Tag: students

NZSM senior piano students at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music senior piano students: Rafaella Garlick-Grice, Laurel Hungerford, Benjamin Booker, Sam Jury, Ben Farnworth

St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Wednesday 14 October 2009

We have been hearing a series of lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s by present and former students of the New Zealand School of Music in recent weeks. This one maintained the level of excellence both in the appearance of highly accomplished performers and in interesting music.

Rafaella Garlick-Grice began with a very mature and well-considered performance of the Prelude and Fugue in G from Book II of the Well-tempered Clavier. Varying her posture at the piano from upright to a hunched effort to climb inside the instrument, her playing was virtually flawless, but more importantly, shining with intelligence and engaging with the audience through illuminating every voice in both prelude and fugue, and entertaining dynamic colouring and subtle rhythmic nuances.

Laurel Hungerford’s Haydn Sonata (in C, Hob XVI 35) was just as distinguished, as she demonstrated her mastery and enjoyment of Haydn’s droll devices, the mock flourishes, the irregular phrases and unexpected harmonic and key shifts. You could hear her smiling at the jokes and the teasings; particularly in the somehow featureless Andante which is actually a small tour de force demonstrating how much delight can be created with musical ideas of great simplicity. My pleasure in her playing was hardly affected by her memory lapses in the last movement, though naturally, they somewhat affected her confidence thereafter.

Though he scarcely acknowledged his audience as he took his seat at the piano, Benjamin Booker played Liszt’s beautiful Un Sospiro, one of the Three Concert Studies, with admirable grace, poetic feeling and technical competence.

Liszt’s second Ballade is a different matter; a piece that attracts censure from the more pedantic of his critics. Its structure might not seem very shapely or easy to bring to a performance that convinces the listener of its organic unity, of a credible progression from one phase to the next, but for one easily seduced by Lisztian emotion, it is a masterpiece. Unfortunately, its secrets are discovered only through a rather more experienced pianist, more profoundly immersed in Liszt’s musical world, and the task, bravely tackled by Sam Jury, was a little beyond him. The opening phase with its mystical terrors that arise perhaps from Hades were too earthbound, and the later fearful left-hand octaves failed to do their job; however the sunny passages were beautifully played, and by the end enough of its essence had been re-created to satisfy and to stimulate a search for the several versions in one’s collection of LPs and CDs.

The last pianist was Ben Farnworth who played Ginastera’s Suite of Creole Dances. There are three, utterly different: the first hardly a dance, rather perhaps an invitation to a dance and the last a ferocious, violently syncopated dance. Farnworth did them proud, in turn, with delicacy, romance, bravura, swagger, and extravagant Latin American exhibitionism.

Quite apart from the interest in hearing several talented and very accomplished young piano students, it was a most satisfying programme of the sort we are scarcely ever offered by our normal concert promoters these days.

New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir astonish

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir conducted by Andrew Withington

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. Friday 9 October 2009

Some of the most brilliant music making comes from the young, not necessarily individually, though there are plenty of cases of remarkable prodigy, but from young choirs and orchestras. En masse, individual imperfections are inaudible while the energy and the delight of youthful music-making are what makes the impact.

It’s not uncommon to hear claims that professional orchestras’ performances are little affected by the conductor, that their years of playing together are what makes the difference between the ordinary and the distinguished. It’s not really as simple as that.

But in the case of a youth choir or orchestra, the character of the conductor is probably critical. In the case of orchestras, the world has the example of Gustavo Dudamel and his Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, and we have had plenty of evidence of brilliant performances by the New Zealand Youth Orchestra under gifted (usually overseas) conductors who have worked miracles.

This time the miracle was wrought by a young New Zealand conductor, Andrew Withington, a protégé of former NZSSC conductor Elise Bradley.

The gasp of astonishment was audible as the choir opened the evening with the chorus from Haydn’s Creation ‘Achieved is the glorious work’, such was the overwhelming energy and intensity of the performance. This was certainly full-blooded both as a composition and in its execution.

I seem to find the wholehearted, simple religious belief of a Haydn a lot more acceptable than the sort of self-conscious piety evinced by Mendelssohn’s essays in the genre for example. The Kyrie and Sanctus (‘Heilig’) from the latter’s Die deutschen Liturgie followed, again accompanied excellently by Grant Bartley at the organ. I had to confess to finding both quite admirable, splendidly sung, with vivid sopranos and uncommonly good male voices – both tenors and basses.

A Sanctus by (Christchurch composer) Richard Oswin followed, with portentous piano introduction, echoing Carmina Burana a little, well presented. A setting of the Salve Regina by David Childs, United States-based New Zealand composer, showcased a solo soprano from the choir who projected well; interestingly written, rewarding for the choir I imagine.

The choir exhibited its richness and power in the showy piety of Parry’s ‘I was glad’, with women’s voices in gentle expressiveness.

I was impressed with the delivery, and pronunciation of a group of Swedish songs in which attention to dynamic subtleties was striking.

And the gentle spirit depicted by a Hebrew song, ‘Erev Shel Shoshanim’, offered a beautiful, comforting alternative to one’s current perception of the character the political entity from which it comes.

William Mathias’s setting of ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind’ was spirited and vivid.

Then came a group of Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes, whose singing was so affecting, authentic, often quite vivid, and plain charming, that I decided that choral performance was the best way of singing them.

The choir reappeared in the second half wearing Maori motifed sashes to open with Kua Rongo from Wehi Whanau, replete with beautifully executed gesture and movement. They created a thoroughly authentic Maori vocal quality in a waiata that sent shivers down the spine: the sort of performance that, heard when one is overseas, quite undoes one.

Three New Zealand folksong arrangements by Richard Oswin offered some evidence of the reality of at least a small body of genuine folksongs; again, their performance was most persuasive, building to an impressive climax.

Repeatedly, the choir exhibited new facets of their skills and versatility: in an affecting song by David Childs, ‘The Moon is Distant from the Sea’, with a flowing piano accompaniment supporting singing that illuminated words and emotions with a splendid flair for varied dynamics and intelligent phrasing. In my notes I had written – ‘one of the most beautiful and expressive songs of the entire evening’. I must have meant it!

From then on popular favourites were the rule: ‘Hine e hine’, ‘Ain’t misbehaving’, ‘I got rhythm’, ‘Nobody knows the trouble…’, all sung with an uncanny idiomatic energy and finally ‘Pokarekare Ana’, from a solo soprano with a pure, youthful voice, uncluttered by ornaments.

This was simply (one of?) the finest choral concerts of the year.

Blythe Press, violin, in Chausson, Prokofiev and Pärt

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Chausson: Poème, Op 25; Prokofiev: Five Melodies for violin and piano, Op 35b; Pärt: Fratres

Blythe Press (violin) and Emma Sayers (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Wednesday 23 September 

Don’t ever overlook the lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s! Of course, they vary widely, in genre, between instruments and voices and sometimes other things, in musical experience and skill, but more often than not, there’s a real treat in store.  

Every so often a concert comes along that deserves a much bigger crowd and perhaps a more prestigious venue, though that’s a factor I fight; for one thing, it is being used as a principal criterion by The Dominion Post for publishing music reviews, with some unfortunate results.

Wednesday the 23rd was a special one.

I’ve been observing Blythe Press, violinist from the Kapiti Coast, since he was a notable performer in the Schools Chamber Music Contests. After starting studies at Victoria University he gained sufficient awards to enable him to complete a music degree at Graz, in Austria. His record of competition triumphs is already, at 20, impressive.  

I fancy this is my first hearing of Chausson’s Poème, in the piano version. It sounds so different, with the violin standing tonally more distinct when accompanied by the piano (I cannot find a piano arrangement listed in Chausson’s entry in New Grove or on the Internet: it must be a publisher’s arrangement).

Yet its warm romantic spirit remained intact in the hands of these two players; nothing sentimental, or exaggerated, but rather, taste, sincerity of expression, and a considerable technique – I mean of both players – that was unobtrusive, and at the disposal of the music. It consists of several short sections, thematically linked but varying in character, and each, even the somewhat light-weight section hinting at the salon, emerged with honesty, in this context.

Prokofiev’s Five Melodies are a surprising product of the composer’s years of exile, this written in California. No hint of the wild young man of forbidding dissonance and ferocious technical demands, these pieces are to enjoy, and their choice could well serve to remind listeners that not all music after the first World War sought to poke the audience in the eye.

Yet they are by no means child’s play, though Press made them sound fairly plain-sailing. Nevertheless, the melodies would hardly have arisen in the imaginations of earlier composers, such is the strong personality of Prokofiev’s music and Press negotiated all the writhing, complex lines.  

Prokofiev is not a composer to be in the proximity of, say, some of his English contemporaries, who might sound flaccid and insipid in the same room (are my prejudices showing?). The playing of both musicians was arresting and their virtually flawless and riveting performances simply held the audience – bigger than normal – spell-bound.

As if two small masterpieces were not enough, the pair then played what has become one of the best–loved chamber pieces of the past 30 years. Fratres is an extraordinary piece in several ways, one being its non-specific instrumentation; its original incarnation was for string quintet and wind quintet, but the version played here is one of the most effective, allowing its clear musical character to emerge independent of the crutch of colourful combinations. Press’s fast opening cross-string arpeggios established his authority at once, and with the emphatic piano chords, a wonderfully gripping experience held the audience. The mystic passages that followed evoked the monastic atmosphere that Pärt sought, monks moving about dark gothic aisles, and finally the piano chords punctuating the violin’s great oratorical statement, were so impressively and movingly expressed by these two instruments.

Lunchtimes in Wellington churches

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

1 Organist David Trott for lunch at Old St Paul’s

A recital of popular classics on the organ

Tuesday 15 September

Lunchtime concerts at Old St Paul’s and St Andrew’s on The Terrace have taken on certain characteristics. While St Andrew’s has tended towards the more serious repertoire, catering for those whose interest in classical music is reasonably wide, Old St Paul’s seems to aim, at least some of the time, at the popular end of he spectrum.

David Trott’s organ recital was a good example of the latter. There was no printed programme and he introduced each piece in a friendly, casual tone, laced with anecdotes that sometimes had less to do with the music than with his own musical life.

If his selection was not entirely familiar, it offered no challenges. Generally they were well suited to the light, attractive registrations available on the church’s organ; such as the piece by 18th century organist and pedagogue Michel Corrette that employed a glockenspiel-like stop, and popular Bach pieces – Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring (‘Jesu bleibet meine Freude’) from Cantata 147 (Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben) and the Air from the Third Orchestral Suite (‘On the G String’). These suited the instrument and its player admirably; but less successful was his little arrangement of the main theme in the last movement of Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony which demands far more dramatic weight that could be found here.

Trott played a distinctly odd-ball arrangement that combined elements of the Water Music and the Royal Fireworks music; his treatment of Pachelbel’s Canon went overboard with changes of registration in almost every bar: perhaps it was intended as a spoof.

Checking first that there were no priests present who might take offence, Trott played Mendelssohn’s splendid War March of the Priests from his incidental music to Racine’s Athalie. It used to make a regular appearance on programmes like Dinner Music at 6pm on the old YC network of my youth; its dramatic harmonies sound so good at the organ and though, again, a grander organ would have made it more exciting, it came off, nostalgia giving it an extra burst.

2. New Zealand School of Music voice students at St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 16 September

I missed the first four items in the St Andrew’s concert next day from the vocal students at the New Zealand School of Music: It meant that I didn’t hear either Laura Dawson and Sophie Kemp who did not sing again later. The rest exhibited admirable features.

Rachel Day has a voice that projects well, but her Richard Strauss song ‘Ich trage meine Minne’ needed greater refinement of tone and dynamic control, and those were the qualities that most of the singers still need to acquire.

She returned later to sing the Jewel Song from Faust, where she conveyed the giddy excitement, ‘hitting’ the notes but missing the interspersed lyrical touches.

Bridget Costello did well to sing the ‘Pie Jesu’ from Fauré’s Requiem, managing dynamic variety well though the piece demands more polished legato singing. She sang a song by John Ireland, Spring Song, with a more reined-in voice, some delicacy and carefully displayed emotion.

Bryony Williams tackled a long aria from The Creation: ‘On Mighty Pens’. It was a strong, convincing performance, showing her dramatic sense and a reasonably controlled top, but her voice wearied towards the end. She balanced that with the rather sentimental Elégie by Massenet (it’s from the incidental music, for cello and orchestra, to Leconte de Lisle’s play Les Erinnyes).

Bianca Andrew won marks for choosing an aria from Barber’s Vanessa (the opera that Kiri Te Kanawa made her mark in a few years ago) ‘Must Winter come so soon?’. She returned to sing the big coloratura aria ‘Non piu mesta’ from Rossini’s La Cenerentola, preceded by the recitative ‘Nacqui all’affano e al pianto’; she moved about sensibly, sang at a reasonable pace and so got all the notes; Emma Sayers’s lively pulse at the piano contributed delightfully.

Kieran Rayner sang three items, each with Emily Mair at the piano. First, Strauss’s ‘Ruhe meine Seele’, which impressed me, though I only caught the last of it; then Ashley Heenan’s arrangement of the sea shanty ‘Lowdown Lonesome Low’ (familiar to radio aficionados in Donald Munro’s performance). It’s a challenge to bring off such songs without embarrassing artifice and Rayner has the personality to do it convincingly, varying the tone and using dynamic variety with intelligence.

He was given the honour of bringing the little concert to an end with the aria he sang in the Wellington Aria contest in August, ‘O vin, dissipe la tristesse’ from Thomas’s Hamlet; not perhaps the therapy that a psychologist would recommend, but Rayner made an excellent case for it.

Young Musicians Twelfth Annual Concert with NZSO players

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Michael Monaghan Young Musicians Foundation

Twelfth annual concert, conducted by Peter van Drimmelen and Kenneth Young

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Sunday 13 September

It had been announced some time before the concert that this one was the last under the current arrangements; arrangements that began in 1996, with the formation of a trust to remember an NZSO violinist, Michael Monaghan, inspired by violist Peter van Drimmelen, with the first of the annual concerts in 1998.

They have consisted of performances by eight secondary-school, and occasionally younger, musicians, accompanied by players from the NZSO and others. All concerned have given their time free while other costs have been met from supporters and sponsors.

Peter van Drimmelen has been the driver throughout and he has decided that now is the time to withdraw from the project.

Before the final item on the programme, several people spoke: Ian Fraser, a former CEO of the NZSO, Chris Finlayson, Minister for the Arts, who spoke of the importance of the enterprise and its achievements, and finally the Education Office of the NZSO told the audience what it had expected to hear: how the scheme was to carry on.

Deserved praise went to Peter van Drimmelen.

In brief, it is being taken over jointly by the NZSO Foundation and the orchestra itself and it will be expanded to provide comparable activities in other centres.

The Foundation’s remaining funds will be handed to the NZSO Foundation.

Though it would be reckless to claim that standards of performance have improved out of sight, it might not be altogether wrong. I can remember earlier concert in which there were several very impressive performances but one or two that didn’t quite measure up.

This time all eight reached a very high standard, with the last two, cellist Lucy Gysbers and violinist Julian Baker, giving particularly polished performances.

Whether by chance or by a certain amount of tweaking the selection, the concert formed a satisfying programme. The opening piece was a most successful choice – French flutist/composer Benjamin Godard’s Valse, a delightful blend of Straussian Vienna and Offenbachian Paris in a showpiece for the flute in which Jae-Won Um displayed a sure instinct and played attractively.

In the slow movement from Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, and in several subsequent pieces, the roguish acoustic of the cathedral took its toll; though probably not so bad from the front seats, at the rear, bass sounds were unduly exaggerated. Sometimes it created an interesting effect that was not too out of place; at other times, in parts of the Sibelius, the orchestral bass instruments weighed heavily on the violin. With the benefit of a very warm-toned violin Chikako Sasaki got inside it successfully.

Sophie Rose Tarrant-Matthews played the last movement of Beethoven’s third Piano Concerto, again subject to an overbearing acoustic, but strikingly musical; her dynamics and her easy and natural phrasing, avoiding rigid rhythms, were always obvious.

Asaph Verner was even more tested by Ravel’s big orchestra, rich in high woodwinds and percussion, in the first movement of his frightening Concerto in G. Balance between the piano and the orchestra was again hard to achieve, but a fine, brave talent was conspicuous.

The second half was devoted entirely to stringed instruments. Claude Lily Tarrant-Matthews (was this a first, with two siblings among the chosen?), only 11 years old, gave a surprisingly mature performance of the slow movement of Mozart’s third – G major – Violin Concerto. She took it slowly but made full use of that opportunity to explore its lyrical beauties.

Benjamin Pinkney was the only player to tackle a New Zealand piece: Anthony Ritchie’s Viola Concerto, first movement. An interesting work, but it was difficult to assess the performance because of the stridency of high woodwinds and the distraction of too much going on in the orchestra to the detriment of the viola’s role.

The middle movement of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto was played with considerable accomplishment by Lucy Gysbers. Though soloist and orchestra found balance difficult, her playing was confident and very musical.

Finally a little-heard Violin Concerto by Kabalevsky was the choice of Julian Baker. He played its first movement, something of a showpiece, happy and boisterous in fine Soviet style, with good grasp of its style, unostentatiously yet with flair.

There was perceptible relief at the concert’s end from the audience on the announcement about the programme’s continuity. While there are still enormous deficiencies in the teaching of music in schools and simply in exposing children to classical music, this initiative goes some small way to redressing the shortcomings. May it flourish now, and nationwide.