Tag: St.Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Seven voice students from Victoria’s school of music present varied and well delivered recital

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Classical Voice Students of the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University
Accompanied by David Barnard, head accompanist and vocal coach

Simon Hernyak: ‘O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion’ (Messiah – Handel); ‘In the silence of the secret night’ (Rachmaninov)
Shaunagh Chambers: ‘Mein gläubiges Herze’ (Bach, BWV 68); ‘Stopping by woods on a snowy evening’ (Ned Rorem)
Zoe Stocks: ‘Zeffiretti lusingieri’ (Idomeneo – Mozart); ‘Adieu notre petite table” (Manon – Massenet)
Emily Yeap: ‘Batti, batti’ (Don Giovanni – Mozart); ‘Silent Noon’ (Vaughan Williams)
Samuel McKeever: ‘Vous qui faites l’endormie’ (Faust – Gounod); ‘Sorge infausta una procella’ (Orlando – Handel)
Jennifer Huckle: ‘Soupir’ (Ravel); ‘En vain, pour éviter’ (Carmen – Bizet)
Elian Pagalilawan: ‘Widmung’ (Schumann); ‘Chanson Triste’ (Duparc)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 16 September, 12:15 pm

Here was one of the frequent recitals by Victoria University’s school of music’s students – this time voice students: two second years, the rest third years.

Rather than plod through the two songs each by the seven singers, it might be interesting to regard it as a concert that drew music of various kinds, chronologically, from 300 years of European music. I’ll start with the earliest:

From Bach’s Cantata no 68, Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt, Shaunagh Chambers sang ‘Mein gläubiges Herze’, a warm and joyous aria that she sang well, if in a rather uniform manner, rhythmically and dynamically. Then two Handel arias: Simon Hernyak with ‘O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion’ from Messiah and Samuel McKeever with ‘Sorge infausta una procella’ from the opera Orlando. Simon’s voice in the Messiah aria was attractive though perhaps too quiet and unvarying to enliven the aria’s sense very well. ‘Sorge infausta…’ is hardly over-familiar: the magician Zoroastro intervenes in the story from Ariosto’s famous Renaissance epic, Orlando furioso. It was a well-placed and striking, resonant aria to bring the recital to its end.

Mozart represented the latter 18th century. From Idomeneo, Zoe Stocks sang the charming ‘Zeffiretti lusingieri’ in her attractive voice that captured the feeling of the breeze rustling the garden. Emily Yeap chose the very different placatory aria that Zerlina sings to Masetto in Don Giovanni, ‘Batti batti’, displaying a good upper register; though its complex emotional sense somewhat eluded her.

I’d have welcomed more German Lieder: Schumann’s hugely popular ‘Widmung’ to a poem by Rückert (‘Du meine Seele, du mein Herz’) in the large Op 25 collection, Myrthen, represented the period well. It’s one of the best loved of the abundant riches of Schumann’s songs and Elian Pagalilawan’s approach, in vocal quality and feeling was a lovely fit.

Gounod’s Faust comes next chronologically; it was Samuel McKeever’s first song and his distinctive bass proved a convincing vehicle for Mephistopheles’s ‘Vous qui faites l’endormie’, with a cruel, mocking laugh. Fifteen years later came Bizet’s Carmen from which Jennifer Huckle sang convincingly, ‘En vain, pour éviter’, her awakening to her fate as revealed by the cards: each word carefully enunciated.

Staying in France, Manon by Massenet provides the touching soprano aria, ‘Adieu notre petite table”, that captures her self-aware fickleness; some lack of verbal clarity was not really a problem.

Duparc has a very special place in French song, or ‘Mélodie’, in spite of the very few songs that survived his self-criticism. ‘Chanson triste’. Elian Pagalilawan sang with a calm, nicely projected voice that captured its poetic character. Staying in France, mezzo Jennifer Huckle sang Ravel’s ‘Soupir’ (one of the Trois poèmes de Mallarmé, originally with instrumental accompaniment), handling both the lower range and some high passages, as well as the second more vivid part, comfortably, in a calm voice that suited the music very well.

Vaughan Williams and Rachmaninov were also, like Ravel, born in the 1870s. Vaughan Williams’s ‘Silent Noon’, a setting of a Rossetti poem, and Emily Yeap here found a setting that suited her voice a little better than ‘Batti batti’ had. She sang calmly, capturing lovers in the romantic countryside very effectively.

The Rachmaninov song was ‘In the silence of the secret night’; like others, she carefully named the poets of each piece, an admirable practice that I have always believed important to be aware of. It applies even more to opera librettists. Even if one has never heard of the poet, as I hadn’t of Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet; but he’s interesting to pursue in Wikipedia or your encyclopedia. Her dealing with this song was rather more nicely controlled and atmospheric than had been her Messiah aria earlier.

Finally, the mid-20th century was represented by American composer Ned Rorem who seems to be still alive at 96. I’ve come across him before, perhaps in student recitals, and he’d made an impression on me. So did this song, to a Robert Frost poem, the musical setting clear-sighted. The programme leaflet named the tutors of each singer (another admirable practice), and Jenny Wollerman’s name was by Shaunagh Chambers’ who sang Rorem’s attractive song; I could hear Wollerman’s voice and influence clearly enough in both the song and in her student’s performance.

I very much enjoyed this recital, as much for the performances, the admirable accompaniments by the school’s vocal coach, David Barnard, and the choice and range of songs as for each singer’s efficient movement on and off: no waiting, no delays; fourteen songs in just 45 minutes.

 

Two less familiar cello masterpieces from Lavinnia Rae and Gabriela Glapska at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Lavinnia Rae (cello) and Gabriela Glapska (piano)

Beethoven: Cello Sonata No 5 in D, Op 102 No 2
Britten: Cello Sonata in C, Op 65 (movements 1, 3, 4, 5)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Thursday 30 July, 12:15 pm

Although this recital offered a good opportunity to hear two significant cello sonatas, not often played, the audience at St Andrew’s was a lot smaller than it had been for New Zealand School of Music vocal students the day before. Two lunchtime concerts a week might seem excessive; no doubt it’s an effort to meet the expectations of players whose concerts were scheduled in the months of silence: it’s a shame if audiences don’t respond to these free concerts by being as generous with their time as the musicians themselves are.

The players
Gabriela Glapska has been heard recently with the Ghost Trio at St Andrew’s and later at the Adam Concert Room at Victoria University. She’s also been involved in recent months in concerts by the SMP Ensemble and Stroma, as well as other ensembles and in an accompanying role. She was prominent in the performances of Poulenc’s La voix humaine in the Festival in February.

Lavinnia Rae has not been so conspicuous in the last year or so as she’s been a post-graduate student at the Royal College of Music in London. But her name appears in many of Middle C’s reviews in earlier years.

Both musicians played in the NZSM orchestra accompanying Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen in 2017.

Beethoven Cello Sonata in D
Though the Op 69 cello sonata (No 3) seems to be more often played, neither the early pair, Op 5, nor the two of Op 102, written in Beethoven’s last decade, are to be denigrated. The last of Beethoven’s five cello sonatas is the only one of the five in the conventional three-movement shape; three others have only two movements while Op 69 has three which are somewhat unusual in character. The Op 102 sonatas probably need to be heard as foreshadowing the piano sonatas and string quartets of his Late period.

Its opening is straight away marked by the vivid contrast between Glapska’s arresting piano and Rae’s quiet, legato cello playing, and it continues to draw attention to the essential differences between the percussive piano and the quiet, more lyrical cello, though now and again, the two merge; there’s no doubt that Beethoven intended it to be heard like this.

The second movement might have been some kind of reminiscence of the Ghost movement of the piano trio carrying that name. There was a mysterious character in the duo’s playing, and they adhered to Beethoven’s clear intention to use this movement to emphasise a musical affinity between piano and cello, in contrast to the first movement. The third movement again challenges the conventions with a densely created fugue that, with only a brief, unexpected, calm respite, resumes its relentless passage. These were indeed the characteristics of this performance that left one with a strong understanding of the composer’s intentions and genius.

Britten’s Cello Sonata
I have to confess to not being a total devotee of Britten, apart from a hand-full of what I guess are his more popular works. Much of his cello sonata however, is moving, and though I didn’t warm to most of it at my first hearing some years ago, more hearings have given me a distinctly greater appreciation. Perhaps it’s unfortunate that the skill and musicality of performers are rather important in inducing real enjoyment. My familiarity with the Britten/Rostropovich account has set the bar very high, bringing it to life with remarkable conviction, creating the feeling that it is indeed a masterpiece.

It’s in five movements, though the second was left out, the spikey, Scherzo-pizzicato.

This performance opened, Dialogo Allegro, imaginatively, with a sense of inevitability, evolving as a dialogue, such as would have come naturally from the warm friendship between composer and its dedicatee and first performer.

I enjoyed the next movement – the second, Elegia: the calm, secretive, impatience of its opening; with its enigmatic piano chords generating a melancholy, lugubrious spirit, as the cello meanders over its lower strings. The notes accurately described that fourth movement, the extravert Marcia energico: its menacing spirit generated by uncanny, fast harmonics.

The extended, scampering Finale sounds fiendishly difficult for both players. The notes defined the bowing technique, bouncing the bow on the strings in the Finale, as ‘saltando’. As a youthful cellist myself, I was embarrassed not to have known, or remembered, that name.

There were moments when I felt the composer was rather obsessively concerned to provide dedicatee Rostropovvich with a strikingly challenging work that he would turn into great, arresting music through his sheer performance and interpretive genius. I mean no criticism in observing that it’s hardly possible to expect lesser musicians successfully to uncover and give life to everything in this big five-movement work.

As so often with these lunchtime concerts, here were two minor (probably better than that) masterpieces that don’t get much played, and we must be grateful that so many professional – or near professional – musicians are ready to play without fees at St Andrew’s, and that Wellington has an amateur (read ‘unpaid’) entrepreneur, Marjan van Waardenberg, with the persuasive powers necessary to recruit them, to schedule and publicise their performances, as well as a central-city church happy to accommodate them.

 

Koru Trio – giving the St.Andrews’s audience its koha’s worth and more……

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Koru Trio at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington

BEETHOVEN – Piano Trio No.5 in D Major Op.70 No. 1 “Ghost”
ZEMLINSKY – Piano Trio in D Minor Op, 3

The Koru Trio – Anne Loeser (violin) / Sally Isaac (‘cello) / Rachel Thomson (piano)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Lunchtime Concert Series, Wellington

Wednesday, 29th July, 2020

One of the largest lunchtime concert audiences I’ve seen at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace enthusiastically responded to two splendid performances by the Koru Trio, a group known to me up to now by reputation only – a quick check of the Middle C review archive confirmed that so far I’d not had the good fortune to review a single concert by the ensemble. I must record here that, long before the interval I was already bemoaning the opportunities I’d missed out on over the years, the Trio having been formed as long ago as 2011! In fact, to my astonishment and pleasure,  the concert replicated the excitement and interest of another I’d recently attended at the same venue, and had subsequently reviewed – that by the newly-formed Ghost Trio, coupling, as here, one of Beethoven’s masterly works in this genre with a lesser-known one by a different composer. On that earlier occasion it was the miraculous Op.1 Piano Trio of Andrzej Panufnik, while here, the Koru Trio after THEIR Beethoven performance gave us the no less remarkable, youthfully-conceived Op.3 Piano Trio of Alexander Von Zemlinsky.

First came the Beethoven Trio, Op.70 No.1, known popularly as the “Ghost”, a nickname attributed by most accounts to the composer’s former pupil Carl Czerny associating in later years the second movement’s evocative writing with the ghost of Hamlet’s father – interestingly enough, Beethoven was toying at the time of writing this trio with the idea of an opera about Macbeth, which accounts for the forgivable slip of association in the Koru’s otherwise excellent programme notes, which had Beethoven’s music recalling Hamlet’s encounter with his father “in Shakespeare’s Macbeth”! The work begins completely differently, of course with an exciting, energetic unison, here instantly grabbing the listeners’ attention with strong, focused playing, which continued throughout the lyrical response to the opening “helter-skelter”. The development began with “another way of doing the opening”, whimsical exchanges leading to major key exhortions and wonderful roller-coaster ride figurations, and left me relishing the thought of the composer’s chortling with exuberant glee at the “plunge” back into the recapitulated opening figure! As much as I loved the energy of the playing I was as much taken with the delicacy and feathery quality the players found in some of the writing, even if from where I was sitting the St.Andrew’s acoustic seemed to favour the piano at the strings’ expense.

Vibrato-less tones from the strings added to the slow movement’s “spooky” effect, the lines suitably eerie and suspenseful, punctuated by sudden bursts of tone and spidery keyboard descents and tremolandos – I thought pianist Rachel Thomson’s beautifully-sustained trilling and tremolandi helped create an almost Musorgsky-like atmosphere in places, with Anne Loeser’s and Sally Isaac’s string playing suitably spectral in attendance. The group marshalled the tensions to great effect – in places the tones were more “lament-like” than ghostly, with the two crescendi almost unnerving in their lack of inhibition. I thought that, as the movement’s end approached, the instrumental sounds in places became “as from the earth”, the music a mere conduit through which mysterious impulses were giving tongue.

A measure of relief was afforded by the first strains of the finale – a kind of “glad we’re out of there” feeling which burgeoned into exuberance in places, every player contributing to the buzz of activity, and sharing the bouts of momentary bemusement at the lines occasionally spinning upwards and disappearing in Houdini-like fashion, only to reappear as if descending by parachute! It made for a thoroughly invigorating entertainment, bristling with good humour and well-being, just the stuff needed! – a lovely performance!

Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Piano Trio made up the rest of the concert, the work exerting no less a fascination on an audience by this time in thrall to the blandishments of the music-making. The work’s Schumannesque opening – darkly passionate, as if its composer was “wrestling with ghosts” – alternated with contrasting sequences, a wistful longing which transforms into a feeling for the German woods with characteristic horn-calls evoking the romance of darkness and mystery. We heard long-breathed lines whose harmonies modulated in and out of the shadows in fine Romantic style, the influence of Brahms, who encouraged the younger composer, readily apparent (Brahms, incidentally, insisted that his own publisher print Zemlinsky’s work). A grand romantic summation ended the first movement, brought off here with great style and panache!

A warm, richly upholstered piano solo (in places bringing to my mind Janacek’s piano writing) began the slow movement, before violin and ‘cello joined in, and so initiated a most passionately-voiced threesome, bristling with impulsive sequences (amid which I caught an echo of Dvorak’s ‘Cello Concerto!) and reaching a kind of fever-pitch before subsiding, exhausted, into gentleness and rapture. By contrast the finale was all skitterish urgency and al fresco energy to begin with, accompanied by redolent hunting sounds from the piano, which fought a rearguard action to keep the strings on the move – I enjoyed the lively interplay between the opposing camps, Zemlinsky’s writing never predictable, and, in fact, saving a brightly-gleaming frisson of surprise and delight for the very end – a work I enjoyed getting to know, and through which the Trio made a lot of fun in sharing with us so joyously!

 

 

Ghost Trio makes an auspicious debut at St.Andrew’s with music by Beethoven and Panufnik

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Ghost Trio: Gabriela Glapska, piano, Monique Lapins, violin, Ken Ichinose, cello

Sir Andrzej Panufnik: Piano Trio Op.1

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Trio in C minor, Op.1 No3

St. Andrews on the Terrace

Wednesday 1 July, 12.15 pm

 

This was a concert of music by two young composers living more than a century apart, still finding their musical language, but already foreshadowing the great works they were to produce later. Panufnik is hardly a household name. He was a prolific composer of 10 symphonies and other orchestral works, songs, chamber music and piano pieces. He was not yet twenty when he wrote the  Piano Trio in C minor as an ‘Exercise’. The piece opens with a dramatic piano solo with the violin and cello picking up motifs, elaborating and expanding them. The opening movement is an exercise in sonata form. The stormy beginning devolves into a beautiful lyrical passage. The second movement, Largo is a song with a tinge of sadness. The final movement, Presto is a Rondo, with a manic dance theme. To me the piece sounded like Debussy, rather the works of the young Panufnik’s great contemporary composers like Schoenberg, Hindemith or Prokofiev. This piece, like all of Panufnik’s music written before the war was lost during the Warsaw uprising of 1944 and Panufnik recreated it from memory in 1945, after the war and revised it again many years later. It is a very agreeable introduction to the music of one of the last century’s significant composers.

Beethoven’s three Piano Trios, Op. 1, were played at Count Lichnowsky’s palace probably in 1793. Beethoven was 23. He had learned from Haydn, had recently moved to Vienna, and these pieces were his calling card. Haydn considered the C minor Trio problematic, hard to understand, but the work gained popularity when published.  It heralded that here was a new, important musical voice, with powerful things to say about the turbulent world that Beethoven would later explore in works such as the ‘Pathétique’ Sonata or his Fifth Symphony. The first movement is built on a profound gorgeous melody developed in the interplay of the three instruments. The second movement, Andante Cantabile is an extended set of variations on a song-like melody that is at the heart of the piece. This is followed by a jolly Menuetto and Trio. The finale is a forceful Presto with a playful theme and a spectacular piano part that would have given Beethoven an opportunity to display his virtuosity.

This was an outstanding performance. The three musicians formed a cohesive ensemble. The pianist, Gabriela Glapska came from Poland to complete a PhD in performance at the NZ School of Music and now works there as an accompanist. She played with a natural ease and fluency, that she shared with the other two musicians. Monique Lapins  joined the NZ String Quartet last year. Her playing was notable for a beautiful tone and sensitivity. Ken Ichinose is the Associate Principal Cello of the NZ Symphony Orchestra and a very experienced chamber musician. He provided a secure clear and beautiful base line for the ensemble.

It was great to be back at the St, Andrews regular Wednesday lunch time concerts. These are such a feature of Wellington’s musical life. The audience was much larger than usual, perhaps because people were starved for live music, but almost certainly because they had anticipated an exceptionally fine concert.

Moving and delightful recital of German Lieder at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Will King (baritone) and Nicholas Kovacek (piano)

Brahms: Vier ernste Gesänge (Four serious songs)
Schubert: ‘Frühlingsglaube’; two songs from Die schöne Müllerin: ‘Am Feierabend’ and ‘Der Neugierige’; ‘Nacht und Träume’; ‘An die Musik’

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 24 June, 12:15 pm

Though we missed St Andrew’s lunchtime concert last week celebrating the survival of live music in public places, this was warmly encouraging with a back-to-normal audience, from two graduate students at Victoria University’s School of Music.

The last time I heard Will King was in Eternity Opera’s production of The Marriage of Figaro in 2017. Though I’d like to hear him again in opera, this recital showed him as a mature and accomplished Lieder singer, and in particular, one who could deal properly with Brahms’s sombre Four Serious Songs.

What is striking about the first of them, ‘Den es gehet dem Menschen’, is the contrast between the uniform seriousness of the voice, often in contrast with agitated, flashing piano accompaniment. It demonstrated the beautifully controlled lyrical voice over a spectacular piano part that evoked a sort of frenzy. That spirit of the second song is very different. ‘Ich wandte mich’ expresses acceptance of death through the singer’s calm delivery, with occasional appropriate gestures, to suggest that Brahms is explaining what he himself clearly finds philosophically compatible in his contemplation of death.

I find it interesting that several great composers who were confessed non-believers (Berlioz, Verdi, Brahms and Fauré) were comfortable taking thoughts from the Bible to deal with a ‘humanist’ point of view. Each composed what are among the greatest and best-known Requiems).

The third song uses words from Sirach or Ecclesiasticus (not to be confused with Ecclesiastes) one of the so-called Apocrypha or books that were removed from the Protestant Bible in recent times. The words contemplate death as felt by one in full possession of his life; and then by one who is old and weak, with nothing more to hope for: ‘O Tod, wie bitter bist du’.  It could well have been a self-portrait in Brahms’s last year, and the song and the way both singer and pianist delivered a calm and comforting performance, captured its essence.

And the last song is the famous passage from Corinthians I, 13: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels’, sung with a clear, humane feeling that would be endorsed by believers and non-believers alike. The four songs are not among Brahms’s most popular perhaps and I may have heard only one previous live performance; but they are universally admired, and need to be more performed.

Unhappily, we can no longer expect to hear music of this kind on our debased Concert Programme.

Five Schubert songs completed the programme, which was a bit shorter than is usual (regrettably). All were among Schubert’s best known and most loved. Uhland’s poem ‘Frühlingsglaube’ (Faith in Spring), gained through the reticence of both performers.

Two songs from Schubert’s wonderful settings of Wilhelm Müller’s cycle Die schöne Müllerin followed: ‘Am Feierabend’ (‘Evening rest’ or ‘After work’) set to happy, hopeful music in triple metre; but when it ends with the miller getting no sign that he is even noticed by the mill-owner’s daughter, the rhythm falters. .

And ‘Der Neugierige’ (The Inquirer), in which the miller, next, asks the brook whether the miller’s daughter loves him, there is again no response. The transition from buoyant hope to despair was deeply felt.

‘Nacht und Träume’ is the setting of a poem by Matthäus Casimir von Collin, brother of the author of the play Egmont for which Beethoven wrote the famous overture. It is one of Schubert’s later songs: deeply moving, a good example of a beautiful setting of a poem of no great distinction but which inspires a great composer to capture its calm and underlying disquiet, never revealed or explained.

And finally one of the most poignant of Schubert’s Lieder: ‘An die Musik’, a setting of a simple, touching poem by Schubert’s friend Franz von Schober. Again, it’s a quiet, intimate, restrained song, addressed as it were to a lover – ‘Music’.

This was a fine recital the honour for which music be shared by singer and accompanist. And it renewed my long-standing feeling that audiences today have too little exposure to the real treasures of classical song – especially Schubert and Schumann. I have always counted myself lucky to have been introduced to this music by two German teachers in the lower and upper 6th form who, remarkably, were music lovers in an otherwise artistically sterile institution, and we listened to and sang (after a fashion) many of the best known Lieder as well as many folk songs. Unfortunately, my German vocabulary remains rather confined to the language of those Romanic poets who inspired their composer friends.

Oh for a series of recitals, including the great cycles by Schubert and Schumann, from resident singers including, naturally, talented students, that would expose the happy few to the real thing.

 

NZSO and Orchestra Wellington players, with a Slovenian pianist deliver fine performances of Mendelssohn and Mozart

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Members of Enzemble NZ

Gregory Squire and Charmian Keay (violins), Sam Burstin (viola), Ken Ichinose (cello), Ana Šinkovec Burstin (piano)

Mendelssohn: String Symphony No. 2 in D Major
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 12 in A Major

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 13 November 2019

Listening to a concert of happy, delightful music is a lovely way of whiling away a lunch hour. This week members of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra Wellington presented a programme of charming music by Mendelssohn and Mozart.

Mendelssohn: String Symphony No. 2
The prodigious talent of Mendelssohn is hard to comprehend. He grew up in a home that was a gathering place for writers, musicians and artists. He took music lessons from the composer Karl Friedrich Zelter, who impressed on him the importance of studying Baroque and Early Classical music, and Bach in particular. Music just flowed out of the young Mendelssohn. Between the ages of 12 and 14, 1821 to 1823, he wrote 12 String Symphonies, which were performed by the musicians at his home.

No. 2 is an exuberant piece, joyful, sparkling, but a challenge for the musicians. It requires precise, clear fast articulation and phrasing. Playing the piece as a string quartet without the rich sound of a string orchestra puts even greater pressure on the players. The four members of Enzemble NZ, the thorough professionals that they are, were undaunted. They tossed the piece off lightly. The first movement, full of energy, has the touch of J. C. Bach and his contemporaries, the second movement is darker, infused with a rich melody, the final movement is fugal in which the young Mendelssohn shows his mastery of the Baroque style. Although not often heard here, these Symphonies have had a number of recordings and obviously enjoy popularity. It was good to hear live such a fine performance.

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 12
This is one of the set of three concertos that Mozart wrote in 1782 . Although scored for an orchestra with strings, oboes, bassoons and horns, Mozart himself arranged it for a String Quartet. Played by a quartet, it has a different quality, a clearer sound of the dialogue of individuals which brought out the operatic features of the work. Mozart had left Salzburg and moved to Vienna. He had completed the opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, and this concerto has operatic touches, particularly in this string quartet arrangement. The quartet was playing the ensemble part with the interplay of the strings and the piano solo coming in with the arias. It is a charming modest concerto and opens with a light hearted theme on which the keyboard elaborates. The second movement is notable for the quotation of a theme by Johann Christian Bach. Bach had just died and the Andante was a musical epitaph of the younger composer to the older master who had greatly influenced him. The final movement is full of sparkling singable melodies. It is a happy, sunny work, played here recently with the NZSO by Steven Osborne.

The Slovenian Ana Šinkovec Burstin played with great sensitivity and effortless simplicity. She has had a successful career in Europe and America, and its is wonderful to have her here in Wellington. She will be a great asset to the New Zealand musical scene. We hope that we will hear her many times more. Her next performance will be with the Wellington Chamber Orchestra, playing the Grieg Piano Concerto on 8 December 2019.

 

Baroque music, rare and familiar, in a happy St Andrew’s concert

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

HyeWon Kim (violin), Jane Young (cello), Kris Zuelicke (harpsichord)

Leclair: Sonata in C, Op.2 no.3
Cervetto, Giacomo Basevi: Sonata in F, Op.2 no.9
J.S. Bach: Italian Concerto, BWV 971 (1st movement)
Sonata no.1 in G minor for solo violin, BWV 1001
Handel: Sonata in A, Op 1 No 3, HWV 361

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 28 November 2018, 12.15pm

A larger-than-average audience came to hear this programme of a mixture  of familiar and unfamiliar baroque works.

Sometimes musical (and other) works from the past are lost sight of because their worth is slight.  This seemed to me to be true of the Cervetto piece.  Extraordinary as it is to read of a a composer from 17th-18th centuries who lived to be at least 101 (c.1682-1783), his music didn’t live up to the quality of other music presented.

The programme began with another rather lightweight piece, by Jean Marie Leclair ((1697-1764).  It had a slow, even lethargic, but tuneful andante opening movement.  The second movement (allegro) was lively, but again, somewhat undistinguished.

Next was a largo movement (you can see the pattern: slow-fast-slow-fast).  The music included a lot of sequences and repetitions, but its character was pleasant.  The allegro final movement was buoyant and dance-like.  The relationship between the instruments featured skilful interweaving, but the violin seemed the only one to carry the melody, with the others accompanying.

The Cervetto Sonata was for cello and harpsichord; the composer was a cellist, and apparently did a lot to popularise the cello as a solo instrument in England, where he lived for the latter half of his life.

The solemn andante first movement featured much double-stopping for the cellist; the second, comprised of a minuet with two trios, was lyrical and rhythmic with the cellist contributing fast passage-work.  Some splendid melodies emerged, and the composer utilised a wide range up and down the cello strings.

The caccia (literally ‘chase’, so in the style of hunting music) last movement had a very strong pulse, and much repetition.  The cellist achieved great resonance especially in this movement.

The Bach excerpts were well-played, but it might have been more satisfying to have had the whole of the ‘Italian’ concerto on the harpsichord or the whole of the violin sonata, rather than one movement of each.  Of course, programming single movements gave each instrumentalist a chance to shine on their own.

As the performers told us, Bach’s counterpoint is more dense and complex than that of the other composers featured.  The ‘Italian’ concerto is a familiar work, utilising the two-manual harpsichord to obtain the contrasts that in a ‘normal’ concerto would be made by a soloist and an orchestra.  Kris Zuelicke gave a very satisfactory performance.

The solo violin sonata was typical  of Bach’s exacting writing for the instrument, frequently requiring for the violinist to play chords on two or more strings, and execute double-stopping.  HyeWon Kim produced splendid tone, and gave a very fine performance.  She played in a baroque style, without vibrato – as did Jane Young on the cello.

Finally, we had the Handel, with the same four-movement tempo sequence as in the Leclair sonata.  The sombre andante had an appealing melodic line.  The trio played as an organic unit, and together brought out the broad sweep of the music, which contained less detail than found in the Bach compositions.

The third movement (adagio) was slow and contemplative, but very short, while the final movement startled me with its familiarity – I think I learned it as a child, as a piano piece.  It was cheerful and elevating at the same time, contained some interesting modulation, and made a happy, smiling ending to the concert.

Brilliant guitar recital from Owen Moriarty at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Owen Moriarty – guitar

Music by Marek Pasieczny Joaquin Rodrigo, Manuel Ponce, Mauro Giuliani

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 8 April, 12:15 pm

At some stage at most guitar recitals, the famous words of Chopin come to mind. “Nothing is more beautiful than a guitar, except, possibly, two.” We had only one, though Jane Curry, head of guitar at the university School of Music, was there too, evidently without her guitar.

Owen Moriarty began with the youngest piece, a Little Sonata by Polish-born Marek Pasieczny (it was wrongly spelled in the programme). It was in four movements, inspired by Schubert’s set of four piano pieces, the Impromptus, Op. 90; and the title was suggested by Hindemith’s ‘Kleine Sonate’.  In truth, it was quite some distance from Schubert, but I knew what he meant: each movement was in a spirit that, give or take a couple of centuries, owed something to the outward shape or spirit of Schubert’s. Schubert’s first piece is marked Allegro molto moderato; Pasieczny’s is Moderato galante; the second, the favourite Schubert Impromptu, in quaver triplets in E flat, is simply Allegro while Pasieczny’s is marked Lento religioso, rather different.

Never mind. The first was ‘galant’ – mid 18th century – sure enough, in character, though somewhat advanced in melodic shape and harmony. Like most of the programme, it afforded Moriarty excellent scope for his superb dynamic subtleties; and the gentle second piece was an even better example of the way the player shifted the sound not merely through the vigour of the plucking but by the position of his right hand working the strings. The third piece, Arpeggiato largamente opened with spacious broken chords that led to charmingly worked out themes; while the fourth, the equivalent of Schubert’s fast A flat Impromptu, exploited the guitar’s essential strumming technique, vigorous and somewhat grand as it reached the end.

Rodrigo’s Bajando de la Meseta is one of five pieces in a suite characterising regions of Spain, this one literally, ‘Lowering the plateau’; Meseta refers here, specifically to the plateau of New Castile (Castilla Nueva), the most central region of Spain in which Madrid is situated. It opened in a deliberate manner, lento strumming, in fast common time, which shifted to triplets, increasingly virtuosic with fast scales and fancy decorative passages.

Ponce’s Balletto and Preludio comes from a generation before Rodrigo. He had an association with Andres Segovia and the two were complicit in publishing this pair of pieces as a newly discovered work of the great lutenist Silvius Leopold Weiss, a contemporary of J S Bach; this was the era when Kreisler was turning out pieces that he attributed to various baroque composers.

It certainly worked as a piece of that age, the Balletto, charming, slow and danceable; while the Preludio was subject to several rhythm changes with motifs weaving through various lines adroitly delineated by the player.

The real spectacle came with Rossiniana No 1 (of six) by the Italian guitarist Giuliani whose guitar concertos (more than one I think) were familiar a few years ago, but not heard (by me) recently. This was one of six pot-pourris on tunes from Rossini’s operas arranged freely and with huge flair and an eye to impressive virtuosity. The tunes were somewhat familiar, at least one from L’italiana in Algeri?, with the last leading to the typical Rossini crescendo of increasing excitement and spectacular agility by both the guitarist’s hands

Another piece by Rodrigo was the last item in the programme: Pequena Sevilliana – The Girl from Seville. Coming from Andalusia, flamenco music was to be expected, but quirky, with little twists that involved the fingers darting all over the finger-board. It was a delightful finish to a highly entertaining and revelatory recital of, quite simply, international calibre guitar playing.

 

Brief and benign “Spanish Disquisition” on St.Andrews’ Chamber Organ

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

St.Andrews Lunchtime Concert Series:
Spanish organ music from the Renaissance to the Baroque
Ephraim Wilson (organ)

Cabezón: ‘Dic Nobis Maria
Victoria: ‘Sancta Maria succurre miseris’
De Aguilera de Heredia: Tiento Lleno based on ‘Salve Regina’
Bruna: Tiento del segundo tono … Sobre la Letania de la Virgen
Cabanilles: Tiento Lleno

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

 Wednesday, 18 March 2015, 12.15pm

Although relatively short, and not well attended, the organ recital was interesting, in that it introduced an organist new to most of us, was played entirely on the small baroque organ, and consisted almost entirely of Spanish organ music, which I am sure was new to everyone in the audience.

Pedals were not part of the design of Spanish organs (or indeed many others) at the period covered by the programme: Renaissance to Baroque. So we had a total of one pedal note in the entire programme; that in the last piece, by Cabanilles.

After explanatory remarks about the programme, Wilson played the short ‘Dic nobis Maria’ by Antonio de Cabezón (1510-1566). His articulation of ornamentation was very fine, but at the beginning the tempo was rather uneven.

Tomás Luis de Victoria (c.1548-1611) was the most famous of the composers featured. As Wilson’s programme note stated, his complex style of writing created emotional intensity, not a common feature (to modern ears, anyway) of earlier music. Here a little more separation of repeated notes would have been desirable, especially in the melody lines.

The remaining pieces were in the form of ‘Tiento Lleno’, which Wilson described as a Spanish musical form analogous to the fantasia in other traditions, but also having elements of the toccata. The first one, based on the Salve Regina, was more complex than the previous pieces, and was played with a fuller registration. It was by Sebastián de Aguilera de Heredia (1561-1627); the music was very well articulated.

Pablo Bruna (1611-1679) was another new name. The full title of the piece by him is ‘Tiento del seguno tono por Ge Sol Re Ut Sobre la Letani de la Virgen’. Having swotted this up a little, I hazard that ‘Ge’ is the low bass G, which in the system of hexachords (the basis of the sol-fa system of John Curwen in the early nineteenth century) was the lowest note recognised in writing music down – thus the word ‘gamut’, the ut being the bottom note in any scale (now called doh in English-speaking countries).

My Spanish dictionary gives ‘sobre’ as ‘in addition to’ and ‘por’ as ‘from’, so I hazard a guess that the piece’s title might be Tiento on the second tone from A [the second note from G], to E, to B, to A, in addition to the Litany of the Virgin’.

Bruna’s melody at the beginning of the piece, and which recurred throughout was, however, rather akin to Arne’s ‘God Save the King’ (Arne was born nearly one hundred years after Bruna’s birth). The changes in registration, and thus dynamics, employed between the various sections increased the interest of this piece.

Despite the programme note for the final Spanish work stating that the Tiento Lleno “Like the previous tiento (this piece) is intended to be played on full register throughout…”, I think this must have applied to the previous work, Aguilera de Heredia’s Tiento Lleno, since there were many changes of registration in the Bruna piece.

Cabanilles’s was a true baroque composition, and contained drama and excitement. It featured quite a lot of staccato, but again, there was not enough separation of repeated notes.Wilson added a short Bach chorale prelude, but it was not one with which I was familiar. It, too, was played without pedals.

The little organ has quite an incisive, even loud tone, especially on full organ. However, though it was interesting to hear the Spanish works, and on the whole they were well performed; perhaps a little more variety of programming might have made for greater appeal.

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts resume for 2015 with a piano quintet

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Xing Wang and friends

Schubert: Sonata for piano and violin in A, D.574, “Grand Duo”
Schumann: Piano Quintet in E flat, Op. 44

Xing Wang (piano), Xin (James) Jin and Haihong Liu (violins), Zhongxian Jin (viola), Robert Ibell (cello)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 11 February 2015, 12.15pm

An attractive programme brought a good-sized audience to the first St. Andrew’s lunchtime concert for 2015.  Many people are grateful to the church and to Marjan van Waardenberg, for providing so many
marvellous concerts.

Unfortunately, another engagement meant that I was able to hear only the Schubert in its entirety.  The opening allegro moderato of the sonata featured very lively, bright playing, as did the scherzo: presto that followed.  The andantino slow movement displayed gorgeous tone from the violin, while the allegro vivace finale was executed with brilliance by both performers.

It was pleasing to have very full programme notes for the two works.  As the programme note for the Schubert stated, the sonata exhibited ‘…rich and beautiful melodic inventions, subtle harmonic colourings, and Viennese dance elements.’  There was much hard work for Xin Jin to do in this work, but all was carried off with accuracy and sureness of intonation and expression.

The Schumann piano quintet promised much from the robust, joyful opening of the allegro brillante first movement that I heard. Later I was told that it continued in the same warmly expressive vein, and that the cello playing of Robert Ibell was particularly noteworthy.

The concerts now continue on Wednesday lunchtimes without a break; much interesting music is promised over successive weeks.  Look up St. Andrew’s website, www.standrews.org.nz, and go to the ‘Coming Events’ listings.