Tag: students

Engaging recital of once much-played piano pieces from young pianist

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Louis Lucas-Perry (piano)

Haydn: Piano Sonata in F, Hob. XVI/23
Debussy: La cathédrale engloutie, No 10 of Preludes, Book I
Liszt: Ballade No 2 in B minor, S. 171
Chopin: Polonaise No 3 in A, Op 40 No 1 (‘Military’)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 7 June 2017, 12:15 pm

Louis Lucas-Perry’s brief biography printed in the programme writes of performances in Upper Hutt and Nelson (a Grieg Piano Concerto there), of winning a New Zealand School of Music ‘Directors’ Scholarship. He offers no information about the schools attended, but mentions teaching and accompanying the Big Sing, students’ choral festival, and chamber music groups.

I notice that I reviewed a student concert that included him in October 2015; there he also played Liszt’s Ballade No 2.

However, on the evidence of his playing he has reached a very respectable level of both technical skill and musical insight. He opened with Haydn’s splendid piano sonata in F major, a fine response to the key which inspires many composers to music that is open, cheerful, often witty (think Mozart’s piano concerto No 19, Beethoven’s Pastoral and No 8, Dvorak’s American quartet). This was staccato, bright, limpid, delighting in sudden modulations, which clearly also delighted the pianist.

Never mind that the second movement, Adagio, in F minor, changes the mood sharply, with a lamenting tone but employing one of Haydn’s most affecting melodies. Haydn can scarcely release it and it returns, blessedly, time and time again, played with infinite tenderness. The melody has such poignancy that I was convinced that I’d heard it long ago, but not for many, many years. I’m sure that everyone in the audience (of around 70) would have been entranced and that all copies of CDs of it in the library would have disappeared shortly after the concert. The last movement restored the spirit of delight (suddenly Shelley came into my head: ‘Rarely, rarely, comest thou, / Spirit of Delight!’ Though the next lines are not so pertinent – ‘Wherefore hast thou left me now / Many a day and night?’).

Debussy’s Sunken Cathedral doesn’t present obvious, enormous technical problems – merely the huge challenge of playing Debussy properly. So it was played carefully, perhaps too carefully for the strangeness of the imagery to emerge with a great feeling of mystery. After all, it’s in C major, mostly.

Liszt’s 2nd Ballade used to be familiar, played on the 2YC, predecessor radio station to RNZ Concert, dinner music programme. But it’s not much played by professionals today; why not? It contains lots of characteristic Liszt – melodic, passionate, mysterious – and Lucas-Perry clearly responded to it with a genuine Lisztian instinct. The pianist’s own imagined ‘programme’ – the legend of Hero and Leander – wasn’t a bad idea as long as one didn’t try to fit it literally to the story. But there were sufficient thundering bass passages and turbulent storm-tossed seas to fit all sorts of romantic legends. And he did a convincing job of telling the tragic tale.

Chopin’s Military Polonaise too, used to be a familiar dinner-music piece on radio (such times now seem to be filled by arrangements for inappropriate instruments of opera tunes and flashy scraps of well-known popular classics). Lucas-Perry took the march-like music cautiously but again demonstrated an ability to play all the notes accurately and capture the spirit of Chopin quite convincingly.

An engaging and enjoyable recital.

 

NZSM Piano Students show their mettle at St.Andrew’s, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand  School of Music, Victoria University presents:
Piano Students 2017

Nick Kovacek (Brahms: Rhapsody in B Minor Op.79 No.1)
Jungyeon Lee (Mozart: Sonata in F Major K.332)
William Swan (Debussy: Preludes Bk II – No.12 Feux d’artifice)
Matthew Oliver (Chopin: Etudes Op.10 – No 9 in F Minor)
Mitchell Henderson (Medtner: Sonata Reminiscenza Op.38 No.1)

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

Wednesday, 31st May 2017

 

A pity that the printed programme gave no information about any of the piano students, which would have “fleshed out” each of them a bit more, a smidgeon of biographical information and a comment regarding repertoire preferences in each case, for instance – nothing more than a couple of sentences akin to what each might write on his or her CV. While I thought the Acting Director of the School of Music, Dr. Dougal McKinnon’s written summary of the Music School’s activities interesting, if understandably promotional, I would have welcomed some additional focus on these particular students and their presentations, who and which, after all, were who and what we were actually there for.

I’m presuming these people were graduate students, judging from the interpretative depth I felt each brought to his or her performance, allied to the level of technical skill displayed in each case. What truly impressed me was that each of the five pianists brought with them a strongly-defined sense of how they thought and felt their pieces should go, so that there was no vapid note-spinning or empty display for its own sake, but concentrated and involved musical impulses behind each note, phrase or sequence. Even when fingers in a couple of instances ran ahead of the music and momentarily lost their poise and articulatedness, there was evidence of feeling at the mishap’s root and was quickly picked up and the notes propelled forwards once again.

I don’t wish to imply that each performance we heard had a sameness of either interpretative manner or technical finish – the pieces were too broad in their range of requirements for such an assertion to be made, for one. and the musical personalities of each pianist too individual, for another. I’m merely reporting that each player gave pleasure on his or her own terms with how his or her chosen piece was articulated. First to perform was Nick Kovacek, who chose to play the slightly lesser-known of Brahms’ two Op.79 Rhapsodies, No.1 in B Minor. The playing caught the music’s latter-day “sturm und drang” feeling right from the opening, and nicely integrated the mood-change of the subsequent lyrical musings into the overall flow, before plunging back into the fray with great urgency. Occasionally, the four-note “motif” sounded splashy, with the player attempting too much velocity, though the effect still caught the excitement of sparks flying as the hammer hit the rock. The central lyrical section was voiced beautifully and tenderly, and the pianist made a good deal of the upward-rushing flourishes, especially the second of each pair. After a properly frenetic climax, the pianist pulled us by the heartstrings into the grey vortex of the coda with real feeling and a nice sense of atmosphere.

After a (possibly unscheduled) luftpause, the diminutive figure of Jungyeon Lee appeared, ready at last to play, without the music, Mozart’s F Major Sonata K.332. Whatever doubts the reluctance of her appearance might have engendered among us in regard to the music-making proved completely unfounded. From the very first note I was drawn in by her characterisations of each episode of the music, everything lyrically voiced and beautifully weighted, the opening strikingly contrasted with the energy and anxiety of the following sequence in a well-rounded, never over-emphatic manner. I would have liked to have heard the repeat in which to enjoy it all again, especially as Mozart’s development section in this movement is so compact, to the point of terseness. I liked her dynamic control of the contrasts, again making them tell without undue force, and her nicely po-faced lead-back to the opening, with, apart from a little choppiness with the sforzandi chords, her music-making obeying the composer’s dictum that it should all ‘flow like oil”.

In the slow movement she brought out the music’s operatic lines with real character, such as her lovely, yielding treatment of the melody. She will, in time, find even more varied emotion in the descending right-hand thirds which followed, and increasingly let the figurations just before the reprise of the opening relax and “play themselves” – the music has more tenderness than she was wanting to show, in those places – but everything else had a naturalness of expression which I found fresh and engaging.

The finale was begun with a fine opening flourish, exhibiting the pianist’s sensitive dynamic control, with each phrase given something special. Occasionally the rapid figurations got the better of her fingers – I felt this movement hadn’t “settled” in performance to the extent the first two had, but as a “work in progress” the playing showed great promise, with my interest held over every bar. Many young pianists find Mozart a puzzle, and skate over his music’s surfaces with brilliance and very little else, so it was good to encounter one who articulated the music with such feeling.

Though Debussy was reputed to have admired Mozart’s music, it still seemed like some kind of quantum leap for a listener to make the transition from the above to the world of the French composer’s music, particularly that of Feux d’artifice (Fireworks), the last of the second set of Preludes, here played with considerable brilliance and evocation by William Swan. Indebted to Liszt, whose playing (particularly his pedalling) Debussy thought a great deal of, the music’s opening encompassed mystery, and growing anticipation, before looming excitingly into brilliance and dazzling momentum. William Swan seemed to have both technique and sensibility aplenty in bringing out these qualities, his traversal of the piece evoking in places something of the sensation of riding a particularly lively rodeo horse, though the piece’s quieter and deeper resonances were also well-served by the playing. We heard some beguiling sotto-voce harmonies murmuring their mysteries, but then were galvanised by sudden irruptions of energy and bright iridescence, with a dying drift of drollery at the piece’s end, the echo of a melody amid the burnt-out ambiences of past glories. I thought it an assured and masterful performance.

If Chopin’s Etude No.9 in F minor Op.10 made a less overtly spectacular effect, the music’s strong, purposeful flow at the outset soon established a world whose darkness was largely unrelieved by any extraneous effects. Pianist Matthew Oliver generated plenty of focused energy in maintaining something of the piece’s grim, obsessive character, tempering the gloom with piquant calls which he nicely differentiated, as if voices were calling to a passing traveller from various places high and low, near and distant, and in doing so creating a sense of spaciousness and isolation. The player brought out the wistful delicacy of the ending, a brief chorus of distantly tinkling voices left behind in the darkness. I thought the young man did well to establish the piece’s character, considering its brevity and elusiveness.

The concert’s final work was the most substantial length-wise of the students’ offerings, and probably the least generally-known, though I think pianist Mitchell Henderson was surely overemphasising the composer’s relative obscurity in stating that nobody in the audience would have heard of him! Nikolai Medtner, like his friend and slightly older colleague, Sergei Rachmaninov, was something of a throwback as a composer, one who determinedly clung to traditional modes of composing and professed an anathema to “modern schools”, in his writings repudiating the beginnings and early developments of twentieth-century music.

Born in Moscow, Medtner didn’t leave Russia until during the 1920s, eventually moving to Britain in the 1930s. Unlike Rachmaninov, who as a pianist developed a varied recital repertoire, Medtner didn’t help his own career as a performer by refusing to perform the music of other composers – he found support for his music only in England, but was famously supported by the Maharajah of Mysore, who was a music enthusiast and a gifted amateur pianist, and who, fortuitously for the composer, had developed a great liking for his music. Thanks to the Maharajah’s sponsorship, recordings of Medtner’s works were made, with the composer at the keyboard (concertos, chamber music and piano sonatas, as well as a collection of his songs recorded with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf!), which resulted in a grateful composer dedicating his Third Piano Concerto to the Maharajah himself.

The work we heard was the single-movement Sonata Reminiscenza Op.38 No.1, part of a larger “suite” of pieces which made up Op. 38, also including 3 dances, 3 canzonas, and a “coda alla Reminiscenza.” – the latter uses the work’s opening theme, hence the title. The piece was written during the first years after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and published in 1922. It’s “strolling” opening had a kind of wistful, “nostalgic journey” feeling, taking the listener to a more purposeful sequence of thematic exposition and development, perhaps less Russian and more cosmopolitean in flavour than Medtner’s friend Rachmaninov’s music. Mitchell Henderson delivered this opening sequence with an admirable sense of ebb and flow, characterising with focused intent the different moods evoked by the opening theme and its occasional motivic reappearance, in between highly chromatic sections of, by turns, restrained lyricism and agitated feeling. His playing took us right into the heart of the music’s varied textures, stressing the music’s essential independence of spirit in its wonderful “structured discursiveness”, while never shirking even the most dissonant of the composer’s’s harmonies – in all, here was a wonderful and absorbing quarter-hour’s music-making!

Something of a feast of both repertoire and piano-playing, then, from Mozart to Medtner – spadefuls of gratitude, therefore, to the musicians and their teachers and to the NZSM for enabling such a presentation for our pleasure!

Woodwind students present entertaining, varied music at St Andrew’s lunchtime concert

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Wind Ensembles of the New Zealand School of Music

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 24 May 2017, 12.15 pm

To hear young performers is always a pleasure; here we had seven young woodwind players, along with three pianists.  The first piece used  a student pianist, and the Bach work was unaccompanied.  Hugh McMillan and Kirsten Robertson were authoritative pianists for the other items.

Bridget Douglas, principal flute with the NZSO is acting Head of Winds, and she introduced the concert.  After that, the players introduced their items, and it was pleasing that all used the microphone, so their words could be heard clearly.

A trio opened the programme: Leah Thomas and Laura Brown (clarinets) and Tasman Richards (piano), playing Mendelssohn’s 2nd Concert Piece.  Grove tells me that this was written in 1833, for basset horn (a close relative of the clarinet) and piano.  The excellent introduction from Leah Thomas explained that the players decided to use two clarinets.  They alternated the music between them, and this worked well.  The presto opening movement was lively and played with flair, with a good variety of dynamics.

The following andante included passages for clarinet alone; these were played with gorgeous subtlety.  The allegro grazioso last movement again had beautiful parts for the clarinets, but the piano was rather ‘rum-te-tum’.   The clarinettists produced wonderful tone, and were accurate and confident.

A Bach Cello Suite on saxophone!!?   Peter Liley explained that the range of pitch of the baritone saxophone he was using was the same as that of the cello.  But I have to say that I found the tone in his ‘Allemande’ from the Suite no.1 a bit weird, so different is the timbre from that of a stringed instrument.  There is not the variety of tone colours as are attainable on a cello.  Nevertheless the higher notes can be very sweet, and the player was well in command of his instrument.

Telemann followed; his Sonata for Oboe and Continuo in A minor  began with a lovely andante from oboist Finn Bodkin-Olen.  Kirsten Robertson’s was a very busy part, played judiciously and producing a fine tone, as indeed did Bodkin-Olen’s oboe.  The vivace second movement was clear and joyful.  This was a splendid performance.

For something completely different, Billie Kiel played on clarinet Malcolm Arnold’s Sonatina for clarinet and piano, Op.29.  This was a challenging selection, with snappy melodies and delightful quirky passages and techniques, all of which Kiel played with the competence of a professional.  The piece’s two movements were both fast.

However, the reliance of the accompanist on reading his music on an iPad or similar had an obvious disadvantage when it seemed that his foot-pedal for the device didn’t work, and he could not continue, making an unwritten break in the piece.  From there he had to rely on a finger to stab the screen in order to turn the pages.

I was not familiar with the name Gaubert (and nor is Grove), but Google is.  Philippe Gaubert lived from 1879 to 1941.  Like many French composers, he was obviously keen on the flute.  His Madrigal for flute and piano was a complete change of mood from the Arnold work, being calm and pastoral.  The flowing accompaniment had its own charm.  It was a thoroughly enchanting performance by Samantha McSweeney and Kirsten Robertson.

The concert ended with the Rondo: allegretto from Weber’s Clarinet Concerto no.1 in F minor, Op.73.   As Frank Talbot, the performer, explained in his introduction, Weber was using the concerto to demonstrate the latest improvements to the clarinet. This third movement was a spirited piece, full of interest and liveliness, and played with assurance and technical mastery.  While the soloist had pauses, Hugh McMillan was kept busy substituting for a symphony orchestra.  It was a good work with which to end the concert.

 

Wellington Youth Orchestra and Simon Brew – playing for keeps

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Youth Orchestra presents:
ROSSINI – Overture “William Tell”
BRUCH – Violin Concerto No.1 in G Minor Op.26
TCHAIKOVSKY – Symphony No.6 in B Minor “Pathetique”

Shweta Iyer (violin)
Wellington Youth Orchestra
Simon Brew (conductor)

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

Tuesday, October 11th, 2016

From the first solo ‘cello note of the Wellington Youth Orchestra’s performance of the “William Tell” Overture, I was spellbound – I’d never heard that opening ascending phrase speak more eloquently and poetically. Naturally, I couldn’t straight-away rustle about in my seat turning my programme’s pages to discover who the ‘cellist was – which was good, because my attention wasn’t then diverted from the playing of the other individual ‘cellists, who seemed all to have a turn at part of the melody as well (Rossini actually scored the opening for five solo ‘cellos accompanied by double basses). Though not perhaps QUITE as beautifully inflected and intoned as the leader’s, each player contributed to an overall lovely effect, the solo lines seeming to “personalise” the music more than is usually the case, and draw the listener into its sound-world most effectively.

When the music got louder, I was able to unobtrusively refer to the orchestra personnel page and discover that the ‘cellist in question was in fact Lavinnia Rae, whom I’d already heard this year playing a solo concerto (she had, in fact won the orchestral section of the NZSM/WCO Concerto Competition earlier this year with her playing of the same concerto, Shostakovich No.1) and simply hadn’t recognised her on this occasion. But her playing instantly proclaimed her skill and depth as an interpreter, and seemed to galvanise the whole ‘cello section to give of its best.

The orchestra under conductor Simon Brew then went on to give a splendid rendition of what followed – focused, stinging raindrops at the beginning of the storm, which featured fiery brass and tumultuous timpani (sounding at the climax more like the Wagner of “Die Walküre” than Rossini!), beautiful cor anglais and flute solos throughout the pastoral sequence, and scalp-prickling calls from the brass at the beginning of the final march.

One hears this music so often, it’s almost taken for granted that any performance will launch crisply and tightly into those dancing and galloping rhythms without any trouble, when it must actually be something of a nightmare for the players to achieve unanimity with those three-note figures, especially at the start. The ensemble did take a few bars to “find” one another individually and sectionally, but Simon Brew brought things together with a clear and decisive beat, allowing plenty of noise at cardinal points (the composer was nicknamed “Monsieur Vacarmini” (Mr. Uproar) by critics of the time) and bringing out details such as the piccolo flourishes during the coda – the wind-playing in general was another of this performance’s notable features. Brew spared his strings by cutting the molto perpetuo-like middle section of this sequence, and instead concentrating on its fervent, warlike aspects, giving brass and percussion their head to great effect.

Next came Max Bruch’s G Minor Violin Concerto, for many people, THE romantic violin concerto par excellence. It provided the opportunity for us to hear another winner from this year’s NZSM/WCO Concerto Competition, Shweta Iyer, who took the Secondary School prize. For a capable soloist the concerto is a gift, affording ample opportunities for both virtuoso display and poetic expression; and Shweta Iyer brought plenty of youthful exuberance and darkly passionate feeling to the first movement’s more vigorous passages, while by contrast finding plenty of lyrical sweetness in the central adagio’s singing melodies. One or two early intonation divergencies apart, Iyer’s playing felt and sounded secure and totally involved, every note invested with warmth and feeling.

Though full-blooded enough in places, much of the playing from both soloist and orchestra had an attractive pliable quality, as if the musicians were listening to what they themselves were doing and trying their best to make certain it was all fitting together. Iyer’s nimble fingerwork at the conclusion of her first-movement cadenza did seem to catch conductor and orchestra out momentarily, but this was the exception rather than the rule. I thought the Adagio in particular had everybody, soloist ,orchestra and conductor, in vibrant accord, exemplified by moments such as the beautiful counterpointed sequence between the solo violin and the orchestral horn, and the give-and-take intensities of the build-up towards the movement’s central climax. Perhaps the brass could have “capped off” the great moment even more resplendently, but in general, the music’s ebb and flow of feeling was put across with energy and sensitivity.

Playing as if their lives depended on the outcome, orchestra and soloist dug into into the finale’s opening measures, the energetic principal theme ringing out resplendently from both Shweta Iyer’s violin and the orchestral strings. Then came the second, more fully-throated theme – was there ever another concerto so endowed with romantic melody as this one? – first the orchestra, then the soloist gave this tune all the “juice” one could want, contrasting with the trenchant figurations of the “working-out” which followed, and the winding-up of energies for the coda’s exciting accelerando, brought off with great flair by all concerned. Very great credit to Shweta Iyer, for some brilliant, adventurous and heartfelt playing of one of the ‘great” concertos.

An even greater challenge faced the orchestra after the interval – this was Tchaikovsky’s final symphony, known as the “Pathetique”, and regarded by the composer himself after some initial misgivings, as his finest work. Most unusually for its time, the final movement is an adagio, marked “lamentoso”, so as to underline the music’s sombre nature – and many a concert-hall performance of the symphony has occasioned an irruption of audience appreciation after its brilliant third-movement orchestral splendours have thudded to a halt, only for the enthusiasm to be quelled by the final movement’s bleak opening strains!

The opening sequences of this symphony, while sobering to listen to, are always a delight to observe “live”, as the lower strings interact with the woodwind long before the violins get their first chances. The syncopated string entries caused the players some difficulties at first, but by the time the brass made their startling shouts of reply the strings had things under control, the players then managing the lovely ascending passage leading to the “second subject” with great aplomb, from ‘cellos to violas and then to the violins, the latter preparing to tug the heartstrings with one of the world’s great melodies.

The winds made a lovely sound throughout their see-sawing passages which followed – detailed and clearly-pointed playing which sharpened the music’s intensities, and “lifted” the violins’ reiteration of the “big tune” to an even greater pitch – but while the clarinet solo which followed held us in thrall, the bassoon, whose hands had been splendid at the symphony’s beginning, unfortunately dropped the ball with the line open, and the concentration momentarily faltered. Those tricky syncopated string entries after the music’s great thunderclap were thus at sea for a while, until the brass came to the rescue with the percussion in tow, roaring out those basic rhythms and getting the ensemble back together.

Splendidly solid support from timpanist Hannah Neman helped further support the strings with their portentous “Fate” theme, capped off magnificently by the brass, upper and lower, the music churning piteously in its despairing throes, and collapsing under its own weight of emotion. From out of the gloom came the strings with their “famous tune” once again, Simon Brew judiciously directing their course through the gloom, their tones focused like a shaft of light surveying the wreckage from the storm. Some superb clarinet playing followed, ably supported by the other winds, and so we were at the coda, the string pizzicati fitful and uncertain at first, and the brass with a frog in someone’s throat – but things came together for those last few heart-easing descents.

The 5/4 second movement, apart from a couple of disjointed rhythmic dovetailings among the strings in places, was beautifully realised, the ‘cellos at the beginning full-toned and heartfelt, the winds plangent in reply, and the upper strings catching that lovely “Italianate” sound during the following sequences, before building the intensities slowly and surely just before the trio. I thought Simon Brew’s marshalling of his forces nicely brought out the trio’s contrasting sombre, somewhat obsessive character, and encouraged the players at the end to make the most of the descending motif’s gentle poignancy.

Next was the March, launched at a sensible tempo, giving the players elbow-room in which to phrase their lines, though I thought the strings could have been encouraged to “dig into” and point these same rhythms rather more jauntily. The winds demonstrated a touch more elan in this respect, though the excitement was still effectively built up, with strings and winds exchanging splendidly “skyrocketed” fusillades of sound leading to the march-tune’s first full-blooded statement. Conductor Brew kept the tempo steady, encouraging strings and winds to swirl their figurations with ever-increasing abandonment and brass and percussion to thunder in support – the deathly silence which followed the last hammered chords spoke volumes!

The strings’ opening phrase then tore open the silence and set the final movement on its course, straightaway laying bare the anguish and sufferings of the music’s creator. Their sorrowing gesture was amplified by the wailing wind counterpoints, and even included a grim-toned solo bassoon, almost like Death waiting in the wings for its moment. Though the horns didn’t sound entirely comfortable at first with their syncopated accompaniments, the strings rallied around a sudden impulsive glimmer of hope in a new episode which was build up by Brew and his players to a magnificent, if short-lived show of defiance – fantastic intensities, which then spun out of control and collapsed, the sounds mercilessly delineating the tragedy.

I thought the playing here little short of cathartic in its effect, as were the strings’ desperate Wagner-like gestures of rebuttal, a kind of “Volga overflowing its banks” and overwhelming the sufferer’s world with torrents of despair – we could do nothing except let the emotion wash over and submerge our sensibilities in a “sea of troubles”, ponder on the inevitabilites of fate amid dark tocsin resoundings, and listen to the weeping voices recede into the darkness.

It was a number of things – the immediate, no-holds-barred proximity of the players and conductor, the intensity and full-throatedness of the playing, and the give-and-take between Simon Brew and his orchestral forces – which combined to produce such a heartfelt and, at the end “wrung-out” result. Thrills and spills alike, every note of it was extremely satisfying to listen to and be caught up in and made part of – much appreciation to all concerned!

Mature performances by undergraduate NZSM guitar students at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Classical guitar students of the New Zealand School of Music
Dylan Solomon, Olivia Fetherston, Joel Baldwin, Rameka Tamaki, Amber Madriaga

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 28 September, 12:15 pm

This student recital was a showcase for an honours student (Solomon) set beside four first and second year students. The test for the audience might have been to have asked them to identify the levels of accomplishment of each, without knowing their place in the academic hierarchy. Without denigrating the splendid playing of Solomon, I was often surprised at both the skill and the interpretive insights displayed by the undergraduate students.

Because soprano saxophonist Kim Hunter had a conflicting engagement, Solomon substituted for the planned piece for saxophone and guitar by Giulianni, a solo guitar piece by James Mountain, Four Fountains, and the Gigue from Bach’s Lute Suite in C minor (BWV 997).

James Mountain is an Australian composer/guitarist, and this piece was inspired by Len Lye’s Four Fountains, a central installation at the Len Lye Centre in the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth.

He began with such unobtrusive hand movements at the top of the strings, that I thought he was perhaps tuning in an unusual way. But it soon became clear that we were in flight and the ethereal sounds seemed to confirm the sense of a Len Lye creation. I have not yet got to see the new Len Lye gallery so I’ll satisfy myself with an extract from the gallery’s website:

“The new Len Lye Centre opened in July 2015 with an audience favourite: the gentle swaying Fountain, a bundle of rotating stainless-steel rods that twist, flex and shimmer. Among the earliest of Lye’s ‘tangible motion sculptures’, Fountain became a work he returned to throughout the 1960s and 1970s with numerous variations in collections around the world.

“Performing alongside three earlier versions of Fountain, a new member of this family of works arrived in 2015 with the 8-metre tall version – Fountain IV – engineered by the Len Lye Foundation based on Lye’s detailed design drawings and notes.”

Having made this connection, I would rather like to hear the piece again. There were two parts: the first an ethereal, spectral melody in a gently swaying motion; the second, more corporeal, with faster, rolling chords, yet still enigmatic and hypnotic with an endlessly repeated note in the centre of the surrounding sounds.

Solomon’s second piece was the Gigue from Bach’s Lute Suite in C minor. The authenticity of the lute suites and other pieces for the lute is a subject that the layman might well avoid. At one end of the controversy is the lack of evidence that Bach wrote any suites specifically for the lute, and that the so-called lute suites (BWV 995 – 1000), are arrangements of music written for other instruments. The water is muddied by transcriptions of, for example, Bach’s solo violin sonatas and partitas being entitled (by Hopkinson Smith for example) as ‘lute sonatas and partitas’.

It was a rather moderato version of a gigue which is often presented as a quicker dance, but then all the dances that came to be employed by composers over the centuries were treated in individual ways, without the focus primarily on dancing. The way this went was very attractive.

A couple of weeks earlier I’d attended the concert in the Adam Concert Room at Victoria University where Marek Pasieczny himself played; here, first-year student Olivia Fetherston played his Little Sonata of 2011; she reported that it was based to some extent on pieces by Hindemith and Schubert, though I didn’t recognise anything very reminiscent of the styles of either composer. It’s a carefully written work which does not, as the name suggests, outlive the interest of its material; it called for the player to give much attention to dynamics, vibrato, subtle tempo changes, interesting sequences of chords that are always an engaging aspect of the instrument’s resources, and flashes of flamenco-like strumming in the last movement. All played with impressive accuracy and sensitivity.

Joel Baldwin played three of Lilburn’s Canzonas. Though I’ve heard them played on guitar before, I had not heard the one presented as No 1 which is based on Sings Harry; perhaps it’s a changed sequence adopted for the guitar arrangements. The usual No 1 is that composed as incidental music, as were two of the others, for Ngaio Marsh’s famous Shakespeare productions for the Canterbury University College Drama Society: this one for Hamlet, and Joel played that second. I didn’t catch the origin of the third one – either for Marsh’s Othello, or for Maria Dronke’s reading of Rilke’s famous The Lay of Love and Death of Cornet Rilke. They lie very well for the guitar, but are deceptively hard to capture, given Lilburnian elusiveness and reticence; and it’s no disgrace not to have mastered every subtlety. He followed with the Fugue from Bach’s solo violin sonata in G minor, BWV 1001, one of those transcribed via a lute arrangement. His playing was fluent and managed to find the outlines of the fugal workings clearly.

Rameka Tamaki played two contemporary pieces, the first by Cuban composer Leo Brouwer and the second by eminent French composer Roland Dyens. With Brouwer’s Danza del Altiplano Tamaki showed a surprisingly comfortable familiarity, as if he’d lived on the Altiplano (the high plateau straddling Bolivia, Peru and Chile) rather than Cuba. There was an instinctive feel for the rhythm and his fingering was agile; he seemed to rejoice in the nasal sound created by strumming close to the bridge.

Dyens’s famous Tango en Skaï, has cropped up in school of music recitals a few times over the years. For a young first year student, Rameka Tamaki exhibited an air of confidence and considerable virtuosity in the varied demands on each hand. Perhaps it’s a kind of send-up of the Argentinian tango and the playing commanded the complex rhythms and flourishes with seeming ease.

Finally Amber Madriaga. First she played the pair of minuets from Bach’s solo violin partita in E minor, BWV 1006, the first of which is a gentle piece, very exposed for a violinist though not that hard simply to play the notes and the same goes for the guitarist. The second minuet, a little more subdued in spirit, is usually played at the same tempo, but she emphasised its meditative character by slowing further; a satisfying performance.

I recalled Madriaga’s name from her participation in the university’s Young Musicians Programme in 2012 where she played the Tango en Skaï. Here she played, instead, Dyens’s Fuoco (from his Libra sonatina), a furiously virtuosic piece that was, perhaps, not technically perfect, but nevertheless exemplifying the admirable level of accomplishment that the school of music is achieving, specifically in guitar.

 

 

 

Plenty of pre-university talent for the school of music to draw on

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

New Zealand School of Music Young Musicians Programme

Classical Classes Final Concert 1

Adam Concert Room, NZSM, Victoria University

Saturday 10 September 2016, 2pm

It is inevitable in a concert of this sort that there will be a great variance in skill levels, and in musicianship.  This time, there were fewer really young students than I have heard in previous concerts of this type; nearly all would be intermediate or secondary school students, I would guess.  The comments below are made not to criticise the individual players, but hopefully to assist them to make their musicianship even better.

The concert opened with a guitar quartet playing two short pieces, very competently.  Not all the players had full-sized guitars, and this may have contributed to the low volume.  Like all the items, the pieces were introduced by the players.  The two gentle pieces, ‘The Water is Wide’ and ‘Waterfalls’ had their attributions in the printed programme reversed – the former is traditional and the latter by Australian Peter de Monchaux.  Vaughan Austin played solo lines very well.  This was not all easy music; off-beat rhythms in the second piece were handled very well.

Robert Evers played two short pieces by Prokofiev, and gave his introduction very clearly and confidently s indeed was his playing.  The first piece, ‘Regret’ was perhaps a little loud for such a sentiment.  ‘Tarantelle’ was the expected fast dance.  No pedal was used, and there was little subtlety but certainly excitement.

Ishta Khor (violin) and Elliot Baguley (cello) were younger performers, and I thought the tone, resulting from difficulties in tuning and bow technique, rather harsh, particularly with the violin.  The cello parts were easier, and sounded better.  The two pieces were by New Zealand composers: ‘A Book of Dreams’ by Barry Anderson and ‘Ghosts’ by Ronald Tremain.

Ryan In played from memory the Praeambulum from Partita no.5 in G (BWV 829) by J.S. Bach.  This was superb pianism,  Ryan’s phrasing and staccato passages were excellent.  He varied the dynamics beautifully, and showed great digital facility for someone of his age.

He was followed by a piano trio: an excerpt (I assume the first movement) from Haydn’s piano trio no.22 in A.  This was impressive playing, from Tee Hao-Aickin (violin), Liam Anderson (cello) and Vanessa O’Neill (piano).  Their interpretation was convincing, the playing showed subtlety, there was good balance, and although intonation was not perfect, it was mainly very good, as was the players’ tone.

A change to singing: an all-female vocal ensemble of Hannah Collier (no relation), Hunter Meek, Brooke Raitt, Greta Healy-Melhuish, Cassandra Bahr and Lily Jones, accompanied by an excellent but unidentified pianist (later identified in another item as ‘Danny’) sang Frederick Keel’s setting of Shakespeare’s ‘You Spotted Snakes’ followed by ‘It was a Lover and his Lass’ by Vaughan Williams.

The voices and intonation were on the whole good, but there was insufficient variation of tone or dynamics.  In the second song, these aspects improved, but sometimes the singing was just under the note, especially in the notorious seventh note of the scale when descending.

Vanessa O’Neill played the Prelude from Grieg’s Holberg Suite.  The work was written for piano, although the composer’s arrangement for string orchestra is more well-known.  Vanessa is a very able pianist.  She knows what she is doing; fast passages were very accurately performed, and where the melody was in the bass, it was brought out well.  This was a very enjoyable performance.

Brooke Raitt (voice) sang ‘Dream Valley’ by Roger Quilter.  While she still has a child’s voice, this was very accurate singing, and William Blake’s words were well articulated.  She just needs to develop greater warmth of tone.  ‘Danny’ accompanied.

Stella Lu, piano, played Sonatina Op.13 no.1 by Kabalevsky.  She played this fast piece (first movement) confidently and capably.

Tee Hao-Aickin returned, along with her pianist sister, Danielle, to play the allegro first movement of Beethoven’s wonderful ‘Spring’ sonata.  This sublime work always makes me smile with pleasure.  The players demonstrated lovely tone; these are promising young musicians.  Intonation was not perfect, but very good from Tee.  Perhaps the timing, phrasing and dynamics were a little too strict, especially in the piano part – there should be phrasing within phrases as well as between them.  Otherwise, this ambitious item was most enjoyable.

A piano trio ‘Oblivion’ by Piazzolla from Jim Zhu (violin), Willoughby Benn (cello) and Ryan In (piano) I found rather dreary (was the composer’s idea to put the audience into oblivion?), but admittedly it warmed up a little during its course.  These players were younger than the previous ones, and therefore not so skilled, but they did well.  The cellist appeared younger than her colleagues, but held up her part well.

Hunter Meek, who had already sung in the vocal ensemble, sang Michael Head’s ‘Ships of Arcady’.  I remember this song being popular in the 1960s; I have not heard it for a long time.  Hunter sings well, but swallows her words somewhat.  Her voice needs more projection, and she needs to keep her mouth open more in quiet passages.  However, it was a pleasing performance, and it was good to hear her acknowledge Danny, still unnamed in the printed programme.

The final item was from pianists Stella Lu and Danielle Hao-Aickin, playing three short piano duet preludes by George Gershwin.  The second, andante con moto e poco rubato, had more subtlety than its preceding allegro yet it also had cheekiness.  The final allegro ben ritmato e deciso was a lively and attractive movement, played very well, making an upbeat end to the concert.

All these young players should be encouraged, whatever their age and level.  A little top: when you bow, do look at the audience!  The work of those who administer, arrange, teach and encourage young musicians deserve thanks.

 

 

 

‘Singers to listen for’: “A long way to hear singing as good as this”

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Rotary Club of Wellington and Kiri te Kanawa Foundation

‘Singers to listen for’, compèred by Rodney Macann

Jonathan Abernethy (tenor), Anna Dowsley (mezzo-soprano), Katherine McIndoe (soprano), Jarvis Dams (baritone), Terence Dennis (piano)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace; 6.pm for 7.15pm

Friday, 26 August 2016

Advertised on RNZ Concert like any other concert, it was in fact not at all.  It was a fundraiser for Gillies McIndoe Research Institute (for cancer research) and the Kiri te Kanawa Foundation.  A similar event had been held last year.  The early part of the evening was taken up with chat, drinks and canapés, before the music started at 7.15pm.

Rodney Macann was a genial and knowledgeable MC, and Professor Terrence Dennis the incomparable accompanist.  Jonathan Abernethy and Katherine McIndoe are graduates of Victoria University and Jarvis Dams is still a student at Waikato University.  With the exception of an item by Berlioz and perhaps the Delibes aria, this was a ‘top of the classical chart’ concert, but none the worse for that; these items are popular because of their outstanding melodies, sentiments and sheer musical quality.

First up was Mozart’s Magic Flute; Tamino’s wonderful aria ‘Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön’.  Jonathan Abernethy has a rich, powerful, dramatic tenor voice, and he was fully up to not only the musical demands of the piece but also the emotional and expressive character.  Meanwhile Dennis impressed me with his astonishing ability to never be merely in the background of the performance, yet always allowing the singer to be in the foreground.  The piano lid was held on the short stick, appropriate for accompanying singers.  This was a glorious performance.

Jonathan’s partner, Australian Anna Dowsley, has not been to New Zealand before.  Like Jonathan, she is a singer with Opera Australia.  Staying with Mozart, she sang ‘Non so più’ from The Marriage of Figaro.  This was a fast, but assured performance, by a lovely voice.  She gave us the drama of the piece in full measure. Terence Dennis made the accompaniment more interesting than I’ve ever heard it on the piano.  In this and many of the other arias, the singers did not stand stock still as in a recital, but moved around the platform.

Back to The Magic Flute, for the duet between Pamina and Tamino: ‘Bei Männern’, from Katherine McIndoe and Jarvis Dams.  Katherine’s voice is placed well forward; Jarvis’s less so.  The soprano sang just a shade under the note occasionally, but this disappeared as the programme progressed.  Both have warm tone, and they made a lovely job of the duet.

Another Mozart favourite is the trio ‘Soave sia il vento’ from Così fan Tutte.  The two women’s and Jarvis Dams’s voices were well matched and they sang in perfect cohesion in this most beautiful trio.

Rossini’s popular comic opera Il barbiere di Siviglia gave us Anna singing Rosina’s aria ‘Una voce poco fa’, as the heroine thinks of her beloved Lindoro.  From the same opera Jarvis, as Figaro, sang ‘Largo al factotum’ in fine style.  Anna’s is a rich mezzo voice, but perfectly under control.  She floated it so agilely, it made for an astounding performance.  Jarvis began off-stage; his voice was well-coloured, and his production seemed effortless.  He made great use of the Italian words.  Sometimes he was a little too loud for this very lively acoustic.  His enunciation of the tongue-twister ending of the aria was phenomenal!

To a different mood; Gounod’s Faust was represented firstly by Jonathan singing a meltingly beautiful ‘Salut! demeure chaste et pure’.  His tenor voice is utterly right for this role.  He injected plenty of feeling into this intensely romantic aria, addressed to Marguerite by Faust, and his high note was glorious.  Katherine McIndoe put the required innocence into her well-characterised rendition of the ‘Jewel Song’.  She employed a range of dynamics to magnificent effect, and her French words were exceptionally clear.

Now to something less familiar: from Berlioz’s The Trojans.  ‘Nuit d’ivresse’ is a duet sung by Dido and Aeneas in Carthage; in this case, by Anna and Jonathan.  Together they sang, calling on their dramatic abilities to great effect, even though lacking set and costumes.  The accompaniment, as always, set the scene though the excellence of Terence Dennis’s representation of the orchestral score.  The singers both sustained beautiful tone marvellously well.  It was a splendid performance of a lesser-known duet.

Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers has one exceedingly popular number; before we got to that, though, we had the aria ‘L’orage s’est calmé’ sung by Jarvis as Zurga.  This was a mature and very fine interpretation, although the tone was just a little harsh at times.

We moved from the former Ceylon to India, with the opera Lakmé by Delibes.  Here was the famous duet for the two women (for some time a number of years ago it was used to sell cars) with its delicious interweaving harmonies.  Rodney Macann explained that these two singers had only met the previous day, yet they were so professional, it sounded as though they had sung together many times, such was their cohesion and matching tone; they gave a very fine, in fact almost immaculate performance, with exquisite phrasing.

To end the musical programme (well, not completely), the famous duet was sung: ‘Au fond du temple saint’.  There is nothing to say about it except that it was outstanding.  The two male singers were simply superb.  As Rodney Macann said more than once, the hearers would have to go a long way to hear singing as good as this.  Congratulations to all concerned!

A number of encores were performed, the first a light opera-style piece for soprano, by John Drummond, recently retired professor of music at the University of Otago.  I missed these, on account of another engagement.

 

 

 

Gems from the tutors at the Aroha String Quartet’s music academy

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s Lunchtime concert

The Aroha String Quartet’s International Music Academy 2016: Tutors’ concert

Music by Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 10 August , 12:15 pm

The Aroha String Quartet is more than ten years old and has, through two or three personnel changes, become an important feature in Wellington’s musical scene.

They take their position seriously, now contributing to the teaching, coaching and support of young (and adult, non-professional) musicians. The Academy takes place at St Andrew’s between 9 and 14 August, with two public concerts on Sunday the 14th. The coaching is done by the quartet’s members plus a number of other international musicians, most of whom participated in this recital.

There was only one complete work (Mozart’s Sonata in D, K 381) and three single movements by the other composers.

The piece played in its entirety was a reasonably familiar sonata for piano, four-hands, played by Songwen Li and Xing Wang. They played it in a brisk, staccato manner rather than seeking its lyrical character. Their style no doubt tended to expose possible ensemble flaws in a piano duet, though there was little of that to bother about, with all four hands hitting the keyboard in a well-practised manner with fine ensemble. That applied to the outer movements while the middle, Andante, revealed a more song-lie quality: it was by far the longest of the three movements.

The first item on the programme was the first movement of Schumann’s wonderful piano quintet (Op 44), from the Aroha Quartet (Haihong Liu and Simeon Broom, violins; Zhongxian Jin, viola; Andrew Joyce, cello) with Jian Liu contributing the piano part. It might have reflected the players’ positions, or mine, in the organ gallery, that Jian Liu’s piano and Andrew Joyce’s cello (he had replaced an ailing Robert Ibell) dominated the soundscape. Given that the piano was Schumann’s first love, it’s never surprising in his chamber music that the piano tends to take charge.

Then came the first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ piano trio (in D, Op 70 No 1) in which Simeon Broom (second violin in the quartet) and Andrew Joyce were joined by pianist Rachel Church. Here Broom assumed a conspicuous space while Church’s piano was beautifully subdued and genial but by no means obscured; and as usual, Joyce’s cello was a lovely contribution; he attracts immediate attention no matter how gentle or subdued his playing, or how good the other players are.

Then finally, the quartet, alone, played Mendelssohn’s last string quartet, first movement, Allegro vivace assai (in F minor, Op 80) written shortly before he died. For many a music lover, for whom Mendelssohn may not be among the top ten, an exception is made for this: beautifully crafted, infused with a depth of feeling and musical inspiration that is moving and completely arresting. A pity that it took his beloved sister’s death and his own failing health to inspire him to commit it to paper; and the only problem was their stopping at the end of the first movement, and that he didn’t feel the impulse to write more of such genius.

Try to get along to their public concerts at St Andrew’s on Sunday: 3 pm and 5:30 pm.

Music Futures diverting showcase for rising young musicians

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Music Futures: The Sound of Wellington Youth Music 2016

Blue Notes (Tawa College Chamber Choir, conductor: Isaac Stone, accompanist: Martin Burdan)
Mendelssohn and Daughters; Zephyr Wills (violin), Vanessa O’Neill (piano) and Emily Paterson (cello)
Guest artists: Malavika Gopal and Anna van der Zee (violins), Thomas Guldborg (percussion)
Lavinnia Rae (cello) and Hugh McMillan (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 31 July, 3 pm

Music Futures is an independent enterprise set up by a group of people who felt there was a need for something more to help talented young musicians through financial awards, performance, opportunities, workshops and masterclasses, mentoring, and lending and hiring instruments. This was their first public performance this year. Members of the NZSO are among the tutors and mentors.

This concert set out in part to illustrate the range of musical genres: a chamber choir, a cut-down concerto, a chamber group and an arrangement of an Indian raga from some of the grown-up participants.

The Tawa College’s small choir, Blue Notes, demonstrated a quality that would, for any average listener, demand top place in any choral competition, such as the Big Sing in Dunedin, where they have been nominated as finalists later this month. Three small pieces, one by their suburban mentor Craig Utting (Monument), slow, clear harmonies and, like all their items a display of admirably sensitive dynamics. Their other offerings were from almost the extremes of western music, from the ‘Agnus Dei’ from Palestrina’s Missa Brevis to Stephen Sondheim’s The Miracle Song. They also contributed at the end of the concert with a careful studied a cappella choral piece by Brahms: ‘Dem dunkeln Schloss der heil’gen Erde’ and Karimatanu Kuicha by Ko Matsushita, that involved tricky intonation and rhythms: all from memory.

The first movement of Mendelssohn’s piano trio in D minor, Op 49 was played by three players from Kapiti and Wellington Girls’ colleges, two girls and a boy, named as if they were Mendel’s son and daughter. Though it’s such a gorgeous work and I know it so well, I can’t remember when last heard it. They played it with a certain languorousness, not altogether inappropriate; but an excellent way to prolong the delicious experience of that rapturous second theme.

Three NZSO players then recreated an arrangement by violinist Malavika Gopal of a raga by Ravi Shankar, entitled La Danse, for two violins and tabla. That offered an attractive contrast to the rest of the concert.

Then we had a foretaste of the concerto that NZSM student Lavinnia Rae was to play the coming Wednesday at the combined concert between the NZSM orchestra and the Wellington Youth Orchestra: Shostakovich’s first cello concerto (first two movements), the orchestra’s part played by Hugh McMillan. Played without the score, this was a remarkably mature and accomplished performance that revealed a real dramatic awareness, as well as brilliant handling of false harmonics in the second movement.

I regretted the likelihood of missing that concert.

There will be two further concerts from Music Futures: on 18 September and 13 November. They too are bound to be highly rewarding experiences for the audience.

 

 

Woodwind students deliver a delightful variety of lunchtime music at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Works by New Zealand composers (mainly)

Woodwind students of Te Koki New Zealand School of Music; accompaniments by Hugh McMillan (piano)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 27 July 2016, 12.15pm

Head of Woodwind at NZSM, Deborah Rawson, introduced the students taking part in the concert, and said she had asked them to find suitable works by New Zealanders.  However, the unavoidable absence of a few students meant that several played more than one piece, the latter ones in each case being by other composers.

Perhaps the cause was the rather more esoteric nature of the programme, but there was a smaller audience than is often the case at these lunchtime concerts.  First up was Winter for saxophone and piano, by Natalie Hunt.  It was performed by Kim Hunter.  The saxophone part was interesting, employing the full range of the instrument, but I found the piano part rather tum-te-tum; the overall effect of the piece was somewhat dreary – perhaps the composer’s view of winter.

Next came one of the several clarinet players: Laura Brown, playing Sonatina for clarinet and piano, by Douglas Lilburn.  Laura explained that the piece was not played frequently, and that Lilburn himself had decided that he did not like it, and put it aside.  Here again, the accompaniment was not very interesting, though it livened up in the second movement.  However, the composer exploited most of the considerable range of the woodwind instrument and its capabilities.  After a quiet opening, the sonatina developed into a tuneful and expressive work.  There were gorgeous effects and fresh-sounding melodies. The sudden ending was a surprise.  Laura Brown played with excellent phrasing.

After Lilburn, we had a performer-composer; in fact, we witnessed a world premiere: Peter Liley’s ‘Trees’, for solo saxophone.  Peter was the only male among the day’s performers.  The piece was unaccompanied, and moved through several short episodes, which the composer explained to the audience.  (It was good to see all the players using the microphone, so that their descriptions could be clearly heard).  The episodes were to do with birds, insects, the fantastic woods, and a great beast.  Peter’s sound was bigger and more brassy than that of the other sax player.

He introduced into his piece extended techniques such as over-blowing, thus producing different and multiple tones.  However, I found that the practice of starting each phrase of the melodies on the same lower note became a little tedious.  Very loud sounds were followed by high chirping bird-like tones.  Considerable musical gymnastics were performed as part of the piece.

Next up was clarinettist Leah Thomas, playing Gareth Farr’s Waipoua, a contemplation of the great kauri forest, and especially of the giant Tane Mahuta.  It was an attractive piece, played in a controlled but evocative manner.  There was good interplay between clarinet and piano.  Dynamics were handled very well.

The only bassoon on show was played by Breanna Abbot. She gave us ‘Three Pieces’ by Edwin Carr.  The first was contemplative, the second bouncy and impetuous, but rather like an exploratory journey, while the third had features of both the other movements.  They were played with clarity, and pleasing tone.

Kim Hunter returned to play ‘A flower who never fully bloomed’ by Michelle Scullion, a New Zealand flautist (or flutist, if you prefer), composer, and multi-tasker in the arts.  Although Kim’s instrument was again the alto saxophone, this piece began with the lower register of the instrument, giving quite a different effect.  The unaccompanied piece again demonstrated the player’s excellent control of dynamics and lovely tone.  Suiting the title, the piece had a mournful character.

We then turned to the classics: firstly, the appassionata movement from Brahms’s Sonata Op.120 no.2, played by Laura Brown.  It has to be said that the confidence and experience of this great composer was most obvious in this gorgeous piece.  Rippling passages on both instruments were a notable part of the movement.  The piano was in no way left in the background; it was essential.  There was an attractive variety of tonal colours and dynamics from both players; a thoroughly satisfying performance.

Last was Poulenc; like so many French composers, he was a lover of woodwind.  His allegro con fuoco was the last movement of his Sonata for clarinet and piano, which was one of the last works he wrote, in 1962, the year before he died.  Leah Thomas treated it as typically spiky Poulenc, fast and jolly and one could imagine Poulenc playing this in a Paris night club.  There was plenty of variety in the piano part as well as in that for the clarinet:  lots of fun and the players gave it life.  It made an excellent ending to an interesting and varied concert.