Tag: song recital

Korngold: exploration of beguiling Lieder one didn’t know, from Georgia Jamieson Emms

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lunchtime Concerts at St Andrew’s
Georgia Jamieson Emms (soprano) and Bruce Greenfield (piano)

Lieder by Erich Korngold: settings of poems, mainly by Eichendorff, from Op 9 and Op 38

St Andrews on The Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday 4 September, 12:15 pm

Middle C has been neglecting its responsibilities with respect to the wonderful lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Partly the result of our diminished ‘human resources’ and partly … well, other things.

There are notes for two or three of them that seem to have failed to find a first sentence, but given time, some the right words and thoughts might emerge on the RNZAF woodwind quintet, six hands at the keyboard, recorder and harpsichord…

The name Korngold doesn’t seem to be found in the average survey of German Lieder, not even among the lesser figures like Marschner, Hiller, Berg or Pfitzner. But since the word is merely the plural of the German word for ‘song’, and applies to German composers strictly speaking, almost all German composers from the late 18th century will have things called ‘Lieder’ among their compositions. But in the course of writing this and exploring books and the internet on the composer and his music, it’s clear that has been a somewhat serious omission. I’d known little more than Korngold’s most famous, precocious opera Die tote Stadt and some of the film music written in Hollywood after he left Germany when Hitler arrived.

Most of the songs Georgia chose were also early and four were to poems of Eichendorff which were most commonly chosen by the famous German Lieder composers: Schumann, Brahms, Strauss and Wolf (Schubert died before much of Eichendorff’s poetry became known). I was interested to discover several recordings of both cycles; since I’d heard none of them before, I must report that further hearings by singers like Barbara Hendricks and Angelika Kirchschlager increased my respect for and enjoyment of them.

The six songs of Op 9 were composed between the age of 14 and 19, and it was not difficult to hear rather unsophisticated tunefulness. One tries to hear influences and I succeeded in hearing, in Schnneeglöckchen, the sounds of early 20th century American operetta: Romberg, Friml, Herbert…, perhaps not the richness of the best of those, but a genuine, Liederish character. The second song was Nachtwanderer, whose theme is very close in subject and in certain musical hints to Goethe’s Erlkönig, but certainly suggested nothing of the song Schubert wrote at about the same age. Neither was the next song, Ständchen, again set to an Eichendorff poem; Schubert’s Op 889 is of ‘Hark, hark, the lark’ from Cymbeline., and his Ständchen in the cycle Schwanengesang is by Rellstab. There are several poems with the name and various settings of several of them. Korngold’s had a sparkling character, and it was one of the few that showed evidence foe me of his gifts: a gift for melody.

Liebesbriefchen revealed something wistful and interesting musically, in spite of a rather modest little poem. Das Heldengrab am Pruth was a gentle, touching little song with interesting piano accompaniment that captured bird-song charmingly. (I notice that Renee Fleming recorded it recently on a DVD anthology). I think Georgia said that Sommer was written for Lotte Lehmann to sing with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, which would have accounted for a piano accompaniment that was orchestrally a bit clangorous; translation ‘blackbird blaring’? That is not in the least a criticism of Bruce Greenfield’s carefully considered and sympathetic accompaniments throughout the programme.

Knowing that the last two songs, from the Fünf Lieder of 1948 were from his last decade invites one to find more musical maturity and emotional depth; and I did. Georgia began with the second song in the cycle, Der Kranke (The Invalid), also by Eichendorff, expressed in gentle, morbid tones with a repeated descending phrase in the piano. The recital ended with the first poem in the cycle: Glückwunsch, words to a beloved that seemed to hint as much at uncertainty as to unalloyed happiness. They offered further opportunities to admire Georgia Jamieson Emms’s colourful and expressive voice.

They ended with a song that Korngold wrote in his late Hollywood years: an afterthought for the film Escape Me Never which was a bit of a flop. But it was a nice way to end a very interesting and rather beguiling 40 minutes.

This exposure has led me to some exploring of Korngold. I’ve long had a recording of Die tote Stadt, which becomes darkly seductive for much more than the dreamlike, beautiful ‘Marietta’s Lied’ (Glück, das mir verblieb). Many years ago, when the Concert Programme (as it was then) used to broadcast hour-long sessions on operas on Sunday mornings, William Southgate spoke about Korngold’s second-best-known opera, Das Wunder der Heliane. Its touch of the supernatural has haunted me and one prone to expressionist sentimentality has longed to see/hear a production. Not in this country…

Medlyn and Greager give rewarding and intelligent recital of early 20th century songs, plus four by Vincent O’Sullivan/Ross Harris

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wednesday Lunchtime Concerts at St Andrew’s

Margaret Medlyn (mezzo-soprano), Richard Greager (tenor), with David Barnard (piano)

Songs by Berg, Ross Harris, Poulenc, Strauss, Puccini and Rachmaninov

St Andrews on The Terrace, Wellington

Wednesday 10 July 2019, 12;15 pm

A song recital by two internationally renowned singers based in Wellington is a significant musical event. The programme was like a snapshot of the music of the first half of the twentieth century across a wide range of countries, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, with a more recent item from New Zealand.

The concert began with Margaret Medlyn singing Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs (1907). These songs were written under the influence of Arnold Schoenberg, but also show echoes of Mahler, Wolf, Richard Strauss, and even Debussy. They were sung with understanding. Margaret Medlyn is a commanding singer with a powerful voice. Her beautiful deep register is penetrating and moving. The songs are set to texts by Carl Hauptman, Nikolaus Lenau, Theodore Storm, Rainer Maria Rilke, Johannes Schlaf, Otto Erich Hartleben, and Paul Hohenberg, a mirror of the Austrian literary world in which Berg was immersed. They reflected a great variety of emotions.

Richard Greager sang four short songs by Ross Harris, set to poems by Vincent O’Sullivan. Three of these were about father and son relationship, gentle domestic thoughts, one had a rollicking sea shanty feel. Vincent O’Sullivan and Ross Harris have a close association, and the songs were written for Richard Greager, all very Wellington, very Victoria University, but they were lovely and unpretentious.

This was followed by Poulenc’s Cinq poèmes de Paul Eluard. Poulenc moved in artistic and literary circles and had set the poems of many of his contemporaries to music. These songs are about down-and-outs, a subject that was meaningful in the Paris of the first quarter of the twentieth century. These songs are very much dialogues between voice and piano, and this was demonstrated by the sensitive piano playing of David Barnard responding to the singing of Richard Greager.

Margaret Medlyn then sang three songs by Richard Strauss. The first, ‘Befreit’, is a setting of a poem of Richard Dehmel, and one of Strauss’ most popular songs. The second, ‘Heimliche aufforderung’, the text by John Henry Mackay, was a wedding present to Strauss’s wife, the singer Pauline de Ahna. The third song, ‘Ich trage meine Minne’, ‘I bear my love /Silent with joy’ is one of the many songs that Strauss wrote for his wife. These songs appear to be simple, but they all have the hallmark of the special Richard Strauss sense of harmony and unexpected chords and twists in the melody.

Richard Greager sang three songs by Puccini. Puccini is hardly known for his songs, but he used these as sketches for arias in his operas. Richard Greager’s warm light tenor is well suited to these songs. In the second, ‘Sole e amore’, one can clearly hear ideas later used in La Boheme.

The final bracket of songs, again from Greager, consisted of three songs by Rachmaninov. These are imbued with a sense of nostalgia for the countryside. Though the setting is Russian the melodic line is often more Italian. It is the rich piano accompaniment that makes it characteristically Rachmaninov.

This was an ambitious programme and a rewarding concert. It was notable for the intelligent approach to the music, the clear phrasing and diction of the two singers. David Barnard’s piano playing, his sensitive support of the singers is worth a special mention. With teachers such as these at the New Zealand School of Music, it is not surprising that it turns out so many fine singers. Some of these singers will be performing Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi at the Hannah Playhouse next week.

 

 

Wide-ranging and imaginative song recital at Waikanae: Mellaerts and Baillieu

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Waikanae Music Society
Julien van Mellaerts (baritone) and James Baillieu (piano) Schubert: song selection

Five Schubert songs
Schumann: Dichterliebe song cycle Op 48
Gareth Farr: Ornithological Anecdotes
Vaughan Williams: Songs of Travel
Ballads and legends by Gershwin, Manning Sherwin and Cole Porter

Waikanae Memorial Hall

Sunday 14 April, 2:30 pm

The Waikanae Music society had taken this recital from Chamber Music New Zealand’s associate society series. It was about the last of a ten-concert tour around the country.

It was a courageous step since, for many years – decades? – there has been a belief that audiences avoid song recitals; the same belief has been cultivated about piano recitals. There is not a huge amount of evidence for either display of timidity.

This past week I’ve been to a well-supported piano recital at Upper Hutt and this song recital at Waikanae. I’d guess there were around 300 at Waikanae.

Julien van Mellaerts took a degree at Otago University and studied further at the Royal College of Music, London. In the programme notes, neither date or place of birth or education of Baillieu, were mentioned. His biographical notes were restricted to references to his competition successes: British, apart from Das Lied International Song Competition, which not even his own website tells me, is in Heidelberg. The shyness about background details confined to ritual listings of prestigious performance venues and distinguished musical partners, is virtually universal in the hand-outs from artists’ managements.

Nevertheless, both displayed great musical accomplishment and polish.

Schubert
They began with five songs by Schubert: Seligkeit, Der Musensohn, Der Wanderer an den Mond, Prometheus and Rastlose Liebe (three of them by Goethe). Mellaerts handled the challenge of projecting the sense of each poem without costume, props or staging very well: after mastering the music and words, it’s one of the solo recitalist’s hardest tasks. One had to admire his efforts. All but one were sung with what I felt were keenly observed vocal and physical gestures, the voice and manner expressing joy, peacefulness, capturing very well the meaning and emotions of each poem. The exception was well-known Der Musensohn which they took at a speed that seemed mistaken: that is to say, I suppose, not the way I have heard it sung by other singers. Goethe’s Prometheus is a sort of narrative poem which Schubert treats rather like an operatic recitative: it was a harder proposition.

Dichterliebe 
The centre-piece, no doubt, was Schumann’s great song cycle, Dichterliebe, all sixteen drawn from one of Heine’s earliest collections, of 66 poems entitled Lyrische Intermezzo, published in 1823.*

The sixteen settings reflected the violently shifting moods that the lovelorn poet experiences; from the peaceful, Springtime evocation of Im wunderschöne Monat Mai, the anticipatory excitement of Die Rose, die Lilie…, and then the strangely enigmatic Im Rhein, im schöne Strome. Next comes the sudden plunge into realisation/courageous acceptance of his lost love: with perhaps the best known, Ich grolle nicht, where his voice hovers darkly round his empty bravado. It’s curious that Schumann didn’t set the poem that follows Im Rhein in Heine’s collection: it’s Du liebst mich nicht: explicit awareness that she loves him not.

From then on the mood fluctuates between bravery and despair and singer and pianist delivered a convincing series of cries and laments, to end, first with Aus alten Märchen wink es, pleading for redemption through the imagery of the old myths and stories, which he sang in determined optimism, and then, in Die alten bösen Lieder, his evocation of the biggest ever coffin in which to bury his love and pain, and though one is tempted to think he means himself to join his grief in it, life goes on. One of Schumann’s moving post-ludes describes his final grief: he’s saying that only music alone, without words, can express some human conditions.

It’s a wonderful sequence and this was a fine rendering from both artists.

Birds to music
The recital then turned to a most interesting and imaginative new composition: Gareth Farr’s settings of words from Bill Manhire, Ornithological Anecdotes, describing four of New Zealand’s birds, their songs, and their predicament, including the huia which sings: “I lived among you once and now I can’t be found”. They were quirky, touching, firmly urging this generation to repair as far as possible, the carelessness and crimes of past generations. The words, the music, the physical presentation all contributed vividly to an unusual and rather memorable experience.

Songs of Travel
We hear individual songs from Vaughan Williams’s Song of Travel, but I can’t remember a performance of all nine of his settings of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poems (the ninth, in fact came to light only about 1960). They are commonly associated with Schubert’s Winterreise: I don’t think very helpfully. As a cycle, if that’s what VW actually intended, they are not as convincing as the great German song cycles, but this warmly studied performance was to be taken seriously. The last song, I have trod the Upward and Downward Slope, emerged impressively, a full-bodied creation that could be felt as an optimistic expression of the value of exploratory effort.

And the recital ended with three carefully chosen songs from musicals: ‘The Lorelei’ from Gershwin’s Pardon My English; then A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, the affecting pre-war song of 1939 that became a hit during the war, and Cole Porter’s droll Tale of the Oyster, which completed a trio of disparate but entertaining numbers. Versatility on display.

The whole was a real delight and it’s to be hoped that Chamber Music New Zealand will seek out other worthy and entertaining song recitalists again.

 

* Schumann was the son of a Zwickau (south-west of Dresden in Saxony) bookseller, publisher and novelist and was thus brought up surrounded by literature. He  became one of the most literate of music critics, founding his own periodical Die Neue Zeitschrift (Magazine) für Muzik in 1834 which gained widespread circulation. It was natural that he read much of the huge output of poetry inspired by the Romantic movement, in English as well as German. Heine was probably Schumann’s most often set poet. Both poet and composer had been unwilling law students, ten years apart, at various universities, with Göttingen in common.

“Hammers and Horsehair” (joined with birdsong) enchant an Aro St audience in Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

HAMMERS AND HORSEHAIR –

Romantic Music from Bohemia, Austria and Germany

JAN KALIVODA – Three Songs for voice, ‘cello and piano
Der Schöne Stern (The Beautiful Star)
Die Abendglocken (The Evening Bells)
Der Wanderer (The Wanderer)

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Sonata in A Major for ‘Cello and Piano Op.69

ROBERT SCHUMANN – Kinderscenen (Scenes from Childhood) for solo piano Op.15

FRANZ SCHUBERT – Two Songs for voice and piano
Suleika 1
Im Haine (In the Wood)

Song for voice, ‘cello and piano (originally for voice, clarinet and piano)
Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock)

Rowena Simpson (soprano)
Robert Ibell (‘cello)
Douglas Mews (square piano)

Aro Valley Community Centre Hall,
Aro St., Wellington

Thursday, 25th October 2018

We sat amid soft lighting on comfortable, homely furniture, talking softly with our fellow audience-members while listening to pianist Douglas Mews “tuning up” his square piano and then “playing us in” with music that I for one didn’t know – it actually sounded, appropriately enough, like a kind of improvisation, perfect for warming up player, instrument and our increasingly attentive ears, until all was ready. ‘Cellist Robert Ibell having by then “tuned up” his own instrument, it was time for soprano Rowena Simpson to welcome us to the concert on behalf of all three musicians.

I had previously heard singer and pianist performing together (also in the Aro Valley, as it happened!) as long ago as 2013  in a most entertaining soiree-like presentation entitled “Lines from the Nile”, an evocative, if fanciful slice of local music performance history, cleverly devised and written by Jacqueline Coats. If there were fewer opportunities this time round for Rowena Simpson to demonstrate histrionic as well as vocal and musical abilities, the repertoire itself plus the singer’s glorious song-bird-like tones made up for any possible lessening of overall effect upon the concert’s audience.

More recently, I’d encountered the “Hammers and Horsehair” combination of Douglas Mews and ‘cellist Robert Ibell, in a splendid 2016 concert at St.Mark’s Church, Woburn, playing repertoire from a similar period to this evening’s, though with no actual repetition of repertoire. I commented then on the “rightness” of their use of period instruments for this music, and was delighted all over again this evening at the musicians’ continued ability to make their beautiful instruments speak with what sounded to my ears like voices “belonging” to this music. Modern instruments can, of course, “do it” as well, if the interpreter is sensitive and visionary enough, but here we had performers and their instruments sounding so integrated as to take themselves right into the various worlds of the pieces played – an extraordinary fusion of sensibilities.

The musicians presented occasional readings which linked the music performed to either its era, or to its mood, or sometimes to the contributions made to New Zealand’s musical life by various German speaking musicians.  However, we began the concert with three songs by Czech-born composer Jan Kalivoda (sometimes spelt as “Kalliwoda”) who lived from 1801 to 1866 – the  German texts of the songs were translated and the words reproduced in the concert’s written programme, enabling us to savour all the more the pure, bell-like tones and exquisitely-floated phrases brought to the music by Rowena Simpson’s lovely soprano voice.

The beautifully-tailored accompaniments gently brought out the flowing triplet rhythms of the first song “Der Schöne Stern” (The Beautiful Star), making the perfect “sound-cushion” for the voice’s solicitous expressions of hope and comfort to a fearful, despairing heart. The following “Die Abendglocken” began with a beautifully-voiced ‘cello solo, the arco phrasings demurely turning to pizzicato when accompanying the voice, both ‘cellist and pianist complementing the soprano’s rapt exploration of the song’s varieties, in places hushed and atmospheric, in others radiant and full-throated. Finally, a brisk ¾ rhythm brought in “Der Wanderer”, the music enthusiastic and urgent as the singer waxed lyrical about “strange lands where unfamiliar stars shine in the heavens”, Robert Ibell’s cello-playing giving weight and colour to the surge of rollicking energy at the music’s end.

Beethoven’s ‘Cello Sonatas were the first written for that instrument which gave it proper “soloist” status. Rowena Simpson told us that the manuscript of this particular work was headed “Amid tears and sorrow” (Inter Lacrimas et Luctum), though the impression given by the work itself doesn’t really accord with such sentiments, possibly prompted by the composer’s thwarted interest in one Therese Malfatti, who eventually married one of the composer’s aristocratic patrons, Baron Ignaz von Gleichenstein, an amateur ‘cellist and the dedicatee of this sonata.

Simpson then told us briefly about Maria Dronke, a German-born Jew who came to New Zealand with her husband John and their two children in 1939 to escape Nazi persecution. Maria, who had been a well-known actress in Berlin, began teaching drama and voice production in Wellington, while John, a Judge whose legal training was not “recognised” in New Zealand, worked in menial jobs until he was able to secure a position as a double-bass player in the National Orchestra. Maria eventually became well-known as a play producer, drama and poetry recitalist and teacher, and included New Zealand poetry in her recitals – she helped lift the levels of acting and production of local theatrical ventures, as well as enlivening the cultural and social climate with her presence. According to Edith Campion, a former pupil, she was “volatile, brimful of temperament and never tepid….” She died in Lower Hutt in August 1987.

The Beethoven Sonata seemed the perfect “rejoiner” to the tale, the music’s personality as distinctive as that of the subject of Simpson’s brief anecdote. From the cello’s questioning opening phrase and the piano’s “raised eyebrows” reply, the music played with our sensibilities through minor-key agitations, and succeeding phrases whose ascents seem never-ending, everything capturing the composer’s whimsical fancies and cast-iron sense of overall direction, so that the music’s “character” sang out with all of its volatilities and overall purposes given their due. The jovial scherzo’s skipping energies were brought out with both tremendous fire and playful humour, right up to the movement’s unexpectedly throwaway ending.

I thought the brief but heartfelt slow movement demonstrated the players’ melting rapport, the phrases and colourings beautifully varied, making the most of the sequence’s interlude-like brevity, before the finale scampered in from out of nowhere, the irruptions of energy resulting in the occasional finger-slip or strained intonation, but more importantly adding to the fun and excitement of the music, the players challenging our capacities (and their own capabilities) to keep up with the rapid-fire figurations and their variants. I was astonished at the sheer transcendence of sound generated by these instruments via their own particular timbral and tonal qualities, a tribute to the skill of the players in making their instruments “speak” with such overall impact and specific focus on detail, and to their bravery in taking “risks” in aid of getting the music’s spirit across to us.

The instrument Douglas Mews was using had its own colourful history which I fancy I had heard something of at a previous concert, if it was, indeed the same instrument, one brought to New Zealand from the Shetland Islands in 1874. The next item on the programme certainly showed off the instrument’s characteristics in a way appropriate to the music, its capacity for expressing both intimate and assertive feeling, and its characteristic colourings in different registers and with contrasting dynamic levels – a “way more” volatile instrument than the average grand piano! It seemed perfectly suited to convey the worlds within worlds aspects of Robert Schumann’s exquisite pieces collectively known as “Kinderscenen”, all but two of its thirteen pieces performed by Mews for us.

A reading of Katherine Mansfield’s poem “Butterfly” set the scene for the music – sequences of deceptive simplicity containing as much reflection as movement, but just as liable to “irrupt” in forthright ways as each succeeding “picture” was brought into view. Though the most popular of the set of pieces, “Traumerei” (Dreaming) here made an unforgettable impression under Mews’s fingers, played with song-like expression, giving each note its own distinctive, but still organic, inflection. The middle section conveyed moments of urgency, with impulses momentarily creating micro-tensions that dissolved as simply as they were wrought, the whole then rounded with a lump-in-throat ascent that caught us in thrall for the briefest of moments before allowing the dream to drift away.

The “Knight of the Rocking-Horse” which immediately followed came as a bit of a shock, as the usual “At the Fireside” ( which Mews chose to omit) is a somewhat gentler “waking up”! After this tempestuous number, and the volatile “Frightening”, we were reclaimed by gentler forces and gradually becalmed, the concluding “The Poet Speaks” here properly eloquent and reassuring in Mews’ hands, and altogether part of a memorable musical journey.

Rowena Simpson then read for us a couple of extracts from a diary kept by Anna Dierks (b.1856), the daughter of a Lutheran pastor who married a missionary in Upper Moutere, later living in Waitotara and then Wooodville. She was obviously musical and when in Nelson was distressed at the lack of quality in her local church choir – an 1875 entry mentions “terrible singing”. She had obviously decided she would attempt to rectify the situation, but it wasn’t an easy task, as an entry a couple of years later (1877) indicates, re choir practice – “It is not easy to lead such a choir – but the Lord will give me strength!”.

Singing of an obviously different order from Simpson concluded the evening’s programme, three of Schubert’s numerous songs, the first, Suleika I, with a text written by Marianne von Willemer, a contemporary and friend of Goethe’s, whose poetry was actually published by the latter under his own name. Willemer and Goethe had had a kind of literary “relationship”, taking pseudonyms and trading poems under the names of “Suleika” and “Hatem”. It all made for a particularly potent amalgam of impulses, a “gift” for a composer to render as music!

The opening of the song recalled the composer’s earlier setting of the same poet’s “Gretchen am Spinnrade” in its agitations, adroitly modulating between major and minor as the singer poured out the music’s intensities, Simpson carrying the feeling of the words so beautifully, doing well with the stratospheric intensities of the vocal line. These highly-charged feelings subsided into  a touching concluding sequence, conveying “the heart’s true message”, drawing forth tender phrasings from the singer and pulsing chords from the pianist, leaving the “infinite longing” of the setting to ceaselessly echo in the silence.

The second song was “In the Woods” (Im Haime), a song the programme notes described as “a bitter-sweet Viennese waltz-melody. I thought the performance most successful, with soaring vocal phrases supported by a beautifully-lilting accompaniment, and each verse of the song sounding like a true exultation of the forest’s capacities for inspiring feelings of well-being.

Before the final item ‘cellist Robert Ibell thanked the audience for “braving the elements” to attend the concert. Referring to the group’s recent twenty-concert tour of the country he recounted the experience of connecting here and there with certain people who had, in turn, a previous association with the instruments the musicians took on the tour. He also quoted from the writings of Julius Von Haast, geologist and explorer, who came to New Zealand from Germany in 1858 with a view to providing information regarding the country’s “suitability for German emigrants”, staying on in New Zealand and eventually becoming the first curator of the Canterbury Museum. Haast was a violinist and a singer, and his wife was also a singer, enabling them to take part in musical events in Christchurch, where they lived. Ibell quoted from Haast’s words – “geology during the day, and music in the evening” which the latter had written to a fellow-geologist, by way of imploring him to come and visit!

The final item was Schubert’s “The Shepherd on the Rock”, his resplendent setting of words by Wilhelm Muller and Karl August Vanhargen von Ense, a work that the programme note called something of “a mini-cantata” in its range and scope, written by the composer during the final months of his life for the soprano, Anna Milde-Hauptman. She wanted a display piece with an especially brilliant conclusion. Schubert never heard it performed as he died just weeks after the work’s completion. Notable also for its inclusion of a clarinet part, the work was here performed with the ‘cello taking over the former instrument’s role.

At first, to hear the ‘cello playing the lines one normally encountered on a clarinet sounded odd; but as the work proceeded I came to enjoy the contrasting timbres and tones, in the sense of a completely different kind of relationship, more of a “real” partnership than the original singer/clarinet echo scenario. Here the soprano’s delivery was radiant in every way, following the long, sinuous ‘cello lines throughout the opening, and awakening the “echo-impulses” from the music’s textures. It was the piano’s turn to shine during the melancholic middle section, with liquid, fluid tones, underlining the loneliness of the shepherd amidst the quiet and empty vistas, illuminated most beautifully by the soprano’s stratospheric ascent and the cello’s introduction of more hopeful impulses, taken up and flung further on high by the soprano’s bell-like exultations, here an exhilarating effect of joyful release, with caution tossed to the four winds! We all loved it to pieces!

We didn’t let the musicians go until we had extracted what we could out of them, so intense was our pleasure at what we had heard. In reward for our appreciation we were given as an encore some music by Louis Spohr, a charming duet between a girl and a bird, in which (so we were told) the bird sang of spring and the sun, and the girl sang of love! Singer and ‘cello both played their parts winningly, the trio enjoying the conventional but still effective ecstasies of the music, before concluding the piece with some delicate, exquisite-sounding phrases. It was music-making that gave rise to thoughts of how fortunate we all were to have witnessed and enjoyed it all.

Katherine McIndoe with brilliant performance of Britten’s Les Illuminations at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s Lunchtime Concerts
Katherine McIndoe (soprano) with Catherine Norton (piano)

Britten: Les Illuminations (I Fanfare, II Villes, III Antique, IV Royauté, V Marine, VI Interlude, VII Being beauteous, VIII Parade, IX Départ)
Copland: Selections from Old American Songs: Long Time Ago, Simple Gifts, The Little Horses
Britten: Selection from Folk Song Arrangements: Dink’s Song

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 15 August, 12:15 pm

Soprano Katherine McIndoe has been at the Guildhall School in London for the past year, though she was last heard, conspicuously, in both the operas staged in the middle of last year by Rhona Fraser’s Days Bay Opera: Tatyana in Eugene Onegin and Guilietta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi.  In Britain she sang at the Aldeburgh Festival last year as a Britten-Piers Young Artist, and was the Governess in The Turn of the Screw and Marcellina in The Marriage of Figaro, and at the Barbican was Sister Catherine in the UK premiere of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking (in which another prominent New Zealander, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, had sung in its inaugural production in San Francisco). Currently she is a finalist Australian Singing Competition.

Pianist Catherine Norton preceded McIndoe at the Guildhall by a few years, then as a Britten-Piers Young Artist, but also at the Franz Schubert-Institute for Lieder and Graham Johnson’s Young Songmakers’ Almanac; and she has appeared at the Barbican, LSO St Luke’s and the Oxford Lieder Festival. And she has performed in France, Germany and Northern Ireland and Malta. She is now tutor in vocal accompaniment at Victoria University School of Music.

So this was a significant recital from a highly promising singer with one of the best accompanists in the country.

By far the most important item in the 45 minute recital was Britten’s setting of nine of Rimbaud’s Les Illuminations. The name needs to be understood in the sense of the practice of decorating manuscripts – throughout the Middle Ages and even into the printing era.

McIndoe sang the cycle, memorised, in very convincing, idiomatic French: accompanied by the piano (instead of the original string orchestra).

Though the nature of the St Andrew’s free lunchtime concerts limits presentation costs, it’s a pity that fuller programmes could not have been offered for a recital like this. They should ideally be printed in both French and English, and several pages would probably be required. There are 42 prose poems in Rimbaud’s collection, written mainly in his youth, during the time of his relationship with Verlaine (ten years older than Rimbaud), which famously involved the latter shooting Rimbaud, though not fatally.

It opens arrestingly and appropriately (or not), with Fanfare which is not one of the poems, but simply the last line from Parade which is the second-to-last song in Britten’s cycle (‘J’ai seul la clef de cette parade sauvage’); and it’s a line that is repeated between Marine and Being Beauteous, as well as in Parade itself. It’s everything a fanfare should be, commanding attention, compelling. Then Villes II, wild and staccato, suggesting modern, urban chaos (even in post 1870 Paris), with satanic moments echoing the Ride to the Abyss from Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust.

Though Britten’s settings are by no means influenced by the more radical styles of early 20th century music, they do create a singular, unpredictable, unique feeling, as distinctive musically as are Rimbaud’s poems which were likewise shockingly radical in form and sense. They range, from both voice and piano, across jumpy staccato intervals, sometimes collaborative, sometimes in a sort of conflict. They sometimes present a polished sheen, then a ferocious outburst expressing terror or danger; then a calm episode, a slow waltz rhythm with an adventurous melody with keyboard-spanning intervals.

In Being Beauteous, words seem to struggle against the music, moving from hushed to contorted utterances; and Parade, frenzied, left an impression of violence hardly expressed before in music. I scribbled ‘a sense that nothing before or since has been created like this’. A momentary feeling, and not altogether inaccurate.

Though I was acquainted with Les Illuminations many years ago, I had not paid them close attention and so I found this performance a revelation. With the poems and the song texts in front of me as I wrote, I realised that Britten cherry-picks words from each poem, and a couple of times borrows a bare sentence from other, unidentified poems: for example, there’s a short sentence before Antique, ‘J’ai tendu des cordes à clocher à clocher”, that comes from some scraps labelled Fragments de feuillet 12.

Like most great songs and song cycles, words and music are of equal importance, and together they conjure very particular impressions and sensibilities; the poems were ground-breaking in the 1880s, and Britten’s settings of about a quarter of them made a remarkable impact on musical England in the 1940s (though probably on very small numbers).

One would expect that audience members, when they got home, would have reached for their anthologies of French verse or detoured by the Public Library to borrow a volume of Rimbaud’s verse.

For your amusement… enlightenment… edification, I found this comment on the YouTube recording by Ian Bostridge: “It’s like a madman shouting in the street. Imagine a stranger coming up to you with an intense expression and emphatically saying to you, “I alone hold the key to this passing parade” referring to life in general. Why do we respect madness, which was once considered repulsive, and conflate it with deep insight? When did our civilization become like this? We must wake up, especially now, or we are doomed.”

After that, Copland’s three Old American Songs seemed slightly irrelevant, though performed with distinction, offering vivid contrasts from one to another. And returning to Britten at the end with Dink’s Song, American originated, it was stunningly accompanied by its startling Brittenesque piano part. While the essence of the performance of Les Iluminations rested heavily on both words and music, both singer and pianist provided an immaculate and highly accomplished vehicle for the entire recital.

This was a lunchtime concert to be remembered.

 

Polished recital of Lieder by Clara Schumann and Brahms, and Robert’s Scenes of Childhood

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Göknil Meryem Biner (soprano) and Tom McGrath (piano)

Robert Schumann: Kinderszenen, Op 15
Brahms: Ständchen, Wie Melodien; Meine Liebe ist grün
Clara Schumann: Am Strande; Sie liebten sich beide; Liebst du um Schönheit; Er ist gekommen; Ich stand in dunklen Träumen; Lorelei

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 11 July, 12:15 pm

I didn’t hear the recital in March 2017 by this couple from Dunedin, though my colleague Rosemary Collier reviewed it. It seems many years since I have heard them. They form an attractive duet and the music they choose is the kind that is not much performed these days: the song recital is a bit out of fashion and there is a deep-seated belief among the classical music impresarios: that classical song recitals don’t sell (and nor do piano recitals, though that myth seems to be evaporating).

McGrath was born in Wellington, studied music at Canterbury University and at the Richard-Strauss-Konservatorium in Munich; he teaches in the Otago University Music Department. Biner was born in Munich, Turkish descent, and also studied at the Munich conservatorium.

This song recital attracted a good audience, by St Andrew’s lunchtime standards.

It began with Robert Schumann’s piano pieces, Kinderszenen (Scenes of childhood). Contrary to the impressions of some, they are not all pieces easily played by children (though some are, like ‘Träumerei’), though they can be expected to sound interesting to children (as well as adults, of course). McGrath’s playing was full of fun (‘Hasche-Mann’), colour and warmth (‘Glückes genug’), though one has heard performances in which the different moods and scenes are created with greater individuality. But as a unregenerate Schumann devotee, there was nothing I didn’t enjoy.

The notes in the programme described the relationship between the Schumanns and their protégé, Johannes Brahms, 23 years younger than Robert, 14 years younger than Clara. Both had a profound influence on the young Brahms’s development. So Biner chose three of Brahms’s songs: first the familiar Ständchen (Serenade) which took her voice quite high with an almost shimmering effect. And Wie Melodien zieht es mir and Meine Liebe ist grün; songs not so familiar depend on the performer’s commitment and ability to carry the listener away, and the combination of the expressive voice and the imaginative piano that Brahms always brings to his songs invested them with warmth and pleasure.

So no great aural readjustment was needed to enjoy the rest of the recital, devoted to the neglected songs of Clara Schumann (though one doesn’t need to dig very deep into the resources of the Internet to find that there are reputable recordings of them). First of all, I expected to hear interesting piano parts and my hopes were met; she was one of the finest pianists of the 19th century after all, and McGrath handled her sophisticated piano writing comfortably. It is interesting to note that, in contrast with Brahms’s songs – there are large numbers to folk poetry and poems by secondary poets – Clara, like Robert, chose poems by well-known poets. The first a German translation of Burns’s On the Shore, to a setting that captured the turbulent high seas, where the piano indeed almost made the chief contribution. No hint of Scotland; it was in a purely German Lieder idiom, and as imaginative a setting as many of the less known of Brahms.

She sang settings of three poems from Heine’s early collection Die Heimkehr. The first Sie liebten sich beide (They loved one another), the music expressing easily the painfully hesitant lines; and Ich stand in dunklen Träumen, the music avoiding excessive grief, though the words certainly invite it. And they ended with Clara’s setting of about the most popular poem in the German language – the famous  Lorelei – Ich Weiss nicht was sol les bedeuten.

It’s not easy to get the indelible music for Lorelei by Friedrich Silcher out of one’s head of course, but Clara’s setting is very evocative; it creates an unease, and employs throbbing  bass notes in the piano, a little reminiscent of Schubert’s Erlkönig. The three Heine poems invited over-ripe expressions of grief but her settings went just far enough without exceeding the degree of restraint that is essential to good art.

The other two poems were by the hugely prolific poet, Friedrich Rückert: Liebst du um Schönheit and Er ist gekommen. The first struck me as an interesting and wise poem and the music captured its sane, comforting feeling. The second touched me with its flowing melody and the idiomatic, fluent piano accompaniment. Musical settings of Rückert poems are only exceeded by those of Goethe and Heine: Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder are among the most famous; there’s also his five Rückertlieder, but you will find dozens of his poems set by Schubert, Schumann and many others.

Perhaps I go on a bit about musical settings of German poets; it’s because of the very rich yet unpretentious treasury of German lyrical verse that attracted most of the great composers in the 19th century; a phenomenon that has no parallel in The English-speaking world where poetry that inspires musical setting is not nearly as plentiful, and where comparable composers simply did not exist.

Apart from the pleasure of hearing these two polished artists performing together in such a comfortable musical relationship, it offered a taste of the huge quantity of German Lieder that remains, for many otherwise well-informed music lovers, rather unknown.

 

Demanding song recital reflects more ambition than accomplishment

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘The Story of the Birds in the Trees’
William McElwee (baritone) and Heather Easting (piano)

Fauré: Dans les ruines d’une abbaye, Op.2 no1; Les berceaux, Op.23 no.1; Clair de lune, Op.46,no.2
Howells: King David
Schumann: Dichterliebe Op.48

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 27 June 2018, 12.15pm

It is not often that I attend a lunchtime concert at St. Andrew’s and come away disappointed, but that was the case this time.  I am fond of Fauré’s songs and deeply devoted to Schumann’s Dichterliebe.  But this time I could not say I was enchanted by what I heard.

The first song went well.  The second, like a number later on, was perhaps a little low for William McElwee’s voice, in places; the low notes were not mellifluous.  French language was well- pronounced.  ‘Clair de lune’ is a delightful song.  But the singer’s tone was a little harsh at times, and there was a lack of subtlety.  I was reminded of what I heard an adjudicator of a singing competition say once: ‘Chew the words’.

Heather Easting’s piano accompaniments here, and throughout the recital, were splendid, with good variation of tone and dynamics suited the words.  A good feature of this concert was that applause came only at the end of each bracket.  Maybe there was an instruction to the audience about this before the singing began; I was a little late, and missed any pre-concert announcements.

Another excellent feature was that the translations of the songs were printed in the programme, and the names of the poets set by the composers were printed.  Too often they are not given credit.

It was not always easy to catch the words of the Howells song; being in English they were not printed in the programme.  Sometimes here, and again in some of the Schumann songs, the singer was a little under the note; not badly flat, but not right on pitch.  Tone and timbre needed to be varied more.

Perhaps Schumann’s Dichterliebe was too tough an assignment.  The first song speaks of love, desire and longing, but I did not hear these sentiments in the voice part – no excitement or surprised joy.  The second song is one of tears and sighs, but here it seemed to have the same tone and expression as the first one.

The third song is faster, and here some excitement crept in to express feelings.  There was  subtlety in the fourth, (‘When I look in your eyes…’).  The next song should have conveyed breathless anticipation and joy, but I could not hear those emotions.  The great ‘Ich grolle nicht’ is a powerful, dramatic song, about the lover not bearing a grudge although the object of his love appears to have turned against him.  The low notes were too low for the singer to be able to provide them with any expression.  I could not hear any tension or drama – it was too plain and unvarying, but improved by the end.  Another singers’ aphorism I have heard is ‘Do something with every note’.

Throughout, the German language was pronounced well.  The 11th song (‘A youth loved a maiden..’) was livelier, musically, but the voice lacked animation.  The following song (on a sunny summer morning…) needed a calm tone.  The piano accompaniment was exquisite, not least in the lovely postlude to the song.  The 13th  (‘I wept in my dream…’) revealed the  attractive high notes of the singer – they were pleasant and strong.

The 14th song (‘I see you every night in dreams’) had a beautiful piano accompaniment.  The penultimate song suited McElwee’s voice better and sounded fine.  The final song had more character to it and showed off again the singer’s good high notes.  The extended piano postlude was glorious and gentle.

This song cycle is one of the plums of the vocal repertoire, but the fruit here were unripe.  It is emotional and dramatic, and these characteristics needed to be revealed in the voice.

 

Polish and Shakespearean themes lead fine St Andrew’s lunchtime recital

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Music for voice and solo piano

Eleanor McGechie, mezzo-soprano (item 1))
Gabriela Glapska (piano – accompanist and items 2 & 3)
Will King. Baritone (item 4)

André Tchaikowsky: Seven Sonnets of Shakespeare  (two songs)
Chopin: Preludes, Op.28 nos. 7-12; Ballade in F minor, Op.52 no.4
Gerald Finzi: Let us garlands bring, Op.18

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 4 April 2018, 12.15 pm

Shakespeare ‘book-ended’ the programme, with two sets of songs, separated by Chopin.  It made an interesting programme, featuring mainly the piano, but with pleasing songs to begin and end.

The pianist and composer André Tchaikowsky was not, we were told in the pianist’s introductory remarks, related to the great composer of the same name.  I remember him visiting New Zealand to play with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, a long time ago.  He was Polish, and died in 1982, at only 47 years of age.

He was apparently a great fan of Shakespeare.  The first sonnet, ‘To me, dear friend, you never can be old…’ was preceded by a long piano introduction.  Eleanor McGechie proved to have a rich voice, and especially gorgeous low notes.  She was well up to singing the wide range of pitch demanded by the song.  The second song, ‘So are you to my thoughts as food to life…’ had a calmer quality.

The song was moody in temperament at first, but later became sprightly, particularly in the piano part.  Both singers in the concert are students at the New Zealand School of Music – and therefore could be excused for using the scores rather than singing from memory.

The Chopin Preludes were skilfully and passionately played (though I counted five, not six).  The link here was Polish nationality, not only of André Tchaikowsky but also of Chopin and of our pianist at this concert.  There were both depth and sparkle in her playing, despite technical difficulties in the Preludes, and the Ballade, which apparently held no fears for her, though the Ballade was not faultless.  All Gabriela’s pieces were played without use of a score.

The Ballade began beguilingly, with poetic, beautiful passages.  The middle section is demanding and very fast, requiring great dexterity – which she has.  Her playing brought out the contrasts very well.  The latter part of the piece was also very fast; the notes shimmered, while maintaining the melodic line, power and forward movement   The pianism was very intense in this intricate music; an impressive performance despite the few flaws.

Gerald Finzi was a litterateur as well as a composer; his love of Shakespeare is depicted in his exquisite song cycle Let us garlands bring (the last line of the song ‘Who is Sylvia’) illustrates his superb word-setting.  The songs, with the plays in which they appear, are:

‘Come Away, Come Away, Death’ (Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 4)
‘Who is Silvia?’ (The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act IV, Scene 2)
‘Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun’ (Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene 2)
‘O Mistress Mine’ (Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 3)
‘It Was a Lover and His Lass (As You Like It, Act V, Scene 3).

Will King enunciated the words very well, and he projected them with a lovely tonal quality.  The effect was magical in places.  In the first song, the opening chords on the piano presaged something ominous.  The next song was a complete contrast; ‘Who is Silvia’ has a cheerful mood.  The delightful running accompaniment adds to its endearing quality, especially the ending.

The performers did justice to this inspired song cycle.  Each word had its proper emphasis and phrasing.  The accompaniment’s dynamics were just right – Gerald Moore’s famous book title (‘Am I too loud?’) did not need to be uttered here.

Will King’s voice was fine, apart from some strain and rawness when singing fortissimo.  After the rather sombre ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun’ there was  return to joy with ‘O mistress mine’.  This could have been sung in a slightly lighter style and tone, and the piano could have done with less pedal for the sprightly final song.  Nevertheless – bravo to all three performers!

 

 

Great singer, and audience, sold short at hybrid festival concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Festival 2018

Anne Sophie von Otter (mezzo-soprano) with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Northey

Schubert: Overture to Rosamunde
Lieder: Der Vollmond strahlt (one of the songs from the incidental music for the play Rosamunde)
Die Forelle (orch. Britten)
Gretchen am Spinnrade (orch. Reger)
Im Abendrot (orch. Reger)
An Sylvia (orch. Anon.)
Erlkönig (orch. Reger)
and her encore: Nacht und Träume

Zemlinksy: Die Seejungfrau – orchestral fantasy

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 15 March 2018, 7:30 pm

I’ll see if I can find space later on to mention the few good things about this concert, apart from the fact that the great Anne Sophie von Otter actually came here and sang for a while.

The Programme
First, let’s see what we could have expected. The first statement in the notice of her recital in the festival season brochure wrote: “Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sophie von Otter is one of the titans of grand opera and French chanson”. And the very abbreviated profile mentioned singing at two famous opera houses, sharing the stage “with the world’s greats”. And the Wellington programme was to “include personal favourites from Schubert lieder and more” (my underlining).

But behold! No opera or French chanson; and certainly, not “more”!

Anyone familiar with the international opera scene and classical music in general knows Von Otter’s wide range in classical vocal music as well as various kinds of folk and tastefully chosen popular music. Since she was the only artist mentioned in the advertising, apart from the orchestra and conductor, it was reasonable to assume that she would dominate the programme with several brackets of opera arias and art songs and perhaps a few European popular songs.

Characteristically, such a programme is fleshed out with three or four orchestral pieces, perhaps an opera overture, an intermezzo, a shortish symphonic poem. But the second half was filled by an unfamiliar symphonic work by Zemlinsky, which turned out to be well worth hearing but seemed an odd accompaniment for a solo vocal recital.

A few days before, Von Otter had sung an excellent programme at the Adelaide Festival, which has, from the very beginning, been a key associate of our festival, in its use of major international artists. There, she had sung, with piano accompaniment, just the sort of programme I might have was expected: innovative, stimulating, appropriate festival fare, doing full justice to both herself and a reasonably knowledgeable audience.

Lieder with orchestra?
Then there’s the question of singing Schubert with an orchestra. Yes, she had done that before, winning a Grammy Award in 1997 for her recording of Schubert Lieder with Orchestra with Abbado and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. The impact of performances with orchestra on record is very different from those in a big concert hall, where the problems of balance and atmosphere are difficult. Many such arrangements exist and were popular especially in earlier times: seen as a way of breaking down barriers for people who might be afraid of a concert entirely from a singer and piano accompanist. That was the reason offered here, in the belief that there was no audience for solo vocal recitals, a fiction broadcast by some music promoters here too; which I have always refused to believe.

If she had come here with Bengt Forsberg, her long-standing accompanist, they would have made a tremendous impact. Erlkönig would have set the audience by the ears with its miraculously dramatic piano accompaniment; it and scores of other wonderful Lieder and French mélodies would immediately have created a huge audience for classical song.

Earlier festivals had some wonderful solo voice concerts, one of the most memorable for me being from tenor Peter Schreier in 1990 or 92 in a packed Town Hall.

Rosamunde
The concert opened with the overture to the unsuccessful play, Rosamunde, for which Schubert wrote a variety of incidental music; it was a nice idea, and conductor Benjamin Northey led the orchestra through it carefully – a very slow opening – with clarity and energy supporting its sparkling Rossini character.

And the first song was from the Rosamunde music: a simple, unaffected melody to typically sentimental words: Der Vollmond strahl, naturally orchestrated as part of the orchestral incidental music. (Rather like Bizet’s incidental music for Daudet’s play L’Arlésienne, the music was immediately popular as the play bombed.) The audience had clapped unrestrainedly after the Rosamunde song, persisting even in the absence of any acknowledgement by singer and conductor; and the audience failed to read their clear messages after each subsequent song. Even if unfamiliar with the etiquette, one might have thought they’d have read the musicians’ expressionless wait between the songs. The determination to clap persisted later between movements of the Zemlinsky piece.

Then came five genuine Lieder. Die Forelle written aged about 19, was sung first; it was orchestrated imaginatively by Britten, more interestingly than the three by Reger; I was not altogether captivated by its singular pathos and wit of words and music. Gretchen am spinnrade followed, Schubert’s second published, in 1813 when he was 16, after Erlkonig; both are considered miracles in their musical invention and extraordinarily acute emotion expression. The genius of Gretchen was not much obscured by the orchestration and the singing of the first two songs offered the singer wonderful opportunity to let her undimmed vocal gifts be heard, finding the unsettled innocence of Goethe’s heroine, though one has heard more passionate outbursts, of phrases like ‘…und ach! Sein Kuss!’

Im Abendrot is a slightly less familiar song, and since its piano accompaniment is a little less embedded in the mind, Reger’s orchestration was tolerable, and the performance evoked its oddly religious character well.  An Sylvia is a very old favourite. It was among my parents’ collection of 10” 78s; not much played by them, but it became part of my aural furniture as a child. Even though the orchestra, in the anonymous arrangement, was pared down, the chomping cellos and basses did sound odd.

And finally Erlkönig; Here was a disappointment, not only the absence of the irreplaceable piano part, but also, I fear, not a male voice that for me at least has become such an essential character in the story, perhaps inadmissibly these days. The awakening of the father’s terror with ‘Der Vater grauset’s, er reitet geschwind…’ (the translations of these marvellous words were pathetic) just passed by…

The best song of all was the encore: Nacht und Träume, a late-ish song from around 1825, where I actually enjoyed the horn’s opening phrases followed by other orchestral felicities that, because it’s a song whose piano part has not taken root in my head so much; though I love it. It was beautiful.

Die Seejungfrau
Introducing Zemlinsky’s Die Seejungfrau, in the second half the conductor congratulated those in the hall for staying (many had left in the interval, compensated by a great increase in orchestral forces with quadruple, and more, winds!). And he talked about the link between this and the NZSO’s earlier festival venture into Star Wars, the music by John Williams, and his film music predecessors Bernard Herrmann and Korngold, to Zemlinsky who taught Korngold in Vienna. And he filled in possible gaps in musical knowledge noting the loss of his first wife, Alma Schindler to Gustav Mahler, who in turn lost her to Walter Gropius. Northey noted another detail that might well have been mentioned in the programme note, the orchestra’s recording of the work, under James Judd, for Naxos.

Much as I was uncertain about how the Zemlinsky, which I had failed to familiarise myself with, would sit in this context (on the face of it, strangely ill-assorted), I was quickly won over by its Strauss-era character (its opening might have suggested the beginnings of Tod und Verklärung or Also sprach Zarathustra) as well as its own character that in fact is some distance from Strauss. The performance had a vivid quality that was immediately charming, colourful, warmly lyrical. The work felt coherently structured in spite of the composer refraining from calling it a symphony or even a symphonic poem. The second movement (unnamed) was more light-hearted and mercurial. I didn’t attempt to create from the music images of mermaids and the ocean or other details of Hans Andersen’s tale. And the third movement became more reflective and elegiac, allowing anyone so-disposed to conjure the mermaid’s sad fate.

It was a most accomplished performance, Northey showing himself as fully capable of extracting the emotional qualities, the rich orchestral fabric, the dynamic and rhythmic pulses that brought it convincingly to life. At the end, the enthusiastic applause here was indeed in the right place.

As I load this on Monday morning, I see an excellent, pertinent letter on the programme from Deryn and David Groves in The Dominion Post.

A polished and scrupulously studied recital by male vocal quartet, Aurora IV

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Aurora IV: singing Renaissance to 20th century music
Toby Gee (alto counter-tenor), Richard Taylor (tenor), Julian Chu-Tan (tenor, Simon Christie (bass)

Music by Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson, Byrd, Jean Mouton, Richard Lloyd, Lasso, Ludovico da Viadano, Poulenc, Tallis, Andrew Smith

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 22 November 2017, 12:15 pm

I’m fairly sure that this was my first hearing of Aurora IV, a male vocal quartet whose repertoire stretches from the 16th to the 21st century, though I have long been familiar with Simon Christie’s voice and recall hearing Richard Taylor in other groups, particularly The Tudor Consort.

One of the characteristics of the recital was the choice of words and music from widely separate eras. Thus the opening piece was a two-year-old setting of a hymn by 13th century Icelandic poet Kolbeinn Tumason. The programme took the trouble of spelling the Icelandic names using authentic letters, using the voiced ‘þ’ and unvoiced ‘ð’ which in English, of course, are left undistinguished by ‘th’.*

The modern setting of Kolbeinn Tumason’s Heyr himna smiður by Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson made strong references to early Renaissance music, which these musically literate singers captured very convincingly; it provided, for me, a chance to be highly impressed by the effective blending and dynamic uniformity of their voices, without in the least avoiding illuminating particular voices where called for.

The first, ‘Kyrie eleison’, of three parts of Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices followed. Here bass Simon Christie as well as male alto Toby Gee, emerged prominently, though the two tenors were obviously important in filling the rich polyphony. Neither ‘Gloria’ nor ‘Credo’ were performed here, and the ‘Sanctus’ and ‘Benedictus’ followed later: the former an interesting contrapuntal piece in which, again, the quality of each voice was conspicuous.

Tenor Richard Taylor seemed to take the lead at the start of the calmer, devotional ‘Benedictus’. The recital ended with the quartet singing the ‘Agnus Dei’, full of pain; till then I had not been particularly aware of second tenor, Julian Chu-Tan, as I was on the right while he faced left. But here I became more aware of him, slightly less robust that Taylor, but perhaps even more finely attuned to the character of the quartet as a whole which presented such a finely nuanced and spiritually persuasive presentation that it’s quite unreasonable to attempt to characterise individual voices.

To resume the order of the programme: Jean Mouton, one of the leading French composers of the 15th-16th centuries, his ‘Quis dabit oculis nostris’; in spite of my hesitation above, here were prominent and moving offerings by Taylor and Gee, in this beautiful lament on the death of his patron Anna of Brittany in 1514. It captured a uniquely idiomatic French style with integrity.

Then a modern English setting of a lyric by 13th century theologian Thomas Aquinas, ‘Adoro te devote’. The composer is Richard Lloyd, composed, as with the Icelandic piece, in 2013, and similarly embracing an authentic Renaissance sound, though with a melodic and harmonic character that rather gives away it more recent origin.

The variety of spellings of Lassus’s name (Orlande de Lassus, Roland de Lassus, Orlando di Lasso, Orlandus Lassus and many others) arises partly from his peripatetic earlier life, born in the Netherlands – in Hainaut, now in Belgium – travelled and worked in France and Italy, but eventually settled in Munich; contemporary of Palestina, Tallis, Byrd….

His ‘Matona, mia caro’ lends itself to a variety of approaches, sometimes by women, sometimes by mixed voices, and by large choirs; these singers adopted a lively, crisp rendition that stressed its exuberance and light-heartedness, even music to dance to. I’ve heard it sung in very differently ways, sometimes like a religious motet; Aurora IV carried the folk, onomatopoeic character ‘don don don…’ excellently.

Ludovico da Viadano who composed ‘Exultate iusti in Domino’, the words from Psalm 33, might be a relatively obscure composer, but his motet seems to be widely popular judging by the number of performances to be found on YouTube. It’s spirited, almost dancing in its energy, starting and ending in triple time, while the main central part is in solid common time. Here was another delightful late Renaissance song that should be popular with young choirs.

Poulenc seemed an abnormal phenomenon in the midst of Renaissance or pseudo-Renaissance song. Two of his ‘Four Prayers’ (Quatre petites prières de Saint François d’Assise) served to sharpen musical receptivity, though presenting a spirit that seemed ambivalent, outside the mainstream. Toby Gee introduced them. They were composed at Poulenc’s Loire Valley refuge, Noizay, in 1948. ‘Tout puisant’ (‘All Powerful’), the second of them, in somewhat ardent, laudatory spirit, was in a distinctively 20th century idiom, faintly coloured by an earlier style, vaguely Renaissance     not easily definable     . The third Prayer is Seigneur, je vous en prie (‘Lord, I implore you’); it presented itself with more sobriety, in a minor key, with a striking passage from Richard Taylor towards the end.

One had been waiting for Tallis in this company. ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments’ fulfilled the Tallis need, with its restraint, its sombre, exquisite tone, seeming to suggest that Tallis had found a balance between the religious conflicts of the age (it was published in 1560, just after Elizabeth had come to the throne, meaning an abrupt shift from the ruthless Catholicism of Mary).  A beautiful performance of a beautiful motet.

Another recent Biblical setting by Norwegian composer Andrew Smith (born in Liverpool, moved to Norway in his teens) picked up on a pattern common in the recital. I didn’t record remarks about the version sung here, which was based on an anonymous 13th century English motet, of words from Isaiah. Presumably, the striking, spare harmonies, infusing the recent arrangement, reflected the original setting (or was it wholly recomposed, in a sympathetic style?).

And it ended with the Byrd’s Agnus Dei which I touched on above, concluding an intelligent, seriously well-studied and polished recital of four-part polyphony.

 

* I was familiar with these Icelandic letters since they were used for the same sounds in Anglo-Saxon, which was a compulsory element in university English language and literature studies in my day. A paper in Icelandic, including readings in the sagas, some originating in the 9th century, but recorded from the 13th century, was an optional paper at master’s level. Further trivia: the Sagas, e.g the Saga of the Volsungs, and the Poetic Edda, were important sources for Wagner in the Ring cycle.