Tag: students

NZSM’s “A Night at the Opera” generates a feast

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

Arias, Ensembles and Scenes from Opera
performed by the NZSM Classical Voice Students

Katrina Brougham, Alicia Cadwgan, Emma Carpenter, Declan Cudd, Georgia Fergusson
Jospeh Haddow, Elyse Hemara, Jamie Henare, Rebecca Howan, Luana Howard
Rebecca Howie, Hannah Jones, Brooks Kershaw, Aluapei Kolopeaua, Priya Makwana
Olivia Marshall, William McElwee Katherine McEndoe, Nino Raphael, Tess Robinson
Olivia Sheat, Daniel Sun, Christian Thurston, Shayna Tweed, Luka Venter.

Director: Frances Moore
Music Director: Mark Dorrell
Repetiteur: Heather Easting
Designer: Alexander Guillot
Lighting: Lisa Maule

Adam Concert Room, Kelburn Campus
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music
Victoria University of Wellington

Friday 19th September 2014

Earlier last week I had the good fortune to catch Radio NZ Concert’s “Upbeat” interview with Margaret Medlyn, one of the tutors of Classical Voice at the NZ School of Music in Wellington. She spoke about the then oncoming “Night at the Opera” presentation involving the voice students and featuring arias and ensembles from well-known operas and operettas. She said that the concert’s semi-staged aspect with costumes and lighting was especially valuable for the younger students, as it gave them a chance to experience a theatrical context in which to perform and to put into practice what they had been studying. But she also thought that all the performers as well as the audience would relish the theatrical aspects of the presentation, adding value and interest to the musical experience.

The presentation was in the capable hands of director Frances Moore, a former first-class-honours student at the School of Music here, and subsequently a Fulbright Scholar at New York University, while working as an assistant director with the Manhattan School of Music’s Summer programme. She’s returned to New Zealand to continue studies at Toi Whakaari, and pursue a career as a director of opera. Here, she certainly made the most of the depth and diverse range of talents among the student performers, encouraging them to relish their opportunities by singing out and giving themselves up entirely to their characters and their interactions. She was aided and abetted by Alexandra Guillot’s inventive set and costume designs, and Lisa Maule’s very appropriate, on-the-spot (sic) lighting, both helping to bring the different scenarios of each item to life.

I’d recently attended and much enjoyed “Der Rosenkavalier” in a “scaled-down” performance edition out at Days Bay, courtesy of music director Michael Vinten, so I was more than usually receptive to the similar treatment accorded tonight’s items – the normally orchestral accompaniments were by turns brilliantly realized by pianists Mark Dorrell and Heather Easting, giving the singers, whether solo or in ensemble, complete security of support at all times, the playing’s energy and sense of fun creating many delightful and alchemic moments. I couldn’t see the pianist(s) from where I was sitting in the Adam Concert Room, but I understood that Heather Easting provided the Britten, Mozart, Donizetti and Puccini accompaniments.

Technically, the items went with a hiss and a roar, with only a handful of unsynchronised ensemble moments disturbing the flow, and which the performers simply pulled together again with confidence and élan. The concert began with an excerpt from Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, sung in English, and designated as “Act One – finale” in the programme – as I later found, trying to pinpoint that same sequence on a “complete” recording I had of the operetta led to all kinds of discrepancies and confusions which suggested that the work had been mercilessly “hacked about” over the years, and with all kinds of “performing editions” emerging from the fracas. Comparing notes on this matter with Mark Dorrell a day or so later considerably relieved my confusion, and restored my faith in my ears!

The gods as presented here were a rum lot, indeed, with delightfully ungodlike characteristics shining forth for all to savour – each singer relished his or her opportunities, most notably Alicia Cadwgan’s delightfully kittenish Diana and Christian Thurston’s suitably machoistic Jupiter, the perfect foil for the suave Pluto of Declan Cudd, whose manner, apart from his highest notes, was easeful and insinuating, causing a sonorous and forthright rebellion among the ranks of Olympus’s celestial inhabitants! It made me long to see and hear a performance of the complete work, whatever the edition and its corruptions and inconsistencies!

From the fripperies of Offenbach’s satire to the stark realities of Britten’s “Peter Grimes” was a quantum leap for the sensibilities, a “plunge-bath after a sauna” effect, whose marked contrast worked extremely well. This was the quartet sequence “From the gutter” from Act Two of the opera, showcasing the voices of Olivia Marshall, Hannah Jones, Rebecca Howan, and, as Ellen Orford, Katherine McEndoe. Olivia Marshall in particular, as Auntie, impressed with the beauty and steadiness of her line, ably supported by her nieces Hannah Jones and Rebecca Howan; while Katherine McEndoe as Ellen engaged our attention with her strength and focus of utterance. The voices in ensemble readily conveyed that stricken, passionate quality called for by the music – beauty of a disturbing, intensely-wrought kind.

Intensities of a different order were generated by the Act One “Padlock” Scene from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, leading to those exchanges between Tamino and Papageno and the Three Ladies that must be among the most beautiful of all operatic moments. First we had Luka Venter as Papageno with his powers of speech bound by enchantment, his frustration and eventual relief at being released warmly and amusingly conveyed. The Three Ladies, Shanya Tweed, Elyse Hemara and Georgia Fergusson, were terrific! – in fact, a little too much so, in fact, as they needed more light and shade, more ease in their singing – but they were still admirably focused, direct and transfixing in their impact.

Declan Cudd as Tamino, along with Luka Venter, his Papageno, gave us a bit more of the lightness of touch that the music needed – but I was waiting (as I always do) for that lump-in-throat moment begun by the wind instruments in complete performances of the opera, when the women sing about the Three Boys who will guide Tamino and Papageno along their appointed journey. Here, I thought the utterances from all concerned were too rushed, wanting the air and space which would generate a certain “charged” quality, as if, for a moment, creation had paused to witness here a kind of celestial laying-on of hands. The scene still worked its magic – and I did like the appearance of the three “Knaben” high up in the balcony at that point, opening the vistas in a way that the music so beautifully suggests.

I was delighted that we got the chorus “Comes a train of little ladies”  from Sullivan’s “The Mikado” as well as the “Three Little Maids from School” – in the opening chorus the voices truly caught that sense of rapturous wonderment at the words “And we wonder, how we wonder….”, with marvellous surges of tone, and a beautiful dying fall at the end. It was the perfect foil for the “three little maids”, Hannah Jones’s Yum-Yum strong and focused, but the others (Katherine McEndoe and Rebecca Howan) closely in attendance. Their three-pronged exuberance  mischievously nudged and poked at the figure of the bemused Pooh-Bah, who declined (perhaps by way of protesting a little too much!) to “dance and sing” as the three girls confessed (“So, please you Sir, we much regret”) they were, by nature, apt to do. Jamie Henare, strong-voiced as Pooh Bah, had a fine time not quite completely evading their clutches!

The first-half closer, appropriately enough the finale of Act One of Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia”, was an ambitious piece of singing and staging which, thanks to plenty of energy, wit and engaging vocal characterisation, backed up by strongly-focused direction and presentation, came across to us most entertainingly. William McElwee’s Count Almaviva was delightful, dramatically outlandish and vocally sweet, if just a bit coloratura-shy in places, while Brooks Kershaw’s Bartolo/Barbaro/Bertoldo responded with plenty of appropriate puzzlement and stupefaction at the count’s appearance as a drunken soldier. Alicia Cadwgan’s Rosina charmed us from the beginning with her quicksilver responses regarding the “letter business”, the characters readily catching the “spin” of the composer’s interactions in their adroitly-dovetailed ensemble.

The arrival of Figaro (Christian Thurston), along with Don Basilio (Jamie Henare) and Berta (Tess Robinson) properly galvanised things to the point where the police were called, and an exciting, tarantella-like ensemble swept us all along, emotions bubbling, simmering and seething with everything ranging from pleasure to bewilderment, ensemble thrills and spills treated as part of the experience. As its riotous way unfolded we were thoroughly engaged by the goings-on – I don’t think the most polished professional presentation could have given us more pleasure than we got here from these exuberant and fearless young performers!

A different kind of sophistication awaited us after the interval with Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music”, the scenario allowing Emma Carpenter’s voice to shine as Anne, both solo, and combining nicely in duet with Alicia Cadwgan’s Petra. Hannah Jones turned in an alluring Desiree, while as a couple Christian Thurston’s robust Carl-Magnus and Tess Robinson’s stratospheric Charlotte also gave pleasure. The performance caught the piece’s essentially “chic” surface nature while allowing us glimpses of the characters beneath the precarious facades – most enjoyable.

“Donizetti’s wonderful Don Pasquale” read the programme-note, and the music certainly lived up to the effusive introduction – this was a committed, no-holds-barred performance of the duet “Tornami a dir” (Tell me once more), which the composer styled as a “nocturne”, performed by Declan Cudd and Olivia Marshall. The former’s tone was freer and fuller in his lower register, though none of his high passages were shirked – while his opposite, Olivia Marshall, brought a confident and secure voice to the music given Norina, his sweetheart. For me, at any rate, the couple’s fervour and commitment easily carried the day.

Back to Mozart and his “Magic Flute” we went, this time with the Three Boys (Olivia Sheat, Luana Howard and Rebecca Howie) very much in vocal focus, delightfully attired in “Davy Crockett from Bavaria” style hats, and turning their tones in well-wrought ensemble towards dissuading Pamina from taking her life over her Prince Tamino’s apparent rejection of their love. As with the excerpt from “Peter Grimes” Katherine McIndoe impressed upon the memory with her focused commitment to the character, conveying her confused emotions with plenty of force and immediacy.

I thought the Rossini ensemble as we saw and heard just before the interval would be hard to beat, but the company at least matched its earlier achievement with the evening’s concluding item, a colourful and heartfelt delivery of the Waltz-Song and Soldiers’ March from Act Two of Puccini’s “La Boheme”. It all came vibrantly together – Tess Robinson’s appealing Musetta floated the insinuations of her melody quite irresistibly, at first angering her estranged lover, Marcello (Christian Thurston), and then winning him back over, to the annoyance of her elderly escort  Alcindoro (a lovely cameo from Nino Raphael), and the amusement of the watching Bohemians.

Though there wasn’t much for them to do as spectators, William McElwee’s Rodolfo and Hannah Jones’s Mimi looked and sounded lovely together, while Luca Venter’s Schaunard and Jamie Henare’s Colline amply completed the Bohemian contingent. Then as the military band approached, it was indeed “half the population of Paris” which seemed to be milling around on the stage as if on holiday, the contingent then marching off to the concluding bars of Puccini’s music in grand style.

All credit to the NZ School of Music’s Classical Voice Faculty and to the students whose performances this evening would have richly justified their tutors’ efforts – it was a great show, whose creative flair and sense of occasion lifted it far above the conventional hotch-potch method of random assemblage of  “vocal gems”, and produced something really worthwhile and memorable. I’m sure Margaret Medlyn, for one, would have been delighted.

Inspiring concert by young students of Donald Armstrong

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Lunchtime concert at Old Saint Paul’s

Andrew Kelly – Brahms: Violin Sonata No 3 – First movement
Claudia Tarrant-Matthews – Elgar: Violin Sonata, Op 82 – First movement
Melanie Pinkney – Bruch: Violin Concerto No 1 – First movement.  François Schubert: The Bee
The Elegiac Trio (Andrew Kelly, Josiah Pinkney – cello, Claudia Tarrant-Matthews – piano) – Rachmaninov: Trio élégiaque No 1, in G minor
Catherine McKay was the accompanying pianist for the three violinists.

Old Saint Paul’s church

Tuesday 29 July, 12:15 pm

This concert, in the regular Tuesday lunchtime series in the former Pro-cathedral, was the last appearance of The Elegiac Trio before they took part in the final stage of the Schools Chamber Music Contest, held this year in Christchurch on the coming Saturday. It proved a remarkable exhibition of young talent by the three members of the Trio as well as the 12-year-old violinist Melanie Pinkney. All three violinists are tutored by NZSO associate concert-master Donald Armstrong.

Andrew Kelly established at once what could easily be felt as the prevailing quality in the violin playing: a warm and even tone that provided the foundation for playing that was rich in dynamic subtleties; in which the central section of the Brahms sonata was so magically hushed, demonstrating the composer’s essentially romantic and emotional character, though cast within broadly classical shapes. It prepared the audience thoroughly for his role in Rachmaninov’s elegiac trio at the end of the concert.

Claudia Matthews, 16, is a little younger than Andrew, but showed greater confidence, though their playing was invested with very similar degree of painstaking care and finesse in handling the bow. Elgar’s sonata is not nearly as familiar to most people as Brahms’s three sonatas: perhaps it does not have the same immediate melodic charm and memorable character; it’s one of those works whose beauties are slower to become embedded in the mind. Claudia’s confidence, firmness and accuracy matched her ease in navigating Elgar’s particular way with the notes, bending them secretly, creating an air of remoteness and gentle drifting, speaking of a maturity that seemed well beyond her years.

Melanie Pinkney is only 12, and I imagine I was not alone in feeling that her musical gift was in the class of the musical prodigy. The Bruch concerto in G minor is a truly grown-up masterpiece; it opens with Catherine McKay’s piano, capturing the orchestra’s character hypnotically, drawing the audience mysteriously towards the memorable first theme by the violin.

Melanie planted her notes with mature assurance, giving no suggestion that it presented any difficulties, since it all lay so comfortably under her fingers. She dealt with every musical colouring and decoration as if she was improvising, yet also with beguiling musical feeling that held you spellbound.

The fine Bruch structure was followed by a little Schubert piece that I haven’t heard for many years. Yes, it IS by Franz Schubert, but he goes under the French version, François – and that’s because it’s a fellow born in 1808 in Dresden, not Vienna, and died in 1878 and though he lived more than twice as long as the eponymous Viennese musician, he didn’t gain immortality. Though The Bee, from his Bagatelles, Op 13 (No 9), named in French, L’Abeille, published in the 1850s, survives.

In any case, it offered another display of a wonderfully fluid bowing arm that produced perfect tone.

After all this precocious virtuosity, one might be surprised at nothing, and that was the case with Rachmaninov’ first piano trio – he wrote two, both called Trio Élégiaque. This first is in G minor while the second in D minor, which is much longer, was inspired by the death of Tchaikovsky.

The tremolo opening of the piece seemed to emerge mysteriously from the dim timber recesses of the church, as the arrival of each instrument each seemed in turn to pick up the same emotion and tonal character of the previous one. They seemed to have paid scrupulous attention to each other’s sound; as the violin took up the theme from the cello it seemed simply to be an extension upward of the latter’s sound, not a different instrument.

Admittedly, this is a gorgeous acoustic for chamber music, but the raw material needs to be there for it to flourish. These musicians seemed not only to have worked together to integrate their sound but also to have judged successfully how their playing needed to be adapted to the space.

Much credit is due to the teacher of the violinists, Donald Armstrong, who oversaw the concert as a whole, but also to Andrew Joyce who coaches cellist Josiah Pinkney and Claudia Tarrant-Matthews’s piano teachers.

 

Engaging lunchtime concert by woodwind students

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Woodwind students of the New Zealand School of Music

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 23 July, 12:15 pm

Five students under head of winds Deborah Rawson at the school of music gave a delightful recital on a cold day which saw a slightly smaller audience than usual at St Andrew’s.

As usual the standard of the performances was remarkable, resulting in several revelations of unfamiliar music. The first was a movement from Saint-Saëns’s clarinet sonata, one of his last pieces, written in the year of his death. Hannah Sellars played its second movement, Allegro animato, not without slight blemishes but with interesting variety of tone and an easy fluency in the runs and other decorative elements.

A second clarinettist was Patrick Richardson, rather more confident both in his presentation and his execution; he played two pieces, the first a successful arrangement of Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin, and then the Allegro from Stamitz’s 2nd clarinet concerto (while the programme had J (for Johann) Stamitz as composer, Richardson said correctly that it was by Carl, Johann’s son; Johann wrote only one clarinet concerto). The Debussy was limpid and fluid, every note entranced by the girl’s beguiling hair, the piano part only slightly diminished in its importance; the concerto movement by the son of the genius of the Mannheim school which so influenced Mozart, was a happy experience, chosen no doubt to exemplify the stylistic contrast between the classical clarinet and the late romantic. The clarity of tone, the player’s firm confidence carried him through the decorative phrases and cadenzas, with striking support by pianist Rafaela Garlick-Grice.

Harim Oh was a third clarinettist; he chose a piece that represented a very different challenge: the first movement, Lento, poco rubato, from the solo clarinet sonata by avant-garde Soviet composer Edison Denisov, born in 1929 and died in 1996. Littered with tricky pitches, micro-tones, note bending and smudged trills, this was a fine performance of a famously seminal piece, defying Soviet orthodoxy.

Two other instruments featured: Annabel Lovatt’s oboe and Peter Lamb’s bassoon. Annabel’s presentation was slightly hindered by nervousness compounded by a non-functioning microphone; however I did hear her say that the CPE Bach piece for solo oboe was originally for flute – no doubt for his patron the flute-playing Prussian king Frederick. One of the really significant revelations of recent decades has been the discovery of Bach’s oldest son’s genius, replacing the earlier view of him as a merely talented odd-ball. This piece made its way through an Adagio with an intriguing, twisting melody, short varied pauses and odd tempo changes; then the Allegro, a show-piece that was just as inventive and entertaining, punctuated by unexpected pauses, which Annabel played with considerable accomplishment. It may well have been more difficult on the oboe than on the flute.

Peter Lamb played a short suite for bassoon and piano by Alexander Tansman, who came alive for me when I visited the city museum in Lodz some years ago to find it largely dominated by Arthur Rubinstein and Tansman, both born there – Tansman 1897–1986. Since then, Tansman’s music seems to have emerged interestingly. This suite explored the instrument’s great and highly contrasted range in sunny melodies that engaged the piano (always played so splendidly by Garlick-Grice) in a real partnership. There seemed to be four movements, varied in a neo-classical manner. Not only does his music avoid modernist tendencies (in Paris in the 1920s, he declined an invitation to associate with Les Six) and certainly the serialists, but there is little to suggest any kinship with his compatriot Szymanowski, 15 years his senior. So this was an engaging, and interesting work that the two played with affection and commitment. It’s time for more serious exploration (by RNZ Concert?) of Tansman’s impressive oeuvre.

Comments later confirmed my impression of a particularly engaging concert.

Tawa’s orchestra tackles substantial programme under lively young conductor

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Tawa Community Orchestra conducted by Andrew Atkins and Laura Barton (violin)

Mozart: Symphony No 25 in G minor – first movement: Allegro con brio
Wieniawski: Violin Concerto No 2 in D minor, Op 22
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture

Tawa College Hall

Sunday 8 June, 2 pm

There are several community, amateur orchestras around Greater Wellington; their major role is probably to enable local musicians to get orchestral experience; not to lay any claim to offering dazzling musical revelations. Most of the audience no doubt comprised friends and family members. Many of those have a genuine interest in music of the classical kind, and no matter the level of accomplishment, it is always interesting, sometimes pleasantly surprising, to be at such concerts.

My connection was as family member, but I was more than a little interested to hear how the players would cope with pieces that were one hundred percent solid classical repertoire.

The first movement of Mozart’s ‘Little G minor symphony’, No 25 (distinguishing it from the other one, No 40) would have resonated with many, as the urgent music, with arresting syncopation, that opened the film Amadeus. While the opening bars were an interesting exhibition of the meaning of ‘balance’, demonstrating the challenge of getting an integrated sound from the varied instruments of the orchestra, which are by nature so incompatible. More striking however was the energy that the young conductor, Andrew Atkins, a graduate student at the New Zealand School of Music, brought to the job. He imposed a professional tempo and sense of momentum on the performance that to a good extent masked any weaknesses of ensemble and technical competence in the players. Nevertheless, the real Mozart showed through, the spirit and the melodic genius.

It was the next piece that had me intrigued. While the Mozart employed a fairly limited orchestra – horns the only brass instruments – Wieniawski, writing about a century later, called for the full Romantic orchestra, double woodwinds, horns and trumpets, three trombones and timpani.

Here too the presence of several guest players, including many from the School of Music, strengthened strings and brass, in particular.

Though I knew both Wieniawski’s violin concertos, I cannot recall hearing either played live, though it would be surprising if the Michael Hill Violin Competition had not thrown one of them up at some stage. The concertos of instrumental virtuosos tend to be denigrated or ignored, though Paganini’s, Vieuxtemps’s and Wieniawksi’s remain in the repertory. However, this one is well-wrought, melodic, interesting; but it would hardly have survived an amateur performance without a pretty competent soloist.

Violinist Laura Barton is a student at the New Zealand School of Music.  After getting through the formal and not uninteresting orchestral introduction, with a certain tentativeness, Barton’s first phrases sounded as if she was feeling her way, but she very quickly hit her stride, playing without the score in front of her, though there remained, very understandably, a degree of tenseness. But if the audience still had to be convinced of her credentials, the first movement cadenza demonstrated an accomplishment that banished any doubts.

The gentle second movement, Romance, demonstrated an unsentimental lyricism and true musicality in the violinist. While Barton despatched the last movement, with its exciting gypsy rhythms, with an aplomb that not only confirmed a fine violinist in the making, but an orchestra that did not disgrace the performance.

The last work was even more of a challenge, written about the same time as the concerto, a product of Tchaikovsky’s early years, it is a colourful and vivid symphonic poem after the manner of Liszt, depicting three episodes of Shakespeare’s play.  No one could have expected a particularly polished performance from the orchestra, yet the energy and zest that young maestro Atkins drew from it, the poignant, lyrical music of the love scene, produced a performance that was quite engaging. There was a palpable feeling that the entire orchestra was giving more than they might have believed possible, and they as well as the audience were being rewarded accordingly.

 

Aspects of nature, life and love, from the NZSM Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Koki New Zealand School of Music presents:
RURAL ROMANCE

LILBURN – Overture “Drysdale”
FAURÉ – Pelléas et Mélisande
BEETHOVEN – Piano Concerto No.3 in C Minor
DVORAK – Symphony No.8 in G Major

Jian Liu (piano)
Kenneth Young (conductor)
New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

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

Wednesday 4th June, 2014

It was the sort of programme I would have travelled miles and miles, over hill and dale, thru fog and storm, and braving accident and ambush to see and hear – with distance lending enchantment, as is often the case. But even without the distance, the enchantment remained – this was music by turns exciting and evocative, so very typical of each composer’s work, even the relatively early Overture by Lilburn, but still, as were the other pieces, treasure!

To my great delight, the bringing about of it all by these youthful players and their conductor had many magnificent moments, for most of the time triumphing over the difficulties posed by the venue. The chief problem was the “in-your-face” character of the St.Andrew’s acoustic, which gave the performance sounds an insistence which wasn’t altogether the doing of the players.

It underlined and set in bold the importance for Wellington of having the Town Hall restored to its former glory as soon as possible, with both performance venues in that building currently out of circulation and sorely missed. I recall over recent times a number of youth orchestra performances in the main auditorium of the Hall whose qualities were underlined by the acoustic’s warmth and focus, a marked contrast to the somewhat overbearing, almost raucous immediacy of the St.Andrew’s sound.

My thoughts regarding the performance of the engaging Drysdale Overture of Lilburn’s were thus coloured by that acoustical context. I found a lot of the playing in what was otherwise a splendid performance lacked dynamic variation – the “great waves of sound” referred to in my notes regarding the piece’s opening gestures scarcely abated during the more vigorous working-out of the different motifs in the composer’s “sunlit rondo”.

Fortunately, the sounds did give space for the various appearances of  the “nostalgic theme”, and the unanimity and focus of the strings in places such as their sudden reprise of the opening figure, just before the final sequence. But this was due as much, if not more, to conductor Kenneth Young’s control and the skills of his players, the oboist in particular delivering the lovely melody with all the feeling for its context that the composer might have wanted.

Thanks to Fauré’s (or rather, his pupil, Charles Koechlin’s) somewhat gentler scoring, three of the Pelléas et Mélisande exerpts from the composers’ s incidental music for Maeterlinck’s play made a lovely impression throughout – Young and his musicians didn’t hold back the emotion, the string-playing in the Prelude having plenty of juice, and the clarinet work outstanding, really making something of the sequence just before the strings’ final phrases.

Fauré’s music doesn’t have the astringency of Sibelius’s for the same subject, and nothing like Schoenberg’s evocations of unease and darkness in his 1903 symphonic poem, also inspired by the play. This feeling was underlined by the exclusion of the fourth piece from the suite La Mort de Mélisande, leaving the lovely Fileuse (Mélisande at her spinning-wheel), depicted by whirling strings and a charming, winsome oboe solo (a different player to that in the Lilburn Overture), and finally the Sicilienne, a graceful dance composed by Fauré for an earlier, unfinished work, and used here again to beguiling effect, with its piquant oscillations between major  and minor. Here the harpist was able to shine, with a nicely-judged accompaniment of winds and then strings.

The Beethoven concerto featured a much-awaited appearance by that fine pianist Jian Liu, whose recital and chamber work I’ve so enjoyed over previous seasons. He didn’t disappoint with this, Beethoven’s darkest and most austere of the composer’s concertante works. Young and the players gave him an opening tutti which “spelt out” the journey in no uncertain terms, tense of mood and sharply-focused in articulation. Again the acoustic tended to narrow the dynamic range of the playing, but this music could easily deal with whatever sonic vagaries were brought to bear on the performance.

From his very first, commanding entry, Liu caught us up with his overall focus, his feeling for dynamic contrast, and his quicksilver responses to the music’s volatilities – as well as commanding the piano part (as with the cadenza) he was able to play “chamber music” with the orchestra in such passages as the rather misterioso section leading up to the recapitulation, dovetailing his cross-rhythmic triplets beautifully with the orchestra’s wind players, and bringing our the “gothic-like” touches to the writing just before the movement’s end.

The slow movement had a kind of Hellenic beauty at the start, its eloquence in Liu’s hands beautifully matched by the wind-playing that brought about a lovely sea-change to the soundscapes, as well as the beautiful dialogues with which the lower strings engaged the pianist at a later point. Only some slightly hurried turns of phrase in some of the exchanges prevented total pleasure – but the coda reinstalled that sense of rapt beauty which continued right up to a slightly misread wind entry at the end (which probably went swimmingly by comparison, at rehearsal – them’s the breaks!).

The finale’s attaca broke the spell, the pianist launching the argument with a real swing, taking the music at a fair lick and rendering some of his figurations as a whirl of notes – very exciting! But again from Liu was this lovely “accompanying” instinct in places, supporting the winds as they took over the melody. I loved the “fierce dance” character of the music during the tutti just before the clarinet tune, brought out with a will by Young and the players. But the contrast with the clarinet’s entry was also magical – fine playing, here – and the string fugue continued the excitement, leading up to the music’s martial element being hurled across the canvas with gusto.

After this, the coda was just right – a proper release of boisterous high spirits, kept pent-up for so long and here given full expression, by both pianist and orchestra. A pianist friend with whom I sat was also lost in admiration for Liu’s playing – “gossamer”, “agile”, “forthright”, and “energizing” were the words that were bandied about between us during the interval!

The recommencement brought out what seemed like the full band for the Dvorak G Major Symphony, surely one of the most adorable works in the romantic symphonic repertoire – and certainly one of its composer’s sunniest creations. Only in the second movement do the clouds gather for moments of anxiety and doubt – and Dvorak had that ability, shared with Schubert, to smile through tears and keep his essential spirit indomitable. And so it is with this symphony.

The outer movements – particularly the opening one – are both rhythmically tricky beasts, and I thought here in particular, throughout the first movement, that the orchestra didn’t manage to exude quite enough energy to really “kick” the music along. It always seems to me, with student and amateur orchestras, that not enough attention is paid to the rhythmic character of difficult pieces – and if the rhythm is tentative, unsure, or sluggish, then no amount of in-tune or note-accurate playing will save or properly enliven the music.

I once heard Ken Young, when rehearsing a difficult piece of contemporary music with the NZSO, telling the players, “Don’t count the music – FEEL it!” With Dvorak’s music, there’s that constant need to feel the rhythmic “kick”, to activate the dance element that’s in so much of his work. It’s not a question of speed or even tempo – but of “pointing” those rhythms, of stressing both beats and/or off-beats where appropriate. Accurate and eager though the playing was, here, I thought the first movement needed a touch more nervous energy overall, and sharper attack on some of those rhythmic beats. With this composer’s music in particular, a strongly-characterised rhythm beats the hell out of merely playing the right notes.

Still, I did think the performances of the middle movements of the work of a particularly high order, here – Young and his musicians revelled in the multifarious changes of mood in the second movement. bringing out the charm and lyricism and, indeed, romance of the opening, but fronting up to the theatrical darkenings of texture and tone brought by forceful wind,brass and timpani at key points – the timpani, in particular, was spot-on in its many rhythmic underpinnings and textural colourings. And the third movement similarly disarmed, with its bright, eager, slightly tense waltz-tune, put across with gorgeous string-tone (even with a touch of portamento in places!). Both the Trio and the sprightly Coda kept the music’s charm to the fore, nicely underlining the contrast with the finale’s declamatory opening.

Though sounding in places a bit of a raucous riot in this venue, the finale had plenty of thrills augmented by one or two spills. Everybody managed to kick up heels at some point or other during the wild dance-sequences (the horns had a great time with their trills, as did the trombones with their hoe-down-like shouts of encouragement!), and the contrasting lyrical variations featured, once again, lovely clarinet work and flute decorations that got the spirit, if not quite the letter, of the music right. And what a barnstorming finish!

I didn’t have miles and miles to go, nor hill and dale to contend with, when returning home – but this concert’s music and its performance still had just enough magic about it to both enchant and content.

 

 

String students from the School of Music gain public performance experience

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Undergraduate string students of the New Zealand School of Music:

Music by Bach, Beethoven and Shostakovich

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 23 October, 12:15 pm  

Even when great music is not played by top musicians with immaculate technical skill, it can be warmly delightful.

Regulars who enjoy Wellington’s various free (or nearly free) lunchtime concerts are not simply those who can’t tell the difference between the good and nearly good. They just love the music. This was one of the occasions when almost all the playing was both technically accomplished and, more importantly, played with love and understanding.

Caitlin Morris opened with the Prelude to Bach’s First Cello Suite. Her playing tended to lengthening of certain notes to a slightly exaggerated degree, but her handling of dynamics was careful and sensitive to the inner spirit of the music.

Violist Aidan Verity played an adaptation for her instrument of the Allemande and Courante from the Fourth Cello Suite, in E flat. Not quite as well mastered (there was a wee stumble in passing from the one movement to the next which clearly affected her confidence), she made a convincing case for the work’s performance on the viola, and her programme note points to a recent scholarly view that Bach may have been writing for the slightly smaller violoncello da spalla.

Most impressive, perhaps of the three solo performances was Julian Baker’s playing of Sarabande and Gigue from Bach’s solo Violin Partita in D minor. The Sarabande was spacious and well paced though some of the rhythmic ornaments might not have been handled with perfect elegance, but the Gigue was confident and fast, impressing with the confidence with which it maintained its speed, and managing very well the ticklish decorative rhythms.

The two other items involved more than one player. Beethoven’s Romances are not, I suspect, as familiar today as once they were. (My early acquaintance with the F major Romance, Op 50, may not have been typical. I indulge a reminiscence…  In my upper sixth year (now year 13) year I had an August holiday job with the late and lamented Wellington Competitions (1970s R.I.P.), part assistant stage managing and part assisting the adjudicator in the gallery of the old, upstairs Concert Chamber of the pre-rearranged Town Hall. He was John Longmire, minor English composer and pianist, and friend and biographer of John Ireland. This Romance was performed more than once by competing violinists and I was in love with it.  Anyway…)

Violinist Alina Junc and pianist Choong Park did a charming job with it, occasional slips in the violin’s handling of ornaments and intonation notwithstanding. The pianist maintained her partnership in sympathy with the violin; it was not altogether clear to me why the slightly enigmatic end missed its mark, but let me hope that this performance might encourage its resuscitation in general affection.

The last movement, Allegretto, of Shostakovich’s Piano Trio, Op 67, was played by Junc and Park together with cellist Xialing. As other performers had done, Alina spoke helpfully about the piece before starting with the staccato and pizzicato gestures, sensitively and confidently.  It became a highly impressive demonstration of the three players’ grasp of the work’s background and inspiration, the lamenting Slavic melody becoming a powerful climax expressing pain and grief.  The audience were in no doubt that they were hearing a performance of great conviction and power, and the trio were loudly applauded.

 

Fine artistry and insight by Duo Cecilia, cello and piano duo

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Duo Cecilia (Lucy Gijsbers – cello and Andrew Atkins – piano)

Beethoven: Seven Variations on ‘Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen’ from The Magic Flute
Rachmaninov: Cello Sonata, Op 19, Third movement – Andante
Paul Ben-Haim: Canzona
Schumann: Fantasiestücke, Op 73
Debussy: Cello Sonata

St Mark’s Church, Lower Hutt

Wednesday 16 October, 12:15 pm

Lucy Gijsbers is in her master’s year and Andrew Atkins the third year of his B Mus at the New Zealand School of Music. Both have already distinguished themselves in competition and academic achievement. Lucy has played as soloist with orchestras as well as being principal cello in both the NZSM and the National Youth orchestras.

Each took turns introducing the pieces they played: both needed to be more aware of the need to properly project their voices. But they had little to learn about projecting the music they played. Their launching the recital with Beethoven’s delightful variations on ‘Bei Männern’ was a coup, as it offered the audience the chance to hear both their mastery of the notes, as well as expressive niceties. The opening was a display of darting, varied dynamics, changing with delightful aplomb from bar to bar.

The duo created the impression of playing the parts, each entirely engrossed in their own view of the music and what they were doing with it. Yet when I paid attention to the combined sound, the ensemble was excellent, listening to each other and responding to each other’s accents and turns of phrase; nothing uniformly bland.

The slow 6th variation revealed the players’ beautifully controlled tone with restrained vibrato, and the last variation announced the imminent ending by giving special emphasis to principal phrases.

On 4 October in the Adam Concert Room of the New Zealand School of Music I heard Inbal Megiddo and Jian Liu give an illuminating performance of Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata. These players played the slow movement of it. To focus on a single movement is often a quite different experience: it opens with a long, seductive piano introduction, a beautiful melody, intensely meditative; Rachmaninov gives quite a lot of solo playing to the piano and that, far from seeming to obscure the cello’s significance, drew
increased attention to its more sparingly expressed contributions. Gijsber’s playing was exquisite.

Paul Ben-Haim was a leading Israeli composer of the earlier 20th century. The single movement, which I think Atkins said (both he and Lucy spoke too quietly) came from a cello concerto, which is listed in an internet site as having been written in 1962. It speaks in a coherent tonal language, though its character struck me as having emerged from the climate of the second half of the 20th century, as well as containing well integrated marks of Middle Eastern sounds. I’m not aware of hearing Ben-Haim’s music before and this induces me to explore.

Schumann’s three Fantasy Pieces, Op 73 are among the most played cello pieces; if played as they were here, by musicians who approach them with liveliness and without any sense of having to justify over-familiar music. They are delightful, spontaneous pieces, far from easy to bring off. Most effective were the charming narrative sense of the first movement, Zart und mit Ausdrück, and the third movement Rasch und mit Feuer which opened with almost frightening attack, typical Schumannesque impulsiveness with a calmer middle section where the cello called attention with her well-chosen stresses on certain notes at the top of phrases. The piano’s role was distinguished throughout the recital but seemed to rise to special heights in the formidable accompaniments of these pieces.

A couple of weeks earlier I’d heard Andrew Joyce and Diedre Irons play Debussy’s Cello Sonata in a Wellington Chamber Music concert and here it was again. Debussy told somebody that he was dissatisfied with the work, his second to last as he struggled with cancer during the First World War, but I doubt whether many of today’s listeners find it unsatisfying. It’s short and compressed and unsentimental; and while it’s a work that could hardly have been written a decade earlier, it does not pay direct attention to the radical innovations that the Schoenbergs and Stravinskys were introducing. These young players approached it as if they’d been living with it for years in their technical mastery and ease with the musical idiom, but judging by the spontaneity and freshness of the performance, it sounded as if they’d just discovered it.

Once again, here was evidence of the wealth of wonderful music-making to be enjoyed for free (or nearly) in many parts of greater Wellington.

 

All the guitar students from NZSM prove more is more

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Classical Guitar Concert

Music by Jorge Cardoso, Maximo Pujol, Stephen Goss, Peter Warlock, Antonio Ruis-Pipó and Vivaldi

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 9 October, 12:15 pm

Three weeks ago I heard some of these student guitarists at Old St Paul’s (17 September). This time all twelve students in the classical guitar department of the school contributed to a mainly different programme that was, if anything, even more interesting and more accomplished.

The Suite of Latin American pieces by Cardoso that had me a bit confused last time was the last work in the earlier programme; here it was first. Perhaps because of that, the trio (Jamie Garrick, Christian Huenuqueo and George Wills) sounded more practised than before. Nevertheless, Samba d’Ouro (Ouro is evidently Portuguese for Gold, as well as being a place name in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Caterina) might have been lifted by a little more rhythmic sensuality.  Camino de Chacarera (which is a folk dance typical of north-western Argentina), was sensitive and nicely articulated. From the next piece, Zamba de Plata, much longer than the first two, there was more movement, along with charm and delicacy in its syncopated rhythms.

And the last two pieces, both evidently from across the Andes, built on the players’ growing confidence: Polca Peruano, elusive but quite melodious, and Vals Peruano, in a triple time slightly disguised by cross rhythms which made it teasing and delightful.

Fin de Siglo (‘End of the century’) by Maximo Pujol, from Buenos Aires, seemed less concerned with visceral pleasures and more with drawing attention to interesting textures and moderately complex shapes: the first part, Andante Tranquillo, and the second, Allegro, a post-Piazzolla, tangoish rhythm. In the middle of the Allegro there’s a nice contrasting, melancholy section which the players captured with grace and feeling.

The same selection as in the last concert from Satie’s Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, arranged by American guitarist Stephen Goss repaid a second hearing. These were for guitar quartet (Jake Church,, Cormac Harrington, Emmett Sweet and Cameron Sloan). While the two Gymnopédies are the more familiar, the Gnossiennes, forming an entity so successfully, lent themselves to more interesting colourings and a hint of mystery. The main impression of the playing was care, thoughtfulness and writing that was beautifully adapted to the guitars.

Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite might have seemed an unlikely case for guitar adaptation, but then it’s based on Renaissance musical ideas which were naturally disposed to the lute and the quartet handled their dance rhythms firmly and gracefully.

The last two pieces involved the full guitar orchestra, twelve in all, with Owen Moriarty conducting. Ensemble was admirable and the variety of sounds and dynamics made these thoroughly entertaining, even if the price was some lack of spontaneous rhythmic lift. The first was Américas by Antonio Ruis-Pipó, actually written for eight guitars, with contributions in the form of clapping and finger-clicking, all generating a convincing orchestral feel.

The last work was an arrangement of Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso, Op 3 No 8, the set entitled ‘L’estro harmonico’. Here the concertino, for two guitars, was shared by two players taking each of the two parts: Christian Huenuqueo and Cameron Sloan in the first, and George Wills and Nick Price in the second part. Vivaldi survives almost any sort of arrangement and here the disposition of the parts through the several groups created a really full orchestral sound, with varied dynamics and changes of plucking techniques between each section. Maybe they didn’t take the word ‘spiritoso’ in the second movement quite seriously enough, but there was little to carp about in the entire, most delightful performance.

 

NZSM Orchestra serves composers well, with a star cello soloist

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Te Kōki New Zealand School of Music : Contrasts

Jason Post: Noumena (world première)
Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor, Op.85 (adagio – moderato; lento – allegro molto; adagio; allegro ma non troppo)
Shostakovich: Symphony no.9 in E flat, Op.70 (allegro, moderato, scherzo: presto, largo, allegretto)

NZSM Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young, with Heather Lewis (cello)

Sacred Heart Cathedral

Tuesday, 8 October 2013, 7.30pm

A demanding programme proved to be well within the capabilities of the NZSM orchestra, which included only a few ‘guest players’ (though all four horn players were guests).

The work by graduate student (studying for Master’s) Jason Post was titled ‘Noumena’, meaning ‘an object beyond our phenomenal experience of it’ according to the programme note by the composer.  It opened with a quiet flute that gradually became louder, and was joined by harp, bassoon and percussion.  Then the other strings arrived, with some playing ponticello (very close to the bridge), while the double basses played very low.  They were quickly followed by overblown flutes, all the while the music becoming louder Some brass joined in, while the percussionist played glockenspiel and then xylophone, the glockenspiel returning again later.  The various orchestral sounds, many of them unusual, made for music that was effective in its own way, but it would be difficult to see the piece receiving multiple performances.

Despite the technical and ideological aspects of the work, it reminded me most of a howling southerly storm, such as we experienced on 20 June this year, and then again, to a lesser extent, as I typed up this review the morning after the concert.  There was a build-up of sound, intensity and texture, then an unleashing, with many wind-like ululations.  The tempo was pretty regular, and the playing intense and on-the-ball.

Elgar was well served by the performance of his cello concerto.  This soulful, even romantic work is different from most of his other compositions.  Heather Lewis, in a gorgeous green dress, made a very strong and incisive opening, playing without the score, and immediately gave us a wonderful range of tone and dynamics.  Right from the outset, the orchestral cellos were very fine, too.

While the sound in Sacred Heart Cathedral is very good, there were times in all three works when the fortissimos were somewhat overwhelming, due to the acoustics, and the size of the building being much smaller than a concert hall.

Nevertheless, both orchestra and soloist made the most of the sublime melodies with their poignant resonances.  I could not see the soloist properly – but there was no doubt about the sumptuous, lyrical and passionate sounds she produced.  The orchestra did its part splendidly, but the focus was definitely on the soloist.  She had the work thoroughly at her fingertips, with all its technical, interpretative and  expressive demands, but made it her own.  The emphasis for both soloist and orchestra was on interpretation.

The lento opening of the second movement had both soloist and orchestra performing wonderful singing lines, filled with romantic longing.  These long lines and their phrasing were beautifully managed by Heather Lewis, and there were delicious pianissimos.  The allegro molto section provided a greater variety of temperaments.

The adagio continued in a similar mood to the lento, except perhaps for a greater degree of sadness, with the soloist virtually continuously involved, while the final movement also had a mixture of emotions, right up to its almost abrupt ending.

Shostakovich’s ninth symphony is possible his shortest and his most jolly – and the first for which I owned a recording.  It starts with plenty of gusto, and a delightful piccolo playing above syncopated pizzicato on the strings, with many interjections from brass and percussion, giving almost a fairground atmosphere.  The lively, quirky theme is thrown around the instruments as well as being played by the
full band.

The second movement starts in complete contrast; it is quiet, slower, and features a lovely clarinet solo, with woodwind chorus to back it up.  The strings enter, with a slow build-up of a surging theme that has a mocking character.  It is overcome for a time by gorgeous flute solos.  This movement was beautifully played.

The third movement went back to a quirky, lively mood.  It was exciting, with a plethora of notes, timbres and rhythmic figures.  Early on, the trumpet and trombones featured in fine form.  They returned later in stentorian style, to signal the largo, which featured a superb extended bassoon solo.  The player had great tone and phrasing; it was a delightful but somewhat sombre interlude between scherzo and finale.

The allegretto starts quietly, but the excitement builds to a climax, relieved by much drumming and rhythmic playing from the wind instruments.  Changes of key added piquancy to the repetition of the theme.  When the full orchestra play it forte there is a definite air of mockery about the rendition.  Many sectional variations ensue, before a quite sudden ending.

This demanding programme deserved a bigger audience.  However, the church was close to being packed.  Perhaps some potential audience members do not realise that the New Zealand School of Music is a university-level institution, and that many of the players are post-graduate music students.  The level of competence is extremely high.

The entire programme received spirited, committed and accomplished performances.
Kenneth Young brought out the best from the players.  His programme notes for the Elgar were elegant: I enjoyed his saying about the first movement “The violas then introduce an elegiac theme, long and flowing, which the cello cannot resist.”  I would need to hear Jason Posts’ piece several times to be able to relate the programme notes to the music, while those for the Shostakovich by Mark Wigglesworth (written in 2007) were very informative about the composer and the history of the work’s performance, but said little about the work itself.

 

 

NZSM voice students in diverse show-case at St Andrews

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Arias from opera; songs

New Zealand School of Music: Vocal students of Richard Greager, Jenny Wollerman, Margaret Medlyn, with Mark Dorrell (piano)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

2 October 2013, 12.15pm

A varied programme was provided, both in terms of the styles of voices, and of the composers whose music was sung.

The programme opened with a couple of duets (and one solo in between).  Tess Robinson and William McElwee sang a Handel duet from L’Allegro,  Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato, the first part of which I missed due to problems at the parking building.  The latter part seemed to suffer from some intonation wobbles, and not a lot of subtlety in dynamics, though otherwise it was a sound performance.

Mozart’s aria from Don Giovanni, ‘Batti, batti o bel Masetto’ was given a lively, apt and accurate interpretation by Olivia Sheat.  With the help of incomparable accompanist Mark Dorrell, the performance flowed beautifully.

Haydn was the composer of the next duet: ‘Graceful Consort’ from The Creation.  Hannah Jones’s attractive, agile and accurate soprano voice coped well, but Rory Sweeney’s voice was not sufficiently supported, the words were not very clear, and the tone was sometimes hard.

Donizetti was the composer of Hannah Jones’s solo: ‘Il barcaiolo’ from Nuits d’été à Pausilippe.  This song about the sea was sung with lovely unforced tone.

Bellini’s opera I Puritani is opened by an aria for Riccardo, the leader of the Puritan army: ‘Ah, per sempre’.  This was sung by Rory Sweeney, who this time had better tonal quality and clearer words.  The aria was well managed with a good range of dynamics – but surely a little facial expression is permitted,
and a little more sadness, as Riccardo hears his beloved being wed to another?

The next tenor was William McElwee, performing ‘Lunga da lei… De’ miei bollenti spiriti’ from Verdi’s La Traviata.  He has a bigger voice than does Sweeney, and it is more operatic in timbre.  He included plenty of facial expression and gesture in his performance.  He has a fine sense of the dramatic, and is a
very promising performer.

After such a number of operatic excerpts, it was refreshing to hear lieder: Wolf’s ‘Heiss mich nicht reden’, one of Goethe’s Mignon songs.  Olivia Sheat gave a beautifully controlled rendition with excellent words and dynamics, and employing subtle shades of tone, to make a moving presentation.

Mark Dorrell got a rest now; Esther Leefe (soprano) and Michelle Velvin (harp) performed A Birthday Hansel; a song cycle for high voice and harp set by Benjamin Britten to words by Robert Burns, some of which were amusing, the poems being in mixed English and Scottish dialects.  Although premiered by Peter Pears, it worked well for soprano.  Esther Leefe’s voice was beautifully produced, and the four songs were delightful and unusual, the presentation, charming.  Both musicians gave first-class performances.  I couldn’t catch a lot of the words – the harp was between me and the singer.  It was skilled playing and singing, sustained throughout ‘Birthday Song’, Wee Willie’, ‘My Hoggie’ and ‘Leezie
Lindsay’.

Staying with twentieth-century song, was Tess Robinson singing ‘The Seal Man’ by Rebecca Clarke.  I’m not aware of having heard this singer before, but I was struck by her strong, expressive voice.  Words were exceptionally well projected and clear.  She painted the picture of the seal man searching for a lover on land superbly well, as did Mark Dorrell in the accompaniment.

The only New Zealand composition on the programme was Anthony Ritchie’s ‘He moemoea’ (‘A dream’, recently sung at the Adam Concert Room by Isabella Moore).  Hannah Jones sang it with lovely resonance, and her words came over pretty well.

Tess Robinson returned to sing two Japanese songs – something I don’t recall ever hearing before.  By Yoshinao Nakada, they were ‘Ubagufuma’ and ‘Karasu’ from Muttsu no kodomo no uta.  She used the score (as did the duettists, earlier) – probably as much for the unfamiliar language as for the music.  Her singing was very eloquent, and her voice conveyed feelings well.

We moved into lighter vein now, with Rory Sweeney singing ‘If I loved you’ from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel.  It was a fine rendition, but there was insufficient feeling in the performance.

The final item was from William McElwee, singing ‘La fleur que tu m’avais jetée’, probably one of the most familiar of all tenor arias, from Bizet’s opera Carmen.  The tempo was a little too fast and unvarying – it could have done with some rubato. McElwee’s high notes were very fine, and his French language excellent.

Some of the programme notes, which were brief but informative, suffered from poor proof-reading in regard to grammar, others had tell-tale signs of being derived from the internet.

All the performances (aside from the songs with harp) were enhanced by having Mark Dorrell as the sensitive and capable accompanist.