Tag: piano

Wellington’s VU NZ School of Music’s Piano Extravaganza Concert lives up to its name

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series

An NZSM Piano Extravaganza, presented by four of Victoria University School of Music’s advanced piano students –

MICHELLE CORVERA
MOZART – Piano Sonata in G Major KV 283 – Mvts II (Andante) and III  (Presto)
SALINA FISHER – Moths in the Light (2007)
HAILEY ZHOU
MOZART – Piano Sonata No 17 in B-flat Major  KV 570 – Mvt III (Allegretto)
SCHUBERT – Impromptu D 935 Op.142 – Mvt.IV (Allegro scherzando)
JUNWEI CHEN
BEETHOVEN – 6 Variations on “Nel cor piu non mi sento” – Wo0 70
LISZT – Paraphrase de concert sur “Rigoletto” (Giuseppe Verdi)
TAL SHIRI
MOZART – Piano Sonata No, 9 in D Major KV 311 – Mvt.I (Allegro con spirito)
RAVEL – Miroirs No. III – “Une Barque sur L’Ocean”
BRAHMS – Piano Sonata No.1 in C Major Op.1 – Mvt.IV (Allegro con  fuoco – Presto non troppo ed agitato)

St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, 30th September, 2026
Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

A stimulating and heart-warming experience – four of the Victoria University School of Music’s most talented and proficient young piano students performing for us in turn, each demonstrating the various aspects of their musicianship in terms of technique, personality, ownership of the work and communication with the audience. What I particularly enjoyed regarding each of these musicians was their individuality – in each case a singularity of response was evident to the different aspects of performance which served each performer in different ways and indicated their strengths, with occasional indications regarding aspects that might benefit from some attention.

We were given no information regarding each performers’ background, and none concerning their status as regards the courses they were pursuing  – whether they were mid-stream, close to finishing, or even post-graduate wasn’t made clear, which actually enabled our receptivities to respond directly and unmitigatingly to what we heard. The students did have the opportunity to talk briefly to us before each presentation, but the microphone facility at St.Andrew’s, almost never in my experience producing a clearly-focused result save for a very few cases (they did manage to introduce themselves), wasn’t up to the task in this instance, leaving us having to rely on what each of the pianists did with their actual music-making rather than with their words – which is how it should be, anyway!

In general I though the repertoire chosen was enterprising and (in a couple of cases) even daunting!  – however, I recall long ago hearing a brilliant young pianist give a recital in which he dispatched a Schumann work of the utmost difficulty with ease in the more virtuosic passages while having less to say about the work’s poetry and thoughtfulness. In complaining about this to an older and wiser friend, I was told to enjoy the performance as that by a “young artist”, expressing something “unique and precious” for the moment, whatever the insights of succeeding years might bring. It was advice that has stayed with me in my listening to the playing of young musicians to this day…..

The concert was begun by Michelle Corvero with Mozart – the Andante movement from Piano Sonata No. 5 in G major – I thought her phrasing at the outset brought out the liquid flow of the music so beloved by the composer, and observed enough ear-catching dynamic variation to show an awareness of the line’s use of different voices. Now and then there was a slight lumpiness in the phrasing as if the music was made slightly unsure of its characterisation – but the player’s overall mode of “discourse” during the music’s exchanges was nicely observed.  She plunged into the Finale’s Presto, bringing out the music’s “Sturm und Drang”aspects with elan, keeping the music’s energies to the fore, and undeterred by the occasional spurious detailing, while working hard at the almost Haydnesque plethora of energies in the music. Mozart’s music is, of course, that which gives the performer nowhere to hide, but the impulsive energies of the playing carried the day. We heard her at her best in the second item, Salina Fisher’s Moths in the Light, bringing into the light an almost surreal piece which contrasted different kinds of delicacies, from the opening’s shimmering  figurations, through the darker suggestiveness of the middle section, and then realising the evanescent texturings of the concluding bars – an enchanting evocation in both conception and performance.

Hailey Zhou was the next pianist, one whose remarks regarding the music she was about to play I couldn’t hear at all, but whose playing interested me as soon as she touched the piano. She also began her segment of the programme with Mozart (good to hear student pianists tackling this seemingly straightforward but deceptively difficult repertoire!) –  the final Allegretto movement of Piano Sonata No.17 in B-flat K.570.  This movement, one of Mozart’s most exploratory, even wayward in places, opened simply and affably, before asserting its more quixotic character with occasional minor-key nudgings and a second-subject group featuring droll chromatic descents that make one wonder where the composer is taking us – all of which was played with a winning combination of great spirit and near-nonchalant ease. Her presentation’s companion piece was one of Schubert’s Impromptus, Op.142 No.4 in F Minor, D.935, also a somewhat characterfully quirky piece, one whose singularities were given a touch of impetuosity in the playing that I instantly responded to. She negotiated the mood-change in the swirling middle section with beautifully-articulated  phrasings, barring an occasional touch of “ahead-of-the-notes’ impatience here and there, but the quixotic lead-back figurations that returned us to the main theme were given with real elan – an absorbing performance!

Next was Junwei Chen, whose opening item varied the presentation with some Beethoven, albeit in a somewhat post-Mozartean mood with his Six Variations on “Nel cor piu non mi sento” WoO 70 , the text of a duet from Giovanni Paisiello’s opera La Molinara (The Miller-Woman). The pianist’s seamless-flow legato still managed to exude plenty of character, with his voicings between the hands – a lovely minor-key episode brought a deftly-etched sense of real personality  to the music-making, helped by the filigree detail (and I really enjoyed the variation with the decorative left hand!) – it was all playing of considerable charm! His other piece chosen couldn’t have been more different in some aspects, save for a comparable strength of personality. This was Liszt’s famous Rigoletto Paraphrase (after Verdi’s opera), playing which unhesitatingly brought out the music’s multifaceted qualities of characterisation, theatrical atmosphere and technical display, giving each of these a requisite energy, refinement and colour. Both the individual character  portraits and the more concerted interactive sequences were beautifully gradated. As was remarked by my aforementioned friend long ago when considering the playing of a brilliant young pianist we both encountered, this was similar piano-playing that joyfully expressed youthful exuberance in keeping with the present, and which will return deeper qualities in times to come – that said, I still registered the refinement of the more reflective section of the music just before the delivery of the tumultuous cadenza-like finish to the work – most impressive!

In some ways the playing of Tal Shiri, the last of the concert’s four pianists, had a similar kind of impact, perhaps even more so than did the Liszt/Verdi piece – the performer’s choice of Brahms’s tumultuous finale to his First Piano Sonata –  was obviously chosen to show off the pianist’s athleticism as much as his more musical responses. Having said this we were still gobsmacked by the playing, though I would have preferred to have hear the first movement of the Brahms rather than the last.  And this was in the wake of two other pieces, the first being Mozart’s opening movement, Allegro con spirito, of the Piano Sonata in D Major K.311, followed (with far too short a pause in between for me) by Ravel’s astonishing Une Barque sur L’Ocean from his Miroirs – this was quite a programme with those two pieces alone! Perhaps the Mozart movement’s  “Allegro con spirito” marking accentuated the sense of “a musician in a hurry”, here, accomplished though the playing was. More seriously, the Ravel piece was disconcertingly upon us before we knew where we were!  Having said that, the playing was compelling in its vivid detailing – a storm-tossed oceanic voyage making for a very exciting, in places, hair-raising a voyage.  The pianist’s descriptive patterning was sharply-etched throughout, though the variety of touch differentiated between structural (clearly-wrought) and colouristic (fascinatingly varied) – when it came to the ostinato-like patternings gradually leading up to the storm, the effect was satisfyingly visceral and inexorable.

IN all, a remarkable display, reminding me all the more of the exuberances of youth and its special and unique qualities!

Wellington City Orchestra spinning musical tales of adventure, love and vengeance

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington City Orchestra at St.Andrew’s

NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV – Antar” Symphony (1875)
ALEXANDER SCRIABIN – Piano Concerto in F-sharp Minor Op.20 (1896-97)
ANTONIN DVOŘÁK – The Golden Spinning-Wheel Op.109 (1896)

William Berry (piano)
Andrew Atkins (conductor)
Wellington City Orchestra

St.Andrews-on-The -Terrace, Wellington
Saturday, 19th September, 2026

Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

None of these three works are likely to be the ones that the average concertgoer would straightaway think of if asked to name pieces of music associated with each of these three composers – and yet they’re all entirely worthy of performance in their own right, and have things of interest to tell us about their creators. Of these, the work of Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) is probably the least widely known, with perhaps the grandiose symphonic poem for orchestra  “Poem of Ecstasy” having achieved a measure of fame (some of it in the form of notoriety at the time of its creation) with its “mystical” associations, representing “escape” from the physical world and union with a “vast cosmos”! In more recent years the composer’s keyboard works, represented most comprehensively by his nine Piano Sonatas, are increasingly being played, along with his single (and eminently approachable) Piano Concerto.

Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) is of course the composer of the much- and rightly-loved  orchestral work “Scheherazade”, though he has other “classics” next to his name such as “The Fight of the Bumble Bee”  (and who WOULDN’T take time out to enjoy a spanking performance of “Capriccio Espagnol”? – yet another piece to add to an indispensable list of “Spanish” music NOT written by Spaniards!)  Closer to the composer’s home is a work I would definitely be including, the magnificent “Russian Easter Festival Overture”, which STILL sends shivers down the back of my spine in places, even after listening to it for more than fifty years! And then we come to the music by Rimsky scheduled for today, which bears the title  “Antar” – whether a symphony or, like “Scheherazade”, a “Symphonic Suite”, it’s difficult to decide; and the composer was of little help when it came to actually designating the work, himself fluctuating between both “symphony” and “ symphonic suite” (more when we get to the performance!)

The third of these enterprising concert choices for today was a work by Antonin Dvořák, one of a number of “symphonic poems” the composer completed upon returning to Bohemia from New York, where he had served for three years as Director of the National Conservatory of Music of America. Obviously wanting to “reconnect” with his native land, he straightaway wrote four tone-poems, each one drawn from poet Karel Jaromir Erben’s grisly stories based on Czech folk-lore, with today’s featured work “The Golden Spinning Wheel” among the nastiest content-wise chosen by the composer. This was after his having earned through the better-known symphonies , concertos and chamber music the approbation of no less a critic than Eduard Hanslick, a fierce opponent of the Lisztian school of “programme music”, who had described such works as products of “the swindle of false erudition”. Consequently, Hanslick was not impressed with Dvořák’s sudden forays into tone-poems, writing of “the dangers of this latest tendency” and also that “Dvořák now indulges in ugly, unnatural; and ghastly stories which correspond so little to his amiable character and to the true musician that he is.”

With such an enterprising and interestingly-stocked programme, the concert could scarcely fail to please – and so it proved, with conductor Andrew Aitkins’s infectiously boundless enthusiasm and direct, clearly-delineated gesturings drawing from the players sonorous, detailed and characterful responses, all of which excitingly and satisfyingly “warmed up” as the afternoon’s music unfolded – a case in point was the somewhat tentative beginning of the concert with “Antar” whose tones steadily and patiently transformed themselves into a splendid orchestral panoply, finding full expression in the exuberant Dvorak work with which we began the concert’s second-half!

Rimsky’s 1875 revision of his original version of “Antar”, a work based on a Middle Eastern legend, was presented in today’s concert – conductor Andrew Atkins contributed a commendably cogent programme note summarising the work’s genesis and subsequent “development”.) The composer eventually produced FOUR published versions of “Antar”,  the ”original” 1868 version and its 1875 revision –  then a SECOND revised version in 1897, and (confusingly!) a reworking of the 1875 version! Armed with sufficient scores and recordings (plus a designation-change by the composer) the enthusiast would have an absorbing time coming to grips with the versions and their history!

“Antar” was based on a Middle-Eastern legend concerning an eponymous warrior-cum-philosopher who has renounced humanity and taken refuge in the desert, where he saves a gazelle from a giant bird – the gazelle then reveals its true identity as the beautiful Queen Kul-Nazar, and grants her saviour the “three joys” he most longs for, which, true to form, are vengeance, power and love, and which the music depicts over the remaining movements.  I noted the effectively dark, spacious timbres of the opening from bassoons and horn, the violas’ tender playing of the “Antar” theme’s first appearance, the winds reinforcing of the upper extensions of this theme, with the flute performing evocatively exotic” figuration” , the strings’ steady articulation of the lines in the music’s first agitated tutti, and their lovely Borodin-esque “lilt” in the following dance-tune, with the horns splendid delivery of the “Antar “ theme as an occasional  counterweight – and to cap off the movement, the grand tutti statement of the “Antar” motif at the movement’s end!

The second movement coalesced rather than began, with deep, murmuring beginnings and surges of tone bringing forth a march-like figure, its subject set upon warfare and revenge, as manifested by the occasional “general welter of sound” (to quote Sir Thomas Beecham, who championed the music of the “Russian Five”, of which group Rimsky-Korsakov was a member). The players kept their martial momentums going splendidly, throwing in plenty of suitably combatative exchanges between strings and winds, capped off by rousing percussive crashes and deliciously portentous touches from the heavy brass, the music ending not in triumph, however, but with a melancholy strings-and wind reiteration of the theme. It brought out all the more the “Russian festiveness” of the third movement’s swaggering opening (reminiscent of works like the composer’s own “Tsar Saltan” and Borodin’s “Prince Igor”), with gorgeously lyrical contrasting themes from the strings, and from an evocative wind-decorated solo horn! Such was the excitement that continued and built up over the last couple of pages, that we all broke into spontaneous applause at the movement’s end!

Gorgeous wind-playing from various soloists marked the finale’s opening (from where I was sitting I couldn’t see who was playing what instrument, the players’ music-stands obscuring all but the tops of bobbing heads! – though it all sounded most evocative), in places rivalling “Scheherazade” for atmosphere and allure, with the strings doing so well with their long, sinuous lines. As the story concluded with the hero’s death in his beloved Queen’s arms the finale had no hint of any sort of stirring “grandstand finish” but rather, a kind of gradual expiation, which conductor and players despatched as meaningfully as the composer’s surprisingly prosaic treatment allowed them to do – C’est la vie, c’est la mort!

Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) was an almost exact contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) studying piano under the same teacher in Moscow, Nikolai Zverev and continuing together at the Moscow Conservatory, each graduating with honours for piano-playing. However, they soon developed along different lines as composers, with, in general terms,  Scriabin the more adventurous, Rachmaninov the more conservative. Scriabin’s music, though largely misunderstood in his day, is enjoying increased interest  and appreciation,  while Rachmaninov’s, more conservative in outlook and enjoying a popularity that has largely endured, is still considered old-fashioned and regressive in some circles.

How interesting that both composed youthful Piano Concertos which shared the same F-sharp Minor key,  Scriabin at the age of twenty-four in 1896 (his first work involving an orchestra) and Rachmaninov much earlier, at the age of eighteen in 1891-2 (the composer’s 1917 revised version does an excellent job of removing the youthful longeurs and tightening up t the piece’s overall trajectories!). Scriabin’s work was written before he had embarked upon quasi-mystical, harmonically-radical explorations of chromaticism and tonality in his later work. Though each was critical of the other’s work Rachmaninov made a point of going out of his way to  promote his colleague’s music after the latter’s untimely death, giving the repeated heresay account of Rachmaninov casting aspersions on his friend’s state of mind difficult to take entirely seriously.

More to the point is that Scriabin’s only Piano Concerto was here given a performance by 22 year-old William Berry of the utmost finesse, control and sparkling brilliance, one accompanied hand-in-glove by conductor and orchestra. The work’s dreamy opening, brought into being by the horn and strings, was answered confidently and then increasingly passionately by the soloist, interacting with the orchestra  both in full-blooded and playfully filigree  exchanges, with a poetically responsive horn obbligato in attendance! – I loved the spacious rolling exchanges between orchestra and piano – and how Rachmaninov-like were the glorious melodic string lines prompting full-blooded responses from the pianist (and vice-versa!), These were activated into fairy-like dancings from the soloist. to the strains of pipers playing, and alternated with surges of Romantic feeling whose continued insistence  eventually drew pianist, players and conductor into a grand summation of arrival – a thrilling place to have been taken, with William Berry graciously acknowledging the audience’s appreciation at the music’s end!

The work’s slow movement drew from me a response similar to that I’ve often experienced with the Chopin Second Piano Concerto’s slow movement – beautifully limpid opening phrases from the strings, repeating the heart-stopping high point of the melody, and then repeating the sequence for the clarinet, and with the piano decorating the moment with a gossamer-like finish – such exquisite beauty! And what fun it suddenly seemed for one’s spirit to jump up up and dance with the piano’s spirited cavortings, then to pause and contemplate the stillnesses as the melody drifted all about its self-created loveliness, the piano joined by the clarinet before the strings returned to further savour the moment.

A swinging ¾ rhythm from the piano began the finale, with one of its measures repeatedly dancing to the top of the keyboard and down again, an exuberant flourish which kept the movement’s momentum alive and unfettered for a flurry of milliseconds!  – interspersded among this was a heart-bursting, burgeoning piano melody whose ascent flung open the vistas and urged the instrumental lines to take the plunge and augment the journey. The piano eventually persuaded the orchestra to abandon all caution and throw open everything widely and fill the spaces with this glorious melody! Having done this and found it good, piano and orchestra reminisced together – both the “open vista” melody and the exuberantly-dancing piano flourish were revisited and treated as old friends, the composer paying homage, consciously or otherwise, to his friend Rachmaninov’s gift of piling up climax upon climax and allowing the emotion full rein right to the forthright conclusion

Our pianist had something special in store for us at the concerto’s end, returning to the platform to give us some music by another composer whose music also deserves to be heard more often – this was a piece by Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), a work whose title I couldn’t hear from where I was sitting as announced by William Berry, though I was able to fully appreciate the music’s quietly rhapsodic opening minor chords, whose wandering, exploratory melody flowered into lusciously-coloured tones, the music exploring both depths and heights on its path towards a monumental climax of sound and feeling – it all unwound slowly and pensively, letting the tensions release their grip and fall away, eventually returning to the piece’s opening, with the journey redeemed at the end by the solace of a major key…..a special conclusion to a memorable overall performance!

After the interval came the Dvořák tone-poem “The Golden Spinning-Wheel” – what a great piece of music it all was, if not perhaps as tone-paintingly graphic in places as  fellow-countryman Smetana’s depictions of events in the latter’s orchestral  work “Ma Vlast” (eg. the pictorial descriptions of Smetana’s “Vltava” and of the brutal events of “Sarka”). Still, Dvořák’s delineations of his story gave enormous pleasure to this listener in what was obviously a characteristically grisly tale of betrayal, murder and revenge – and the extent to which the music could be enjoyed “as music” and away from the story’s specifics was, I thought, remarkable!

The story told of a peasant girl Dornička, whom a king encounters on his travels, falls in love with her, and proposes to make her his Queen – the girl is then murdered by her stepmother who installs her own look-alike daughter as the king’s projected bride, but a magician retrieves the murdered girl’s body in exchange for a golden spinning-wheel whose magic then betrays the stepmother’s crime and restores Dornička to life, so that, in the words of Oscar Wilde’s Miss Prism, “the good end happily and the bad unhappily”. Andrew Atkins and the orchestra grasped the mettle firmly and plunged into the music’s glorious opening, strings and percussion establishing the trajectories, with horns and winds sounding the approach of the king, before the strings enable the royal party to sweep onto the scene, and the king to catch sight of and fall in love with the beautiful peasant girl at her spinning wheel, beautifully portrayed by detailings such as the interaction of solo violin and cor anglais, with colourful and atmospheric touches from the harp and percussion. The rest of the story unfolded with readily-evoked energies and panoplies of detail and colour, in many places satisfying as “absolute music” besides serving the narrative – but we particularly enjoyed those characteristic Dvořákian touches, such as the glorious string theme in thirds which heralded the king’s return from the wars to greet his supposed bride, and whose spinning-wheel then unexpectedly “spins out” the grisly tale’s details, resulting in the King’s rightful bride’s reinstatement, and the punishment of her would-be-murderers.

Though much was new to me, and probably to most people in the audience, this afternoon’s music successfully captivated and held our attention with its exotic fascination, colourful orchestration, and here, sturdily and enthusiastically committed performances  – all credit to Andrew Atkins’ enterprise and his players’ dedication and sheer elan in bringing it all so enjoyably to life for our pleasure!

Quang Hong Luu (piano) – brilliantly personifying composer and music and their times

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Quang Hong Luu, with Phan Hồng Châu,  at Old St.Paul’s, Wellington

FRANZ  LISZT –  Anneés de pelerinage – Troisieme (Third Year of Pilgrimage) S.163

Angelus – “Prayer to the Guardian Angels”
Aux Cyprès de la Villa d’Este No.1 & 2
Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este
Sunt Lachrymae Rerum E mode Hongroise
Marche Funebre
Sursum Corda

Quang Hong Luu (piano)

Cathedral of St. Paul (“Old St. Paul’s”), Mulgrave St., Thorndon, Wellington
Thursday, 10th September, 2026

Vietnamese-born pianist Quang Hong Luu made a welcome “return to life” on behalf of Wellington’s concert-goers in an Old St.Paul’s “lunchtime concert” presentation, after an earlier indisposition prevented him from giving a promised recital for Wellington Chamber Music’s Sunday concert series on August 16th. Quang had originally intended to present music by Chopin, Beethoven and Liszt, including in the recital the last-named composer’s rarely-performed set of pieces from his later years, written while in residence in Tivoli, Rome, at the Villa d’Este, famous for its spectacular gardens and fountains. These seven pieces were published as the third book of an extensive collection of works which the composer collectively called “Annees de Pelerinage” (Years of Pilgrimage).

Three of these pieces draw their direct inspiration from the Villa d’Este, two of them meditations evoking feelings concerning the magnificent cypress trees in the villa’s gardens, and one inspired by the inspirational fountains, the latter work resonating in various other composers’ music in the years to come. Liszt’s sojourns at these Tivoli gardens provided solace to a composer feeling himself increasingly at odds with existence in general, and beset by occasional depression and sadness, much of which is expressed in the darker moments of some of these pieces.

The “lunchtime concert” format of this occasion perfectly suited the detachment of these pieces by Liszt from the original recital intended by the pianist, the music’s markedly spiritual, and in places esoteric character finding a fitting ambience in the Old St.Paul’s outstandingly beautiful “old-world” environment. The piano, too, in this case a hundred-plus year-old instrument, seemed to unashamedly proclaim its venerable experience in a way that felt and sounded entirely appropriate to the music and to Quang’s playing. Only the dismal weather outside refused to take note of the significance of the occasion, the rain probably accounting for a smaller-than-usual lunchtime audience.

Opening the collection was Angelus (Prayer to the Guardian Angels), its opening tintinnabulations suggesting the traditional bells – as befitted this piece’s dedication (to Liszt’s grand-daughter Daniela) the music at first seemed innocently child-like in tone and aspect, though gradually taking on deeper, grander tones before again returning to the child-like simplicities of the opening. The ballade-like melody pressed forward with engaging youthful vigour, “playing” inquisitively with the three-note staccato figure and its modulations, and with the melody itself, before gathering itself for a grand presentation of the theme, the pianist raising his hands high as if symbolising the blessings of the return to the repeated figuration passage with which the work began, and  blissfully intoning an “uplifted” meditative repetition of those same notes whose gentle earthward descent returned us to a fleeting reminiscence of the ballade-like melody’s opening strains.

By comparison, the first of the two  Aux Cyprès de la Villa d’Este  made a big, black-browed, imposing, even  fearful impression – the repeated tolling bells in the bass amplify and brutalise the opening tintinnabulations of the first piece, the music moving forward deliberately and majestically, then reinforcing the music’s forward movement, plunging us headlong into a kind of maelstrom of agitated sound whose tones lift us up and plunge us downwards in the manner of some oceanic wave, leaving us at the mercy of the ambiences surrounding the places to which the music has delivered us – as if we are in awed dialogue with the cypress trees, a kind of confrontation with nature, with creation in a larger sense and with our place in it, one of awed humility at their symbolic permanence and essential “character” (these trees being symbols of death in classical  tradition…..)

Again, the music at the outset of the second Cyprès de la Villa d’Este was gaunt, black-browed and imposing, though not as unremittingly fearful or threatening in aspect as in the previous piece – a repeated downward-leaping fifth rose partially upwards in a gesture of part defiance, part despair, followed by several tersely muttered chords. The exchange wass repeated, and a new theme, determined and rising appeared, followed by a fanfare-like passage that rose and fell with some certainty – the downward-leaping fifth and its partly-upward “balance” reappeared, followed by, firstly, a forward-looking chromatically-harmonised passage, and a luminous-sounding chorale-like major-key section, suddenly sounding like the Liszt of a previous time, as if a melodic resurgence of a idea from  the composer’s 1850 Consolations or from his 1852 Harmonies Poetiques et religieuses had come to mind. It seemed almost as if the composer had penetrated the outwardly forbidding aspect of the cypresses to express deeper, more ambivalent existential truths suggested by their customary associations – working towards a more transcendent expression that shed light upon darkness in unforeseen ways. Certainly, there was as much peaceful resignation in the repetitions of the luminous- sounding chorale as there was an occasional  indication of a troubled spirit elsewhere.

Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este, the most famous of the set, came next, introduced by an upwardly-thrusting impulse of light and energy and substance whose joyous outpourings symbolisd what its composer described via his quote from the Gospel of John (4:14) as “a well of water springing up into eternal life”, and which was to prove inspirational for a whole new generation of Impressionist composers such as Debussy and Ravel. I wanted Quang Hong Luu to savour for a few more resonant milliseconds the truly transcendental moments of Liszt’s quoting of Wagner from the opera “Das Rheingold” – here, the alluring Rhinemaidens’ twice-voiced lament was, for me, dispatched a shade too quickly – fortunately, the rest, under Quang’s fingers was sheer magic through his playing’s crystalline brilliance, and, towards the end, his complete and exhilarating physical realisation of the flow of water’s all-engulfing cumulative effect, leaving at the end a deep, richly-intoned summation in the piano tones of  something sacramental and life-changing!

The next piece, Sunt lacrymae rerum – en mode hongrois,  returned to the darkness of the first “Cypress” piece. The title “Sunt lacrymae rerum” means “There are tears for things”, and is a quote from Virgil’s “Aeneid” made in reference to the fall of Troy, though Liszt would have been referring here to the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848-49, a theme he had already explored in his piano piece Funerailles, and the symphonic poem “Hungaria”.  The air of mourning was apparent, expressed on both a personal and a national level, Liszt employing all kinds of sonorities to express different levels of sorrow, the piano writing unique in terms of its vision and inventiveness.

No let-up was possible with the following Marche funebre (the earliest piece in the collection, written in 1867), written to mark the death by execution of the unfortunate Maximilian I, the Emperor of Mexico, and containing the inscription on the score “To have wished for great things is an accomplishment in itself “. Perhaps the introduction to this work contained the set’s darkest music – Wagner called this music “an old man’s delirium” – the central section was bleak and ruminative, while the final section was extraordinary, a huge crescendo, atonal harmonies amid tremolandi passages, before a final section which paid homage to the unfortunate monarch in the most fulsome pianistic “clarion call” terms!

Finally came the pianist’s ultimate act of faith, the chorale-like Sursum Corda (Lift up your hearts!) an irresistible and heartfelt statement of faith which the pianist here threw himself into with amazing gusto, at times lifting his whole body from the piano seat in aid of putting every fibre of his being behind the delivery of this music’s message, a performance which fulfilled to a unique, overwhelming degree a “blood-sweat-and-tears” kind of fervour on the part of the composer, so that here, it was as if performer and composer had become one.

We made up for lack of audience numbers at the end with what we hoped were sounds and gesturings of enthusiastic appreciation of the pianist’s superhuman efforts! Quang assured me he would be in Wellington next year for another concert, as yet undisclosed as to content. At such an interpretative level as we had been privileged to experience on this occasion I felt inclined to happily and eagerly undertake with him whatever musical journey he might propose! What a treat to have such an experience to look forward to!

 

The Dolfin-Lin Duo – positively tingling with spontaneous re-discovery!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents:
Dolfin-Lin Duo – Balazs Dolfin (‘cello) / Tony Chen Lin (piano)

ZOLTÁN KODÁLY  –  Magyar Rondo (Hungarian Rondo) (1917)
ANTON WEBERN  –  Sonata for ‘Cello and Piano (1914)
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH  –  Sonata for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord in D Major  BWV 1028
GAO PING  –  Sonata No. 2 for ‘Cello and Piano “Departure” (2001)
BÉLA BARTÓK – Rhapsody No. 1 for ‘Cello and Piano (1928-9)
NATHANAEL DEJONG – Abandoned Voices (2021)
JOHANNES BRAHMS – Sonata No.1 for ‘Cello and Piano in E Minor Op.38

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday,, 30th August 2026

Review for “Middle C” by Peter Mechen

This partnership of ‘cello and piano made a profound impression with the Duo’s strongly-projected, in places “larger-than-life” realisations of the works chosen, with those I’d heard before (the Bartok and Brahms pieces) giving a remarkably singular impression to my ears of hearing the music for the first time! I’d heard Tony Chen Lin’s playing on several occasions previously as well as on recordings, and found myself often remarking upon his boldly-characterised view of both detailings and overall trajectorial and colouristic character, playing which unhesitatingly “addresses” more than merely “coaxes out” the music’s manifold moods. On this occasion, of course, his partner was Hungarian cellist Balazs Dolfin ( their Duo was formed in Italy in 2021) whose similarly arresting and whole-hearted approach to his instrument and its sound-world in general seemed to me to fit like a glove with the pianist’s aforementioned qualities  – so that the music-making throughout the concert positively tingled with spontaneously-generated re-discovery!

First up was Zoltan Kodaly’s Magyar Rondo, written in 1917, and drawn from incidental music the composer had written for a play by Zsigmond Móricz called Pacsirtaszó (Lark’s Song), a folk-style drama but  with “social realism” themes – this version for ‘cello and piano brought out the piece’s soulful folk-character at the outset, before breaking into a dance variation, angular and quixotic! A deeper, more baritonal tone came with the next, slower variation, the piano contrasting the cello’s sombre voice with full, assertive treatment accorded the melody’s refrain, though the music returned to more intimate realms for a wistful, harmonics-like cello passage, almost ghostly in effect! A far more helter-skelter mood overtook the next variation’s minor-key mood-change, the music abandoning itself to a burst of high-spirited display before the cello took us suddenly along a pizzicato-strewn pathway, the piano playing bagpipelike figurations as the dance swirled and swayed up and down – but how wistful and redolent were the dream-like moments of remembrance, compared with the wildness of the duo’s concluding high-spiurited flourishes!

Nothing further from the opening could have been devised than what we next experienced, Anton Webern’s ‘Cello Sonata, a work written in 1914, and intended as a present for his father, who loved the ‘cello! For whatever reason the composer broke off working on the piece and decided he would give his father the “Three Little Pieces for ‘Cello and Piano” Op.11 instead, abandoning the Sonata, which wasn’t rediscovered until 1965, twenty years after t3he composer’s death. Though roughly contemporaneous with the Kodaly piece we heard  at the concert’s beginning, the Sonata seemed to inhabit an entirely different creative sphere,  Though not twelve-tone music. Webern’s Sonata features fractured phrases and angularly-pointed rhythms whose contrasts are often explosive and even disturbing, with “sehr bewegt” (very animated) suddenly giving way to (“zart bewegt”) gently animated, before reverting without warning to the original marking for the piece’s final gesturings.

Not inappropriately, the players then took up, after a moments’s pause, the programme’s next item Johann Sebastian Bach’s  Sonata for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord in D Minor, with the first-movement Adagio in our minds seeming almost to “sort out” the still-resonating strains of the Webern piece, almost as if giving credence to Webern’s teacher Schoenberg’s dictum that “there are no dissonances in music, just more remote consonances…”. I thought the playing so very exquisitely dovetailed, bringing out as much the character as well as the beauty of the lines’ interactions during the following Allegro. The soulfulness of the minor-key Siciliano rhythm throughout the Andante brought out the expressiveness, the depth of feeling, the grief inherent in this music that awaited release in a finale that danced like thistledown in the wind, joyously freed from earthly constraint as the composer evoked the prospect of life’s fulfilment in expectation of heavenly reward.

Sixth-generation Chinese composer Gao Ping’s music is well-known to New Zealand audiences due to his significant working associations with various educational institutions in this country, such as Christchurch’s University of Canterbury and Te Koki New Zealand School of Music in Wellington. He’s developed long-term relationships with local musicians such as Michael Houstoun  and  the New Zealand String Quartet – the fifteen year-old association with Houstoun has resulted in a recent recording “Outside the Window” of Gao Ping;s music, released on the Rattle label. By way of acknowledging a New Zealand influence upon his own music he is currently planning an opera set in this country, one whose setting (Central Otago) will draw from storytelling traditions present in classic stories from both Chinese and Western cultures. This has been, he has said

Gao Ping’s Cello Sonata No. 2 was written on 2001 – its title, “Departure” was taken from the subject of a Chinese poet of the “Song Dynasty” one writing in times parallel to western medieval times (10TH-13TH century), the Song Dynbasty poet Su Dongpo. The poet relates the work’s title to the cyclical meaning of the Chinese  word shi meaning “departure” which incorporates both an end and a beginning, an idea elaborated upon by Geo Ping’s music which ends the piece with the notes of its beginning. Its sounds also give voice to the composer’s inclination to blend Western and Chinese music, reminding the listener in places of the inclinations of Janacek, Kodaly and Bartok in their similar “seedings” of various pieces with folk-inspired impulses and gestures.

There are five sections to the work  which play continuously, and whose flow emphasise that same “end is my beginning” concept. The cello underlines traditional colours and timbres of traditional Chisese instruments such as the Guqin and Erhu, as well as having recourse to vocal inflections of traditional speech-styles, stemming from an era of personal expression and introspective inclinations. The ‘cello emphasised these associations at the beginning, now and then “bending’ the notes, and employing freely ranging dynamic levels, with eerie, other-worldly harmonics that invited the piano’s first entry. A sustained note slowly developed more elaborate configurations which grew to  allowing ever-increasing freedom of expression – the instrumental sounds could be described as reaching for speech inflections, suggesting the full human range of tones, timbres, colours and dynamics.  Whole episodes then gave themselves over to contrasting depictions of emotion and purpose, often alarmingly confrontational, then reverting to introspective moods, the tones becoming increasingly disembodied as a sense of overriding timelessness crept into the sound-worlds and gradually silenced the remaining impulses and counter-impulses in spell-binding fashion!

An interval of discussion made the time pass quickly before we were off again with the dauntless duo, this time a folk-flavoured work by Bartok, the Rhapsody No.1, originally composed for violin and piano but arranged by the composer for ‘cello and piano – here, ‘cellist and pianist gave a remarkable display, giving full measure to both the physical and lyrical aspects of the Rhapsody, tearing into the well-known contrasted pairing of the traditional Lassú (slow) and Friss  (fast) sections of the Hungarian verbunkos (recruiting) dance with tremendous physicality, precision and plaintive lyricism, the soft-playing as arresting as the excitement generated by the more brilliant sections.

An entirely new name to me was New Zealand composer Nathanael Dejong (b.1988) whose work reflects his training as both a pianist and violinist as well as composition, but directly focuses on his interest as a parent in childhood development relating to teaching and learning in an age he considers overshadowed  by electronic media devices –  the “Abandoned Voices” title reflected this dominance of digital media at the expense of human interaction. Consequently the work we heard presented sombre exchanges between the instruments, deep, serious and heartfelt utterances punctuated by long silences and wide dynamic ranges, both piano and cello employing delicate, winsome sets of gestures representing a plethora of sounds to make sense of, both of their own volition and in responsive contexts to one another – the cello playing unworldly harmonics and the pianist reaching into the body of the piano to dampen notes and chordings. It all makes for a variety of impulse and intent awaiting definition and associated meaning, the “small voices, waiting to be heard” presence embodied in newly-emergent human form.

Though there was nothing “small voiced” about Johannes Brahms, the young composer’s rabid perfectionist nature resulted in his destroying many youthful compositions before allowing his innermost creative thoughts to remain, an inclination which for some years dogged his compositional efforts – indeed, some scholars suggest that probably only one-third of Brahms’s entire compositional input has survived. The earliest “official” works were for solo piano and song collections, the young composer’s meetings with the violinist Joseph Joachim and Robert and Clara Schumann gained him invaluable advice, example and confidence, though he maintained his rigorous self-critical attitudes to his work throughout his compositional career. His two ‘cello sonatas interestingly “reverse” their composer’s expected compositional trajectories, with the earlier First (played today) very much connected to the past, the deep-throated melody that opens the work frequently “changing places” with the piano, so that the harmonic structure of the work is richly varied in texture and tone. The “fusing” of the two leads strengthened the discourse between the two voices, both performers here scarcely holding back in terms of full-blooded expressiveness – I simply loved it!

For whatever reason, Brahms removed an Adagio movement originally composed, leaving the “Allegretto quasi Menuetto”  to fend for itself as a foil to the outer movements, a charming theme, sharing the opening section with a sinuous second theme, also in a minor key – the trio was even more suggestive in intent, with both instruments tying the melodic strands closely together, before returning to the opening dance. The finale  plunged into a whirling dervish-like opening, (commentators cite Bachian influences here relating to “the Art of the Fugue” at the beginning, which took on a more playful aspect in places, and with Brahms broadening the trajectories into momentary illusions of adventurous impulse (shades of the D Minor Piano Concerto’s great “questing” theme at one point!) and disarmingly charming dance-like manoeuverings, all swept away by the return of the opening “whirling” figures, concluding with a furious, cataclysmic stretto leaving us all deliciously dishevelled by the music’s wonderfully conclusive sound and fury!

 

Ozan Biner-McGrath at St.Andrew’s – a piano recital of music to delight in and savour

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MUZIO CLEMENTI (1752-1832) – Piano Sonata in B Minor Op.40 No.2
SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873-1943) Prelude in B Minor  Op.32 No.10
Etude-Tableau in F-sharp Minor  Op.39 No.3
CESAR FRANCK  (1822-1890) Prelude, Choral et Fugue FWV 21

Ozan Biner-McGrath (piano)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday 29th July 2026

The St. Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert series in Wellington has consistently delighted us this year with a number of extraordinarily exciting concerts, both performance- and repertory-wise – and this week the series came up with yet another absolute winner! This was a piano recital presented for us by a young pianist from Dunedin, Ozan Biner-McGrath, who’s currently a year-13 student at the city’s Logan Park High School while undertaking piano studies, both with his father, Tom McGrath, and  Professor Terence Dennis at the University of Otago, with whom he’s taking a piano performance paper.

He’s already achieved a number of milestones as a young musician – in 2025 he received First Prize at the Dunedin Concerto Competition,as well as being selected as an NZSO Emerging Artist the same year, having been a semifinalist the previous year in the National Piano Competition and a finalist in the Lewis Eady National Junior Piano Competition in 2023. Earlier this year he participated in and was a semi-finalist in the Lev Vlassenko  Piano Competition in Brisbane. Other biographical details I’ve gleaned are his veneration for two particularly outstanding piano virtuosi, Martha Argerich, and Grigory Solokov, and a love for chamber music as well as solo playing. He also takes part as a percussionist in performances by the Dunedin Youth Orchestra.

What particularly attracted me to Ozan’s recital here was the repertoire he chose, in particular a Piano Sonata by the unjustly-neglected composer Muzio Clementi, who wrote over one hundred such sonatas, and was a virtuoso whose reputation as a performer vied for a short time with that of Mozart. A famous piano-playing confrontation between the two in the presence of the Emperor Joseph II was considered a “draw” though each side’s supporters claimed their favourite’s triumph!

Mozart was, of course, almost congenitally ungenerous to any would-be competitors and their achievements – Beethoven, on the other hand, was quoted as being a great admirer of Clementi’s music!  – in fact when listening to a work like the latter’s B Minor Sonata Op. 40 No. 2 (which Ozan  Biner-McGrath played today), I couldn’t help but join so many of the dots with Beethoven’s  rather more  well-known  “Pathetique” Sonata, with its similar slow introduction to the work. The great Vladimir Horowitz was a noted exponent of Clementi, and more recently, the American pianist Lamar Crowson made two LPs containing a number of the sonatas – however these works remain rarities in piano recitals, so I was grateful for Ozan’s advocacy (and his absolutely splendid playing!).

Right from the beginning, the solemn Molto adagio e sostenuto opening of the B Minor Sonata was beautifully “voiced” , filled with inflexion and communicative impulse – every phrase was given by the pianist a “living value”, it seemed, with Beethoven’s similarly “striving” quality and gift for eloquence a seemingly obvious act of homage to the older composer, the music’s  poise and suggestive spaciousness similarly followed by a fiery allegro. In places I found myself thinking even of the great Sviatoslav Richter’s ability to harness waves of energy and build them unerringly into cataclysmic gesturings at the music’s conclusion – wow!

The second movement Largo, Mesto e patetico brought a questioning opening ambience, as if the player was musing on certain ideas or conundrums, returning them at the end into the whimsicality from which they emerged – all very remarkably transparent a creative process! The Allegro gave rise to dark, urgent passages alternating with more fanciful sequences, the pianist adroitly giving the structure an appealing air of spontaneous unpredictability – and there was a marvellously-wrought “developmental” section that made use of an initial descending figure then given ascending chromatic treatment – simply mesmerising! The return of the opening revisits the “riddle” of the work’s introduction before a presto Coda whirled us away on a barrage of triplets – what a splendidly-wrought roller-coaster ride!

Biner-McGrath’s next offering was the magnificent B Minor Prelude Op.32 No.10 by Sergei Rachmaninov, inspired by Arnold Bocklin’s painting “The Return” (Rachmaninov’s close friend, fellow-pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch left an affecting account of his “discovery” via the composer himself, of this particular Prelude’s “meaning”). This was a remarkable performance by Biner-McGrath, one whose focus and sense of  timing seemed to embody a vivid representation of the artist’s subject in the painting – the return home of a soldier,  plagued by doubts as to what he might encounter and by the unpredictability of how he might react to whatever circumstance he finds. Biner-McGrath built the tensions unerringly throughout the “dark night of the soul” experienced by the prodigal regarding his struggle, and gave appropriate tragic voice to the “major-to-minor” phrase which brought the work to a close.

After this came the spectacularly virtuosic Ètude-Tableau Op.39 No. 3 in F-sharp minor –  a veritable torrent of pianistic pursuance on Biner-McGrath’s part, which, however, didn’t for me seem to have quite enough light-and-shade or specific characterisation (it was the one item I couldn’t quite “connect” with, as much as I appreciated the technical achievement of the player realising the notes!).  Coming after the B Minor Prelude especially, it was more sound and fury than anything else, and gave something of an impression in places of a work still in progress as an interpretation, (maybe the preceding Prelude’s “completeness” in performance needed some time for me to escape the spell and jump into the Etude’s very different world) – still, for whatever reason I remained on the “outside” of the music, and have continued since then to wonder exactly why….

No such problems accompanied the concert’s final item, Cesar Franck’s Prelude Chorale et Fugue, a work written in 1884, long  after the composer had left his piano virtuoso years behind him, but still reflecting his formidable keyboard skills. He completed the Prelude and Fugue before adding the Chorale, paying homage in the first instance to Bach, and, perhaps as a kind of afterthought, wanting to express something of his own religious mysticism in the manner of another of the composer’s heroes, Franz Liszxt, who had befriended the young Franck and encouraged his career at various times, both as a pianist and as an organist.

The work’s opening in Biner-McGrath’s hands was filled with Romantic feeling, a sense of constant yearning for life’s meaning, the flowing, exploratory opening expressing the tensions associated such feelings, both in the restlessness of the harmonic explorations and the freely-recited declamatory passages, repeating  the opening agitated figures and their answering recitations – the pianist freely immersed himself in the music’s explorations, maintaining a “questing” aspect through variants of the agitated passagework which took us further into what seemed a kind of “charged” state of being, leading to agitated passages which fell away as quickly as they had risen.

Biner-McGrath then took us in to the world of the Chorale, calmly and purposefully evolving a “structured” kind of sound one would associate with some sort of ritual, a more “inward” kind of experience – this was further illuminated by a melody played by the left hand repeatedly passing over the right, as if some inward spirit was guiding the hands towards expressing something unearthly, the pianist adroitly bringing out the varying intensities of each of this theme’s appearances as the music progressed, becoming almost orchestral in effect in places, as if unseen voices were joining in the resonances of this noble melody.

Gradually the voices died away, and the pianist took up a very Lisztian repeated three-note descending theme which could have come from that composer’s Third Annees de Pelerinage (published as a set of pieces in 1883, a year before Franck wrote this present work) – sombre in mood at first, it gradually developed in presence and power up and down the keyboard, until the same three-note theme was announced as the beginning of the fugue! – its outwardly contained, slightly capricious aspect was beautifully controlled at first by Biner-McGrath, exploring the motif’s manifold possibilities both declamatory and poetic, until briefly subsiding and re-emerging as a more agitated figure resembling the left-over-right hand-crossing of the Chorale, all so enthrallingly exciting and cataclysmic!

With the turmoil dramatically broken off, a repeated-note figure then seemed to almost “summons” the celestial-sounding return of the chorale theme, one whose growing radiance then majestically shares the sound stage with the fugal theme in a ritual-like rapprochement of sorts, a transformation into what one indubitably feels like a kind of ecstatic resolution of previous troubles and conflicts into eventual triumph!

Of course, it was the kind of music and performance that sent us all babbling out into the streets afterwards – extraordinary! Ozan Biner-McGrath will certainly be a musician to watch for in the near future, and a name to conjure with!

 

 

 

NSZO’S Let There Be Light illuminates Saariaho, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Shan Liu (piano) with Jaime Martín and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra – photo, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

KALJA SAARIAHO (1952-2023) – Lumiere et Pesanteur
SERGE PROKOFIEV (1891-1953 – Piano Concerto No. 3 In C Major Op.26
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893 – Symphony No. 4 in F Minor Op.36

Shan Liu (piano)
Jaime Martín (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington (Te Whanganui-a-Tara)
Friday, 24th July 2026

Review by Peter Mechen (Middle C / Seen and Heard International)

This concert by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra was given the title “Let There Be Light”, a quotation from Genesis 1:3 in the Bible, depicting the creation of light upon the earth and its division from darkness – a theme which took different manifestations in the three works given in this evening’s concert by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and its guest conductor Jaime Martín, along with a major contribution in one of the items from the remarkable sixteen year-old New Zealand pianist Shan Liu, here making his mainstage debut with the orchestra.

Beginning the concert was a piece by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Lumière et Pesanteur  (Light and Gravity) – the composer’s own notes regarding this work referred to it as a ”gift” from her to fellow Finnish composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen to honour his advocacy as an interpreter of an earlier work by Saariaho, the oratorio La Passion de Simone, which was inspired by the works of 20th Century philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943). The music of Lumière et Pesanteur  was reworked by the composer from part of that same oratorio, the “Eighth Station”, described by one commentator as the piece’s “most orchestral and least-defined“ section.

Saariaho’s work here  began with the merest murmur of a percussion twinkle from celeste and strings, an evocation of space into which joined a lone trumpeter, sounding a fantastical line with the utmost freedom – this gave way to various wind instruments whose floating tones spontaneously interacted, forming delightfully speculative colouristic and textural ambiences, with brasses playing ever so softly! Over the top of these iridescences piped a piccolo, a foil for the occasional subterranean growlings welling up from beneath, but countered by the continued effusions of wind tone supported by the harp and the softest and most mysterious of brass sonorities.

One could have supposed some kind of narrative at work – my feeling, being new to this music,  was a fairytale-like scenario, one in what seemed in a constant state of sublime and seamless coalescence.  It felt for me as if existence itself here was portrayed in the act of emitting hugely all-embracing sighs of pleasure from the various instrumental groups, occasionally led or spearheaded by specific lines.

Throughout, these tones seemed poly-harmonic, giving us hardly any consciousness of specific keys or modes – instead, opening our imaginations to scenarios of sonorities, textures and timbres engaged in some kind of cosmic interaction, and at which we were spectators mesmerised by the phenomenon’s inception, its growing to various stages of fruition and its equally enigmatic departure! – one in which the sounds didn’t cease as such but seemed to play on at the end beyond what we could actually hear……

After this came the Prokofiev Concerto, a different kind of journey, with its volatility and “take-it-as-it-comes” attitudes towards darkness and light, bestowing insights upon both players and listeners via an experience akin to something of a roller-coaster ride! Such a process seemed all the more Herculean a scenario here through the work in question being undertaken in our presence by such a youthful soloist! Of course Shan Liu had by this time demonstrated his exceptional qualities as a pianist on both the home and international pianistic arenas, even though he was here tackling repertoire that one would think was the preserve of the super-virtuosi (I had, for instance, seen none other than Martha Argerich play this concerto – so I was hedging my bets as to how this young man would in my mind fare against that memory!)…..

Anyway, what a concerto! The opening Andante featured  firstly a clarinet, and a second soon joining in, with the strings then sounding that characteristic sweet-and-sour quality of Prokofiev’s in the opening melody – then in came the strings again with the Allegro – such terrific energy and momentum announcing the pianist’s first entry – could Shan Liu do it? My goodness, could he what! – straightaway, such sparkling, clear and brilliantly fluent fingerwork – and then he really opened up the pianistic throttle for the toccata-like exchanges with swirling winds and slashing strings and tremendous orchestral support in general!  And so it went on – the military-like dotted march rhythms shared between the piano and mischievous instrumental detailing brought out humour aplenty – the march rhythms turned to scampering ones, with each upward-thrusting  gesture eliciting cataclysmic cries from the orchestra, the last of which featured  a return of the opening theme as a full-throated kind of “hymn-tune” – Shan Liu took up the cantabile mood, interacting with the waves of orchestral sound and producing a kind of ethereal, almost mystical sea-change in the music, until the return of the urgent allegro rhythms which recommenced the argument.  And so it went on, through various succeeding episodes too numerous to describe, except to say that the last sortie set the seal on the movement, with the pianist’s running two handed unisons gathering up the orchestral forces in the tremendous and excitingly irresistible propulsions that took the music to a triumphal final chord – at which point the Michael Fowler audience simply exploded with delight and pent-up exhilaration, deservedly giving the musicians their due!

The slow movement was all wistfulness and charm at the outset, the soloist completely at one with conductor and orchestra in the music’s bitter-sweet lyricism, until a sudden outburst brought a wild dance, which the cellos and basses helped along, giving plenty of “hoof to the swing” – as they also did with the succeeding triplet rhythms. By contrast a sequence of pure magic then meandered into and over the sound-vistas, everybody in a kind of drifting dream -a moment of fantastic, other-worldly music-making!  And how spontaneously the rhythmic impulses seemed to come to life again, with dancing impulses sprouting from all about the orchestra – those amazingly jaunty passages then fused their energies with the return of the wistful melody that began the movement – what seemed like opposites enjoying a perfect partnership!

The winds had done a superb job of introducing most of this work’s themes thus far – and the finale was no exception, with the bassoon setting a wry, insouciant opening tone for the movement’s beginning, the piano joining in the fun with big-boned dance measures and playful competition with the orchestra via several glissandi-like skirling phrases added to the “quick-march” exchanges.  There was so much to enjoy, with the winds (again) initiating a plaintive, bitter-sweet melody,  the piano nonchalantly replying with a “walking” theme, taken up by the winds, and a full-blooded return to the bitter-sweet theme on the strings – this was both voiced and embellished until the theme here got the gloriously “full Rachmaninov” treatment from soloist and orchestra (though I’m certain that neither composer would thank me for THAT heartfelt observation!). Those ubiquitous winds then bumptiously reintroduced the opening theme – by now sounding positively turbo-charged! – and with soloist, conductor and players working up to full stretch in alternating the music’s heightened momentums, the concerto by the end had simply overwhelmed us with its power and brilliance!

We couldn’t let Shan Liu go for a while after this! – not until conductor Jaime Martín visibly INSISTED the young pianist play an encore! – most appropriately we were given Schumann’s Traumerei from Kinderszenen, an appropriate antidote to the concerto performance’s intoxication in its simplicity and naturalness of utterance – even though it inhibited not a whit of animated discussion throughout the interval regarding what we’d heard!

Surprisingly, and as it turned out, delightfully, conductor Jaime Martín made a gracious and entertaining “guest’s speech” for us at the second half’s beginning, firstly praising Shan Liu’s remarkable performance, and then properly introducing himself, by way of amusingly recounting his first interactions upon his arrival with various New Zealanders who, upon learning that he was Spanish, acceded, to his utter amazement, fulsome congratulations upon him in relation to the recent Football World Cup Spanish victory!  –  “..almost as if” he said “I myself had played in the final!”. He then talked about his own impressions of the Tchaikovsky Symphony he and the orchestra were about to play,  actually getting the players to sound a few of the work’s themes and motifs by way of highlighting them for us – all this was done in a perfectly straightforward and unpatronising way – a further amusing moment was when the conductor mentioned the word “fate” in his description of the symphony’s main recurring motif, and paused for dramatic effect – in the silence one of the cellists dropped their bow on the floor!

All such byplays done with, Martín began the symphony, getting truly spine-tingling brass-playing and dramatic whiplash-chordings from the full orchestra in the work’s introduction. The strings expressively and plaintively took up their own “first subject”, handing over to the winds and helping to further build up the tensions which became a kind of “pitched battle’ between the “fate” theme and the orchestra’s lamentations! It was a properly dramatic and sonorous journey throughout, the eloquent orchestral detailing in every section by turns confronting (the “fate” music and its insistent accompanying theme) and consoling (the folksy second subject theme and its major-key variant) right to the tumultuous conclusion of the first movement.)

Martín had asked his strings beforehand to play the accompaniments alone to the long oboe solo that distinguishes the second movement, encouraging his audience to “register” the simplicity and loneliness of these pizzicato passages, adding to the beauty of oboist Robert Orr’s actual performance – listening to this movement I was freshly taken aback by the qppeql of Tchaikovsky’s orchestrations, especially the many interactions between strings and winds so gorgeously and heartfeltly realised in this performance. Likewise in the famous pizzicato-led third movement the impact of the instrumental contrasts between strings, winds and brass were positively flavoursome (Johanna Gruskin’s piccolo in particular picturing a superbly loquacious “beastie”!).

Martín then introduced the finale almost as attacca (not marked in the score), conveying the music’s tremendous urgency, the playing marked by fierce exchanges and great brilliance – similarly, the conductor brought the contrasting “Birch tree” melody in almost in tempo. maintaining the music’s delicacy but enhancing the excitement! Later in the movement this melody led with increasing intensity to the final, tumultuous statement of the “fate” motif, momentarily halting the music’s headlong flow, but leading to a quiet reiteration of the festive-like music which represented the composer’s words “If you cannot discover the reasons for happiness in yourself, look to others…” The orchestral frenzy unleashed for us at the conclusion of this movement tonight embodied that fatalism with the utmost euphoria and excitement. Since then, my memory has been wandering back to my first encounter with this work via the legendary Hungarian conductor Antal Dorati, whom I saw give what seemed like a cataclysmic-sounding performance with the then NZBC Symphony Orchestra here in Wellington in 1973 – his shade would, I think, have relished tonight’s equally memorable presentation.

 

 

 

Aotearoa and China – a musical dialogue presented by Jian Liu

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music Concert Series 2026

Jian Liu (piano) presents “Aotearoa and China – a musical  dialogue”
Works for solo piano  by New Zealand and Chinese composers
– the first of four concerts as part of a CMNZ tour)

St Andrews on the Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 14 th June 2026

Review for Middle C by Gary Wilby

What a thoughtfully curated concert by Associate Professor Jian Liu of Te Koki New Zealand School of Music Victoria University of Wellington. This was a brilliant piano journey through both the place and the culture of New Zealand and China. The programme – Aotearoa & China: A Musical Dialogue  –  cleverly paired piano solos by composers from the two places which are Jian Liu’s home.

In his introductory comments he mentioned that the programme was not the big works from the romantic period – which he had recently been playing as
member of a Quintet at the Chamber Music section of the Michael Hill International Violin Competition Semi Finals in Auckland – but rather smaller piano works from the two countries which complement and contrast place, land, and its inhabitants.

Jian Liu, who has lived in NZ for some 16 years spoke of live performance as having an energy and connection  which he wished to share with us. The programme began with Lilburn’s 1951 “From the Port Hills” one of Five Bagatelles. This  the most evocative and embedded of piano works relating to the landscape of NZ – the vista, the walking, cycling, running, the backdrop to every Cantabrians day – was played with spacious crafted phrases and dynamic range, the bass notes played with a heft to perhaps even suggest the crater’s volcanic origins.

This was immediately followed without a break by “Pictures from Bashu” by Huang Hu Wei,  referencing the cultural richness of Sichuan in a selection of four pieces from that work. Immediately the delicacy of morning, the lyricism, the dynamic virtuosity, the festivity, the sound with Chinese characteristics was
apparent.

“Three Short Pieces” by Salina Fisher, who was present in the audience, moved us to a more abstract view – amazing for a work by a school student at the time – of “Raindrops on a Misty Pond”, “Moths in the light” and then “Galaxy”, giving us a sense of vastness. Each of these Jian gave us with great clarity – delicate echoes, where every note had its place creating an almost different piano sound. And, we were made aware of that by the performer.

Salina was paired with probably the most well-known Chinese composer to New Zealanders in this programme – Tan Dun. If not for the film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” maybe because of his many concertos. His “Water Concerto” has been performed in NZ as has his opera “Tea” performed at the NZ International Festival of the Arts. He also visited NZ a number of times and worked at VUW, facilitated by Jack Body and connections through the Asian Composers League Festivals. Again, only a selection of movements from this longer piece – “Eight Memories in Watercolours” – were heard  – the exciting “Staccato Beans”, the
pastoral “Herdboy”, and the evocative “Floating Clouds” almost French floating away to nothing.

Tan Dun’s work was more motivic than we had heard thus far. Dynamic with strong rhythms, tempo and beat. The “Herdboy” evoked isolation and Chinese instrumentation. I would love to have heard Jian playing the last in this suite – the very exciting “Sun Rain”

The programme then moved into love and affection – lyricism. Gareth Farr’s beautiful, sensitive “Love Songs” for three friends – subtle and beautiful melodic lines with arpeggiated left hand accompaniment. Immediately appealing but also requiring reflection. Of course, Jian played these very sensitively,  gifting us the simplicity and emotion of these pieces.

Jian then played “Three Songs from the Mountains of Southern Yunnan” by Zhang Zhao. The folk aesthetic moved though dance like activities involving children, hills, Mountain Moons and mountain Fire which sparked under Jian’s fingers and almost felt slightly dangerous.

After the Interval we had two Lullabies – “For Matthew” by Gillian Whitehead and a work by He Lu Ting. The intimacy of interacting with a child, the soothing of a child – Gillian’s rocking motion with Jian bringing out the bass part and then a work with a Chinese taste where the pianist “rang out” the melodic line. A universal act.

The children are presumably slightly older in Anthony Ritchie’s “Carolina Bay Suite” and Ding Shan De’s “Children Suite – Happy Holidays”. The former evokes a sunrise then children excitedly playing and running on one of the South Island’s most well-known beaches and carnivals. Having fun in the sun at the beach. The Chinese child getting out of the city, skipping with ropes and playing hide and seek. The perfect day for children – here and there.

The programme concluded with two early works by senior composers of the two countries’ earlier times – more formal and traditionally structured.  David Farquhar’s “Sonatina” is a work which should be played more as it reflects on and is part of a time when NZ composers were finding their own feet as part of this country, as part of this land. The programme finished with Wang Li San’s “Sonatina”. Unlike Farquhar’s typical music tempo markings (eg .Andante) for each movement, the latter has the more typical Chinese “titles” describing nature’s sunshine, new rain and “Dance of the Mountain Men” evoking dance and nature.

What an interesting programme –  so well curated and so well presented to the large audience by the performer and by Wellington Chamber Music. As one woman said leaving the venue “That was so exciting –  I didn’t know any of the pieces”. But she was converted and enthralled. Jian Liu’s playing is in its self worth hearing but in this concert he did more by creating links and dialogue for us. He brought us to the lands and the people of two countries’ cultures – especially the children.

It is worth noting that the music is available through Sounz Centre for NZ Music and also through the NZ Music Trust who published “Chinese Piano Music for Children” and also “NZ Piano Works in Two Volumes”. Jian Liu is, during the next week, presenting the programme through Chamber Music NZ to Whanganui, Upper Hutt and New Plymouth

Orchestra Wellington in full “swing” with escapist New York jazz

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ORCHESTRA WELLINGTON -2026 Collaborations
W:ELLINGTONMarc  Taddei with Orchestra Wellington  – Photo Credit : Andy Best

LEONARD BERNSTEIN – Chichester Psalms
– Tudor Consort / Joshua Derbyshire-Foale (boy soprano)
GEORGE GERSHWIN – Piano Concerto in F
– David Fung (piano)
ROLF LIEBERMANN – Concerto for Jazz Band and Orchestra
– Te Koki Jazz Band
DUKE ELLINGTON – Harlem

Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday 30th May 2026

Reviewed by Leila Lois
for MIddle C

What a treat to experience Roaring Twenties New York, replete with a jazz-inflected orchestra and virtuoso soloists, on an early winter evening in Wellington. This edition of Orchestra Wellington’s ‘Collaborations’ series transported audiences to the streets and speakeasies of a bygone Manhattan. The evening exuded classical jazz sophistication, with a pleasing
programme loosely fitted to the jazz era theme: Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, Rolf Liebermann, and Duke Ellington.

The evening began with a gorgeous rendition of Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, featuring the Tudor Consort and boy soprano Joshua Derbyshire-Foale. The chorus roused the piece with “Behold how good”, the cello foreshadowing the beauty to come. The work sat perfectly within
the Michael Fowler Centre’s acoustics, maintaining its ecclesiastical air while finding warmth in the venue’s wooden architecture.

Next came Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F, with pianist David Fung bringing a syrupy fluidity to the keys. Honed by training with the Cleveland Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, he proved a wonderful collaborator throughout. There was a playful call and response between trumpet, timpani, and piano, melting into the swoony strings under the expert direction of
conductor Marc Taddei. The helter-skelter rondo evoked Roaring Twenties Manhattan so vividly it could practically be felt — the muted trumpets a particular standout, alongside the desultory pizzicato violin and the balmy calm of flute and piano.

Liebermann’s Concerto for Jazz Band and Orchestra, accompanied by the Te Koki Jazz Band, delivered a vibrant dance-hall sound. The pacy cymbals and trombone (the latter led by Jakob Elijas) had the audience toe-tapping and shoulder-shimmying within moments. A playful turn into bossa nova, complete with cowbell and Afro-Cuban instrumentation, added a welcome frisson.

Winds, brass and percussion – Orchestra Wellington – Collaborations 2026 :  Photo Credit: Andy Best

The final piece, Duke Ellington’s much-admired Harlem, perhaps transported audiences furthest of all. Ellington once quipped that “you can’t write music right unless you know how the man who’ll play it plays poker” — and this work fully embodies that spirit, maximising the plush textures of the full orchestra to conjure a vivid, colour-drenched Harlem of the early-to-midtwentieth century.

A beautiful showcase of escapist New York jazz, this edition of Orchestra Wellington’s ‘Collaborations’ series was a real hit, and at the onset of winter, it brought welcome colour and delight.

Echoes of woodland scenes rubbing shoulders with companionable coffee-houses! – an echt-Viennese musical lunchtime experience for Wellingtonians at St. Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Christine Wang (violin), Beth Chen (piano), and Sebastian Dunn (horn)

EUGÈNE BOZZA (1905-1991) – En Forêt (In the Forest) Op.40
Sebastian Dunn (horn), Beth Chen (piano)

FRITZ KREISLER (1875-1962) – Schön Rosmarin (Old Viennese Dance No. 3)
Christine Wang (violin), Beth Chen (piano)

JOHANNES BRAHMS  (1833-1897) – Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano in E-flat Major Op.40
Christine Wang (violin), Sebastian Dunn (horn), Beth Chen (piano)

St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, April 29th, 2026

Every now and then in a concert one encounters music one has never before heard, or even heard of, and sometimes even whose composer has a name one doesn’t know. On certain occasions audiences sit primly and attentively and at the end applaud, congratulating the composer(s) and the musicians, and of course, one another upon according the piece or pieces due attention. But on once-in-a-blue-moon occasions such hitherto unknown music can unexpectedly generate an instant impact akin to a real frisson of excitement, one which lingers on in the memory for ages afterwards. It’s happened to me a few times over my years of concert-going experience – the latest being my attendance at a recent St Andrew’s-on-The Terrace concert featuring three outstanding musicians – Sebastian Dunn, horn, Christine Wang, violin, and Beth Chen, piano.

To be accurate, the truly “instant combustion” fireworks took place most markedly during the concert’s first item, featuring horn player Sebastian Dunn and pianist Beth Chen in a vivid presentation of an ear-opening horn-and-piano piece by French composer, Eugène Bozza (1905-1991). This was En forêt  (In the Forest), a piece written in 1941 as an entrance exam piece for the Conservatoire de Paris, and one regarded ever since as embodying the entire technical and expressive capabilities of the French horn. The piece depicted a hunting party in a forest, the writing combining different horn-playing techniques with an impressionistic piano accompaniment. Both  Sebastian Dunn and Beth Chen revelled in their concerted evocations of the hunt and their individual depictions of various scenes and moods throughout – a particularly atmospheric feature was the horn’s magical use of call and distanced (or muted) respondings. The visceral impact of the piece and its performance almost literally “brought the house down” at the conclusion, so evocative was the playing of both musicians throughout in terms of recreating presence and distance, activity and reflection.

After these somewhat “larger-than-life” exertions, violinist Christine Wang next took the platform with Beth Chen to give us “something completely different” – a most charming and nostalgia-soaked piece titled Schön Rosemarin – Old Viennese Dance No.3, by Fritz Kreisler. Before the piece was even halfway though, the winsome charm and delicacy of the players’ violin and piano strains had taken us far away from the forests and the hunters, and was instead enabling us to “drink in” the ambience of the Viennese coffee-house with its traditional “Atmosphäre von Gemütlichkeit”. Fritz Kreisler, besides having been, of course, a renowned virtuoso violinist, was also a composer, but he preferred to publish some of his music under an assumed name so as to give the pieces the chance to be judged by their own merits and not by his “virtuoso violinist’s” reputation. By comparison with Sebastian Dunn’s riveting display of “virtuoso roar” with HIS instrument, violinist Christine Wang seemed to me to catch the completely different kind of “olde-worldly” ambience of the Kreisler piece perfectly, as did Beth Chen’s equally delightful pianistic identification with the spirit of the music.

These seemingly far-flung performing aureoles and contrasts in delivery then magically came together for the programme’s third item, Johannes Brahms’s Horn Trio in E-flat Major. In his introduction to the piece Sebastian Dunn talked about the composer’s preference for the “natural” (i.e. “valveless) horn over the more modern version.  Obviously the “Waldhorn” as it was known, had nostalgic connections for Brahms (his father had taught him as a child to play the instrument) besides what the composer specifically referred to as the horn’s more “natural” characteristics, its intrinsic tonal shadings and generally “softer” sound. Dunn assured us that he would do his best in this performance to compensate for his own “modern” instrument’s relative “brashness”!

This work was written in 1865, and probably inspired chiefly by the death of the composer’s mother earlier that same year. As with Brahms, its genesis wasn’t perhaps entirely straightforward, as befitted his generally enigmatic response to various influences regarding his music.  The Trio’s somewhat changeable moods across its four-movement span have prompted various other conjectures regarding sources of inspiration – besides recalling his mother singing the folksong “Dort in den Weide steht ein Haus” (There among the willows stands a house) as influencing part of the Adagio Mesto slow movement, Brahms hinted at another, more mischievous song in the work’s finale, “Es soll sich ja keiner mit der Liebe abgeben” (No-one should have anything to do with love), one which ably suited his ongoing “confirmed bachelor” status. As with any piece of music its creative motivations, whether conscious or otherwise, invariably reflect a veritable jigsaw of influences.

Brahms’s combination of violin, piano and horn was innovative at the time, but has since inspired a number of other works, most obviously (and perhaps, surprisingly) György Ligeti’s 1982 work Hommage à Brahms. Here, the performance of the “original” generously brought out all of the work’s inherent qualities, the opening Andante movement enjoying its relative freedom as the only “sonata-ish” work of Brahms’ to pay little heed to sonata form! – this was more of a rondo-patterned melancholy main theme with a livelier contrasting sequence, the two sections alternating and  subtly blending gestures from one another’s material into a beautiful coda.

The second movement was a dancing Scherzo begun by the piano, and juxtaposing a leaping opening theme with occasional syncopated shouts of consenting glee, catapaulting the trajectories through to the resonantly sombre Trio, after which the Scherzo’s return restored the music’s high spirits. Came the Adagio mesto slow movement, a funereal introduction by the piano heralding a scenario of sorrowful lament, violin and horn almost weeping, it seemed, as the piano moved the cortege forwards – there appeared no respite until the movement’s end, despite an occasional “lifting up” of the melodic line, only to be brought down to earth again under the weight of emotion and gradually dissolving into the mists of gloom….

What a transformation the music then underwent with the finale’s delicious bubbling-up of energies from within!  – with rompings and frolickings spreading like wildfire through the music’s textures! Christine Wang’s violinistic brilliance, by now fully come into its own, and Beth Chen’s vigorous “foundation-rock” piano-tones were the constant “movers and shakers” of the music throughout. Interestingly, (and ironically), I’ve always felt Brahms’ writing for the horn never fully conveyed the out-and-out exhilarations of the “Waldhorn” world, one made so manifest by the Bozza piece we heard at the concert’s beginning – though, of course Sebastian Dunn’s skilfully-reproduced rumbustions during the Brahms work were sufficiently ebullient in certain places to make the instrument’s presence felt, and especially towards the piece’s end!

A group of us, amid plenty of excited babble, managed to make our way across the Terrace to a coffee-shop afterwards, where we were able to reflect anew (and not by any means for the first time!) upon our good fortune at having a lunchtime concert series in the city to attend which featured such resoundingly memorable musical treasures delivered via absolutely first-class performances!

 

 

 

 

 

Scriabin and Rachmaninov from Tony Lee – a piano-fancier’s ultimate dream concert?

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ALEXANDER SCRIABIN – Preludes –  Op.11 No.1 in C Major
Op.17 No.5 in F Minor
Op.16 No.1 in B Major
Etude – Op. 2 No. 1 in C-sharp Minor

SERGEI RACHMANINOV – Piano Sonata No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 28

Tony Lee (piano)
St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, 22nd April, 2026

Perhaps the use of the word “ultimate” in the heading unfairly inflates the overall impact of what was, in anybody’s language, a sensational recent display of piano-playing in all aspects of the art-form.  This was delivered by Australian pianist Tony Lee at one of St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace’s free and absolute “mana-from-heaven” lunchtime concerts regularly enjoyed by the capital’s music-lovers. The “ultimate” description would of course be contested hotly by lovers of piano-playing over the choice of repertoire – and even in regard to technical wizardry opinions would differ as to which pieces might be accorded the most elevatedly demanding places in the pianistic pantheon.

Enough to say, the repertoire chosen by Tony Lee amply demonstrated the pianist’s extraordinary mastery of the keyboard challenges posed by the music of two composers, Sergei Rachmaninov and Alexander Scriabin. Each were themselves virtuoso pianists, Rachmaninov gaining the higher honours from the Moscow Conservatory with the “Great Gold Medal” for piano-playing, and Scriabin a close second with the “Small Gold Medal”. Their own music took markedly different paths  though each was greatly influenced by Chopin at the beginning, with Rachmaninov evolving a rather more conventional kind of individuality, and Scriabin being more the “innovator”, increasingly exploring chromaticism and tonality to almost mystical degrees in his later music.

Their different directions gave rise to contentious moments between them  – Scriabin was critical of  Rachmaninov both regarding his music and plano-playing, at one point even deriding the latter’s music as “earthbound”. And he famously told Rachmaninov at one point that a passage in the latter’s music (the opera “The Miserly Knight) perfectly accorded with his, Scriabin’s “colour-theories” relating to musical keys – when Rachmaninov expressed his disagreement, Scriabin replied, “…Your intuition has unconsciously followed the laws whose very existence you have tried to deny!…..”

Despite all of this, Rachmaninov was determined, after Scriabin’s unexpected death, to promote his colleague’s music, performing it almost exclusively on a tour of Russia, and donating the proceeds to Scriabin’s family. Since those times, the two composers’ musical reputations have continued on different courses, each being in separate ways somewhat misunderstood – rather like with Liszt’s music, much of Rachmaninov’s output has enjoyed a near-instant popularity to this day, though parallelled by strains of outright critical contempt in certain quarters, whereas Scriabin’s music has gradually risen in stature from initial bewilderment and neglect to increased fascination and acceptance on the part of the listening public.

Today’s concert underlined significant aspects of each composer’s creative achievement in terms of the piano, though surprisingly, not in relation to larger forms – Scriabin actually wrote no less than nine piano sonatas, though none were offered here as a comparison to the first of Rachmaninov’s two efforts in the genre. Instead we were given examples of the former’s music in a kind of miniaturist guise, the pieces being from larger collections, though each beautifully self-contained in effect. These exquisitely-crafted morceaux  while obviously derivative, still conveyed enough of their composer’s individuality, though It would have been interesting to have compared the two composers’ individual way with sonata form. Here, I couldn’t help but note my responses to some of the music regarding what I felt were influences, and, surprisingly, more so in Scriabin’s case than in Rachmaninov’s.

First came Prelude Op. 11 No. 1 in C Major, based on a lyrically floated phrase repeatedly used, here, with great sensitivity and imagination, both poetic and passionate in utterance, and reminiscent for me of Debussy’s early music Then we heard Prelude Op 17 No 5 in F Minor, a work with stormy cascadings, impulsive gallopings and unbridled agitations, the pianist splendidly maintaining the wildness and passions of the opening throughout until the sounds came exhaustedly to rest at the very end – it all had something of the energy and drive of Chopin’s very first Op. 28 Prelude, but seemed uncannily to me as if the music might just as well have been Rachmaninov’s.

The following Prelude Op.16 No. 1 in B major recalled for me  firstly Grieg and then Schumann, with sounds resembling  the former’s piquant harmonic explorations venturing into and mingling with the latter’s poetic evening semblances – though as with all of these there was a feeling of a growingly independent spirit already taking flight and pushing out its own capabilities.

And then, the opening of the last of the Scriabin pieces,, the Etude Op. 2 No, 1 in C-sharp Minor, strangely reminded me of Rachmaninov once again – not the stormy C-sharp Minor manner of the latter’s most famous of his Preludes, but of a similar kind of obsessiveness with the opening rising melodic motif, used by him in other pieces, such as the well-known B Minor Prelude’s constant reiteration of its opening. It was all such vividly concentrated playing! – It left me feeling that Lee’s performances would have readily won Scriabin’s music some new friends on this extraordinary showing.

After a short break there came a different kind of “extraordinary”! I had heard Rachmaninov’s two piano sonatas played many years ago on a recording by the legendary John Ogdon, and remembered how “overwhelmed” my then relatively jejune ears felt after listening to what seemed cascades and cascades of notes! Today, those same cascades seemed, in Tony Lee’s hands, to sound-sculpt a magnificently “alive” and spontaneously driven plethora of musical impulses, instantly proclaiming a sense of beginning an epic journey, and exhibiting the means by which this would happen – the portentous themes, the flashes of brilliance and the ever-burgeoning sense of expectation which drew us further into the music’s world. It couldn’t help but recall for me the opening of the Liszt Sonata, though with themes that were even more expansive, taking more time and space to coalesce.

The big repeated-note theme was allowed to sing and resound, majestically suggesting a Faustian kind of spirit, both tremulous and eager in regard to any impending journey. It was irresistibly drawn by a rolling, agitated triplet theme  elaborated here by the pianist with great “presence” and remarkable poise and control but then giving way to a rising. arpeggiated idea that suggested aspiration to a “higher goal”, a Faust-like evocation!  We were made to feel the conflict between competing urges and impulses, between passions and ideals, all building up to a majestic climax – how does Rachmaninov do it?  Then, dramatically, it all seemed to, for the moment, expiate itself – and at that point I heard the unmistakeable echoes of the Third Piano Concerto, the two-note major-key repetitions whose minor-key transition produced an inwardly rising lump-in-the-throat effect as the movement came to its close.

Rachmaninov had reputedly began this work with Goethe’s “Faust” in mind, with each of the movements inspired by the main characters in the  latter’s version of the legend – though the composer was to later downplay the specifics of his inspiration, the movements certainly fitted the “Faust/Gretchen/Mephisofeles” programmatic order, with the second movement’s tenderness and lyricism readily suggesting the innocence and beauty of Gretchen – a perfect foil for the dark turbulence and brooding self-doubt portrayed in the opening movement. Here, Lee allowed  the music to drift, dream-like out of the silences, the oscillating figures framing a gentle song whose sinuous and mesmeric trajectories could ensnare any adventurer, its spell gradually growing in insistence, resembling a flow of openhearted longing and unfulfilled desire, and reaching a point where it cascaded over and down, again fleetingly sounding those echoed reminiscences of the Concerto! Lee then gently and patiently revisited the composer’s lines of the opening dream, this time building gradually towards a kind of effervescent frisson, whose almost-visionary moment glowed and then sank into what some listeners might have described as a post-orgasmic reverie at the end.

Came the finale – a “wild-horse-ride”, tremendously exciting, and a performance which seemed to us in the audience to give every tone, every impulse, every NOTE its due place in the music’s texture, impregnating everything with its particular significance, so that we were caught up in the music’s realms of wonderment and vividly-wrought realisation! The Dies Irae theme, one of the composer’s trademarks, leapt into the fray, its trajectories defiant and remorseless under Lee’s fingers, before its Mephistofelean spirit suddenly wavered at the appearance of a plaintive descending theme, a wholehearted counterweight to the Spirit of Denial and his combatative roisterings! A war of sorts was then waged by the music with the various elements brought into play by Lee’s near superhuman resources until the opening theme of the work was again sounded as if peace had been restored – but almost as if Heaven was shutting its doors, the Dies Irae theme came roaring back and laid all to waste with a series of coruscating descending chords! We were agog as our pianist’s energies hurled the final chords at us with stupendous irrevocability!

Wow! – what a work and what a performance! As I’ve had occasion to mention a few times previously in relation to other St.Andrew’s concerts, considerations such as appetite and hunger seemed well-nigh dwarfed by what we had all experienced this time round, with Rachmaninov and Tony Lee!  At the very least, it was, certainly, a lunchtime to remember!!