Tag: St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Unusual trios for contrasted groups, influenced disparately by viola d’amore and the Holocaust

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music of Sorrow and Love
Archi d’amore Zelanda and the Terezin Trio

Archi d’amore Zelanda (Donald Maurice – viola d’amore, Jane Curry – guitar, Emma Goodbehere – cello)
Michael Williams: Suite per antichi archi
Boris Pigovat: Strings of Love (2016)

Terezin Trio (Katherine McIndoe – soprano, Reuben Chin – alto saxophone, Heather Easting – piano)
Ellwood Derr: I never saw another butterfly

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 18 May, 12:15 pm

This lunchtime concert combined two young chamber groups in music that touched on tragic themes and conditions of the heart, physical and emotional. Perhaps they were to be seen as metaphysically linked.

We have heard several performances by Donald Maurice’s Archi d’amore Zelanda; the last let us hear both the viola d’amore and the modern viola; in fact the last outing was just a fortnight ago, as part of an octet playing Vivaldi.

Today, they played two pieces commissioned by them and which will have their ‘world premieres’ in a forthcoming trip to Poland where they will play at the Europejskiego Centrum Muzyki Krzysztofa Pendereckiego w Lusławicach (or European Center for Music, Krzysztof Pendercki, Lusławice), a small town east of Krakow. Check it out on the Internet.

It is an important cultural centre with origins as an intellectual and artistic centre in the 17th century. It is not far from Penderecki’s birthplace, and the composer bought the old manor in 1976 and restored it to create a music centre, with a beautiful contemporary building opened in 2013.

The Trio will also give concerts in Krakow and Warsaw.

Michael Williams
Suite per antichi archi was commissioned from Hamilton composer Michael Williams.

His piece touched on the heart, and its first movement was named for the heart condition, ‘Arrhythmia’, an obtuse reference to music with varying rhythms. For the first few minutes all three instruments were plucked, rhythmically though in varying bar-lengths; then viola d’amore and cello returned to bowing. The music might not have been too complex or academic, but it was attractive, untroubled. The second movement, Cavatina, was slower and elegiac, with much attention to the lower strings of all three instruments; there was a hint of Spanish music guitar of the 17th or 18th centuries (Hopkinson Smith’s concerts at the 2014 Festival stimulated my interest in and enjoyment of it). The third movement was a fugue, with the bowed instruments used mainly in that way, gaining speed subtly as the mood lightened and became dance-like, though remaining in an antique mode.

Boris Pigovat
Boris Pigovat and Donald Maurice have formed a partnership/friendship since the composer wrote a Holocaust Requiem in 1995, with an obbligato viola for Maurice, to mark the 70th anniversary of the Nazis’ atrocity, Kristallnacht. Atoll Records recorded it by the Wellington Orchestra under Taddei with Maurice as violist.

The latest fruit of that association is Pigovat’s Strings of Love.

Because I hadn’t heard very much of what the musicians said about the music, I asked Donald Maurice for some help and he gave me the following about this piece.

“Much of [Pigovat’s] music since [the Requiem] is reminiscent of those ideas [in the Requiem], in particular in his viola sonata, and in this new piece, Strings of Love, there are similar ideas to the ‘Lux Aeterna’ from the Requiem. It also includes a clear quotation of the nursery lullaby ‘Rock-a-Bye Baby, on the Tree Top’. This poem was believed to have been written by a pilgrim who travelled on the Mayflower and it was a comment on the way the American Indians rocked their babies to sleep by hanging their bassinets off tree branches. This observation about the significance of the theme in the trio is my own, not from Boris!”

So there was dreamy quality in the viola and cello in the opening part, then a kind of a popular tune, with perhaps the influence of a guitar, though the viola dominated the melody. The mood lightens and the tempo increases towards the end. Both the music’s intention and its performance were of attractive clarity and should help create a nice repertoire for the innovative combination of viola d’amore, cello and guitar which, judging by the sort of music they inspire, evokes feeling that relate Renaissance or Baroque sensibility to contemporary musical values and social issues.

Ellwood Derr
I never saw another butterfly was written in 1966 around poems written by children in the terrible concentration camp at Terezin in Czechoslovakia. So it has an affinity with the much later written Third Symphony of Gorecki.

It’s composed for a trio, appropriately entitled Terezin: soprano, alto saxophone and piano. Soprano Katherine McIndoe has, in only a couple of years, established an attractive record in competitions and small opera performances, such as with Days Bay Opera. It’s a strong voice with a keen-edged vibrato that might need watching in years to come, but which showed admirable accuracy in the early quasi-atonal music and an air of electrified fear in the section so marked. Her spoken words came almost as a shock.

Reuben Chin’s contribution on the alto saxophone too, was most accomplished: twittering and bird-like (rather than simulating a butterfly) in the Prologue; while the calm, Debussyish, accepting spirit of ‘The Garden’ hardly disguised the underlying hopeless grief that is embedded in the music. Throughout, Heather Easting’s piano lent expressive and sympathetic backing, often rather dominating the scene as near the end of the fourth section, marked ‘Fear’.

I had hesitated about coming to this concert, thinking one of my colleagues was to review it, but was engrossed by both these unfamiliar trio ensembles right from the start.

 

Beguiling, wide-ranging guitar recital from Owen Moriarty a fine substitute for lunch

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Owen Moriarty – solo guitar

Music by Turina, Nikita Koshkin, Santiago de Murcia, Tarrega and Donal Macnamara

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 11 May, 12:15 pm

As noted in my review of the recital by NZSM guitar students on 20 April, this programme was to have been by the students, while Moriarty would have played on 20 April.

It was well worth the wait. Each of Moriarty’s recitals produces an extraordinary range of music either written or arranged for the guitar, from all eras from the Renaissance to the present. This recital spanned from the early 18th century to about 1980.

First was Turina’s Hommage (sometimes – perhaps in Catalan – Homenaje) a Tarrega. Like the other famous Spanish composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Turina composed few works for guitar; but many of the piano pieces have been transcribed for guitar. He wrote five, this ‘Homage to Tarrega’, being his last for guitar. It has two movements: Garrotin (Catalan for ‘stick’) and Soleares (I guess it has to do either with the sun or being alone). The first a steady-paced piece in common time, the second more flowing and perhaps Andalusian in character.

The amplification worried me a bit at the beginning – it diminished some of the subtlety of the music and its performance, but I stopped noticing quite soon.

Then came the most unusual of guitar pieces, Nikita Koshkin, a prominent Russian composer and guitarist, born in 1956. The Prince’s Toys is evidently one of his most famous pieces, a story paralleling Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges – the tale of a spoilt, cruel young prince who’s nasty to his toys and suffers his retribution. But without the microphone, I caught little of what Moriarty said: there are twelve pieces in the suite.

The three movements that Moriarty played exhibited the surprising and often highly virtuosic range of sounds available to a skilled guitarist, sometimes combining gentle strumming under a more prominent melodic line, involving left hand plucking; surprising quiet passages; tapping or merely brushing the belly of the instrument while other hands (so it often seemed) perform high-speed acrobatics from end to end of the finger-board.

Santiago de Murcia (the region between Andalusia and Valencia) was a decade older than Bach and Domenico Scarlatti; most of his music is lost, but Moriarty described the discovery in Mexico half a century ago of a revelatory collection of his music, and other music has been discovered recently in Chile, though there is no suggestion that he ever travelled to Latin America. The three movements of his Sonata in D, arranged by Bill Kanengiser, who was one of Moriarty’s teachers in Los Angeles, revealed a melodic and stylistic gift that draws on popular musical traditions. There was a slow and gentle middle movement in triple time, of singular charm, and a lively gigue-like last movement that was both subtle and fluent; and so were they played.

Then came three pieces by Tarrega himself: an Alborada, hushed tones suggesting a slow dawn, Rosita, that seemed full of reminiscences, quite taxing technically; and then the Jota, which I encountered first (half a century ago?) in the splendid piece by Glinka: Jota Aragonesa, which I haven’t heard on the radio for decades. There are many others, including the entr’acte to Act 4 of Carmen, by Liszt and Saint-Saëns, etcetera. It evolved in various ways and was quite extended, though it still ended rather too soon.

Finally, in a sort of family reminiscence, of which I caught little, Moriarty talked about an Irish piece by Donal Macnamara who lived in the 18th century; A Gaoth Andheas (something about the south wind). Typically Irish in tone, gently lamenting and nostalgic. The programme note follows a website that I too stumbled on: “South Wind was written in the 1700s by “Freckled Donal Macnamara” in homesickness for his homeland in County Mayo, as described in Donal O’Sullivan’s wonderful book, “Songs of the Irish.”

A delightful recital to be sure!

 

Talented young pianist impresses at St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Nick Kovacev – piano

Haydn: Sonata in B minor, Hob XVI/32
Bach: The Toccata from Partita No 6 in E minor, BWV 830
Schubert: Impromptu in B flat, D 935, no 3
Ginastera: Danzas Argentinas (1937)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 13 April, 12:15 pm

The New Zealand School of Music is a major supplier of talent to the year-long series of lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Most of those who play are at somewhat advanced degree levels, but this time it’s pianist Nick Kovacev who is in his first year at the school. I had not read the brief note about him in the programme at the start of the recital and had imagined that he was probably about a third year student, such was the polish and confidence of his playing. Even though there were occasional slips, which of course reassures us that we are listening to a live performer and not a highly enhanced recording playing behind an animated papier-mâché model of a pianist seated at the piano.

I’m sure others were misled too as he proceeded to dazzle the audience with one of Haydn’s more spectacular sonatas, Hoboken’s No 32 in B minor, from memory, as was the entire recital. It was not far removed from the more breathtaking of Scarlatti’s sonatas: staccato, animated, fluent, his playing displayed awareness of dynamic variety, produced through a well-applied palette of articulations. His posture suggested maturity with a flair for the pregnant pause and taste sufficiently cultivated to enrich the shapes of tunes which were never merely repetitious.

The Toccata from Bach’s 6th harpsichord partita provided Kovacev with a different idiom to explore. The improvisatory start and finish lent a sense of spontaneity, as if he was making it up as he went along; it compared strikingly with the sobering effect of a fugue which arrives a rather a surprise. His playing showed purpose and mastery, as he paid careful attention to the evolution of the fugue. The programme notes used the words ‘earnest simplicity’ to describe the next piece, by Schubert and it struck me that it applied to the Bach too.

Schubert’s big Impromptu in B flat (among the two longest of the eight) drew attention to yet another facet of Kovacev’s talent. His ability to sustain the musical line in a major piece of music was very evident; it is a set of variations on one of the rich, poignant melodies in his incidental music for the play Rosamund, and its structure can be compared with Beethoven’s sets of piano variations. The unexpected changes of mood though modulations sounded both inevitable and surprising and the performance proved a rewarding experience. Kovacev dealt skillfully with minor, understandable memory lapses.

If these pieces from memory were not impressive enough, Ginastera’s Danzas Argentinas was a sort of summary of his imposing technical and interpretive accomplishments at present. It begins with a dance by an old herdsman: bi-tonal, dissonant, heavy-footed and virtuosic, then lyrical, feminine and elusive in the second, and finally, to portray the arrogant gaucho: hectic, forceful and deliberately shapeless. It was a rather spectacular demonstration of a young pianist’s achievement and his ambitions for the future.

One will keep an eye on his progress.

 

 

Beautiful lunchtime with a flute and piano at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Rebecca Steel – flute and Diedre Irons – piano

Poulenc: Flute Sonata
Franck: Flute Sonata in A (transcription of the violin sonata)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 6 April, 12:45 pm

I’ve heard Rebecca Steel at least three times over the past year, playing with a pianist or as part of a trio, in interesting music, often adapted from music for other instruments: Debussy piano pieces, Piazzolla, Chopin, or authentic flute works such as by Bach or Villa-Lobos or Persichetti.

This time we heard what is perhaps the most famous and attractive flute sonata of the 20th century: Poulenc’s; and one of the several adaptations of César Franck’s Violin Sonata which is so lovely that everyone wants a piece of it. And here, with her partner, one of New Zealand’s finest pianists, we heard a version that proved just how universal is its pertinence.

Both performances were world-class; a reminder that St Andrew’s had gained such a reputation that the country‘s top musicians find it worthwhile (not in a pecuniary sense) to play there. There was an audience of nearing 100, and I could sense that their applause recognized that they knew they were hearing music both memorable and splendidly played.

Poulenc, though nearing the end of his life, produced here a piece that, though its first movement is marked Allegro malinconico, is a little slower than ‘allegro’ and not all that melancholy. It was full of vitality and melodic piquancy, and the dynamic attack and variety of articulation and colour had the audience sitting upright, with smiles on their faces. The second movement begins with a slowly rising arpeggio, and like most of Poulenc’s music, blessedly tonal, its face turned away from the strictures of the avant-garde. Nevertheless, its idiom could be of no time but the mid 20th century. Then the third movement, Presto giocoso, presents a sudden, almost shocking attack delivered equally by the two instruments. But it doesn’t persist, reverting for a moment to the calmer spirit of the first movement, with reference to what is somewhere referred to as ‘Poulenc’s trade-mark motif’, only to plunge back into the boisterousness of the first part to bring it to an end.

Franck’s sonata always raises the question in the minds of listeners, why didn’t he write lots of music in this gorgeous, melodic vein? Well, of course there is other music that supports his claim to be among the 20 greatest composers (make your own lists).

And it’s one of the pieces that seems to survive rearrangement for other instruments with no damage. I don’t think I’d heard a flute arrangement before, and was immediately won over, partly because of the strength of the music in melodic and structural terms, and partly through the brilliant and tasteful performance, by both flutist and pianist. The flute spun a lovely, lyrical line that banished any feelings I might have had about the ability of the flute to create the kind of legato phrases that come naturally to the violin. The duo allowed a subtle rubato to emerge, accelerating and slowing along with the rise and fall of the music. I feared that with the sparkling climax at the end of the second movement, applause might break out, but we had an audience that was sensitive to what the music was saying.

The following Recitativo movement was calm and beautiful, allowing the melody slowly to find its way, making us listen. I even had the inadmissable feeling that the flute was creating a more memorable impact, capturing the music’s essence more successfully that a violin would; it was so calm and peaceful.

The melody of the last movement is so sublime – it has stuck with me since I first heard it, played by a fellow student one sunny afternoon at a famous University Congress at Curious Cove in Queen Charlotte Sound long ago. The soft, velvety sound of the flute, immaculately matched by the piano, might have sounded, for a moment, a bit off-hand as the end approached, but the spell was nevertheless sustained.

It brought an unexpectedly beautiful recital to an artless, heartfelt conclusion.

 

 

 

Popular trios from NZSO players at St Andrew’s at lunchtime

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Haydn: Piano Trio in G, Hob.XV:25 “Gypsy”

Mendelssohn: Piano Trio in D minor, Op.49

Koru Trio: Anne Loeser (violin), Sally Isaac (cello), Rachel Thomson (piano)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 23 March 2016, 12:15pm

Here was a dream team – two string players from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and a pianist who has frequently played with the orchestra when a piano is required as part of the band.

The lively, tuneful Haydn trio, one of his best-known, is a delight to hear. However, a few glitches in intonation early on in the first movement (adagio), and the violin tone being rather too prominent in that movement detracted a little from its glorious melodies.

The sublime poco adagio slow movement revealed a lovely blend of the instruments, and beautifully varied dynamics. The rondo all’Ongarese finale featured, as indicated by the name, Hungarian folk music. These gypsies were very speedy and vigorous, and left a happy impression of their dancing.

Mendelssohn’s trio is much longer, and begins much more sombre in tone than that of the Haydn work. There is much for the piano to do in the first movement – and indeed, elsewhere. The cello was most distinguished here, with its gorgeous flowing theme, after the initial agitato, which returns. Later, all play the theme, with astonishing rippling passages from the piano. This molto allegro agitato movement is quite long, and very dramatic.

The second movement, andante con moto tranquillo, opens with piano only, playing a song-like theme, reminiscent, not least through its pensive quality, of the composer’s Songs without Words for piano solo. Variations upon the theme followed. In the scherzo: leggiero e vivace third movement there were indeed lightness and liveliness. The sprightly character put me in mind of some of the composer’s Midsummer Night’s Dream music. The music became more vociferous as it darted here and there, like so many little sprites.

The Finale: allegro assai appassionata was indeed passionate compare with the previous movement. Broad expanses of music, and greater use of the forte dynamic were features. What a plethora of themes and modulations Mendelssohn worked into this movement! The exciting finishing passages demanded considerable virtuosity from the players.

Prolonged applause greeted the end of the trio’s performance. This was a concert of fine music, from fine musicians

 

Enterprising concert of New Zealand music at St Andrew’s lunchtime

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

 New Zealand Music for Woodwind: Ken Wilson, John Elmsly, Douglas Lilburn, Natalie Hunt, Ben Hoadley, Jeremy Mayall, Anthony Ritchie

Peter Dykes (oboe), Deborah Rawson and Peter Scholes (clarinets), Ben Hoadley (bassoon), Reuben Chin (saxophones), Kirsten Robertson (piano)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 16 March 2016, 12.15pm

An annual series of New Zealand Music for Woodwind, instigated by Ben Hoadley, had its eighth iteration with this concert. The enterprise and enthusiasm of wind players in introducing the audience to both new and older woodwind works by New Zealand composers is to be commended.

The occasion made for an interesting programme. Sadly, due to another commitment, I missed the first item, Ken Wilson’s Duo for clarinet and bassoon; doubly sad because Ken was a former neighbour, and good friend. I know from his widow that this work was recently recorded by today’s players, Peter Scholes and Ben Hoadley, in Auckland. Such was Ken’s modesty that I didn’t know until reading today’s programme note that he had a doctoral degree in composition from Indiana University, though I knew he had studied there.

Next we heard a premiere performance, one of three to which we were treated. This was an extraordinary work, by John Elmsly, currently Creative New Zealand/Jack C. Richards Composer-in-Residence at the New Zealand School of Music. He wrote One mouth, two voices in collaboration with brilliant young saxophonist Reuben Chin, currently undertaking post-graduate study at NZSM.

The work required Chin to play both soprano and alto saxophones at the same time. There were several short sections of the two saxophones being played, described in the programme note by Elmsly as the ‘choruses’, interspersed with ‘verses’ played alternately on the solo instruments.

Such was the complexity that Chin needed the score to be on three music-stands – he had no spare hands for turning pages! According to the programme note, ‘the party trick’ of playing both instruments simultaneously is not unknown, but it seems an astonishing feat. Coupling both instruments is interesting, but of course, there is a limit as to what notes can be played on each instrument, with only one hand apiece.

There were a lot of effects in the piece, but also fine melodic sequences. The solos exhibited exemplary playing, and delicious soft passages on both instruments. This contrasted with the almost raucous quality of their loud notes. The ‘choruses’ tended to be loud, and featured standard chords, as required by the limited notes available. It was an effective work, well worth hearing again.

A short and sweet Canon for two clarinets by Douglas Lilburn followed. It was notable for attractive interweaving of the two instruments. Two “Clarinet Duets in Red and Black”, Ladybug and Muchacho (Spanish for servant or maid), by young Wellington composer Natalie Hunt, a clarinettist herself, were really delightful. The first of the two short pieces was a wonderful dance for the insect (ladybird, if you prefer). One could see the insect hopping and flying around in what seemed a random fashion. The second was a premiere performance, and revealed superb writing for the instrument, bringing out its sonority and lyrical qualities in a very satisfying way. Played by two leading clarinettists, the pieces were a pleasure to hear.

Today’s bassoonist also composes; Ben Hoadley’s brief duet for two clarinets, was lively and fun, titled 10.10.10. To an organist that reads like the metre of a hymn tune, but in fact it was inspired by the film documentary One Day on Earth, filmed over a single 24-hour period in every country, on 10 October 2010.

Jeremy Mayall, recently Mozart Fellow at Otago University and now teaching at the Waikato Institute of Technology, wrote The Effect of Bundled Sticks on Sound for bassoon and effects pedals, which also had its premiere at this concert (the bassoon is the bundle of sticks). Ben Hoadley’s expertise as a bassoonist brought out the beauty of the instrument. I was not sure that the pedal effects (recorded sound, some of it recorded live from the instrument) added to the attractiveness, though they did to the volume and resonance, not to mention adding sundry extraordinary extraneous noises. The composer’s note says ‘…at its essence this piece is an exploration of sound’.

The final work (that made the concert rather too long) was Anthony Ritchie’s Sonata for oboe and piano. An energetic allegro vivace opened the work, with both Peter Dykes (NZSO associate principal oboe) and pianist Kirsten Robertson (née Simpson) all over the place on their instruments, at considerable speed. Its spiky changes were spirited and exciting. The adagio middle section is described in the programme note as ‘featuring a soulful oboe melody’, though to me, the oboe’s biting tone, particularly in the St. Andrew’s acoustic, belied this description somewhat, especially if auditorily compared with the saxophone. It was a tuneful sequence, though mostly (as with the rest of the sonata) fairly loud. The last section, maestoso-mesto-allegro, was musically diverse, but to me became a bit tedious with repetitions; I thought shorter would be more satisfying.

It was marvellous to have a group of such expert players all performing in one concert, and to hear new and not-so-new New Zealand music.

Accomplished duo play Brahms at St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Catherine Norton (piano) and Carolyn van Leuven (violin)

Brahms: Violin Sonata No 1 in G minor, Op 78
Scherzo from the F.A.E. Sonata (1853)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 17 February, 12:15 pm

The lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s started last Wednesday; Middle C neglected it.

But I was delighted to be at this one, starting the year so splendidly with Brahms. Catherine Norton’s name is reasonably familiar in Wellington, and I realized that Carolyn van Leuven’s ought to have been, too, as her short biography revealed, though her origins are in Canterbury, with studies and work in Europe and America, that she has played with the NZSO. She is now working in Wellington.

It was clear from the start that this was a seriously rehearsed performance, with care over balance, each taking pains to offer space and attention to the other; the piano, even with the lid on the long stick, remained a perfect partner. Brahms offers plenty of warmth and lyricism in his violin sonatas: the warmth of the violin and discretion of the piano part. They handle bits of melodies from two of his songs, ‘Regenlied’ and ‘Nachklang’, which offer a sort of emotional basis to the music. Though it is hardly fair to expect listeners today to pick up themes from a quotation from a song in another language, the symbolism of rain and then of sun shine, the alternating feeling of sadness and peace were there; in the second poem rain mingles with tears and they are audible in the semi-quavers in the last movement.

But Brahms is always careful to avoid emotional references that are too bold and precise or too obvious. The rather secretive opening of the Adagio led perhaps to a slightly too emphatic piano passage: perhaps understanding the poetic reference would have helped the listener, but that is inadmissible. The finale, Allegro, however was both calmly paced and even, though quite assertive, clearly followed the detailed dynamic markings, bringing to an end what was a singularly polished and satisfying performance.

To play the Sonata before Brahms’s Scherzo contribution to the ‘FAE’ collaboration with Schumann and his pupil Dietrich – a gift to their violinist friend Joseph Joachim – tends to draw attention to the Scherzo’s surprising maturity, written 25 years earlier, when Brahms was 20. The confidence of the brisk opening phase with its clean staccato piano chords, followed by a broad, meditative section were splendidly captured by the players, as if Brahms was referring to the character of the other movements of the sonata for which he was not responsible. Yet the feeling almost of grandeur towards the end could have been felt as the conclusion of the work rather than just the third movement (Schumann was assigned to both the second and last movements). It’s strange that the entire sonata is not played much.

This was a recital that dramatically illustrated the value of, the gratitude we should feel for, the year-long series of Wednesday lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s on The Terrace. For me at least, if I may for a moment reflect on my own relationship with them. In the mid 80s, I went regularly to the St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts, and pinned on various departmental notice boards details of forthcoming concerts, encouraging awareness of all the delights to be found there. They were probably a catalyst that led to my taking early retirement from the Public Service and devoting myself to both nature conservation and the preservation of historic buildings in Wellington, as well as to writing about music.

St Andrew’s, led by its minister, John Murray, was also important in dramatizing various civic issues such as the preservation of Wellington’s historic buildings. This was the time of building frenzy when council and developers were allies in the widespread destruction of scores of buildings that should simply have been valued and restored. The building boom culminated in the collapse of 1988; the bitter irony followed with many of them, many head offices, being vacated soon after by the companies that had built them, abandoning Wellington for Auckland and elsewhere.

One minor but precious one was 22 The Terrace, a very early building and near neighbour of the church, which survives thanks to the efforts of John Murray and others including the feisty ‘Save our City’ campaign.

The mid 80s (1986) also marked the first New Zealand International Festival of the Arts, with its important three-week-long series of lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s. Those concerts drew together a great many leading New Zealand musicians, as well as a few from abroad, who were not the main focus of the big festival events. The lunchtime concerts, and for a couple of festivals, daily early evening concerts as well, continued to enrich the festival till, in the post-Chris Doig era, through the later 90s, its artistic standards declined, turning away from a focus on acknowledged classics in the performing arts.

With the devoted enterprise of Marjan van Waardenberg and the generous support of the church itself, St Andrew’s helps preserve much of Wellington’s important musical character.

Interesting exploration of varied guitar music in NZSM’s students’ showcase

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music: St Andrew’s Showcase week

Guitar students: Jake Church, George Wills, Dylan Solomon

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Thursday, 8 October 2015, 12.15pm

The last of the four showcase concerts from the New Zealand School of Music offered guitarists a platform. One of the four programmed players could not appear, meaning that a piece by New Zealand composer Mike Hogan, Hammerowen, was omitted.

Thus, in contrast to the hour-long viola concert on Wednesday, this one was about ten minutes shorter than the normal 45 minutes.

Two guitarists calling themselves Duo Kita, Jake Church and George Wills, began with two pieces from Brazilian composer Sergio Assad’s Summer Gardens Suite. It rather established the character of the whole concert: undemonstrative, gentle, subtle, discrete, for it supplied an appropriate though back-to-front opening piece, Farewell, a restrained and regretful lament.

Twentieth century guitar music sometimes seems to have little connection with the popular image of guitar music, probably coloured in the imagination by that of the great Spanish composers. In these two pieces the resources of the two instruments are carefully and imaginatively exploited and the expressive potential of a full range of dynamics (other than fortissimo, though careful amplification can achieve striking effects), and articulations deriving from the variety of plucking techniques. The second piece, Butterflies had little connection with either Schumann’s inventions or of Offenbach’s boisterous ballet score; dominated by a rather a hypnotic, self-reflective spirit that was driven by a repeated, rising four-note motif.

Jake Church remained in his place and then introduced the concert; unfortunately I did not catch certain key details (the microphone was iffy) and had to check things later. He explained that he was about to play a Bach suite that was different from that in the programme: the Suite in E flat, BWV 998 which, according to the usual reference source, was written for keyboard but later arranged for guitar. “Arranged for guitar, it is usually played in D major with a ‘Drop D’ tuning [that means the low E string is tuned down a tone to D]. Julian Bream played it in a BBC2 broadcast on television in early 1978 at the All Saints chapel of New Wardour Castle, when he announced it as ‘of vital importance’.” (Wikipedia). Church played the Prelude and the third movement, Allegro.

The Prelude was quietly cheerful with rolling triplets while the Allegro was a dance-like piece with quicker triplets, quite charming. I could well understand how guitarists were happy to purloin it, under what-ever pretext, from the plentifully-endowed keyboard players.

And Jake Church followed that with a Levantine Suite by Dusan Bogdanovich, born in Yugoslavia (presumably Serbia) just 50 years ago. One of the most distinguished contemporary guitar composers, his three movement work was an impressive exercise in quite complex counterpoint and rhythms, interesting textures, often delicately decorated, and Church’s playing was up to its demands. I confess to losing track of the shifts between the three sections, but there was an episode involving fractured scale passages, and it came to an end as the composer would have wished, without rhetoric or attention seeking.

Dylan Solomon’s offering was one of Scarlatti’s 500 or so keyboard sonatas , K 213 in D minor, a steady-paced, deliberate piece in which the original conception for harpsichord could be readily heard, without creating any sense that the guitar was inappropriate; a short pause in the middle led to a repeat that seemed somewhat of a variation on the first section, at least in tone and articulation. It was admirable.

Tarrega’s Adelita and Preludio No 2 was played by the other half of the Duo Kita, George Wills. It was a charming revelation of the gifts of a composer whom most of us would know only from the unforgettable Recuerdos de la Alhambra. Here was the same melodic gift, gently paced; the first piece sounded to me more improvisatory, ‘preludish’ than the more song-like second piece and I wondered whether Wills had played Adelita second for it sounded more song-like, restrained and perhaps infused by a feeling for whoever Adelita was.

George Wills brought the recital to an end with Danza Negra by Columbian composer Lucas Saboya. The title rang bells but I found it was a recollection of a Dansa Negra by Brazilian composer Guanieri – a piano piece played by Katherine Stott at the Nelson Chamber Music Festival earlier this year (useless trivia).

The real enigma rested with the programme note that referred to Saboya’s piece as part of Suite Ernestina, the last part of which contains an ‘allusion’ to a Danza negra by one Antonio Lauro’s Suite Venezolana. In a samba rhythm with a generalised South American character (meaning I’m not really able to pin-point the melodic and rhythmic styles), it involved virtuosic scales and other fast finger-work that Wills handled with impressive, idiomatic skill.

Though the recital was rather abbreviated, it gave the happy few who were there the chance to expand their musical horizons with both original guitar music and excellent adaptations from the classical masters from three most adept instrumentalists.

Violist Gillian Ansell and student Aidan Verity with viola concertos at NZSM Showcase

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand School of Music; Showcase week – viola students

Stamitz: Viola Concerto in D, Op.1
Schumann: Märchenbilder for Viola and Piano, Op.113
Walton: Viola Concerto

Aidan Verity, viola; Gillian Ansell, viola; Rafaella Garlick-Grice, piano

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 7 October 2015, 12.15pm

Having been told the previous day, and by the listed outline of concerts to come in this week of NZSM student recitals that this was to be one of ‘viola students’, I was disappointed to discover that in fact only one such student was playing, plus her teacher, Gillian Ansell.  I hastily add that it is no disappointment to hear Gillian Ansell play, but over the years NZSM has excelled with its viola students, and we have heard numbers of such students perform at end-of-year recitals.  So today was a surprise.

The works were not performed in the order in which they were printed the programme, and no announcement was made to indicate that the order of the first two items was reversed. This might have confused some.

The student, Aidan Verity (spelt in the programme also as ‘Aiden’) is a very accomplished performer. Her Stamitz concerto, in a piano reduction version, as was the later Walton concerto, quickly revealed her gorgeous tone and highly skilled playing.  Her deeper tones were particularly mellifluous.  She was a confident and assured performer, and made double-stopping and fast runs seem easy.  Just occasionally intonation was a little suspect, but these occasions became fewer and fewer as she warmed to her task.  The overall performance was delightful, and in places magical.

It was quite an exacting programme to have, following Stamitz’s three-movement concerto, the Schumann work of four movements.  There were some tricky passages here, especially in the Rasch (quick) third movement, which demands some fast finger-work.  The final movement, Langsam, mit melancholischen Ausdruck (slow, with melancholic expression) is, strangely, in a major key despite its melancholy nature, while two of the earlier movements are in minor keys, despite the more lively characters.

Aidan gave the last movement, with its abrupt ending, a fine interpretation, making the music sing soulfully; a curious contrast to the brighter temperament of the previous two movements.

To have perhaps the most important viola concerto in the repertoire rendered by a professional violist of Gillian Ansell’s standing and experience at a lunch-hour concert was an unexpected bonus.  Here, as in the Stamitz work, Rafaella Garlick-Grice’s performance at the piano was remarkable; her rendition of the orchestral role was thoroughly accurate, supportive, and idiomatic to the different characters of the two concertos.

Gillian Ansell introduced the work, telling us of the link between her viola and this concerto.  As the excellent programme note told us, the first recording of the concerto was made by the noted English violist Frederick Riddle who was a previous owner of her viola, and she thinks it likely that that recording was made using what is now her instrument.

Ansell took a little time to settle, but then played splendidly, with a mellow sound.  However, despite the skill of the performers, I found the concerto did not ‘grab’ me; the absence of an orchestra subjected the work to too severe a test as the lack of orchestral colour, variety of timbres left it feeling a rather cold piece, even pedestrian in places. Yet this was an admirable performance by both Gillian and Rafaella which revealed the music’s lyric qualities but was simply not able to exploit them as fully as orchestral support would have allowed.   It goes without saying that the many technical difficulties were well within Gillian Ansell’s grasp.

To say the pianist’s contribution to this concert was major, is an understatement.  As in most of Schumann’s music for instrument and piano or voice and piano, the latter is vital, its part and varied.  To play two concertos substituting for orchestra in the one concert, plus another major work is a considerable challenge, and one that this performer fully met.

As I’d expected, there was a bigger audience than on the first two days; for Wednesday is the usual day for St. Andrew’s lunchtime concerts.  The timing of these concerts in the school holidays might also have contributed to the rather disappointing turnouts.  Though the programme ran a quarter of an hour longer than the usual lunchtime concert, I did not notice anyone leaving, which suggests that these concerts are not attended in the lunch-breaks by many workers in the area who had to return to their jobs.

 

Mellifluous reeds hold sway at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace Lunchtime Concert Series
NZSM Clarinet Students’ Presentation
Tutor: Debbie Rawson

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

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2015

Having recently enjoyed the concert given by the NZSM’s saxophone students, I found myself looking forward to hearing their “wind cousins”, the clarinettists, do their stuff.

On the way to the concert I found myself thinking of what one would call a group of clarinettists  – of course, players themselves may well have devised their own unilaterally-accepted collective term, of which I’m unaware.  Nevertheless I had fun turning over words in my mind such as “colony” or “chorus” (both rather humdrum), before more enterprisingly (and more naughtily) entertaining descriptions such as “conundrum”, “coven” or “calamity”.

Whatever the case, and whatever the reality, there was certainly nothing calamitous about the playing of these young musicians. Right from the very beginning there was delight to be had, beginning with Laura Brown’s sensitive and flowing performance of the third Movement Andante Grazioso from Brahms’ First Clarinet Sonata. Especially winning was the player’s delivery of the Trio, beautifully withdrawn tones shaped convincingly into a whole, and with lovely support from the pianist, Hugh McMillan.

A different kind of sonority was presented to us by bass clarinetist Patrick Richardson, relishing the chance to demonstrate the distinctive tones and timbres of an instrument whose raison d’ete seems little more than to “double” other instruments’ lines in orchestral works.

I was delighted to encounter a work I’d never heard before, Vaughan Williams’ Six Studies in English Folksong. Written originally for ‘cello and piano, these pieces have been transcribed for any number of instruments, the bass clarinet being particularly suited to the composer’s original choice in terms of range and colour.

Patrick Richardson played these short pieces with such evocation as to banish thoughts of winter and take our sensibilities to times and places that seemed like a world away. I was particularly taken by the beauty of the playing in the fourth study, featuring a tune I didn’t know but which nevertheless seemed to open my “nostalgia floodgates” – this despite the somewhat quirky title of the original, “She borrowed some of her Mother’s Gold”. Again, there was support of great sensitivity from the pianist, this time Kirsten Simpson.

The relationship between clarinet and saxophone was underlined by the next item, featuring saxophonist Genevieve Davidson – an Etude (No.3 from a set of 15) written by Frenchman Charles Koechlin (1867-1950), a prolific composer who was a contemporary of Debussy and Ravel, and who associated with and influenced people like Poulenc, Roussel and Mihaud but whose music has been since overshadowed by theirs.

The études (written in 1942, for saxophone AND piano) are less “display virtuoso” pieces than “examinations” of the former instrument’s resources – and Genevieve Davidson’s gorgeous, seductive alto-sax tones brought out all of the music’s tender and contrastingly energetic characteristics. Her playing captured both the waltz-rhythms’ graceful manner and the livelier polka-like mid-section’s insouciance – a delightful performance.

Laura Brown returned with a small but heartfelt 100th birthday gift for composer Douglas Lilburn, in the form of the second movement from his 1948 Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano. We were told by Brown to “listen for the morepork during the music’s middle section”. Beginning with characteristic pianistic sonorities, the music allowed the clarinet some opening declamation before requiring from the player some deeply-wrought, withdrawn tones, pushing back the work’s vistas with every utterance – the morepork’s voice chimed clearly in the piano part. Apart from some difficulty in voicing one or two high-lying notes, Laura Brown’s sounding of the movement was as ambient, flowing and lyrical as one could wish for – a birthday treasure, indeed.

Came the colony/chorus/what you will onto the platform next to perform a different kind of delight – an arrangement for clarinet quintet (if I remember rightly, Debbie Rawson thought possibly by New Zealand composer Ken Wilson) of the allegretto movement of Beethoven’s Op.10 No.2 Piano Sonata. Joining Laura Brown and Patrick Richardson for this exercise were Jess Schofield, Rebecca Adam and Brendan Agnew.

Well, whomever “Anon” was, or is, the arrangement worked splendidly, in my opinion. Beginning with the bass and B-flat clarinets, the music’s purposeful opening gestures grew gracefully upwards to their flowering-points (with double-note figurations for Beethoven’s octaves when the passage was later repeated – a deft touch), the lighter-toned instruments nicely “opening out” the sonorities. The players beautifully observed the more “relaxed” aspect of the Trio section, giving the phrases time to breath, and affording some relief from the ever-so-slightly vertiginous swing of those opening ascent

The group sprung a nice surprise upon us at the piece’s conclusion – we were treated to an ungazetted performance of Bach’s famous “Air on a G-string” , again, an arrangement that fell most gratefully on the ear, the players sensitively augmenting the dynamics in places, which served to confirm something of the music’s inner strength and indestructibility.

Back to Genevieve Davidson and her saxophone, for a performance of music by another lesser-known French composer, Florent Schmitt (1870-1958), whose music is regarded in some quarters as “the greatest that nobody has ever heard of” – among the laudatory critical appraisals of his work that I found was the following: – “it (the music) shimmers with bold conviction, elemental intensity and and a fearless harmonic vocabulary”. Given that there’s nothing like a “cause” to bring out shoals of enthusiasm for a neglected genius, on the basis of the short but intensely beautiful work we heard, the rest of Schmitt’s output would be well worth investigating.

Songe de Coppelius was a work inspired by a well-known tale of E.T.A.Hoffman, one also used by another French composer Leo Delibes as the story for a full-length ballet, Coppelia. Brief, but in places hauntingly beautiful, the music’s depth of feeling was here expressed by both players, Genevieve Davidson coaxing from her soprano sax a beguiling variety of colours and dynamics. The music’s  sense of mourning at the outset was gently interspersed in places with more rhapsodic languishment – it all further demonstrated the innate musicianship and judgement of this gifted young player.

Finally we were treated to the distinctive timbres not merely one reed but two, in the form of a work for oboe, the instrument played by Annabel Lovatt. This was a piece by Johann Wenzel Kalliwoda (1801-1866) yet another prolific but neglected composer whose work was “given an airing” by people involved with this concert. Incidentally, “Kalliwoda” is the somewhat unfortunate Germanised version of the composer’s “proper” native Bohemian name, Jan Kalivoda, which I’ve actually never seen written as such on recordings or in reviews of his music.

Unaccustomed as I normally am to such things coming my way, I was pleased to be able to indulge in some one-upmanship regarding Kalliwoda’s name, as people I spoke with after the concert had never heard of him (I must, however, shamefully admit to not having heard any of his music!). Annabel Lovatt told us that at the time this work was written, pieces for solo oboe were rare indeed, and that she would “do her best” to bring it all to life for us. She was too self-deprecating, as she gave a terrific performance of what turned out to be a full-blooded virtuoso work.

Entitled “Morceau de Salon”, the music began gently on the piano, the oboe joining in with melancholy tones, here intoned beautifully, and confidently dealing with technical hurdles such as wide leaps and exposed phrasings with admirable fluency. As the piece proceeded the virtuoso demands made of the player seemed to crowd in, as if jostling one another out of the way – there may have been one or two notes missed in the florid hurly-burly, a phrase or two snatched at a little too eagerly – but Annabel Lovatt certainly engaged with the music, and emerged at the piece’s conclusion triumphant, having obviously given her “all”.

A highly entertaining and informative concert, then – expert playing and presenting of some highly diverting and fascinating music.