Tag: piano

Praiseworthy, adventurous concert from Tawa Orchestra moves into foreign parts

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Tawa Orchestra conducted by Andrew Atkins with Xing Wang (piano)

Weber: Overture to Preciosa
Mozart: Piano Concerto No 20 in D minor, K 466
Beethoven: Symphony No 7 in A, Op 92

Christadelphian Church, Paparangi

Sunday 14 June, 3 pm

My third orchestral concert this weekend established a healthy restoration of normality in music making. The two Inkinen Festival concerts from the NZSO represented music as performed by a hundred or so of the most talented and polished musicians in New Zealand.

But apart from those, there are many thousand who devote some of their energy and time to pursuing the same activities; some of them do it for unapologetic personal satisfaction, unlikely to make any sort of living from it, but being rewarded by the response of a paying or non-paying, but sympathetic audience. There were smallish but very appreciative audiences at both the St Andrew’s and Paparangi concerts.

There are dozens of small community orchestras throughout New Zealand; they get musical and social pleasure from their efforts and their audiences may be fewer than their own numbers. But such an orchestra contributes importantly to local communities.

The Tawa Orchestra has existed for at least a couple of decades (I’m guessing) and, like most such groups, pays a conductor and perhaps a soloist to work with them. In the past the orchestra has usually played in Tawa College Hall; this time they have given two performances of their present programme: the first at St Andrew’s on The Terrace in the city, the second in a church in Paparangi.

They tackled a most commendable and probably the meatiest programme in their history: music from the central repertoire, that takes no prisoners, from which there is no place to hide, where the accuracy of the notes, their articulation, their expressive shape in dynamics and tone are essential elements in the composers’ conception, and where their absence or faulty realisation might affect listeners’ enjoyment.

Those factors, as well as the kind of venue they play in, weigh on ‘amateur’ performances, and often face awkward acoustic problems.

The Weber overture was part of the incidental music that he wrote for a play, Preciosa, and it works well as a concert overture. It is constructed in a conventional way, ending with strong, lively melody and the orchestra’s playing was driven energetically and given the obvious technical limitations, was an imaginative, successful way to open the concert.

Then conductor Andrew Atkins lent a hand moving the upright piano to centre stage for the performance of Mozart’s great D minor Piano Concerto with pianist Xing Wang. Its introduction often sounds unexpectedly deliberate: that is, slow, but its strikingly serious, almost fateful character quickly made the tempo feel absolutely right, creating the sort of atmosphere that the name Mozart probably doesn’t prompt for a lot of people, especially those familiar only with the more popular pieces. The programme note recalled the affinity of this concerto with Beethoven who began his piano concerto career only 15 years later, and it was the serious-minded quality that Atkins and his pianist drew from it that counted very much in its favour.

It’s not insignificant that this was Mozart’s first piano concerto in a minor key (there was only one other, later, that in C minor; the character of keys was important to Mozart, as they are to most composers).

Wang’s cadenzas were excellently played, overcoming the evident difficulties presented by a piano not meant for concert use. The orchestra made gestures towards dynamic variety, and a greater subtlety of expression than was actually achieved. But the spirit was willing.

The piano furnishes the second movement, marked Romance, with a lovely melody which the strings also handled well; it’s a little removed, though not too far, from the profound spirit that ruled in the first movement. I realised after a little while that I was neither hearing nor seeing oboes, though the score calls for them and two players were listed in the programme (Mozart didn’t use orchestral clarinets till a bit later in his career), but there were plentiful flutes and I wasn’t sure that oboe parts weren’t being handled by them to some extent.

The last movement is lively and purposeful though it doesn’t express unrestrained joy or happiness, and it contains plenty of challenges for the pianist – not purely technical, but in its spirit and intellectual character, and the orchestra may have found some difficulties in expressing them. Wang played the last movement cadenza in an unrushed, studied and thoughtful manner.

The whole work had been an admirable if rather surprising choice for amateurs, but one that was handled with as much accuracy and energy as it was reasonable to expect.

If the Mozart was a tall order, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was like tackling Everest and the South Pole on the same day. And there was no brilliant, fluent soloist to draw attention away from the purely orchestral challenges.

In its main elements, the performance was praiseworthy, though there were obviously limitations in ways that are to be expected: instruments in the low register tended to weigh a bit heavily on the rest of the orchestra, especially timpani, trombone and tuba, on account of the church acoustic; and the presence of six flutes but no oboes was a little unfortunate (there were three clarinets however). Certain failings were due simply to an excess of enthusiasm, however, which was hardly a problem in the first movement, but where thematic elements are repeated many times as in the second and third movements, balance problems and shortcomings in finesse appeared.

The vigorous rhythms and the dance-like character of the whole work, much remarked, were certainly very evident. Here and there, certain instruments handling inner parts emerged too loud, somewhat obscuring the melody line; that might have been due to slightly unbalanced numbers in various sections, though the dominance of violins over violas meant it did not trouble the string department.

One hopes that members of the audience, new to this sort of music, will be inspired to poke around on You Tube to explore other performances of the music they’ve heard, allowing themselves to become classical music devotees or even fanatics in due course.

The ambitious and demanding character of the current programming, and much of the organising of the music, soloists and programme notes is presumably the work of conductor Andrew Atkins, and these aspects of a conductor’s job which he performs so well, as well as the broad familiarity with the huge classical repertoire that he demonstrates, should help towards a useful career as a conductor, eventually of professional musical ensembles.  In the meantime, he’s expanding the horizons and the musical skills of the Tawa Orchestra excellently.

 

Pianist Catherine Norton initiates delightful, welcome renaissance in song recitals

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Songbook: an anthology of songs about song from five centuries

Songs by Finzi, Telemann, Josquin, Mahler, Canteloube, Vaughan Williams, Browne, Wolf, Schoeck, Stephan, Rachmaninov, Hahn, Farquhar, Bolcom

Amelia Berry (soprano), Elisabeth Harris (mezzo-soprano), Declan Cudd (tenor), James Henare (bass-baritone), Roger Wilson (bass-baritone), Richard Greager (tenor). Catherine Norton (piano), Terence Dennis (piano)

Adam Concert Room

Wednesday 10 June 2015, 6.30pm

Resounding congratulations are due to Catherine Norton, who is not only a superb accompanist, but also is the initiator of Songbook.   She has fairly recently returned from study and performing overseas, mainly in the United Kingdom.  She has worked with the Young Songmakers’ Almanac, descendant of The Songmakers’ Almanac, an English vocal group which toured here some years ago with Chamber Music New Zealand.  This doubtless gave her the idea of doing something similar here.

The presence of Amelia Berry (like Catherine an alumnae of Victoria’s New Zealand School of Music) and James Clayton, from Australia, as soloists in the recent production of La Cenerentola was obviously a spur.  Unfortunately the latter was ill, and at short notice some changes had to be made; two stalwarts of Wellington’s vocal scene, Richard Greager and Roger Wilson, plus the fortuitous presence in Wellington of that doyen of accompanists, Terence Dennis (now Blair Professor of Music at the University of Otago) outstandingly filled the gaps.

I was delighted to discover such an innovation as this concert.  I have bemoaned for years the lack of live song recitals in Wellington these days.  Occasional lunchtime concerts feature singers, but mostly they sing operatic extracts.

There are thousands of wonderful songs out there, in a variety of languages.  The audience was treated to a programme printed in a very readable typeface, with full texts and translations where required, the latter by Catherine Norton herself.  Another excellent feature of the printed programme was that not only were composers’ dates and opus numbers of the songs given where possible, but also the year of composition of the songs, plus the names and dates of the poets.

An eclectic selection of songs about songs, or songs containing songs was a good introduction to what one hopes will become a series of themed recitals.  Included in the mix of singers were cicadas, a donkey, a cricket, a couple of cuckoos, and a nightingale – not to mention the occasional lover, of course.

Elisabeth Harris had the unfortunate task of opening the concert at short notice, with ‘Intrada’ by Gerald Finzi. Some uncertain low notes hardly spoiled the performance of this song (poem by Thomas Traherne) and were understandable in the circumstances.  The voice has matured and become more sonorous since I last heard it.  Catherine Norton was a simply superb accompanist, here and throughout the concert.

Amelia Berry sang a short song, entitled in English translation ‘A new thing’ by Telemann.  A delicious song, it typified Norton’s enterprise in selecting the programme; the words in translation read “Presenting something new, / not after the old tastes, / will depress anyone / who does not hatch anything new himself. / But what kind of slavery is it / to set such narrow limits? / whether it is old, or new, it’s enough if it’s useful and delightful.”

Josquin’s amusing ‘El grillo’ (The cricket) was sung by a quartet of the four School of Music graduates.  Their blend and matching dynamics, pronunciation and excellent diction in this unaccompanied piece allowed the audience to enjoy it amply.

From Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Roger Wilson and Terence Dennis performed ‘Lob des hohen Verstandes’ (translated as ‘In praise of higher understanding’).  This amusing song about a singing contest between a cuckoo and a nightingale, judged by a donkey, had Mahler writing in picturesque style, especially when it came to narrating the donkey’s judgement.  It was performed with much
gusto by these two splendid musicians; a dramatisation could hardly have given us much more.

Amelia Berry returned to perform a Languedoc folk song arranged by Joseph Canteloube in 1948: ‘O up!’  A cuckoo featured again, and a cicada.  The excellent French and the style with which Berry put it over embodied the humour. She sang next a Vaughan Williams song ‘Orpheus with his lute’.  She has great tone throughout her range, and her phrasing and enunciation of words are very pleasing. Sometimes I found her a little too loud for the size of the venue.

Catherine Norton had chosen two songs by men who died 100 years ago this year, during the First World War, one English, one German.  Richard Greager sang ‘To Gratiana dancing and singing’ by William Denis Browne, to words by Richard Lovelace – a fine poem.  In this the accompaniment was particularly lovely – and not easy.  Like Roger Wilson, Greager demonstrated that he continues in good voice, and sang this enchanting music so well that it was hard to remember it was at short notice.

This range of gorgeous songs, some familiar; others not, did not even touch on the most famous song writers, except Wolf; his was the next song: ‘Was für ein Lied soll dir gesungen werden’, sung by Amelia Berry.  Again, her language was extremely good, and she introduced light and shade into her rendition.

A poem ‘Ravenna’ by Herman Hesse was set by Othmar Schoeck, a Swiss composer who died in 1957.  The words revealed that Hesse was not particularly impressed by the town, and the setting was unusual musically.  However, James Henare sang it well in his wonderfully deep bass voice.

Tenor Declan Cudd performed ‘The canticle of night’ by the other war victim, Rudi Stephan.  Cudd was the only one of the singers to perform his song from memory, and his full tenor voice was very lively; his performance had plenty of volume when required, and the song demonstrated yet again that all these composers set their poets’ words very well.

The best-known item was Rachmaninov’s ‘Vocalise’, written in 1915 (another centenary).  Amelia Berry demonstrated superb breath control, and varied her voice and dynamics beautifully.  Catherine Norton brought out the melodic phrases in the accompaniment splendidly.

Richard Greager gave great feeling and expression to the French song ‘Le souvenir d’avoir chanté’ by Reynaldo Hahn.  (Wikipedia gives the date of composition as 1898; the 1888 given in the programme seemed a little improbable, even though Hahn was a child prodigy – he was born in 1874).

The New Zealand element, ‘Synaesthesia’ by David Farquhar, a setting of a poem by Cilla McQueen, was sung by Elisabeth Harris.  The repetitive nature of the  accompaniment and also of the vocal line were part of an effective and commandingly sung item.  Like Berry, Harris has learned to use her resonators well.  And Norton demonstrated that she is well able to work in a huge variety of styles throughout what was only three-quarters of an hour.

The programme ended with a song by American William Bolcom (born 1938): ‘Over the piano’, a cabaret song.  Amelia Berry sang it in suitable style, leaning against the piano and supplying appropriate gestures and facial expressions.  The poem ending with ‘Goodbye’ made it an apt end to the recital, although another was in the programme which could not be performed given the absence of James Clayton.  However it would have been fitting: a Hindemith setting of words by Francis Thompson, beginning “Go, songs, for ended is our brief, sweet play”.

It was a treat to hear a programme like this.  Thanks to all concerned – do it again soon!

 

NZSM Piano Students impress at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrews Lunchtime Concert Series 2015
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music Piano Students

Joy Sun – BEETHOVEN : Piano Sonata No.18 in E-flat Op.31 No.3 (Ist Mvt.)
SCHUMANN-LISZT – Widmung

Choong Park – RACHMANINOV – Piano Sonata No.2  (Ist.Mvt.)

Hana Kim – SCHUBERT – Impromptu Op.90 No.2 in E-flat

Nicole Ting – BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata No.30 in E Op.109 (Mvts. I and II)
CHOPIN – Scherzo No.2 Op.31

Xing Wang – DEBUSSY – Children’s Corner (Suite)

(NZSM Piano tutor: Jian Liu)

St Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wellington

Tuesday 26th May 2015

What a pianistic feast this was! – more appropriately so for a lunchtime concert, with nothing given us that was too large-scale or difficult to digest easily. Which is not to suggest that the repertoire chosen by the students was anything less than challenging, both technically and interpretatively.

Each of the performers impressed with their intense involvement in the music-making – I felt they all to a creditable extent made music from “inside” their particular pieces, and conveyed a sense both of enjoyment of detail and awareness of the music’s overall “reach”, allowing each quality to readily speak.In every instance the music’s “character” was to some degree conveyed most readily.

I was unaccountably hampered during the concert by not having a pen that worked, and was thus unable to make notes as “reminders” for later – my apologies if my remarks seem not as detailed as is usually the case. Fortunately each of the students had a distinct “way” with his or her playing, which I found helpful as well as refreshing and exciting.

Joy Sun began the concert with a sympathetic and sensitive reading of the first movement of Beethoven’s Op.18 E-flat Sonata. She shaped the music beautifully, giving the impression of “going with” the work’s explorations as much as driving the music’s course herself – nothing was unduly forced, and her aspect at the keyboard was fluid and organic.

I was similarly impressed with her shaping of Liszt’s equally loved-as-maligned transcription of Schumann’s song “Widmung”, stressing the poetry and lyricism ahead of the music’s more obviously virtuoso aspects, especially in the latter stages. Her building up towards the “grand manner” from the central episode’s gentleness was nicely managed, as was the work’s quietly-ecstatic conclusion.

More poetry, this time of a brooding, Slavic kind came from the expert fingers of Choong Park, playing the opening allegro agitato from Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Sonata. It all came to life in this performance most vividly, from the opening downward plunge, through the gentler D Major episodes, before building up to the tremendous evocations of churchbells that were a trademark of the composer. Choong Park seemed completely at home in the work’s textures, and his patient unfolding of the music suited the piece’s improvisatory aspect, allowing it to unfold as night follows day.

A welcome antidote to such intensities was provided by the sparking, rippling performance by Hana Kim of Schubert’s delectable Impromptu Op.90 No.2 in E-flat. One or two tiny hesitations apart, the pianist kept the “spin” of the piece going most beguilingly throughout. She allowed the more declamatory “trio” section enough heft and space to point the contrasts before gliding, gossamer-like back into the reprise of the diaphanously-woven opening.

As with the recital’s first two items, the contrast with the next pianist and repertoire (Beethoven’s Op.109) was almost palpable. Nicole Ting was a “big” player with grandly-conceived gestures, some of which provided thrills and spills of an almost palpable order, though nothing unremarkable in the context of the pianist requiring the music to achieve its fantastic, virtuoso character. What inaccuracies and breakdowns there were in her playing could have been attributed to nerves as much as a “throwing caution to the winds” aspect (which I really enjoyed), and certainly didn’t conceal the fact that she “knew” how the music ought to go, even if she occasionally snatched at phrases in the Op.109’s second movement. I relished the wholeheartedness of her playing amid all of the thrills and spills.

And the Chopin Scherzo which followed was a tour de force – here was a young player already “tagging” these classic pieces of music as if wanting to create a brave new world of her own. Once more I felt invigorated by her approach, being put in touch by her with the piece’s originality and power and inherent danger. Of course, one can achieve these things with a lower attrition rate than here, and I would hope she would be able to eventually achieve even more “finish” in her presentations – though ideally, not at the expense of those qualities which enable the listener to sit up and take notice of what the music is actually trying to say.

Finally, fluent, and sparking playing of a high order was given us by Xing Wang, with Debussy’s delectable “Children’s Corner” Suite. Apart from a tendency to rush the music in places (she made, for me, a little too much of the “mechanus” aspect of “Dr.Gradus ad Parnassum” and could have entrusted the effect more to the tongue-in-cheek aspect of the music’s natural “spin”, rather than to speed) she evoked these childhood vignettes with real feeling,  dreaming sweet dreams with Jimbo, for example, and also dancing exuberantly with the snowflakes.

Again, I thought Golliwog’s Cakewalk a bit too mechanical – there’s a delicious drollery to be found in these rhythms which she will one day take the risk and put her trust in, and not perhaps feel the need to crank the piece along quite so much, which includes more playfulness in the piece’s ending.

Piano tutor Jian Liu expressed his pleasure to me at the recital’s end in working with these students – he was obviously proud of what they’d achieved, and of what they’d be able to go on and do, just as surely. The students’ enjoyment of and imaginative individual approach to what they played, was, I thought, a great and nicely-realised tribute to his tutorship and own example.

 

 

 

 

Halida Dinova – quintessentially romantic pianism

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Classical Expressions Upper Hutt presents:
Halida Dinova (piano)
A recital of words by Rachmaninov, Chopin, Beethoven, Scriabin and Liszt

RACHMANINOV – Morceaux de Fantasie Op.3 Nos.1,2,4
CHOPIN – Fantasie in F Minor Op.49
BEETHOVEN – Piano Sonata No.14 in C-sharp Minor Op.27 No.2 “Moonlight”
SCRIABIN – Etude Op.8 No.12 / Nocturne for the Left Hand Op.9 No.2
LISZT – Piano Sonata in B Minor

Halida Dinova (piano)

Genesis Energy Theatre, Upper Hutt

Monday 27th April, 2014

I was thrilled to learn that Russian-born Halida Dinova had returned to New Zealand to give more concerts, as I’d been bowled over by her playing on the occasion of her last visit two years ago. On that occasion she played in Lower Hutt at the Little Theatre on a piano that had been pronounced “past its expiry date” and made it sound like one of the world’s most mellifluous instruments, giving us, among other things, particularly memorable readings of Balakirev’s “Islamey” and the complete Chopin Preludes. (For further detailing regarding this previous recital, go to my review at  https://middle-c.org/2012/05/halida-dinova-russian-soul-from-tatarstan/)

One of the things that struck me so forcibly about her playing the previous time round was Dinova’s amazing conveyance of physical engagement with the music, and specifically with the composer’s sound-world in almost every instance – I think I may have felt that one of the Debussy pieces worked less well for me, though there was another from the same set of pieces which the pianist seemed completely to “own”. I remember how Dinova’s playing at the time gave me an insight into British pianist Peter Donohoe’s remark made when I interviewed him some years ago, regarding Debussy’s music, to the effect that he adored “every note”.

Here at Upper Hutt’s Classical Expressions, though having the use of a far superior instrument, Dinova’s playing didn’t grip my imagination quite so insistently as before – though there were still whole sequences of the magnificence that I remembered. The repertoire may have had a part to play, here, as I sensed a tad less involvement on the pianist’s part with parts of the Beethoven Sonata compared with the remainder of the programme; and Dinova herself told me afterwards that she was still “exploring” the Liszt Sonata, having begun working on it less than a year ago.

I did think that, for all its excellences as a concert-hall, the Upper Hutt venue “distanced” us from Dinova’s playing as the Lower Hutt Little Theatre didn’t do at all – my chief irritation was the canned piano music which was heard in the auditorium up to a few minutes before Dinova herself came on to play. Surely one goes to a “live” music event to hear only “live music”? – and ought there not to be at least SOME aural “space” before a concert by way of preparation for the music about to be played? I would want, at best, no pre-recorded music at all before a concert, and at the very least a fifteen-minute period before the beginning where one hears nothing else clamouring for attention. If this is an overseas trend being brought here, then in my opinion, it  ought to be strangled and quietly disposed of. For me it was simply “musak” and it had the effect of reducing the impact of the concert’s actual music and the pianist’s playing of it.

Fortunately, such was the “pull” of Dinova’s presence and focus upon the music that she was able to quickly dispel all such annoyances and take us, in this case, into the nineteenth-century world of the young Rachmaninov, with three of his Op.3 Morceau de Fantasie.  Beginning with the Elegie, her very first notes explored a depth of sound, a resonance which, underpinned by a ‘tolling bell” effect in the left hand, conjured up a kind of feeling for the effect that those particular sonorities evidently had on the impressionable composer. The more agitated central Lisztian sequences excitingly took over the entire keyboard, before Dinova’s exquisite sense of atmosphere and innate timing gradually allowed the silences to “surge softly backwards”, placing the piece’s pair of final notes with bitter-sweet resignation.

Then came THE Prelude, richly-wrought, varied in utterance (how can one play those three portentous notes? – let me count the ways….) and redolent with expectation, left hand anticipating the right at every possible opportunity (something else I noticed during her previous recital at Lower Hutt), a journey which seemed to unfold rather than fall into preconceived places – amazing, tumultuous central agitations, and a properly “awed” concluding series of chords, each a world of unpredictable sensibility. After this, what better way to philosophise than to introduce the figure of Polichinelle to the discourse? – based on the well-known Commedia dell’arte character (Pulcinella, in Italian), this knock-about comedian restored our stricken sensibilities with his antics, though taking time out to savour a few moments of romantic ardour in the piece’s middle section. Dinova’s enjoyment of the character was obvious, as much through her quicksilver fingerwork as from her wry smile at the throwaway ending.

Chopin’s F Minor Fantasie brought out the “no holds barred” aspects of Dinova’s pianism to thrilling effect – a deep, rich sonority at the beginning, posing a question to which came the lyrical reply, the drama and ceremony of interchange, the spin of the storyteller, the “strut” of the processional. Out of this grew those wonderful improvisatory flourishes building up the tensions towards action, everything played with wonderful fluidity, the triplets dancing along excitedly, turning in places to little “marches”, and in other places to more declamatory utterances. The piece’s “still heart” is the prayerful central interlude which Dinova more breathed than played, voiced so inwardly and beautifully. Afterwards, the reprise of the first section was fiercely tackled, Dinova’s playing plunging the music headlong into renewed conflict, with  thrills and spills adding to the excitement.  And just as compelling was the tenderness of the poetic reminiscence at the piece’s end, that final upward gossamer run and concluding chords the stuff of storytelling.

After this I thought the first two movement of the well-known Moonlight Sonata less remarkable – all darkly and solemnly played (here, with the right hand often anticipating the left!), but still, with the pianist seeming to be an observer rather than a participant in the drama. Dinova played the second movement in a completely unexaggerated way, bringing out some beautiful dynamic variation, and in places subtly emphasizing the left hand. But the finale was something else – incredible “attack”, a strong left hand driving the trajectories and the right hand creating great roulades of sound. Here nature took a hand in the proceedings, with torrential rain drumming an accompaniment on the concert hall roof throughout the last few tumultuous measures!

Two contrasting pieces by Scriabin followed the interval, the first a favourite of the great Vladimir Horowitz, the Etude Op.8 No.12, entitled Patetico (Pathetique).  Dinova took to the music in the manner born, allowing the piece’s build-in momentum to grow and the agitations to rise like a wind from the steppes, though allowing a lovely lyricism in the Rachmaninov-like gentler middle sequences, But with the return of the opening idea, Dinova opened her the floodgates, the left hand leaping dangerously across the keys, the repeated notes growing increasingly frenzied, and the deep bells more and more clangorous, until the whole suddenly whirled upwards to a heaven-storming climax – what a great virtuoso display! After this, the gentle lyricism of the Left-Hand Nocturne from a set of two pieces Op.9 was balm to the senses, the evening’s most poetic and melting playing,the pianist’s left hand brilliantly encompassing both virtuoso and lyrical elements in a breath-taking display.

I was fortunate enough to hear Dinova play some of the items on the evening’s program twice, among them Liszt’s B Minor Piano Sonata, the second time at a house concert on an upright piano, a couple of days afterwards! Inevitably, my reactions to her playing of the pieces have criss-crossed to some extent between the occasions – but the cumulative effect is the thing, and especially with a work as all-encompassing as the Liszt. Before proceeding, I must say that I was sorry that the concert’s programme-note-writer, one whose work I normally greatly admire, made a passing reference via the work to Liszt’s “deplorable” morals, thereby reinforcing the surely-by-now-discredited legend that the composer bedded almost every female who threw herself at him – anyone who’s read Alan Walker’s up-to-date and incredibly detailed biography of Liszt will be appalled at the extent (outlined by Walker) of the “hatchet-job” done on the composer’s reputation and integrity in the past by people such as Ernest Newman, with no real evidence to back up claims of unbridled licentious behaviour other than prejudicial heresay – as Walker remarks, a case of fame and success giving rise to intense jealousy, and resulting mischief on the part of others.

Let the music speak for the man on this occasion – and one remembers Wagner (no great supporter of other people’s creative efforts) equating the man with his music, writing to Liszt after hearing the sonata for the first time with the words, “the sonata is beautiful beyond compare, great, sweet, deep and noble, sublime as you are yourself…..” Dinova’s playing of the work, while not completely “under the fingers” (on each occasion she had to break off in the midst of a piece of tumultuous passagework – in a different place each time, incidentally – and re-align her trajectories) caught the piece’s multi-faceted character – a brilliantly-conceived structure, a vivid and theatrical recreation of the “Faust” legend, a deeply-moving expression of conflicting personal emotions, a pianistic tour-de-force. Structurally, she gave the piece all the time it needed to speak, and all the urgency its figurations required to create the work’s overall shape. And her characterization of the characters and episodes pertaining to the “Faust” legend were vividly-drawn and theatrically-contrasted.

Dinova’s playing seemed to me to demonstrate a kind of innate sense of what each section of the music required as the music advanced – a powerful bringing-together of spontaneity and inevitability. She seemed incapable of playing a routine or a mechanical phrase, as every note had its own kind of quality, its own particular strength of purpose and relationship with the others. One didn’t know what she was going to do next with the music, how she was going to “voice” a particular passage, or distribute the emphasis between the hands. Her conjuring up of the music’s central nocturnal scene (Faust in the garden with Marguerite?) was as entrancing as the succeeding fugue was tense and electric – despite a dropped note or two the cumulative excitement was palpable, and the climax of the sequence sent glinting figurations skyrocketing upwards between fusillades of repeated notes. In the house concert the fugue momentarily came adrift, whereas here it was during the amazingly orchestral writing leading to the big heroic theme’s final statement when things were momentarily derailed. Neither hiatus was a fatal error – the music was picked up and driven onwards as excitingly as before.

Perhaps when Halida Dinova comes back to this country once again she will bring the work with her as a fully-fledged falcon, soaring aloft while taking in the whole of the terrain at a single glance (as somebody said once of another great Russian pianist, Sviatoslav Richter). She did enough here to reaffirm her status as a romantic pianist of outstanding quality. I managed to get a CD she’d made for the Doremi label of Scriabin’s music, which I can’t wait to listen to and which I’ll look forward also to reviewing. Meanwhile I shall cherish the memory of playing whose immediacy and excitement continue to give pleasure long after the recital’s last notes have been sounded.

Italian Embassy brings pianist to Wellington with interesting programme

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Luciano Bellini – piano
(presented by the Embassy of Italy)

Domenico Scarlatti: Sonatas, in E, K 380 and in D minor K 64
Luciano Bellini: from the Album Mediterrando (Spartenza, Habanera, Fado, Preludio e Aria Egea, Promenade, Tramonto sul Bosforo, Sirtaky, Bolero, Saltarello)
Luciano Berio: Six Encores for Piano: Brin, Erdenklavier, Wasserklavier
Verdi: Romance without words and Waltz in F major
Leoncavallo: Canzonetta
Alban Berg, Sonata Op 1
Ferruccio Busoni, All’Italia
Alfredo Casella: Due Ricercari sul nome B.A.C.H.

The Opera House, Manners Street

Sunday 19 April, 5:30 pm

A colleague picked up information about a piano recital by a visiting Italian pianist, under the auspices of the Italian Embassy. Luciano Bellini: not a name I knew; a bare outline of his programme; some names that suggested quite serious music among some oddities and curiosities.

One has to take seriously someone advertising Berg’s Piano Sonata, as well as a couple of pieces by Italian composers of real distinction: Berio and Casella, and a perhaps slight piece by the great Italo-German pianist/composer Ferruccio Busoni. Two of Scarlatti’s little sonatas are always a nice prelude to any piano recital.

So I managed to get back on the train from the New Zealand String Quartet’s concert at Waikanae, just in time – but sadly missing the last piece at Waikanae, Dvořák’s String Quartet Op 105.

Foyer quite busy with a number of notably well-dressed people – clearly Italian: glad I wasn’t in shorts and jandals.

Luciano Bellini does not disclose his age in the material I’ve been able to see on the Internet. I’d guess early or mid 60s.

I enjoyed his Scarlatti, relaxed, graceful, pleasantly rhythmical, by no means concerned to display brilliance or speed, but simply making music in his own way.

Then came an album of shortish pieces by the pianist himself, called Mediterrando, extremely colourful and varied pieces that evoke the sounds and rhythms of many – nine – parts of what the ancient Romans and evidently Italians today, called Mare Nostrum – ‘our sea’, the Mediterranean. They began with an inspiration from Sparta, touched Spain with a habanera and Portugal with fado, Turkey, modern Greece, and so on.

Luciano Berio was a leading figure in the Italian avant-garde after the second World War, associated with the Darmstadt school with Dallapiccolo, Boulez, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Maderna … His Encores for Piano, written in the 1990s, were three in number from a total of six. Four of them, according to
notes I have found on the Internet, only in Italian, explored the sonic potential of the four elements: earth, air, fire and water, as defined by the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles (this from the pianist’s notes); he was famous in myth for perishing in an eruption by Mount Etna on Sicily. The first, Brin – the timbral possibilities of the piano achieved through clever games with pedals and sustained notes. The other two: the ‘Earth Piano’ and the ‘Water Piano’, considered these elements in terms that reflected the understandings of the ancient Greeks.

The music itself was both intriguing and attractive, even though cast, as to be expected from Berio, in a near serial language, and Bellini’s performance exposed its colour and variety.

Two piano pieces by Verdi were interesting if unremarkable, Mendelssohn close by in the Romance without words, and a charming Waltz, not Straussian, but operatic in tone, a bit blowsey as a composition and in its playing, appropriately.

If ever you wondered what Leoncavallo did with the rest of his life after Pagliacci, here was an example: a Canzonetta, an enjoyable fast piece in dance rhythm. Can’t find a reference to it anywhere, including the only CD of his piano music I can find, by Dario Müller for Naxos.

Then came the major work, clearly intended to demonstrate that we were not hearing a mere salon piano player: Alban Berg’s piano sonata, his Opus 1. It’s gritty, more gritty that the many songs he wrote earlier, and later. Though he’d started taking lessons from Schoenberg it is not a serial work, or even atonal; however, its tonality is often obscure and it is not notable for its tunes. This was a very competent if not highly illuminating or arresting performance. Its mastery doesn’t come readily, and Bellini is to be admired for its inclusion.

Ferruccio Busoni was born in Tuscany, a brilliant pianist and conductor as well as composer, who sought to promote contemporary music, but whose own music perhaps lacked something of melodic and emotional appeal. He lived in various parts of Europe, but mostly in Berlin where he died. His most famous work might well be his piano arrangement of the Chaconne from Bach’s solo violin Partita in D minor. Bellini played his approachable salute to Italy, All’Italia, containing echoes of turn of the century compositions; the second part was in a saltarello rhythm, rhapsodic with occasional smudges. This too was far from boring.

The recital ended with another moderately familiar and quite important Italian composer, Alfredo Casella, a near contemporary of Berg, musically educated in Paris and influenced by Debussy. His 1932 Due ricercari on the name BACH, followed many who had used the letters, in German notation, as a theme for variations. The repetition of the notes B flat, A, C, B soon became too insistent. After all, the range is very small and the emphatic playing tended to obliterate whatever interest there may otherwise have been in the work.

There were a couple of very suitable encores – Musetta’s waltz song from La bohème and a Chopin mazurka.

Though it was a curiously constructed programme, there was enough variety to entertain a general audience, and a few significant pieces by important composers to engage those more anxious to explore the unexpected or unusual. Professor Bellini’s visit to Wellington was worthwhile and the Embassy is to be encouraged to undertake such ventures again. One of the ambassador’s predecessors took a very real interest in Wellington’s musical life, taking every opportunity to bring Italian music and musicians to our attention.

 

Lucy Gijsbers shines in ‘cello recital at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by admin

St Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series

Duo Cecilia: Lucy Gijsbers, cello; Andrew Atkins, piano

Prokofiev: Sonata for Cello and Piano in C major, Op.119 (1949)
Andante Grave, Moderato.
Beethoven: Sonata No.21 in C Major “Waldstein”: Allegro con brio
Liszt: Concert Etude in D flat major “Un sospiro”
Kapustin: Nearly Waltz Op.98 (1999)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 25th March 2015

The first two movements of Prokofiev’s Op.119, chosen to start this programme, put Lucy Gijsbers straight into the limelight from the word go. The beautifully crafted phrases and full throated, rich sound she drew from the lower register of the cello in the opening solo bars showed immediately what an accomplished musician she is. Likewise as she moved up the register in the later reflective episodes, her tone was sweet and warm. The duo shaped the mood in those recurring sections with poetic sensitivity, working with one mind to craft the melodies. This made the contrast very effective when they attacked the allegro interludes with real vigour and a sense of the dramatic. But unfortunately, when the dynamic rose above forte, the pianist simply swamped the cello part. It was a mistake to attempt this work on full piano stick; worst of all it caused the sweeping dynamism and passion of the closing cello passagework to be swallowed up in a maelstrom of concert grand fortissimo. The same problem persisted in forte sections of the Moderato; but at other times the duo captured its lively, puckish mood very effectively, and provided a beautiful contrast in the slow melodic bars. Prokofiev’s startling false harmonics in the coda melody were superbly executed by Lucy Gijsbers – you could have heard a pin drop as the final notes evaporated into the barrel vault.

Andrew Atkins had clearly put a lot of work into the Beethoven movement, but I’m afraid I felt disappointed. That was because he seemed to interpret Beethoven’s direction of allegro con brio to mean “extra fast” allegro. But the term means simply “with spirit, energy, vigour”. The busy, repetitive opening idioms started too fast for clarity and the later cascading runs were further rushed in a number of places. The dramatic sweeping passagework that recurs throughout this movement was doubtless designed around Beethoven’s legendary skills at the keyboard. It requires crystal clear execution and nuance to express the melodic structure concealed in the subtle complexity. There is an amazing musical architecture in there that is all too readily lost in those huge handfuls of notes, and sadly that is what happened here. The Listz was better controlled in the opening piano section, but the fast centralforte section was again too hectic to come across satisfactorily.

Beethoven made a habit of spending time in the countryside, away from his keyboard and quill pen, throughout his life, and this somehow permeates his composition despite its extraordinary demands and complexity. Our local version may needs be the New Zealand bush, but every performer must somehow tap into this dimension, and this is what I hankered for here.

Kapustin’s Nearly Waltz for piano-cello duo opens with a disarming rhythm that alternates almost randomly between 5/4 and 3/4. The duo picked up on its lively whimsical mood with just the right touch, although later forteinterludes again suffered from too much piano volume. However, this capricious three minute gem was wrapped up with a delightful final phrase, finishing in high register with the music simply floating away……It was a great way to finish an interesting and varied programme that was clearly appreciated by the audience.

There are a couple of issues the duo needs to work on if they are to optimise their professional profile. Firstly, the programme information provided was far from satisfactory – only composers and titles were given; no opus numbers, keys, or movement designations. And secondly, an adequate assessment of a venue’s acoustics before each performance must surely go without saying. Every concert room is unique, and performers must play the acoustics just as they play their instruments. A failure to do so can lead to serious imbalance, and no professional musician wants to court that hazard.

 

 

Bravos for the second of Freddy Kempf’s Beethoven concerto concerts with the NZSO

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Freddy Kempf’s Beethoven

Beethoven: Egmont Overture, Op.84
Piano Concerto no.4 in G, Op.58
Piano Concerto no.5 in E flat, Op.73 (Emperor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conductor and piano soloist, Freddy Kempf

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday, 14 March 2015, 7:30 pm

You can’t beat Beethoven on a good day – and this was a very good day, with star performer Freddy Kempf as conductor and piano soloist.  It was the second concert in a series of two in which Kempf has played and conducted all Beethoven’s piano concertos was greeted by a full Michael Fowler Centre.

The Egmont overture I have not heard live for a long time, and it was a most welcome opener for the concert.  Very full and poetic programme notes, author unacknowledged, gave the story of Goethe’s drama for which the composer wrote 10 pieces of music in all, in 1809.  While the text is dramatic, the overture can be heard as absolute music, without knowledge of Goethe’s play about the Flemish Count fighting for independence from the Spanish occupation in the 16th century.

The incisive start immediately created a mood, and the full sonority from the strings grabbed attention.  The timpani had a good workout here; Beethoven was apparently particularly fond of the tuned kettle-drums.  The music was noble, yet passionate.

Kempf conducted the overture without a score, and the smaller orchestra for Beethoven’s period was arranged with the second violins to Kempf’s right, with violas next, and the cellos next to the first violins.  (So Julia and Andrew Joyce got to sit next to each other.)  Kempf’s energetic conducting, to be followed by both conducting and playing two concertos, constituted a major physical workout, quite apart from performing all the music from memory.

There was plenty of sound from the players, especially as it reached my ears in the back row upstairs.  This position was excellent acoustically, and much better than the stalls for seeing the whole orchestra.

Kempf came on for the Piano Concerto no. 4 carrying a baton, but apart from the first time he stood to conduct the orchestra, he did not use it – indeed, his having to stand rapidly and then seat himself quickly to continue the piano part made it almost impossible to use the stick.

The first movement, allegro moderato, got off to a good tempo, but not too fast, the revolutionary (for the period) opening on the piano immediately demonstrating the great clarity and broad dynamic range employed by Freddy Kempf, despite this being, as the programme note stated, the quietest of Beethoven’s concertos. The andante con moto slow movement featured wonderful contrasts between strong orchestral passages and the delicacy of the piano phrases.  The playing of the cadenza, Beethoven’s own, was quite brilliant.

The final movement, rondo, is a jolly romp – cheerful and tuneful.  It was taken a shade faster than I am used to, but not excessively so.  There was great precision from the orchestra while the piano’s lyrical episodes interspersed beautifully.

Some people in the audience found Kempf’s getting up to conduct the orchestra then quickly seating himself again to play passages, to be a distraction, but I did not.  The flow of the music was never interrupted.  At any rate, the audience was very attentive.  I believe that in my exalted perch I heard the bass sounds better than one does on the ground floor; I heard the cellos and double basses very well, while seeing the entire orchestra added to the interest.

The ‘Emperor’ concerto was not titled thus by Beethoven.  Misnamed as it might be, given the composer’s abhorrence of Napoleon’s excesses, it nevertheless stands as royalty among piano concertos.  Concerto no.5 features the majesty and the melody of a supreme work of musical genius.  However, the greater use of brass and timpani than in the previous concerto confirmed a certain military presence, as does the somewhat swaggering opening.

Intensity and superb articulation were features of the playing, particularly on the part of Freddy Kempf.  Perhaps the pace of the opening allegro lost the work a little of its grandeur, but tasteful rubati
soon banished the thought.  It was an exciting performance, the noble melodies and the delicious detail, clear and sonorous as they were, provided almost ecstatic listening.  The great attention to phrasing, and Beethoven’s marvellous use of syncopation kept both orchestra and audience on their toes, while Kempf’s playing continued to have extraordinary clarity – never the slightest blurring.

The slow movement, adagio un poco mosso, is such a remarkable song of quiet assurance, especially where the upper strings play as the piano gives the soft theme while the lower strings do pizzicato – just sublime.

Only occasionally the ensemble strayed just a little.  Otherwise, orchestra and piano were unanimous, even in those passages where Kempf was too busy at the piano to do any more conducting than moving his body in time, to keep everything together.

The rondo: allegro ma non troppo finale relieved us from the emotion of the adagio.  At the end, enthusiastic applause broke out, many audience members rose to their feet, and the orchestral players applauded much more than is usual for them.  The audience’s ovation went on many times longer than normal.  Mercifully, we were spared an encore; that would have removed the mood of elation created by the concerto.

Even for those of us who go to many concerts, this was a very significant musical experience.  Bravo, as my neighbor shouted several times.

 

 

 

 

Pianist Nicola Melville’s visit home with a diverting entertainment and a tribute to her teacher

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chamber Music Hutt Valley
Nicola Melville – piano

Chopin: Nocturne in B, Op 62 No 1
Schubert: Sixteen German Dances, D 783
Debussy: Estampes (Pagodes, La soirée dans Grenade, Jardin sous la pluie)
In memory of Judith Clark:
      Gareth Farr: Gem
      Ross Harris: In Memory
Eve de Castro-Robinson: Chat
Jacob TV: The Body of Your Dreams for piano and boom box
William Albright: Dream Rags – Sleepwalkers Shuffle and The Nightmare Fantasy Rag – A Night on Rag Mountain

Little Theatre, Lower Hutt

Thursday 5 March, 7:30 pm

The first recital in the 2015 series from Chamber Music Hutt Valley presented former Wellington pianist Nicola Melville. Nicola was raised in Tawa and took her bachelor’s degree at Victoria University and later studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. She now teaches in Minnesota.

Last month I heard her in a concert at the Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson where she played several of the pieces we heard at Lower Hutt (see my review posted on 8 February).

The theme, or rationale, of the recital was Nicola’s affection for her piano lecturer at Victoria University, the late Judith Clark who had a profound influence on a generation or two of Victoria students. Three of the pieces were commissioned by Nicola from composers who’d had contacts with Judith, others were pieces that she’d played under Judith’s tutorship.

Nicola is a splendid representative of the increasingly common kind of musician who’s determined to communicate, unpretentiously, occasionally self-deprecating, and who wants her own fairly obvious love of her job to be shared by her audience. Speaking of which, while there were quite a few young people and of her composers (Farr and Harris) in the audience, the number of ordinary citizens could have been larger

Nicola changed the order of pieces in the programme, and the Chopin item was changed from the advertised Mazurkas to the not-so-familiar Nocturne in B, Op 62/1, which she had played while a student of Judith Clark. It’s an interesting piece with a somewhat tentative, arpeggiated opening soon followed by a gentle melody. It was nocturnal and lyrical apart from sudden break-aways, with sprints up and down the keyboard.

Schubert’s sixteen German dances revealed several that were familiar as individual pieces that crop up in student tutor collections. The early ones were simpler, more closely connected with the soil, with heavy-footed peasants and they became more sophisticated, calling for more elaborate, exhibitionist playing (and dancing). Though no doubt all would be classed at Ländler, the triple-time forerunner of the waltz, they display much variety and Nicola’s treatment was playful, light-hearted, brusque, energetic, some moving to the minor key towards the end: not always perfect but played with gusto and delight in the flourishes, ornaments, and unpretentiousness that is both Schubert and Melville.

Debussy’s three Estampes capture his flair for putting a sophisticated European stamp on traditional music from other places. Most marked in Pagodes where the characteristics of the gamelan can be heard, though hardly such as a Balinese or Javanese might recognise. Then Grenade (the Spanish city, which the French spell with an ‘e’, to confuse it with the Caribbean island), with a slightly jazzy episode; and finally in a French garden under the rain. Some hammering notes suggested a pretty heavy downpour, but more general were dancing flurries of pluvious notes.

The three pieces written to honour Judith Clark followed the interval: Gareth Farr’s a rather gentle, intimate piece that suggested Debussy, but also no doubt, Lilburn; Ross Harris’s Gem was a reflective piece that expressed a sadness and poignancy, in which I found myself contemplating its structure, its thematic ideas and their development, without much success.

Eve de Castro-Robinson’s Chat was a contrast: spiky and lively, capturing the sort of penetrating, alert conversations one could have with Judith Clark, perceptive, careful, aware of a possible differing opinion.

A piece by Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis who calls himself Jacob TV in the States, called The Body of your Dreams: a satire on the consumer society, the obsession with thinness and fitness, advertising, the piano accompanying a recording of a TV advert for a miracle weight-loss programme. The cajoling, dissembling American voice and the piano fitted together well; it was funny and though musically unimportant I guess, it used music as a permissible and seductive vehicle for ridicule and satire. Nicola’s own enjoyment fed that of the audience.

Finally a composer with whom Nicola had studied, William Albright, whose interest in ragtime may well have sparked or at least coincided with Nicola’s own, and her flair with the Scott Joplin idiom. The two pieces called Dream Rags were punchy, rhythmically emphatic;  Nicola showed herself very much at home with them, certainly an update on the turn-of-the-century originals with harmonies and fractured phrases that might have alarmed Joplin. But there was no alarm in the Little Theatre: a general delight in this and in the entire concert.

 

Last three days of the triumphant 2015 Chamber Music Festival in Nelson

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Adam Chamber Music Festival, Nelson 2015
29 January to 7 February 

Part Three

The Nelson Cathedral and Old St John’s church

Thursday 5 to Saturday 7 February

Thursday 5 February

For the first time, at this festival, two trips out of Nelson were organised, primarily as part of the full festival pass package; on Tuesday it was St Arnaud on Lake Rotoiti; today, to Upper Moutere to visit Höglund’s glass studio, the Neudorf Winery and a concert by The Song Company in a beautiful country church.

I decided to remain in Nelson in spite of that meaning foregoing the concert which included songs from the late Middle Ages – the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The song, Crist and Sainte Marie by St Godric, is one of four, ‘the oldest songs in English for which the original musical settings survive’, according to Wikipedia. I will record a personal reference, that Godric spent many years in the famous Lindisfarne Priory (indirectly giving me my name), where the beautiful illuminated eponymous Gospels were probably written in the early eighth century.  There was also a song by the enlightened Castilian King Alfonso X (13th century), English madrigals by Tomkins, Morley, Gibbons and Weelkes; and then a song cycle by Gareth Farr, the Les Murray Song Cycle, and modern madrigals from Australia and Denmark.

In Nelson the concert by the Ying Quartet that I heard on Tuesday at the lake was repeated.

French piano music
Thus there was only the 7:30 pm concert at Old St John’s, entitled Joie de vivre. That was on account of the full programme of French music in which Kathryn Stott was the still point of the turning world.

The earliest piece was five dances by Marin Marais (recall the film, Tous les matins du monde). Phillip Ying took Marais’s viola da gamba part on his viola which might not have altered it materially, but did remove the music from a particularly idiomatic 1700ish sound, partly the effect of a piano in place of a harpsichord or similar instrument of the period. The dances were varied and charming.

A Ravel rarity, which I’d not heard before: Trios beaux oiseaux du paradis, was sung by the Song Company, a cappella.

Kathryn Stott returned to join Rolf Gjelsten’s cello to play first, Fauré’s Après un rêve and then Debussy’s Cello sonata. Rolf read us a translation of the poem by Romain Bussine, a poet and singer who co-founded, with Saint-Säens, an important society in Paris, the Société nationale de musique, for the promotion of French music in the face of, mainly, Germanic influence. It included Franck, Fauré, Massenet and Duparc and several others. The former is very well-known and its performance was enchanting, not at all sentimental (which it rather lends itself to). The Debussy sonata may not be quite as assured a work as the violin sonata but this was a most attractive performance that both distinguished and brought together the distinct lines of the two instruments.

The New Zealand String Quartet joined Stott in César Franck’s Piano Quintet, in a performance whose spirit was very much guided by Stott’s playing, poised and restrained, with space between the phrases, her chords lean and clear. These remarks were true for the first two movements, following the composer’s indications, but in the third, Franck’s marking ‘con fuoco’ was licence for the release of the feelings it was rumoured that Franck had for a particular student at the Conservatoire. The big throbbing melody seemed steadily to increase in speed and dynamics, to quite a climax.

This most welcome performance added to the little effort initiated with Stott’s performance on Tuesday of the splendid Prelude, chorale and fugue, no doubt driven by the pianist, to pay attention to Franck’s unjustly neglected masterpieces.

Friday 6 February

Waitangi Day has usually fallen during the festival and offers an obvious excuse to explore New Zealand music, familiar and unfamiliar.

Nicola Melville remembers Judith Clark and shared friends
The 1pm concert served to showcase former Wellington pianist Nicola Melville who now teaches at Carlton College Minnesota, in music associated with her teacher and mentor at Victoria University, Judith Clark who died last year.

The programme note explained that the pieces were by composers dear to Judith’s heart. And there was a second set of pieces by composers who are among Nicola’s favourites.

The first played was Lilburn’s Three Sea Changes, the first two written in 1946 and the last in 1981. They have become familiar through the sensitive performances by Margaret Nielsen of 40 years ago, and it was good to hear them played by a pianist with a couple of generations’ longer perspective, of their acceptance as among the most characteristic of Lilburn’s piano music.

Then followed a new commission called simply, Gem, by Gareth Farr, a kaleidoscope of shifting tones, sentiment and sparkle. Its performance was full of affection and delight.

Ross Harris recorded in note about his offering, In Memory – Judith Clark, which was written for her 80th birthday, that she addressed him ‘you flea’. In it there was an immediate feeling of sadness, the notes spaced in a gentle and thoughtful way. It seemed to touch a deeper vein, especially in Nicola’s delicate and sensitive performance.

Eve de Castro-Robinson marked her tribute to Judith, “free, capricious, whimsical”, and that was the case. It might have been a characterisation as much of Eve as of Judith, with its scampering, quirky wit, that may well have enlivened the meetings between the two.

Jack Body’s offering was changed from the advertised Five Melodies to two pieces labelled ‘Old Fashioned Songs’, in Body’s inimitable treatment of them: Silver Threads among the Gold and Little Brown Jug. The expected and the unexpected in ‘Threads’, diversions from cadences that the ear and mind might have expected, yet enough of the original remained to tease. The ‘jug’ was treated to semi-staccato, spaced plantings of notes, it increased steadily in complexity, liveliness and interest, and Melville played them both with clarity and a keen sense of their wit and eccentricities.

Nicola in America
The music then moved abroad, to the United States. The first composer was an avant-gardist with wit and a mind to entertain: Jacob TV which is the American version of his Dutch name, Jacob ter Veldhuis. The Body of Your Dreams is a scathing look at the mindless world of TV advertising, using tapes and loops, rock idioms, of an advert for an electronic weight-loss programme, using repeated words a few of which I could pick up like ‘fat’, ‘press the button’ ‘no sweat’, ‘amazing’, the language of the bottom end of youth culture, advertising and the electronic media.

The piano was very busy in collaboration with the junk-burdened noises on the tape, good for a moment’s contemplation of the meaning of music, satire and what passes for culture.

And finally, a return to a composer I think ranks high in Melville’s pantheon: William Albright who wrote a number of rags, among much else. These two were entitled: Dream Rags, comprising The Nightmare Rag, with the parenthesis suggesting Night on Rag Mountain (though I detected no hint of Mussorgsky) and Sleepwalker’s Shuffle. They were, I have to confess, closer to the idiom of ragtime than the pieces by Novacek heard a few days before. In any case, Melville was very much at home with them and they delighted the audience.

Verklärte Nacht in the evening
The 7:30pm concert called on The Song Company and both string quartets. The Song Company sang songs from the 14th and 16th centuries. William Cornish’s ‘Ah Robin, gentle Robin’ with the singers taking varied roles, the men first and then the women while conductor Peelman accompanied with a drum; voices and the drum steadily rose in pitch and intensity, as the words revealed the singer’s despondency at the realisation of his lover’s likely faithlessness.

‘Where to shud I expresse’ possibly by Henry VIII followed, along with the anonymous, c1350 song ‘The Westron Wynde’, each a lament on a lover’s fickleness, or at least, absence. Here was the style of singing that best suited The Song Company, capturing lovers’ troubles with individual voices most advantageously on display, between their coming together to create beautiful vocal fusion.

Two New Zealand pieces were Lilburn’s Phantasy for Quartet, and John Cousin’s Duos for violin and viola of 1973. The Lilburn was a 1939 exercise written at the Royal College, for Vaughan Williams, winning the William Cobbett Prize. Here was a nice link with the previous song bracket, as Lilburn used the tune from The Westron Wynde, at first with restraint, and then increasingly energetic. The New Zealand String Quartet gave it a sweet, loving performance; apart from an early performance in Christchurch, I think it was said to be the near premiere in New Zealand.

Cousin’s three duos were Waltz Lee, Lullaby for Peter and Polka for Elliot, very much a family affair. These early examples of the composer’s work are charming, characteristic, offering a nice opportunity to hear other than his more commonly encountered electro-acoustic music. They were played engagingly by Janet and Phillip Ying.

The Ying Quartet returned in full to play their own arrangement of an Alleluia composed by Randall Thompson in response to the early years of the Second World War. There were hints of Samuel Barber sure enough, but its somewhat incongruous lamenting character in contrast to its title, led to an interesting, quite complex contrapuntal piece; the quartet may well have made it something of a personal utterance.

Which left the rest of the concert to Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night (Verklärte Nacht). The programme note described it rightly as ‘his glorious Sextet’, and this performance by the New Zealand String Quartet, plus the violist and cellist from the Ying Quartet, made a wonderfully rich and emotional job of it.

Saturday 7 February

Cornerstone Classics – Haydn and Mozart
Here, on the festival’s last day, was the chance to hear three New Zealand players not otherwise represented. Their style however, conformed with the approach to early music that was one of the hall-marks of the Song Company. Douglas Mews at the fortepiano and Euan Murdoch on the cello are well-known exponents of ‘period performance practice’; the violinist replacing the advertised Catherine Mackintosh, Anna van der Zee, is a regular member of the NZSO’s first violins, but proved to be fully sensitive to the playing style considered appropriate for the ‘classical’ period.

Two Haydn piano trios (Hob.XV/18 and 19) enclosed Mozart’s violin sonata in C, K 403. The feathery decoration applied to Haydn’s G minor trio enhanced the fortepiano’s lightness of sound, which in turn coloured the playing by the two stringed instruments. Even for one who is perfectly used to music played in accordance with historical practice, the first impression when a new and, I must confess, unfamiliar piece is played, is of a touch of the insubstantial. But the ears quickly adjust. Haydn’s trio in A (No 18), played after the Mozart, was as full or ornaments as was No 19, but more lightened with wit, and quirky gestures as well as the modulations that even one quite used to Haydn’s behaviour finds surprising.

I really enjoyed Mozart’s violin sonata, played in comparable, genuine style, it sounded closer to the Romantic era than Haydn, even though written ten years earlier; it’s part of an incomplete set that his friend the clarinettist Anton Stadler tidied up/completed. The first movement is marked by a strong rhythm, with an unusually emphatic first note in the bar, or at least that is the way it was played (I hadn’t heard it before). It seemed that the Andante might have been marked molto andante on account of its rather imposing slowness. I found the whole thing very attractive and so it did surprise me that I hadn’t come across it before.

Grand finale –cries of the cities
No doubt the big crowd at the final concert in the cathedral was there mainly for the Brahms Sextet. Yet there may well have been a good deal of curiosity about the set of seven ‘cries’; they filled the first half.

They involved, again, both quartets and the Song Company. The order departed from that in the programme. First came not the earliest, but the Cries of London by Orlando Gibbons, inspired by the earlier Cries of Paris. It’s a far cry from Gibbons’s familiar madrigals and keyboard pieces with its colourful and probably sociologically interesting words and atmosphere.

Louise Webster’s Cries of Kathmandu succeeded in using music of a generalised Indian character embroidered with Hindu religious imagery to paint an intriguing though on balance, distressing picture of a once charming subalpine city largely ruined by capitalism and mass tourism.

It was a short step to Jack Body’s Cries from the Border, a piece typifying the composer’s profound human and political concerns, now coloured by his own imminent mortality. The tale of the fate of German-Jewish philosopher, Walter Benjamin, trapped on the French-Spanish border attempting to escape from Vichy France and the Nazis in 1940. Body wrote: “Unlike Benjamin, I am a traveller reluctant to transit. But the sentence has been pronounced…”. Musically it expressed these complex emotions committedly and convincingly.  Jack Body was there to stand for the applause.

The Cries of Paris of c. 1530 by Clément Janequin was a predictable sequel. Like that of its imitator Gibbons, it did contain the cries of the city’s street vendors, which were no mere medieval phenomenon, but petered out only around the First World War. The performance left no doubt about the reason for their survival and now renewed popularity.

Then came two New Zealand latter-day efforts: Cries of Auckland by Eve de Castro Robinson which dealt with the anti-Springbok Tour and the cries of the protesters throughout the country, still vivid in the memories of all of us who were involved: “1 2 3 4, we don’t want your racist tour! … Shame! Shame! …Amandla, Amandla”  and hints of later protests about asset-sales and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

And Chris Watson contributed a comparable political offering from Wellington. More words, and a wider lens: the morning commuter trials (cries of frustration?), the dramatic revealing of Wellington Harbour at the bottom of Ngauranga Gorge (cries of spiritual uplift?), but then the realities of political Wellington at the time of the negative, dirty politics, election campaign – the cries of debate, perhaps the cries of hopelessness, from the victims of the victory of inequality.

Brahms Sextet
The Ying Quartet plus the violist and cellist of the New Zealand String Quartet had the last word, with the glorious second string sextet by Brahms (Op 36). Reference is usually made, and was here, to the belief that it contained hidden reference to Agathe von Siebold with whom he had been in love with a few years before, encoded in the first theme of the first movement. Typically, Brahms shied away from commitment, which he apparently later regretted. The work’s high emotional intensity, especially the Adagio, slow movement, can colour the listening experience, but it hardly matters what specific narrative the listener allows to accompany a performance, for it is such a transcendent experience from the young composer, aged 33.

These festivals have often succeeded in bringing things to a conclusion with a musical creation of unusual splendour and emotional power. This one achieved that very movingly.

 

Nelson chamber music festival: the second three days, with a trip to St Arnaud

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Adam Chamber Music Festival, Nelson 2015
29 January to 7 February 

Part Two

The Nelson Cathedral and Old St John’s church

Monday 2 to Wednesday 4 February

Monday 2 February

PianoFest I: Dance
Sunday’s rain which had been threatened to continue today, disappeared and there was sun first thing, but clouds soon returned and umbrellas reappeared as we set off for the 10.30 PianoFest I: Dance.

It featured four prominent New Zealand pianists: David Guerin, Jian Liu, Stephen de Pledge and Sarah Watkins. ‘Dance’ was a rather approximate term as the first piece, Ravel’s Mother Goose, in the original piano duet form, was not designed for dancing; though Ravel’s later orchestration was in fact expanded into a ballet in 1912. I don’t know how successful it was or how much it is performed today. But predominantly it consists of charming, quiet depictions of some of Perrault’s (and others’) famous fairy stories. It was played by Jian Liu and Sarah Watkins, who brought to each scene a wonderful delicacy, precision, an awareness of the spirit of each tale and the pianistic colours demanded by that character. There were vivid revelations in each of the five movements – a special finesse in the depiction of the Beauty and the Beast (Les entretiens de la belle et de la bête).

There were three pieces by New Zealand composers: David Hamilton’s Three Rags were genuine dance material, closer to the Scott Joplin originals than the elaborate and over-sophisticated rags by Novacek, heard the day before. These were for eight hands at two pianos, positioned face to face, Watkins and de Pledge on the Steinway on the left and Guerin and Liu at the Yamaha on the right. Lilburn’s rather untypical Tempo di Bolero written when he was flatting in his twenties in Christchurch with Leo Benseman and Lawrence Baigent, both pianists. So it was for three pianists, in very close proximity; the three this time were, treble to bass, Guerin, Liu and Watkins. It was an energetic piece, that rather burdened the bolero rhythms with complexity, but nevertheless made one rather wish that Lilburn had been drawn into the business of composing for the theatre, to find the sort of popular success that Farquhar found with his Ring round the Moon music. Though the three Canzonettas, that were played on Wednesday in the Stabat Mater concert were teasing hints at what might have developed if the climate had been different.

The last piece in the programme was an extended exploration of Bottom’s characterisation in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ‘A Tedious Brief Scene: Bottom’s Dance’ by Leonie Holmes. The employment of all four pianists (left: Watkins, Guerin; right: de Pledge and Liu) imposed a certain chaos on the music that depicted Bottom, the butt of jokes and teasing, through rhythms and in the handling of musical ideas.

Also in the hour-long programme was the third Slavonic dance from Dvořák’s first set, in the composer’s original piano duet form. It occurred to me that we could use a couple of nationwide recitals featuring the two pianists, de Pledge and Guerin, doing the entire two books of these small masterpieces.

The only music by Scharwenka that I knew till a few years ago was this Polish Dance (Op 3 No 1) that both my wife and I were surprised to confess to have played, after a fashion, in our youth. The programme note explained how commonplace our experience was, noting that it had been one of the ‘greatest hits’ of its time, the sheet music selling in millions.

Prokofiev’s own piano arrangement of parts of his Romeo and Juliet ballet is for one pianist – here, Stephen de Pledge alone. The Lily Dance of the Maidens: curious and careful, contrasting with the heavy, confrontational Montagues and Capulets.

In the afternoon we got PianoFest II
It was advertised as ‘World Voyage’, for the usual reason of widespread composer birthplaces, though the distribution was pretty normal: France and Germany, the United States and a couple of pieces by New Zealanders.

This festival has been given a certain quirky interest by pairing music that has been transformed, generally by the composer from the original instrumentation to something else.

Beethoven featured twice. Late in his life, he had rewritten his third piano trio (heard on Sunday), as a string quintet (heard on Saturday); and on Monday we heard his Piano Sonata in E, Op 14 No 1 which he later transcribed as a string quartet to be heard on Wednesday from the young Nelson quartet, The Troubadours.

The Piano sonata was the first piece in the PianoFest II programme and it was played by Jian Liu.

I was enchanted by Liu’s playing of this unpretentious sonata, evincing a very carefully considered, understated performance of beautiful delicacy, with fleet little decorative passages, that, again, made me long to hear Liu in performances of a lot more Beethoven.

The contribution from France was Messiaen’s Regard du silence from the huge canvas, the Vingt regards sur L’Enfant Jésus, played with enormous authority by David Guerin. From the United States: John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction for two pianos, from Stephen and Sarah who exploited the interesting sonic possibilities that Adams wrote into his boisterous piece.

New Zealand composer Sarah Ballard wrote a set of four pieces representing the four medieval elements: earth, air, fire and water, and here we heard the four pianists (treble to bass, left to right: de Pledge, Guerin, Watkins and Liu) in two that portrayed an ancient Mexican cave and Mount Erebus.

A different disposition of the four pianists then played Gareth Farr’s Bintang, probably danceable enough, but a stimulating and impressive listen.

Bach by Candlelight
The evening concert was the focus on Bach which has become a key element in the festival. It was made particularly distinguished as the first appearance of The Song Company; and the forces also included both resident string quartets Douglas Mews (organ), Robert Orr (oboe) and Loan Perernau Garriga (double bass).

To start, Ying Quartet’s leader Ayano Ninomiya gave an impressive performance of the Prelude from Bach’s Partita No 3 for solo violin, and followed with Eugène Isaÿe’s astonishing treatment of the music  in his second sonata for solo violin. The performances of both pieces were distinguished by extremely high technical brilliance and artistic integrity.

The first of Bach’s vocal pieces on the programme was Jesu meine Freude. This is one of Bach’s real masterpieces and demands exquisite balance and blending between parts and both richness and dramatic characterization. Inner parts sounded too prominent, and though each voice was technically assured, the tone was not uniform; I am not bothered by vibrato in baroque music, but here it obtruded occasionally. Here was an example, I felt, when the possibly authentic use of one voice to a part made it very hard to meet achieve a simple, beautiful, dramatic performance.

Hannah Fraser sang the best-known aria from the St Matthew Passion, ‘Erbarme dich’. I’d loved her Brahms songs the night before, but was not so convinced by this, perhaps on account of a voice that was so warm and emotional, beautifully adapted to the 19th century, but didn’t meet the stylistic expectations that have become normal for Bach today. Her lovely accompaniment was from a blend of players from the two quartets plus bassist Joan Perarnau Garriga and organist Douglas Mews.

Soprano Mina Kanaridis sang the gorgeous aria, ‘Mein gläubiges Herze’, from Cantata No 68, with a real sense of ecstasy and conviction. But the real triumph of the concert was the performance by bass Alexander Knight of the cantata Ich habe genug (Cantata No 82), with a simply superb voice, and a stage demeanour that commanded the entire space both by means of his penetrating gaze at his audience and the sombre expressiveness of his singing. He was supported admirably by oboist Robert Orr, and again bassist Perernau Garriga and Mews at the chamber organ, all three of whom had given comparable backing to Mina Kanaridis.

A second instrumental piece was the third of Bach’s not often played Gamba Sonatas (BWV1029): on Gillian Ansell’s viola, accompanied by Douglas Mews, it was modest and unpretentious, and free of artifice of any kind.

 

Tuesday 3 February

To St Arnaud on Lake Rotoiti
This was the day of the lake: when the music and the pass holders go to St Arnaud on Lake Rotoiti where the Ying Quartet play in the lovely little chapel whose windows give on the beech forest and to the distant mountains. We walk to the School of Music where the bus will depart at 9.30am. The uncertainty of the weather, though the sun was shining then, means there is a wide variety of dress, from optimists to pessimists: I was in the middle with a light jacket and proper shoes.

Most of the way in through varied farmland and the series of villages south of Nelson till we turn off after about half an hour; the road becomes more winding and we travel through more plantation forest; almost no native trees apart from occasional patches of totara till within about five miles of St Arnaud. Why did the State allow land sales and native forest felling to make way for exotics so close to this beautiful lake? However, the immediate environment is largely beech.

After morning tea at the Visitor Centre we go to the little chapel where the Ying Quartet is already seated, backs to the windows, while the audience gets lovely views of close kanuka and more distant beech.

Quartets by Haydn and Tchaikovksy and a trio by Anthony Ritchie
 The acoustic is gorgeous in the small timbered space with its curved laminated beams that create the feel of a vaulted gothic crossing; and the first few minutes are spent wallowing in the immediacy of the individual and collective sounds of the Haydn first movement. Better than at earlier performances we could here enjoy the quartet’s elegant and sensitive playing, Haydn’s wit and teasing, all with such care for the ebb and flow of phrases and dynamics.

The programme is Haydn, Op 20 No 4, Tchaikovsky, Quartet No 1 and a trio by Anthony Ritchie, entitled Spring String Trio. The Tchaikovsky drew more power and drama from the players, their painstaking attention to fluctuating dynamics and rhythmic effects more exploited.

In introducing Ritchie’s little piece, in which leader, Ayano Ninomiya stood down, giving the violin part to second violin Janet Ying, Phillip Ying referred to the piece as Spring String Ying Trio. Though commissioned as a birthday present, its tone was initially serious though quite brisk: getting older is no laughing matter.

But it was a delight to hear Janet Ying’s fine, confident violin playing, unobscured by her leader’s dominance, which is the common fate of the second violin. Its slower second section cemented its place as a small but substantial work.

Helene Pohl talks with the four PianoFest pianists
Back in Nelson later in the afternoon, it was the turn of the four pianists participating in the PianoFest, to chat with Helene Pohl. As well as exploring each pianist’s early experiences, and how a commitment to a professional career emerged, there was interesting discussion on the sense or otherwise of multi-pianist performances such as we had at the first and second ‘PianoFests’: the consensus was that it was fundamentally an eccentricity and perhaps stupid, except for Schubert’s which were justified as a means of getting very close to members of the opposite sex.

Kathryn Stott
Kathryn Stott’s major piano recital was in the evening. It demonstrated her special interest in French music with Ravel’s Sonatine, a nocturne by Fauré, L’Isle joyeuse by Debussy and Franck’s formidable Prelude, chorale and fugue. Their variety, and the rare hearing of the splendid Franck made it a memorable and, for the many probably unfamiliar with Franck, a revelatory event. The second half was dominated by Stott’s illuminating playing of the original piano version of Grieg’s Holberg Suite, too rarely heard, that restored Grieg’s place as a great piano composer; the rest was from South America, Villa-Lobos’s Choros No 5, Guanieri’s Danza negra and Ginastera’s Dance No 2 from Argentinian Dances. It ended terrifyingly with a rather extended, killer piece she had commissioned from Graham Fitkin called Relent, evidently a mark of his sense of humour since its speed, ferocity, complexity and sheer impossibility for anyone less than a Stott, was utterly unrelenting.

Wednesday 4 February  

The anchors of the festival
Three main groups provide the backbone of this year’s festival. The New Zealand String Quartet of course; the Ying Quartet from the United States; and the Song Company from Australia. Some festivals are very particular in the range of musical genres, but most like to include players that lie perhaps a little apart from the popular central element of a festival’s character.

Several times it has been a singer or singers. That is excellent because the world of chamber music tends to give rise to somewhat narrow areas of acceptability for quite a few, who might just surprise themselves if they ventured out of their narrow comfort zone.

So the Song Company had an important role to play in a festival like this, and they tackle it on several different levels: inserting a couple of Brahms Lieder in a chamber music programme; doing several of Bach best loved choruses and arias alongside violin pieces; testing the water with a wide variety of styles and musical periods – Medieval and Renaissance polyphony and madrigals, the Baroque, the classical and the romantic periods, the modern or twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

And of course, there are factions within each of those categories, those who turn off early music, or scorn romantic music, or art songs, or opera but love religious choral music, find English music boring, and so on.

Roland Peelman and The Song Company
A challenge to all these limiting fads and fashions was offered on Wednesday morning in the vigorous and wide-ranging discussion between Rolf Gjelsten and Roland Peelman, the director of The Song Company.

As with all these sessions designed to shed light on the making of a musician, this began with Peelman’s description of the unmusical life in a small Flemish town in Belgium where, from nowhere, a strong musical impulse arose, that sought out a music teacher at about age eight and induced the family to buy a piano. Then a quite rich musical life at a boarding school, a useless year at a local conservatorium (he mentioned almost no Belgian place names apart from Ghent), but more fruitful general education at university.

His learning went on to Cologne, the base of the post-Darmstadt, avant-garde school led by Stockhausen, and it included the important (for Peelman) teaching of Alois Kontarsky (you’ll remember him from a chamber group at one of the very early New Zealand Festivals in Wellington in the late 1980s).

Insights into conducting came mainly from those with almost no standing as a conductor but with a flair for giving invaluable guidance and inspiration. One had said he could tell him everything about conducting technique in an hour but it would take a lifetime to learn.

While he had initially said that the impression of Australasians that Europe was seething with culture was delusional, his later account of rich and flourishing arts and music scenes in at least the main centres of Europe, hardly supported his argument. Much of what he said seemed to place high value on wide general cultural awareness and knowledge instead of on narrow, music-only, highly technical, and detailed analytical study.

His own wide exposure to literature, several languages, history, the arts generally and music in particular was enviable, especially in a country with steadily narrowing cultural and intellectual horizons.

Peelman was interesting about the close relationship between musicians who inhabited the avant-garde and those who explored early music performance practice from the 1970s. The one had spawned and informed the other; especially the realisation that one could not live on the former but there were growing audiences for the latter.

To Australia
His account of his shift to Australia in 1982 was fascinating. His contact with Aboriginal ‘Dreaming’ music at Waggawagga left a mark on his brain; his first job was at Mt Gambier on the South Australia/Victoria southern border teaching keyboard and singing and conducting the brass band.

Life became serious when he was appointed assistant chorus master at Australian Opera in Sydney, in the far-off days when the company had 22 productions in its annual repertoire (now about half that in a good year; it was the late 80s when I started going to Australia to make wonderful opera discoveries). Though he allowed himself reservations about aspects of opera as spectacle and its perception as amusement for the wealthy (“music takes second place”, he said – maybe, but not for me), he gained varied and valuable skills, describing the hectic, non-stop life as intoxicating.

Then in 1990 came an offer of appointment with The Song Company, Australia’s only full-time professional small choir. He had much to say about its evolution, about the fundamental contrast between four and six voices. A finally he disclosed that, after 25 years, he’s ready to take on something else.

PianoFest IV
After lunch on this fine day, when the rain had gone, the fourth in the series of PianoFests, which had been planned and organised by Stephen de Pledge as a mini-festival-within-a-festival, took place in Old St John’s, as its deconsecrated embodiment is now known.

More multi-pianist performances, this one subtitled ‘Opera’. Official participants were: David Guerin, Jian Liu, Stephen de Pledge, Sarah Watkins.

The first, played by De Pledge by himself was Liszt’s transcription of Isolde’s ‘Liebestod’ from Tristan und Isolde. Liszt had the taste to ensure that Wagner’s scoring did not lose anything in the process, and the piano version moved just as ecstatically from calm grief to necro-erotic frenzy.

Nor did the transcription of the prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg suffer with four hands at two piano (Stephen on piano A, left, and David Guerin on piano B, right); in the transcription by Max Reger, its lines were if anything etched with more clarity than in the original.

Norma
But the real revelation was the fantasia drawing melodies from Bellini’s wonderful opera, Norma, by Czerny, a contemporary of Bellini, as well as of Rossini and Schubert. He was a piano teacher and composer of piano etudes and impossible exercises: this one for six hands at one piano. The emotions remained alive and well, and the rhythmic pulse under the final heart-rending melody, rather undid me.

It lay in the way he spread the melodies to the very limits of the keyboard, with not inappropriate adornments; inter alia, it called for De Pledge, in the treble position, to reach repeatedly with his right arm across Sarah Watkins to plant notes outside of his own territory; Sarah was wedged between, with David Guerin at the bass. The combination, towards the end, of exciting, pulsing bass rhythms and gorgeous, heart-rending melody, rather undid me. As I remarked yesterday, I felt, as the result of the glorious music that Bellini wrote for this great opera, and Czerny’s sensitive and exciting treatment, that this piece had a serious independent existence, vindicating the genre of six or more hands at one piano.

Freddie
Then came another kind of novelty, though it was not altogether clear whether Double F for Freddie, had another life as some kind of opera, it was, as described, a humorous romp at the very limits of one piano: viz. four at one keyboard – from top to bottom, Guerin, Watkins, Liu, with de Pledge offering, as far as I could see, just the final deep bass note at the end.

Carmen for the madhouse
Then came an indescribable, extraordinary party piece devised by De Pledge for all four pianists in riotous disarray. It’s mainly Carmen, but there are other impertinences: Die Fledermaus, and Sarah suddenly interrupting Stephen doing Micaela’s act 3 aria with the opening of Grieg’s piano concerto, which was the signal for the arrival of other players, of growing chaos, of shifting piano stools, of forcible position changes at different keyboards, some corruptions like the Habanera delivered by Jian with feminine delicacy.

Carmen herself arrives (Rae de Lisle), tosses the rose to the pianists and then joins the riot. Five at two keyboards is unbalanced however, and De Pledge set out to find another pianist in the audience, and finally forcibly arrests Kathy Stott; she puts up a considerable fight to avoid this unseemly press-gang musical recruitment but joined the chaos of six at two keyboards with gusto to deliver the coup-de-grace to Carmen.

Troubadours
The third event of the day was at 6.30pm in the Cathedral, restoring a more orderly and civilised tone. The Troubadours, the noted student string quartet, who have been spotted around the city during the week, playing at schools and charities, were here to play Mozart’s Divertimento K 136, and the old filmic hit, Over the Rainbow. In particular, they played Beethoven’s own arrangement for string quartet of his piano sonata in E, Op 14 No 1.

These players, students variously at Auckland, Waikato and Victoria universities, were Julian Baker, Hilary Hayes, Jin Kim and Heather Lewis. Their playing was stylistically idiomatic, beautifully articulated, nicely phrased and judged for gentle rhythmic and dynamic variations.

Stabat Mater
This title referred of course to the great Pergolesi cantata that filled the second half. Sung by two sopranos from The Song Company, Mina Kanaridis and Anna Fraser, it was accompanied by the Ying Quartet, minus Janet Ying, plus Donald Armstrong and Douglas Mews at the chamber organ.

For a work that is so famous and so well-loved, I have heard it too few times, more in other countries than in New Zealand. I think it is no longer spoken of as it once was, with a degree of scorn or superciliousness, the result of a piece of music being too much loved on account of its beauty, not a virtue in mid-20th century avant-garde circles.

This performance was truly beautiful, fully justifying the employment mainly of the festival guests from Australia and the United States. The voices expressed the overwrought religious grieving that lies at the heart of the medieval poem, with sobriety and restraint, as well as extraordinarily sensitive control of tempi and expressive gesture. Led by Ayano Ninomiya’s strong but scrupulously handled violin, the ensemble gave a performance that would have impressed the most discriminating audiences anywhere in the world.

The earlier part of the concert had comprised a lovely Song without Words by Gillian Whitehead from Rolf Gjelsten’s solo cello. Donald Armstrong and Gillian Ansell played Lilburn’s entrancingly lyrical Three Canzonettas for violin and viola. Ayano Ninomiya delivered a Kreisler piece of high virtuosity and musical interest, breathtakingly.

Then the Song Company appeared to sing El fuego by Mateo Flecha, a 16th century (and so, contemporary with Tudor England) Spanish (Catalan) ‘ensalada’, in five parts, or was it six?  Vividly Hispanic, it and its performance were a delight.

All this highly heterogeneous material made it one of the most unexpected and delightful programmes of the festival.