Tag: piano

Ludwig Treviranus returns to Upper Hutt for highly coloured recital of Beethoven and Mussorgsky

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Ludwig Treviranus (piano)

Beethoven: Piano Sonata in C, Op 2 No 3; Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition

Genesis Energy Theatre, Expressions Arts Centre, Upper Hutt

Saturday 10 November, 8pm

The name Ludwig Treviranus came to my notice when he played in his last high school years in the Hutt Valley, before moving to study music under Rae de Lisle at Auckland University. At that stage there was already a certain flair, a feeling for the dramatic in music, and they were the characteristics most clearly evident in the two pieces he played on this short return visit from Sydney where he is teaching this year. Last year he completed a doctorate at the State University of Florida in Tallahassee, guided by New Zealand pianist Read Gainsford.

The C major sonata of Beethoven’s first published set of piano sonatas has more pointers to the future, his own future, than to the past of Haydn and Mozart’s keyboard works; and it was the vivid contrasts in tempo and dynamics, between the crisp staccato phrases and sudden shifts to lyrical passages, even within a few bars, that marked his playing most strongly.

The second theme of the first movement was enlivened in these ways, particularly with its rippling, ornamented arpeggios; his approach made coherent the somewhat surprising cadenza that Beethoven gave himself near the end.

The brevity of the third movement is always a surprise, and Treviranus succeeded in delivering that surprise, at the same time convincing us of its rightness. The whole was not without minor trip-ups and rushes of notes that were a bit blurred; nothing detracted however from the fleetness, strength and insight of his performance.

It was a somewhat short recital: all over, including his pithy, fluent introductions, in an hour and a half. Nevertheless, there was time for him to make a lively impression on the large audience through his demeanour, his air of friendliness and of course his easy comments on the music and its context.

The second part was given to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, which he told us he had learned in his final year at Florida. To bring the music more vividly to life he had arranged for images of the five extant paintings by Hartmann, which were the inspiration of the music, to be projected on a screen behind the piano; the other five pieces were illustrated by appropriate paintings by others, including Van Gogh’s study of straining oxen, for Bydlo.  If you search the Internet you will find a lot of partly speculative information about other possible sources among the very large retrospective Hartmann exhibition in Saint Petersburg in 1874, as well as rather more insightful writing about the composer and the painter and the aesthetic climate of Russia in the 1870s.

One measure of a performance of this work is the conviction brought to the varying accounts of the Promenade that appear between our viewing of the works on the gallery walls.  Generally, the viewer was led on a thoughtful walk around the exhibition, without haste; his emotions in the music reflecting what he sees there: the slightly sinister Gnomes (or Gnomus) and a colourful, animated scene at the Tuileries. Then came the primitiveness of the lumbering oxen of Bydlo (a Polish cart drawn by a cow writes one commentator, a symbol depicting the oppressed Polish people whose country lay divided under the domination of Russia and Prussia throughout the 19th century) with its heavy emphasis on the alternating chords, unchanging in pace as they fade away into the distance.

Treviranus commands a huge dynamic range, which was called for to depict the two Jews, Goldenberg and Schmuyle; and in the sudden plunge into the Catacombs, here with the pictorial background of three blurred figures against a half-lit wall; it was one of the most evocative episodes.

And he captured the grandeur and the occasional fall into triviality in the last two pieces, Baba Yaga and The Great Gate of Kiev: that image of Hartmann’s architectural conception, never built, shows graphically how far traditional Russian visual arts were from the classically derived styles that had ruled in western Europe, and Mussorgsky’s music too takes its inspiration from that of the Russian peasant, finally merging in spirit with the Promenade. In all, Treviranus‘s studied avoidance of any too elegant or polished performance could be heard to conform successfully with what we could see projected on the screen.

The pianist plans to return to Wellington next year; though he is very interested in teaching, I hope he can make time to enlarge and polish his repertoire, especially the fields he demonstrated so promisingly this evening.

 

Michael Houstoun at 60 – divining the depths of the Diabellis

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Chamber Music New Zealand presents:

Michael Houstoun – 60th Birthday Recital

BEETHOVEN – 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli Op.120

Michael Houstoun (piano)

Ilott Theatre, Wellington Town Hall

Saturday 20th October 2012

It was probably pianist Artur Schnabel’s droll wit (documented elsewhere) which gave rise to the remark he made in a letter to his wife regarding the audience at a performance he gave in Spain of Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations – “I am the only person here who is enjoying this, and I get the money – they pay, and have to suffer!”

A once-fashionable thought was, of course, that suffering was good for the soul; however, in Beethoven’s music, and especially in these variations, the moods are so varied and wide-ranging that any discomfort would surely be just a small part of a myriad of emotions, each with its own particular kind of nourishment for the spirit.

At Michael Houstoun’s Ilott Theatre birthday recital of these variations on what the composer called a “cobbler’s patch” of a tune, it seemed that things such as enjoyment, excitement, bliss, profundity and humour were paramount, rather than any hint of suffering. From those very first utterances, Diabelli’s garrulous little waltz seemed at once deftly placed and somehow ennobled – under Houstoun’s fingers the repetitive banalities grew a sequence of arches, through which the first of Beethoven’s variations then proudly and imposingly made its way.

Throughout this parade of wonderfully quirky characterizations Houstoun’s playing kept certain unities alive and flowing –  as per usual with him, nothing was fudged or ill-defined, the focus always sharp and bright, no matter how varied the touch or wide-ranging the dynamics. And at once his clarity of expression kept the structure taut and seemed to enlarge the music’s parameters of utterance.

That for me was Houstoun’s great achievement in this performance, making something distinctive and memorable of each of the individual variations, but keeping each within a greater, underlying flow of overall purpose. I would be prepared to stick my neck out a bit, here, and suggest that a younger Michael Houstoun would have unequivocally made his listeners aware of the music’s eventual destination, but allowed each of the variations less individual character, lest any of them stepped out of line or broke ranks. Here, the pianist’s maturity and understanding allowed us to experience the best of both worlds.

As commentator William Kindermann points out, these variations harbour great tensions of complexity which arise between Diabelli’s commonplace theme and the unlimited possibilities unleashed by Beethoven – and performances which attempt to “smooth out” or “call to order” the extremes of firstly banality and primitive impulse, and then profundity and intellectual severity don’t seem to me to completely “chart the course” of Beethoven’s achievement.

My notes on Houstoun’s performance suggest anything but a smooth ride or a regimented display – I’ve already described that feeling of some kind of opening grand processional by the composer into the world of the “cobbler’s-patch” waltz, which the pianist’s playing suggested; and other impressions were quick to follow – for example, Variation Four (Un poco piu vivace) was here beautifully sculptured movement, somehow finely-chiselled strength and liquid flow at the same time, while Variation Six (Allegro vivace) hurled out the trills both in treble and bass, the instrument in places roaring excitingly! By contrast Variation Fourteen (Grave e maestoso) brought before us a rich cortege with beautifully augmented resonances and nicely-terraced dynamics.

As to the underlying flow, Houstoun took us from this quasi-orchestral realization through the following five variations to the nineteenth’s Presto with nicely theatrical timing that made the most of both continuities and contrasts. The grave e maestoso was energized with the military strut of the following presto scherzando, which stimulated ensuing high-spirited scamperings, hard on its heels, of both of the succeeding Allegros, and then fell into a kind of “Well, thank goodness THEY’VE gone!” poco moderato interlude that resulted in a “That’s what YOU think!” rejoiner with Variation Nineteen’s aforementioned Presto.

Notes scribbled during a performance can take up an awful lot of space, as here – in the pages of his Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik journal, Robert Schumann could as a critic indulge his fancy freely in describing fleeting, spontaneous impressions suggested by both his own and other people’s music – those of us less endowed with insight have to be rather more circumspect! But reading these in situ thoughts of mine brought back the concentration and purpose that Houstoun brought to his traversal of the music, truly making it his own.

Our feelings concerning the pianist’s identification with Beethoven’s world were nicely activated by a short film before the recital, in which Houstoun talked about his lifelong relationship with the music, beginning with an account of a very specific “moment” for him involving a recording of the great “Appassionata” Sonata (educationalists will recognize a well-documented learning phenomenon, the “readiness” principle, here). The film valuably caught something directly and very naturally expressed, the beginnings of a musician’s journey whose progress up to and including the performance which followed had obviously reached a stellar plateau of achievement.

Rounding off the event was a presentation to Michael Houstoun at the performance’s conclusion by June Clifford, former Chairperson of the Chamber Music New Zealand Trust Board, marking both the pianist’s birthday and the extent of his artistic achievements in tandem with Chamber Music New Zealand over the years. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind regarding the appropriateness and significance of such an award – we in the audience felt both thrilled and honoured to be present at both music and history being made so very resplendently.

 

 

 

 

Litton and Hough combine with the NZSO to present an exhilarating concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Andrew Litton conducts the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with pianist Stephen Hough

Anthony Ritchie:  Diary of a Madman: Dedication to Shostakovich; Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No 5 in F, Op 103; Shostakovich: Symphony No 5 in D minor, Op 47

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 22 September, 8pm

To label this concert ‘Around the world in 80 minutes’ is to draw a rather long bow: every concert that includes both a New Zealand and a European work could be so called. From Egypt to Russia is not far, and Ritchie’s piece is really from Russia, after all….

But Wellington’s astute concert-goers were not misled: it was an excellent concert both on account of the programme and the performers.

Anthony Ritchie is one of New Zealand’s best and most successful composers; his arrestingly named Diary of a Madman proved a splendid piece, a sort of small-scale ‘concerto for orchestra’; it was originally written for the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, to celebrate the centenary of Shostakovich’s birth in 1906. Its name derived from Shostakovich’s admiration for playwright and short story writer Gogol. He had set the story The Nose and the play, The Gamblers, as operas; another Gogol story was called Diary of a Madman, which uses the formula of ‘laughter through tears’, a formula that is very often present in Shostakovich, Ritchie writes.

It employed a large number of Shostakovich’s tunes from a variety of works, many of which would have been familiar to many of the audience, though not all easy to name. So one way to pass the time was to wrack the brains to identify each one; another pastime was to admire the orchestration of which Ritchie is a master, using xylophone or tuba or side drum with flair and wit, each element seeming to reflect something of the character of the theme involved; and also to become increasingly impressed by the organic structural feeling that accompanied its unfolding.

He hardly had to tell us, in the programme notes, that he had put them together in a process of free-association; so an attempt to find logical associations would clearly be nonsense.  It began in comfortable tonal language and didn’t deviate greatly from its idiom as music to divert and entertain.

It deserves to become a staple repertoire piece.

Stephen Hough seems to be the only great pianist who allows us to hear Saint-Saëns’s piano concertos. Years ago he played No 4; now No 5, which the composer wrote in 1896 in Luxor and Cairo, making use of some local tunes and thus acquiring the nick-name Egyptian (unlike some composers, he was not starved of melodic invention however). But the extent of this material is slight and I hear more touches of Spain and even the Balkans in this concerto.

Hough made his early reputation in certain very conspicuously virtuosic works like the Hummel piano concertos, but his playing has always revealed an exquisite poetic quality and a refined taste that the flights of unbelievable spectacle merely seem to enhance in a perfectly modest way.

On Saturday evening, he gave a spectacular demonstration of the way in which he has persuaded millions of the value of certain neglected music, particularly the much scorned Romantic composers of the second class. He has shown that the main impediment has been the belief that the music was meretricious and shallow, a view that sprang from the influence of the post Romantic and atonal schools. But it can all be blown away by a player’s musical integrity and demonstrative sincerity. Each movement has a strong individual character, with constantly changing handling of the ideas, set in delightful sunny visions.

Saint-Saëns never pretends to teutonic profundity; he can never be mistaken for Beethoven or Bruckner, and though some of his music, for example most of his solo piano works, can be called trite, far more of his music than gets played deserves to be well known. There is nothing predictable or formulaic in this concerto; its progress, as it happens, seems inevitable; nowhere more conspicuous than in the middle Andante movement, where a distinctly, perhaps north African, atmosphere appears, but which proceeds in the most unpredictable ways, portentous, then mysterious, sentimental moments alternating with deep sonorities.

The only common link between that and the Shostakovich was the number 5.

This great symphony responded to Andrew Litton’s attention just as powerfully and colourfully as had the two previous works. If one’s attention had been monopolised rather by the piano, it was now easy to be impressed by the smooth beauty of string playing, the sense of unease that was soon created, the touches of sardonic martial music, ethereal touches from the celeste or harp and the surprising entry by the piano.

At the back of one’s mind, as one listens to this symphony, is always the still unresolved question about Shostakovich’s intentions: how much do we rely on Volkov’s account of its bitter anti-Stalinist subtext, that the words attached to the score were merely to save his skin; or is it expressing a more ambivalent picture of Soviet conditions?

Nevertheless, this performance left no room for doubt about the orchestra’s ability to rouse powerful emotional responses to the music itself; it was perhaps the kind of concert that the NZSO ought to present more frequently.

 

 

John Chen’s highly rewarding detour for piano recital at Waikanae

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

(Waikanae Music Society)

Mozart: Piano Sonata No 15 in F, K 533 and K 494; Enescu: Piano Sonata No 1 in F sharp minor, Op 24 No 1; Dorothy Buchanan: From the Mountain to the River; Schumann: Fantasie in C, Op 17

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 2 September, 2.30pm

John Chen paid a flying visit from Auckland to play this one concert for the Waikanae Music Society after which he returned to Auckland to pick up his flight the same evening, to Hamburg. The good citizens of Kapiti could well feel privileged.

The Waikanae hall which is basically an indoor sports arena has not been an ideal music venue, particularly for chamber music, has been cleverly adapted so that sound projects more strongly and cleanly. A recessed stage was created a few years ago which acts as a kind of amplifier, and this has recently been improved with a hard-surfaced ceiling at 45 degrees which further enhances the sound.

Chen cultivates a reputation for looking out for unusual music, and it is music that generally rewards his risk-taking. That was certainly the case here with two rather unfamiliar pieces. Mozart’s Sonata No 15 is not unfamiliar, but it is just not so often played as half a dozen other sonatas that are more popular.

It was composed in two separate parts. In June 1786 he had written a Rondo (or Rondeau in one account), to which Köchel gave the number 494, and some months later he wrote an Allegro and Andante.  At his publisher Hoffmeister’s request, he joined those two movements with the earlier Rondo, adding a twenty-seven measure cadenza to it, to form a three-movement sonata.`

Chen’s playing introduced it unpretentiously, light and confident, yet betraying its sophisticated, contrapuntal character and the interesting inner voices seemed to gain particular point.  His articulation was precise, with lively staccato, all of which commanded attention.

Each movement contains musical ideas that are both attractive and arresting and which lend themselves to imaginative development; the themes are not especially catchy, but they soon take on the nature of a thinking person’s sonata. The meaningful pauses in the Andante movement are not characteristic of a late 17th century work; : each note, in Chen’s hands, seemed to be in the inevitably right place, and it was as if Mozart was responding to an instinct that was taking him rather wide of the conventions of his day.

It was the next piece that was the real discovery: Enescu’s first piano sonata. He wrote three, but the second has been lost; in the light of this one, that is very sad. Everyone has expectations of Enescu through the two wonderful Romanian Rhapsodies (the second, much less played, is quieter but just as infectious); the reality of the other music that he’s written is quite different however, and his opera Oedipe is ranked by many among the great operas of the 20th century. I have long regretted having to opt out of booked seats to see it in Bucharest about eight years ago.

The opening is very plain, single notes, but slowly complexity gathers, rhythms and tonalities shift to create an air of unease or instability; it place in the march of music history is defined by an occasional subtle bluesy harmony, but its ancestry can only be heard as coming from the eastern side of the Atlantic. If there are traces of Romanian folk music, they merely go to show that my acquaintance with that music is uncultivated. The general impression is of a work rich in melody of a fleeting kind, that makes its points obliquely and modestly. I Googled the work (as one does almost routinely these days – my set of the New Grove Dictionary of Music gets consulted much less) and found a review of a performance which made excellent general remarks about the music:

“Perhaps one reason why not a lot of pianists have paid attention to Enescu is because, while it is fiendishly difficult to play, the music rarely offers virtuosic thrills that bring concert audiences to their feet. To be sure, playing Enescu is just as difficult as playing Bartok, Ravel, Prokofiev or Rachmaninov, but Enescu requires a selfless kind of virtuosity, one that goes far beyond absolute control of the instrument.”

I thought there were weaknesses, not in the playing, but in passages that struck me as prolonged by needless passagework or repetition of mere decoration; and, particularly in the second movement, the promise of an interesting development that was tantalisingly unfulfilled. However, Chen’s achievement was to invest such moments with interest and liveliness, and the last movement slowly created a ravishing and magical landscape by which all minor misgivings were forgotten.

A short impressionistic piece by Wellington composer Dorothy Buchanan opened the second half, imaginative, unpretentious, and Chen gave it a gentle, careful reading.

The big draw-card was of course Schumann’s Fantaisie in C, widely loved even by those poor souls who don’t love Schumann’s music unreservedly.  Though it is allowable to regret that he did not quite find this glorious vein of composition again. Chen revealed a real affection for it through playing that was both hugely capable (it’s not for amateurs, I say sadly), but poetic and restrained, and in the powerful central movement giving full vent to all of the composer’s wonderful impulsiveness, never mind a couple of unimportant smudges, and expressed so rapturously, the composer’s ecstatic hopes for a future with his beloved Clara.

And so, after rather clamorous applause, he played the Prelude to Bach’s 4th English Suite in F, BWV 809.

.

 

Douglas Mews and Broadwood give Haydn his dues

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Haydn: Sonata in C, Hob.XVI:50 (allegro, adagio, allegro molto)

Andante with variations, in F minor, Hob.XVII:6

Sonata in E flat, Hob.XVI:52 (allegro, adagio, presto)

Douglas Mews, 1843 square Broadwood piano

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 22 August 2012, 12.15pm

It was intriguing to hear such a different piano; this instrument sounded like a cross between a harpsichord and a modern piano.  The three works performed were composed during the early 1790s, when Haydn made two lengthy visits to London.  The programme note described the pianos Haydn would have encountered in London as ‘fundamentally different [in] character to the Viennese pianos he was familiar with.’  It has a rather uneven timbre from bass to the top of its shorter keyboard, but this may be, at least in part, due to its age.  It has quite a range of dynamics compared with that of the harpsichord, but it is not comparable with the range available on the grand piano or upright piano (which had not been developed at the time this piano was made).

Douglas Mews’s programme note states that ‘The English sound was typified by a romantic ‘haze’, which undoubtedly had an effect on Haydn’s writing style’.

The sonata in C was a charming work; the variety of the variations and the modulations in the final movement made it an interesting one as well.  The second work encompassed a great range of dynamics, from delicacy through to the coda’s stormy mood.

In the second sonata, in E flat, I heard the resonance of the instrument more, and also the ‘hazy’ sound of the English piano referred to.  The sonata, to my ears, had more ‘body’ than did the previous one played.  It featured an emphatic first subject in the first movement, and winsome melody in the slow movement, with lilting variations upon it.  The finale was light and very capricious.  The prestidigitation required from Douglas Mews was formidable.

This was something different in the way of a piano recital: skilled playing of delightful music on a different instrument from the species usually encountered.

 

Well-presented concert from NZSM’s Young Musicians’ Programme

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Young Musicians’ Programme of the New Zealand School of Music

Students of voice, piano, flute, violin, clarinet and guitar

St Andrew’s on the Terrace

Wednesday 8 August, 12.15pm

Pre-university music students can seek to study in the Young Musicians’ Programme of the New Zealand School of Music, in preparation for tackling the real thing when they matriculate later.

There are various opportunities to hear music students at the secondary stage of their education, such as at concerts by the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir, the Wellington and the National Youth Choirs and Orchestras (the Wellington Youth Orchestra plays this Sunday, 12 August at the Town Hall), and at events like the ‘Big Sing’ of the National Choral Festival, the Final stage of which can be heard at the Town Hall on Saturday 18 August, and the Schools Chamber Music Contest.

For a decade, a very special concert was staged annually by the Michael Monaghan Trust at which young instrumental players played concerto movements with an orchestra of players from the NZSO; that was wound up last year with the promise that the NZSO itself would pick it up and run something similar: what has happened?

At all these events, it is normal to hear performances that are astonishingly skilled and musically insightful.

The lunchtime audience at St Andrew’s enjoyed such an experience on Wednesday.

Eight young students played and sang, each introduced clearly by the programme director Shannon Digby. One of the most talented opened the concert with a short bracket of piano pieces: by 17th century Italian composer Bernardo Pasquini and Brahms. Nicole Ting played two movements of the Pasquini suite with a rare sensitivity and a surprisingly developed instinct for the music’s style and spirit, her ornaments were tasteful and charming, and her playing fluent and accurate. Though she had a wee lapse at the start of Brahms’s Intermezzo (in F minor, Op 118 No 4) here too she showed a maturity of understanding that took me by surprise.

Rosalie Willis on the flute may not have demonstrated quite that level of technical polish or fluency but her playing of a Fantasie in E minor by Telemann, showed care with phrasing and dynamics; the rhythmically testing last movement, Allegro, she managed very nicely.

Sophie Smyth has an as-yet softish soprano voice. She sang Der Lindenbaum from Winterreise, capturing its heart-broken mood with singing that was charming and accurate, and with accompaniment from Buz Bryant-Greene that gave sensitive support, though it’s not always easy to hold the voice and piano together, and he rarely overtopped her quiet delivery. Her second song was Jenny McLeod’s ‘I have no name’, from her collection Through the World, a small masterpiece that I’m humbled to say I hadn’t heard before. Sophie did it real justice.

Amber Madriaga is a guitarist already exhibiting surprising facility; her playing of Roland Dyens Tango en Skai gave off an air of confidence and considerable accomplishment in the repeated whirlwind flourishes, and occasionally almost too much dynamic subtlety.

There followed the Romance movement from Poulenc’s Clarinet Sonata from the already well advanced player Emily Evers, moving through its big range smoothly though her top was given to some shrillness. Emily later joined with tutor Karlo Margetic and oboist Ashley Mowbray in a fellow student’s composition, Subversion by Sean Pearless. It was musically interesting and treated each instrument with considerable understanding.

The only contribution from a jazz student was from Alex Ware, singing Butterfly, with a vibrato that might need watching later, though with confidence and an ease of delivery essential to the idiom; and then a scat-style concoction based on Summertime which perhaps suffered a little on account of her striving for innovation; yet there was no mistaking her fluency and an attractive vocal quality. Both were accompanied idiomatically by Daniel Millward.

Buz Bryant-Greene returned to accompany Allanah Avalon in He Moemoe (‘A Dream’), a rather beguiling song by Anthony Ritchie. Here there were moments when the two seemed not to be in perfect balance; her voice is attractive though a bit more attention is perhaps needed on projecting her lines.

Such was the pleasure of the concert that I was surprised my watch showed 12.50pm when I felt it was only half way through.

These young musicians will be interesting to watch.

 

Jian Liu – pianist in full flight at the Ilott

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music presents

Jian Liu –  a “Fantasia” recital

CPE BACH – Fantasia in C Major W 59/6  / BEETHOVEN – Fantasia in G Minor Op.77

LISZT – Apres une lecture de Dante; fantasia quasi sonata  / MOZART – Fantasia in D Minor K.397

SCHUBERT – Fantasie in C Major “Wanderer” D.760

Jian Liu (piano)

Ilott Theatre, Wellington Town Hall

Sunday 29th July 2012

At the interval, after pianist Jian Liu’s blistering traversal of the Liszt Dante Sonata, I was approached by a piano-fancier friend, whose aspect was one of great excitement and agitation: transfixing me with an intense, fire-flashing gaze, he exclaimed, “I hope you’re going to write up this recital as the greatest Wellington has heard for years!”. Being in a somewhat euphoric state myself, after the Liszt, I nevertheless managed to remember the farmer in one of Carl Sandburg’s dialogue poems, who, in response to the question, “Lived here all your life?” replied with a laconic “Not yit!”. But I still added my two cents’ worth regarding what I’d heard so far to the paeans of praise from others who joined us, to my friend’s momentary, if not complete, satisfaction.

Certainly, Jian Liu’s performance of Liszt’s visionary exploration of the spirit of Dante’s Divine Comedy seemed like an all-encompassing display of both technical brilliance and poetic identification with the music. I had heard Liu relatively recently in recital, playing the same composer’s B Minor Sonata, and thought at the time that his Lisztian credentials were pretty impressive (the review of that concert is also on Middle C). However, in terms of overall effect, Liu’s playing here for me surpassed that earlier performance in almost every aspect. And while my allegiance to Diedre Irons’ Liszt-playing remains unshaken in terms of her incomparable variety of touch and poetry of phrasing, Liu’s more austere way with the pianistic textures was allied to a tremendous intellectual grip of the music’s overall shape and form which at the time swept all before it. It was no wonder my friend was thus transported by it all.

The overall idea of the recital – that of exploring difference composers’ treatment of the idea of “fantasia” – brought forth fascinating results, especially in the first half. In a sense, what threw the Liszt work into bold relief was the relative emptiness of the piece that preceded it, a work by Beethoven, no less, though not one of the master’s greatest compositional efforts. In fact, this Fantasia in G Minor has never seemed to me to bear out the contention that Beethoven was one of the greatest improvisers of his age, one capable of putting every other virtuoso of the time to flight in those “contests” that pianists of the early Romantic era  (and before, remembering Mozart and Clementi) seemed to occasionally take part in. It’s pretty thin stuff, really, with occasional flashes of the “Ludwig Van” of the great sonatas, placed cheek-by-jowl with handfuls of somewhat tiresome show-off stock pianistic figurations.

My feeling is that the “real” Beethoven would have improvised with much greater freedom and contrast than this piece exhibits – perhaps the “writing down” of what was meant, after all, to be a spontaneous recreation of musical thought has spoiled it. One thinks of Lady Bracknell’s description of natural ignorance in “The Importance of Being Earnest” – “Ignorance is like a delicate, exotic fruit. Touch it, and the bloom is gone.” I thought also that the contrast with Mozart’s famous D MInor Fantasia K.397, which Liu played to open the recital’s second half was instructive regarding the compositional methods of each of the composers – Mozart, we are told, tended to “compose in his head” and then write down what he’d worked out, whereas Beethoven’s processes were far more visible in the form of scraps of motifs, figurations and sequences which filled his sketch-books, like a sculptor hewing at an ever-present shape or form, and bringing it into being. In this respect, Mozart’s work seemed finished, whereas Beethoven’s had the feel of a work very much in progress.

The recital opened with a Fantasia by another stormy petrel, CPE Bach, whose music I particularly love for its volatility and its juxtaposition of beauty with angularity. Jian Liu brough out this Fantasia’s capricious spirit with a will – here was a sense of fun at work expressed in delightfully unpredictable ways, even if the composer somewhat over-milked the repeated two-note figure which served as an omni-present watcher on all the other goings-on. Liu showed excellent “evocation” instincts in his playing of this piece, characterizing the different moods strongly and bringing to bear an enviable command of dynamic and keyboard colours. What CPE’s father, the great Johann Sebastien, would have thought of it all, I couldn’t begin to think, though, of course one remembers he was no mean fantasia-writer himself.

So, after these two somewhat frivolous explorations of keyboard capriciousness, the Liszt work hit us like a thunderbolt, and especially in Jian Liu’s hands. While I couldn’t, in the wake of hearing those two Russian women pianists, Sofia Gulyak and Halida Dinova, earlier in the year, award the palm for “the greatest recital in years” to Jian, his playing of the Liszt placed his pianism fully on their level, if from a vastly different tradition. It would be outside the scope of this review to analyze just why Liu’s playing made the impression on me that it did. But in one important respect it had what I felt was slightly lacking in the same pianist’s  earlier recital also featuring Liszt’s music – an all-pervading resonance, a sustenance of tone which here opened up whole vistas of expression, ranging from the blackest oblivion to the most shimmering and scintillating light. In terms of energy and impulse it was playing I’ve rarely heard surpassed by anybody in recital, in places. It was art which largely concealed art, to Jian Liu’s credit – throughout, one felt the presence of both Liszt and of Dante, ahead of that of a pianist making these evocations possible.

Having gotten our sensibilities properly calmed down during the interval, we felt able to return to our seats for some more music – first up was the delicious D Minor Fantasia by Mozart. I was interested in what Jian Liu would do with this work, as Mozart never finished it, and posthumous editions have “rounded off” the allegro section with a concluding flourish and cadence which I’m afraid sounds worthy but somewhat glib. A recording of this work by the Japanese pianist Mitsuko Uchida adopted what to my ears seemed like a wonderful solution – i.e. to return to the opening arpeggios of the work, modulate in the same way, and then conclude with a final major-key archway which ends quietly in the bass. However, Jian Liu preferred to follow the Breitkopf Gesamtausgabe’s aforementioned “completion” – and his dignified, sensitive playing made the conclusion sound of a piece with the rest. But what a charming and beautiful work it is, the ideas given plenty of “air” by Liu, preserving something of the piece’s spontaneity despite its finished aspect.

The afternoon’s concluding “fantasia” was the renowned “Wanderer Fantasy” by Schubert. Pianists themselves seem divided regarding the legendary technical difficulties accompanying this work – Schubert himself was reputed to have said, upon leaping from the piano after an abortive attempt to play the work in public, “The devil may play it, for I cannot!”. As regards Schubert’s oeuvre for solo piano, it is clearly the most technically demanding, though whether it challenges the executant difficulties of some of the other virtuoso pieces of the Romantic repertoire seems to be a matter of opinion. Called the “Wanderer” Fantasy because of the work’s direct quotation from the theme of Schubert’s own Lied “Der Wanderer” of 1816, the piece has four distinct sections, though is played without a break. It was a favorite of Liszt’s who made a transcription of the piece for piano and orchestra, and who was also inspired by Schubert’s technique of “thematic transformation” to produce works like his own B Minor Sonata.

Straightaway, Jian Liu engaged us physically with the music, making wonderful use of dynamic terracings to give the sounds  plenty of organically-conceived variation – thanks to Liu’s unfailing sense of the music’s direction, the argument always seems to be going somewhere, and never put in a rhythmic or colouristic straitjacket. Though the physical effort of engaging with those notes was made apparent, and one or two of the arpeggiated figurations sounded a bit blurred around the edges, the playing’s essential energy and liveliness carried us joyfully along, eventually bringing us to the edges of a deep, richly-layered region of dark stillness and mystery. Here, the music became all of a sudden hymn-like and entranced, almost religious in feeling (no wonder Liszt couldn’t keep his hands off it!), the initial simplicity of the lied-melody then fragmenting into a hundred eager voices, creating a ferment of activity growing from the textures of the music. Here Liu’s ear for detail meant that the dappled strands of sound impulse were kept flowing and undulating – marvellous playing.

The presto episode again had that sense of boundless energy, some elemental life-force expressing a kind of cosmic joy and high spirits, one whose voltage increased and crackled as the concluding fugue hove into view. So, the pianist might have dropped a few notes here and there! – what was far more important was that the music’s momentum was gloriously maintained, everybody, pianist and listeners caught up in a kind of trajectoried trance whose culminating wave of energy occasioned great scenes of appreciation from an excited audience. Wisely, Jian Liu brought us all back from fever pitch with a transcription of a Richard Strauss song, very Schubert-like, rapt and beautiful, a fitting conclusion to a memorable afternoon of music.

 

 

 

Varied, attractive 25th anniversary concert from Kapiti Chamber Choir

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘Full Circle’:
Byrd: Mass for Four Voices
Choral music by Katherine Dienes, Felicity Williams, David Hamilton, Rossini, and folk songs
Piano music by Janáĉek and Lilburn
Violin music by Tchaikovsky

Kapiti Chamber conducted by Stuart Douglas, with Carolyn Rait (piano) and Ken Dougall (organ); solos by Helen Ridley (piano) and Richard Taylor (violin, with accompanist Judith Wheeler)

St. Paul’s Church Waikanae

Sunday, 8 July 2012, 2.30pm

The ‘Full Circle’ of the title of the concert was due to the fact that this was the 20th anniversary concert of the choir, and the programme being performed was virtually the same as that performed at the initial concert.

The choir was founded by Professor Peter Godfrey at the request of two local singers: Paddy Nash and Pat Barry.  Peter Godfrey was present at the concert, as was his successor, Dr Guy Jansen.  Stuart Douglas took over last year.

The printed programme provided a list of works sung in each year of the 20. I appreciated having all the words and translations printed.

The singing of the Byrd Mass was very fine – full of beautiful chording and purity of tone, especially from the sopranos.  The quiet opening set the scene for contemplation and plangent melismas (though these were not quite so good as the chords).

The opening was a little uneven, as were the beginnings of some of the other movements.  Latin pronunciation was excellent, and beautiful vowels were to be heard throughout the work.

This was unaccompanied singing of a high standard.  Dynamics provided variety of expression; for example in the Gloria, at ‘propter magnam gloriam tuam’(‘according to your great glory’).

The decision to modernise the translated words in the printed programme rather than use the English words of the period, or of the Anglican Prayer Book of 1662, led to a few infelicities: despite “You alone are holy, You alone are the Lord”, we had “You who removes the sins of the world…You who sits on the right hand…”

In the ‘Domine Deus’ section of the Gloria the basses were particularly admirable, while at the ‘Qui tollis’, the parts were particularly well balanced, and all produced a lovely sound; this continued in the ‘Quoniam’.

The Mass was divided, so that the Kyrie, Gloria and Credo were heard together, then after the interval, the Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei.  This was a great idea; a sung mass is interspersed throughout a church service, not all sung at once.  The attention is more focused by interspersing it in this way.

Between the longer movements, Stuart Douglas used his pitch pipe; in this first part of the mass the intonation held up well.

The ‘Et incarnatus est’ in the Credo had a limpid quality.  I thought that if I shut my eyes, I could imagine I was listening to an all-male choir in the Chapel Royal in London, for which the work was composed.  (Ladies, this is meant as a compliment!)

The crescendo at ‘Et resurrexit’ was splendidly achieved without loss of tone.  The counterpoint at ‘Et iterum venturus est’ was a fit vehicle for the words ‘And he will come again with glory…’; sublime in both its conception and rendition.  From here to the end of the Credo, there was tricky music to sing, but this choir knew its stuff very well.

‘In the mists’ by Janáçek, a work in four movements, was played by Helen Ridley, who had played at that concert 20 years earlier.  This was difficult music, and as described in the short programme note, ‘enigmatic and often melancholy’.  The pianist in her introduction described the music as expressing the composer’s mental state, his isolation as a musician, seeing what he saw as a nationalist, as tragedy occurring in his country, and to him personally.  She said that he employed folk music, and the inflections of speech, and this was obvious in the andante first movement, which built from a quiet opening to turbulent passages followed by soft cascades.

The second movement, molto adagio also contained folksy sounds, but was more contemplative to begin with, followed by stormy passages that nevertheless used the same theme.  A quiet ending finished the movement.  The third, andantino was again folksy, but also one could imagine a conversation going on between higher and deeper voices.  The tonality was modal

The final presto was not very fast, and there were many hesitant figures (and in earlier movements also).  Faster passages followed, with numerous different figures, having a dance-like feeling.  This was very skilled playing of a seldom-heard work.

The choir turned now to unaccompanied New Zealand music, the first being ‘Jesu, dulcis memoria’ by Katherine Dienes.  I remember singing this in a church service at the Cathedral in Dunedin, as part of an early New Zealand Choral Federation conference.  It is a very fine piece.  The only difficulty here was that because women tenors are used as well as men, the tone is changed, since they are singing at the bottom of their voices, whereas the male tenors are often at the top of theirs, so the effect is quite different.  It was more noticeable in this work than in some of the others.

Next came ‘Exultate jubilate’ by Felicity Williams, accompanied on the piano by Carolyn Rait.  The Christchurch composer has created a piece that is truly joyous, and also thoughtful.

Lastly, David Hamilton’s ‘Nunc dimittis’, a very effective piece with lovely harmonies and a quiet ending.

After the interval, we had the remaining movements of the Byrd Mass.  The opening tonality of the ‘Sanctus’ seemed a little difficult to begin on, and was not quite together.  However, what followed demonstrated wonderful purity in the upper parts.

The start of the Benedictus also seemed also to provide some difficulty, though the pitch at the end was fine.  However, then the Agnus Dei started slightly flat.  The work lost a bit of life at the end, but I think Byrd would have been impressed overall, as was the audience.

Richard Taylor, violin, played with Judith Wheeler two parts of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher, Op.42 ( ‘Mélodie’ and ‘Scherzo’), the composer remembering his stay at his benefactor’s Ukrainian estate.  This young violinist (12 years of age??) performed with confidence, excellent control, a warm tone, and technical mastery.  Having long fingers is obviously an advantage.  He used dynamics well in the well-known and very lyrical first part, and performed demanding runs and double-stopping in the second.  This was quite a tour de force for a young fellow, and, along with Judith Wheeler’s exemplary playing, received a great reception.

Three sacred works of Rossini were sung by the choir with the singers mixed up in their positions, rather than being together according to voice part.  I thought this improved the blend of the choir. ‘O salutaris hostia’ featured splendid dynamic variation, while ‘Ave Maria’ (again the start not quite together), and ‘Salve O Vergine Maria’ were well-performed, with organ.  The last (in Italian, not Latin) was more rollicking in nature and romantic in style.

Helen Ridley returned to play Sonatina no.2 by Douglas Lilburn.

This piece, which the composer had dedicated to his colleague and supreme interpreter, Margaret Neilsen, was also given a spoken introduction.  There was considerable use of the sustaining pedal, which had been clearly prescribed by Lilburn.

The piece had very spare scoring, and featured typical Lilburn rhythms.  The atmosphere of the bush was created with bird song.  The three short movements were mainly slow and dreamy, the ending fading away.  They were played with empathy and clarity.

To end this rather long concert the choir sang in English three unaccompanied folk song arrangements: ‘Early one morning’, ‘O come you from Newcastle’ (both English) and the American ‘Shenandoah’.  While they were all fine, the last was the most telling, with appealing harmonies and a real feeling of longing conveyed in the voices.  The last verse was split into many parts; a most effective arrangement and a lovely ending to the concert.

The choir, through a wide repertoire, proved itself most versatile and capable.

 

Romance with elegance – Jian Liu plays Schumann and Liszt

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand School of Music

Jian Liu (piano) in concert

SCHUMANN – Carnaval, Op.9 / LISZT – Piano Sonata in B Minor

Adam Concert Room, NZSM Kelburn

Wednesday 30th May 2012

What a delight for piano-fanciers! – here at the Adam Concert Room was a free recital featuring two of the cornerstone works of Romantic piano literature served up for us by pianist Jian Liu, currently the co-ordinator of classical piano studies at the New Zealand School of Music. Both works fully tested the player, producing in each instance a strongly-etched interpretation from an obviously well-equipped musician who possessed an abundance of skill, endurance and creative imagination.

On the face of things pairing Schumann’s and Liszt’s music made a logical enough coupling of works, though their close proximity here highlighted the nineteenth century’s most significant musical controversy – the conflict between tradition and innovation which burst into open conflagration between the conservatives, who clung to classical ideals and the progressives, who wanted to explore new ways of doing things. As so often happens, the debate became excessively nasty at times, with casualties on both sides, though at the time, more so on the part of the progressives such as Liszt, whose music, was systematically trashed by mouthpieces of the conservative establishment, such as the influential critic Eduard Hanslick (though the latter greatly admired Liszt as a pianist).

Schumann and Liszt were in fact good friends at first, but the differences which developed between them unfortunately turned into issues, exacerbated by people such as Schumann’s wife, pianist Clara Wieck, who disapproved of what she called Liszt’s “empty, vulgar compositions”. Despite all of this, Liszt in 1854 dedicated his Piano Sonata to Schumann, certainly in return for the latter’s earlier dedication to Liszt of his wonderful Op.17 C Major Fantasia, and perhaps also in a spirit of reconciliation – though by this time Schumann was beyond reach, having become increasingly beset by the mental instability which was to contribute to his death in 1856 at a mere forty-six years old.

So we were presented with two very different but equally potent and wholly characteristic manifestations of musical romanticism – though the conflicts and animosities which flowed between the worlds represented by these two pieces continue to this day to divide opinion and polarize musical sensibilities. At the recital I sat next to and talked with two people, one an enthusiastic admirer of Liszt and his music, and the other who, when the Sonata was finished, said “I made myself stay to listen to Jian play – but oh! – how awful that music is!”. Evidently, the spirit of the disapproving Clara Wieck lives on in today’s world.

One of the recurring characteristics of Jian Liu’s playing throughout both works was the generous flexibility of his phrasing, giving the notes space in which to breathe at all times, so that nothing seemed hurried or sounded incoherent – within these spaces his sensitive detailing, never fussy or contrived, was always accompanied by the feeling that he was drawing out from the notes themselves what sounded like an infinite variety of voicing, shadings and colorings. So, it was no surprise that he was able to constantly entertain and charm our imaginations with his portrayals of Schumann’s moods and characterizations throughout the composer’s richly-conceived parade of personalities, “Carnaval”.

Right at the beginning the opening fanfares had just enough rhetoric to arrest the attention without losing the declamation’s urgency and excitement, the following animato building up its energy and exuberance, before breaking off and beginning the whimsical procession of characters and emotions that give the work its never-ending fascination. From so many finely-drawn characterizations, I thought Liu’s Pierrot particularly vivid, the phrasing free rather than metrical, and with some lovely, subtle voicing, the repeat emphasizing the dreamy, self-communing aspect of it all, with even the emphatic repeated three-note phrase drawn into the world of wonderment. The Valse Noble enabled us to hear how Liu’s left hand beautifully varied its emphasis, the different voicings bringing a strand of meaning to the music far above that of mere accompaniment.

Spontaneity in performance is a risky business (Liu’s Papillons, though exciting, was a bit of a scramble, as were some of the left-hand figurations in the treacherous Paganini), but that sense of throwing caution aside was so worthwhile, so imbued with spirit and impulse as to drive away any sense of routine. And with that spirit applied to the work as a whole, Liu was able to present the music to us as sounding freshly-improvised – Chopin, for example, coming across here as a spontaneous-sounding tribute from one romantic to another, the music seeming to almost lose itself in its own reverie, here, towards the piece’s conclusion.

So, there was poetry and elegance aplenty; and excitement, too, with the right-handed repeated-note scintillations of Reconnaissance followed by the agitations of Pantalon et Colombine, energies shared across both hands in the latter to stunning effect. The final March of the League of David against the Philistines had plenty of swagger, and the ensuing stretta swept our sensibilities along towards the final triumphant if battle-scarred chords. Liu’s playing again caught a sense of the occasion, of the composer’s Don Quixote-like questing spirit, complete with fully-imagined triumph at the end.

But what of Liszt and the B Minor Sonata? Side-by-side with Schumann and with Jian Liu’s finely-honed sensibility brought to bear on the music, the work’s visionary scope and searing focus seemed as if newly-wrought for this occasion, with nothing about the performance left to “play itself” or convey anything of Clara Wieck’s charges of emptiness or vulgarity.

Liszt-lovers like myself are all too aware of the abyss of disapproval mined by all those nineteenth-century conservatives beneath the composer’s feet – and carried onwards in the twentieth century by agenda-ridden character assassins such as Ernest Newman. No other major composer, with perhaps the exception of Wagner, has had to endure, both throughout his lifetime and posthumously, such torrents of criticism and outright hostility regarding his music (let alone his grossly-distended reputation for extra-musical exploits). Fortunately, the advocacy of musicians such as Louis Kentner, Alfred Brendel, John Ogdon and Georges Cziffra, and a host of present-day pianistic giants, among them the redoubtable Leslie Howard with his staggering survey of the composer’s keyboard output for Hyperion Records, has effectively given the lie to the Clara Wiecks of this world regarding the music’s interest and worth.

Whether Jian Liu aligns himself with the believers or the skeptics in the matter of Liszt’s music, he plays it with the care and commitment of a true advocate, with no detail left to chance or unexplored. As with his playing of Carnaval, I was taken by the extent to which his piano-playing speaks across the hands, with what I had previously thought of as mere accompanying figures having something interesting and significant to say. Of course, the Sonata, with its amazingly-layered reworking of the principal themes needs a player alive to those different voices and their characters, and Liu didn’t disappoint, investing every episode with a kind of organic flow that constantly led the ear of the listener onwards. Even during the couple of instances where the music’s complexities momentarily clouded his bearings, he was able to seize upon the severed strands and quickly pull them together and continue – heart-stopping moments, indeed, but their resolution further evidence of the player’s quality.

For me one of the highlights of Liu’s performance was his playing of the fugue – Elgar’s description “a devil of a fugue” relating to his own Introduction and Allegro for Strings would as well apply to LIszt’s diabolically-conceived lines, the latter’s use of the work’s themes demonstrating compositional mastery of an almost indecent kind! Here, these were set in motion by the pianist as part of an ever-burgeoning torrent of impulse whose progress evoked a kind of demonic pursuit through the mind’s most shadowy and sulphurous realms of fancy. By contrast, and perhaps fittingly enough, another moment of magic was generated by Liu over the work’s last few pages, with whole worlds created between the hands, and as beautifully-timed a final low B as I’ve ever heard.

All I wanted during the performance of the Liszt was (should I be ashamed of admitting to this?) a touch more rhetoric in places, mostly in the form of bigger, more resonant tones at one or two cadence-points. Liu’s playing treated the music entirely on its own merits throughout, and was as faithful an account of the score as given by any other pianist I’ve heard – but everything I’ve read of Liszt’s playing indicates that he was no literalist, and that he wouldn’t hesitate to “heighten” whatever mood or feeling the composer indicated (accounts suggest that Liszt and his contemporaries had a more “creative” attitude to the printed score than we ourselves allow performers in this day and age).

Unlike that of his great contemporary, Chopin, the music of Liszt has a “larger-than-life” aspect which, in some instances invites performer-involvement of a kind that reflects the spirit of the work rather than one slavishly following the letter of the score. Without adding notes or radically changing tempi or dynamic markings, I feel it’s still possible to convey something of that “beyond the notes” feeling that marks a truly great and visionary performance of this repertoire. Jian Liu had for me something of this quality in his soft, inward-sounding playing – had he allowed a few more degrees of lingering romantic resonance in the bigger moments the performance as a whole would then have utterly knocked me sideways.

 

 

 

 

 

Hutt Valley Orchestra – “What did you say they were playing?….!”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

RACHMANINOV – Piano Concerto No.3 in D Minor

MASCAGNI – Cavalleria Rusticana (Concert Performance)

Melanie Lina (piano)

Hutt Valley Orchestra

Brett Stewart (conductor)

(Cast of Cavalleria Rusticana: Ruth Armishaw (Turidda) / Sharon Yearsley (Santuzza)

Kieran Rayner (Alfio) / Jody Orgias (Mama Lucia) / Alison Hodge (Lola) / Chorus)

Expressions Art and Entertainment Centre

Upper Hutt

Saturday 5th May 2012

I must confess to surprise upon hearing about the Hutt Valley Orchestra’s proposed Sounds Expressions concert – the Rachmaninov Third Piano Concerto? And Cavalleria Rusticana? – the whole of it? Perhaps my response was due in part to my experiences as a player in an amateur orchestra in Palmerston North during the 1990s, though I must say we also attempted things of reasonable difficulty, like the Borodin Second Symphony and the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony, and had a lot of fun, and made splendidly outlandish and occasionally reasonably musical noises.

I had heard pianist Melanie Lina being interviewed on RNZ Concert, and liked what she had said about performing the Rachmaninov Concerto, and was impressed by the quiet confidence she exuded about it all. So I was intrigued, but thought that, however good the soloist might be, the work would still be quite a challenge for the orchestra, in fact, any orchestra. Again, I was basing these reactions upon what I knew of amateur orchestral playing, and wondered whether the Hutt Orchestra (whose work I didn’t know at all – in fact, I didn’t even know they existed!) was going to be up to the task – and then, after the Rachmaninov, there was Mascagni’s “Cav”, for goodness’ sakes!

It turned out to be an evening of surprises, involving a full gamut of reactions, a process whose exact order had considerable bearing on my own responses to the evening’s music-making. It was very much a concert of two halves – first up was the Rachmaninov Concerto, one which soloist Melanie Lina began confidently and nearly always securely, with steady, if rather muted support from the orchestra. I noticed from the outset that the orchestral winds seemed to find it difficult to actually “sound” their notes, though the violins were a little better – though somewhat “seedy” the first orchestral tutti had recognizable shape and form. And conductor Brent Stewart seemed to make all the right gestures and work collaboratively with his soloist throughout.

The only problem was that Stewart seemed to have considerable difficulty getting any actual tone from many of the players, who appeared for long stretches as if they were “cowed” by the music. It was left to Melanie Lima to make her own performance of the work for much of the time, because despite the conductor’s best endeavors, she got precious little help from the orchestra, save for one or two details, such as a sensitive horn solo answering one of the piano’s phrases in the second subject group. The horns actually seemed in places reasonably onto things, because I picked up some nicely etched-in muted notes from them just after the pianist’s reprise of the opening theme.

During the piano-and-orchestra exchanges that followed the players kept things rhythmically together,  though the lack of any impactful tone from the orchestra made the episode a one-sided affair, the brass hardly registering at all. I found it difficult to understand why the players didn’t seem to want to “play out” more – as I said earlier, my own orchestral experiences involved at least making with my colleagues plenty of noise, quite a lot of which was musical. I wanted these players to similarly hurl themselves into the fray, take more risks, and in the right places, roar, blare, rasp and bray, but at least give the soloist something reasonably substantial in places to actually play along with or against (this is a romantic concerto, after all!). Perhaps Brent Stewart had been reading Richard Strauss’s tongue-in-cheek essay “Advice to conductors”, containing statements such as “Never look at the brass – it only encourages them”!

The soloist made a good fist of her “dying fall” music just before the cadenza – she played the shorter of the two written by the composer (though probably the more difficult, less chordal and more quicksilver an affair),achieving real grandeur at the climax.Though entering late the flute sounded its solo evocatively, as did all the winds and the horn. In fact the horns again stood out, making the beautiful “sounds of evening across the meadow” sequence (my favourite bit in the first movement) just before the final reprise of the opening, really tell, with secure chording and nicely-floated tones.

I hoped that, with more room to breathe, away from the strictures of the first movement’s driving rhythms, the orchestral tones would sound more fully during the slow movement – but apart from a nice-phrased oboe solo, the rest of the orchestra, alas, sounded fairly inert and hardly preparing of the way for the piano’s tragic downward entry, here beautifully sounded by the soloist, moving from anguish to warmth as the music proceeded. What passionate writing here! – and how involved Lina sounded! To my delight she and conductor Brent Stewart kept intact the vertiginous passage that’s often cut, the sequence thus able to fully express the music’s somewhat Bronte-ish wildness and gradual descent into loneliness. I thought Lina everywhere had the full measure of the work’s emotional contourings, setting romantic sweep next to poetic expansiveness, but always with the music’s overall shape kept in hand.

Occasionally the winds would nose their way up and out of the misted orchestral textures and make a phrase “tell”, both clarinet and oboe managing to sound some of their counter-theme against the pianist’s skittery central-section waltz-like rhythms. And the strings did conjure up enough tone to recognizably sound the final tragic outburst of the movement, just before the soloist’s dangerous-sounding flourishes heralded the finale.

The “galloping horse” motive rang out splendidly from Melanie Lina’s piano throughout the finale’s opening, the violins actually managing to sound their counter-melody against the pianist’s forthright second-subject measures. Then, in the haunting nocturnal episode that followed the orchestral tones filled out and the players made something of the music’s dark pulsings underneath the piano’s quixotic chirruping. Another section sometimes cut in performance was here restored, with swirling figurations from the piano supported by strings, and with the flutes sounding their repetitions of the piano’s nocturnal birdsong.

A pity the violas and cellos couldn’t muster up enough tonal weight to help usher in the beautiful return of the first movement’s second subject – like an old friend returning after a long absence! Happily flute and horn amply supported the piano here, just like during the “old times”. For the rest of the work, the piano took charge, driving the music towards the “big tune” at the end, Lina phrasing her lines expansively and romantically, pulling the orchestra along with her, and achieving real grandeur to finish.

The pianist was accorded a great ovation, and, I thought, deservedly so. I wondered in fact whether it was I who was at fault here, underestimating the demands made of the players by the sophisticated nature of the work’s sinuous, often somewhat elusive orchestral quality. Still, even so, I found it hard to understand the lack of sheer orchestral NOISE in places where surely the musicians would have “felt” the need to fill out tones and expand phrases naturally.

Judge of my surprise after the interval, when, right from the beginning of Mascagni’s score, the orchestra came alive! The strings dug into the melody and actually made it sing, while the winds and harp made a lovely impression, leading up to the first singer’s entry. This was Turidda (not Mascagni’s original “Turiddu”), sung by Ruth Armishaw, the character’s sex-change presumably the company’s response to the lack of an available tenor for the part. At least one hoped so, because despite one’s most liberated and politically-correct instincts, the scenario was always going to flounder spectacularly with the so-called “duel to the death” between the wronged husband and his wife’s lesbian lover at the story’s denouement – even in an age ridden with wholesale scuppering of traditional operatic presentations, this seemed a more than particularly perverse way of rearranging things.

Though obviously a concert performance, surely it would have been better to present the character as a “trouser role” in this case, a la Baroque opera, or one of the Richard Strauss stage works such as “Rosenkavalier”? Still, all credit to Ruth Armishaw, whose stylish singing certainly didn’t lack ardour – whether or not it was latent homophobia on my part, or merely my inability to make the “leap of imagination” required, I must confess I found myself ignoring her feminine attire, and responded to the strength of her commitment to the role as if she was a “Turiddu”.

Once again, the “second-half” orchestra amazed me with its energy and fullness of tone after the bells sounded, and the waltz tune took up its insinuating gait – the Italianate winds did exceedingly well, especially the piccolo. The chorus, seriously lacking weight of numbers, made up for a lack of tonal splendour with energetic and accurate singing. The brass seemed to have found their voices, and with the timpani, made telling contributions to the cadence-points. Everything had the kind of “schwung” (yes, I know, this isn’t German opera!) that one imagines one would find in the average Italian provincial opera house in this repertoire.

Sharon Yearsley (as Santuzza, the would-be lover of Turidda) and Jody Orgias (as Lucia, Turidda’s mother) made the most of their exchanges in their somewhat fraught opening scene – both alive to their characters’ dramatic possibilities and using their voices accordingly, Yearsley’s particularly heartfelt. Also right into his part, as with almost everything I’ve seen him do, was baritone Kieran Rayner as Alfio, the village carrier, his voice bristling with energy and rustic directness, unaware at this stage of his wife Lola’s affair with Turidda, and single-mindedly intent about his business.

The whole Easter Hymn sequence that followed swept us up satisfyingly and carried us along – it’s music that almost blackmails the listener emotionally, so direct is its lyrical and cumulative appeal. Everybody on the performance platform seemed totally committed and involved, at one with conductor Brent Stewart’s impressive control of the buildup to the soprano’s’ thrilling climactic note at the chorus’s end.

Wholly admirable was Sharon Yearsley’s pacing of her role, outlining the complex history of the knot of relationships between the main players in the story to Jody Orgias’s patient and responsive Mama Lucia, then pulling out the stops with Turidda’s entry. With two women singing the impassioned encounter between them that followed, the scenario seemed almost to transcend time and place and take on the power of an opera seria scene from a work by Handel – great singing from both Armishaw and Yearsley, nicely interrupted by the flirtatious Lola (Alison Hodge oozing charm and insouciance with her Waltz-Song), but rising again to a furious climax as Turidda rejects Santuzza and follows Lola, voices and orchestra again delivering plenty of raw power.

More goings-on bubbled up with Alfio’s arrival, Yearsley and Kieran Rayner making the most of their dramatic exchange, as the hapless Alfio was told by Santuzza of his wife Lola’s renewed involvement with Turidda. Not surprisingly, at one point Yearsley almost faltered, but rallied splendidly – throughout, the orchestra surpassed itself. with splendidly baleful tones. What an emotional contrast provided by the famous Intermezzo! – the violins struggled a little at first, but were more securely-toned when doubled by the lower strings for the “big” melody – the whole nicely shaped by Brent Stewart, and marked by some sensitive harp playing.

The few bars of waltz music that follows always makes the hairs at the back of my neck stand up, for some reason, and this performance made no exception – Ruth Armishaw, chorus and orchestra tore into the Drinking Song with gusto, despite a few scratchy ensemble moments, and caught the excitement of the last few bars with a will. The baleful brass accompanying Alfio’s entry, and the subsequent viola solo  (so darkly poised) helped create real menace, even if the ‘cellos couldn’t advance the feeling with the same surety.

Plenty of support was forthcoming from the strings for Turidda in her impassioned “farewell” aria, and the orchestral energies continued right to the end – here was the “noise” that was wanted so badly earlier in the concert. Throughout the fateful offstage cries announcing Turidda’s murder and the subsequent whiplash chords, the sounds struck home splendidly.

So, very much a “tale of two halves” here, I felt, as far as the orchestra was concerned. Perhaps most of the rehearsal time was taken up with the opera (in which case it certainly showed) – but there again, perhaps it was the music. Mascagni would have had a fair idea of what the average Italian opera orchestra could play and tellingly deliver – raw emotion taking precedence over subtlety and shades of expression – and so his music would have probably been an easier proposition, especially for non-professionals, than that of Rachmaninov’s. Whatever the case, all credit to pianist Melanie Lina for her marvellous exposition of a redoubtably difficult work, both technically and interpretatively – I hope we see her back in the Wellington region before too long – and to the concert’s second-half singers, players and conductor for a thoroughly invigorating “slice of Italian verismo life” (with intriguing variations) – hugely enjoyable.