Tag: violin

Music from the memory, in the air and on the wing – all from Wellington City Orchestra’s opening 2026 concert!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington City Orchestra’s 2026 concert series – a fresh and adventurous beginning!

LILI BOULANGER – D’un Matin de Printemps *
LOUISE WEBSTER – Violin Concerto (In Hollowed Bone I hear the Seas Roar)
LILI BOULANGER – D’un Soir Triste
SERGE PROKOFIEV – Ballet “Romeo and Juliet” – Suite No. 2

Helene Pohl (violin)
Justus Rozemond (conductor)
Virginie Pacheco (assistant conductor)*
Wellington City Orchestra

St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Saturday 28th March, 2026

This opening Wellington City Orchestra concert of 2026, brought to its audience a truly engaging and stimulating  programmme. Conductor Justus Rozemond and his WCO musicians here followed up their enterprising 2025 concert of works by Nicolai, Rachmaninov and Berlioz with an even more exploratory selection – two compositions by the tragically short-lived French composer Lili Boulanger (the first of which was directed by the WCO’s Assistant Conductor. Virginie Pacheco and which opened the concert), followed by a Violin Concerto from Auckland composer Louise Webster, here played by the work’s first performer in 2016, Helene Pohl – and with the composer in the audience! – and finally, a Suite of dances from one of the most beloved of twentieth-century ballets, Serge Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet”.

Assistant Conductor, Virginie Pacheco (who had made such a positive first impression in last year’s concert series), took the rostrum for the concert’s beginning and launched her players enthusiastically into the opening wide-eyed spring-like strains of Lili Boulanger’s D’un Matin de Printemps, (A Spring Morning). This was one of the last works the composer completed before her untimely death in 1918 at the age of twenty-four – she had written several chamber versions of the piece for different instruments, but wanted its “full-orchestra” expression as the piece’s last word.

The music’s remarkably verdant textures were conveyed here throughout the “spring morning” opening section with a judicious amalgam of elan and delicacy – a more sombre set of sequences followed, featuring strings and wings in forest-murmur-like “nature-exchanges’, which built up through a splendid crescendo, becoming at the end a kind of exultant processional exuberantly capped by a splendid harp flourish – wonderful, atmospheric playing!

The front violin-desks were then moved back to make room for the concerto soloist – this was Helene Pohl, who had given the premiere performance of Louise Webster’s Violin Concerto as long ago as  2016 with Auckland’s St.Matthews’ Chamber Orchestra. The composer was originally going to write an “overture-like” piece for the concert with passages for a solo violinist, but when she discovered who the violinist was going to be, the present concerto simply “growed”, inspired by Webster’s regard for Pohl as a musician. Incidentally, Webster subtitled the work with the quotation from Ruth Dallas’s poem about the  sea – “In hollowed bone I hear the seas roar” – AFTER the music had been written, a truly organic, rather than “made-to-order” gestation!

The following year, Pohl was due to reperform the work with the NZSO as part of the SOUNZ readings of music by New Zealand composers, but conflicting schedules meant that NZSO violinist Yuka Eguchi had to step in to perform the work instead. Now, ten years after that first SMCO performance Pohl was delighted to have the chance to revisit the concerto in concert – she recalled being particularly struck by the work’s fusion of emotional expression with colourful pictorial detail, making the concerto all the more pleasurable a prospect to go back to.

The work’s beginning instantly arrested one’s attention – over a low orchestral pedal-point the solo violin entered with an ascending theme, the orchestra repeating the theme at a quicker pace. The violin’s “similar but different” wandering, soulful theme, joined by the flutes, gradually energised things, elaborating on certain phrases, rising to stratospheric heights – a beautiful sequence!  From there on the movement played host to sequences alternating tensions and exaltations, all joined in a kind of accord which  featured the soloist reacting to and interacting with both single/smaller groups and with larger orchestral forces – however, a brief confrontation sequence with the orchestra brought forth echoed phrases, sharp pizzicati, percussive “slaps”, and piled-up-note patterns, cautioning against easy conquest!

In other places the interactions of the violinist with smaller groups had an intimacy and candour that suggested something of a “friend in the wilderness” relationship – the soloist frequently parleyed with winds such as the flutes or piccolo, or tenderly mused with the clarinet, or larger groups of sostenuto strings, as well as gentle wind chorales with pizzicato accompaniment – the violinist soared above the winds’ ostinato -like figures in a beautiful passages reminiscent of Holst, sometimes echoing, and at other times supporting each of the soloists phrases and “frontings up” with similarly-derived figures. Another gorgeous “wind chorale” sequence encouraged the soloist to break into a kind of dance, joined in with by the orchestra – something which seemed for a few treasurable moments to unify the music’s questing spirit.

It came across to me as much as a kind of re-exploration or reassessment of deeply-felt experience and feeling.  various both tension and exultation.  The writing for the orchestra in places spare and uncompromising, seemed still  to respond to the soloist with things she already knew, echoing or elaborating phrases and impulses from the solo instrument’s own plethora of realities.  At the end  even the strings gave the soloist moments of reassurance in return to her oputpourings, however brief the rhythmic impulses and guarded sighings, leaving a solo ‘cello and then a viola to offer the soloist concluding impulses of companionship.

Conductor Justus Rozemond got the second movement to grasp the trajectories and flex plenty of orchestral muscle, bringing out a swinging theme that was punctuated by various wind, brass and percussion irruptions. The violin danced at first, then after letting the orchestra echo the dance, re-entered, soaring and swooning beguilingly as the winds amicably chattered away. Eventually the orchestra decided to join in with the violin, grasping the mettle with force and energy, trajectories riding upon surges of almost joyous collegial abandonment. Honour satisfied, the momentums sank to rest – so that when the violin tried to revitalise the dance the orchestra abruptly called a halt!

The third movement, written for soloist and strings alone, drifted into being like a half-realised dream, solo violin harmonics floating into and out of the bleak sostenuto orchestral string textures. The orchestral strings remained glacial as they built an impassioned climax (reminiscent in places of the slow movement of Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony). The solo violin toyed with other solo lines, all wanting to fill the ambient soundscapes, all trying in places to break through a kind of expressive stranglehold, but constantly being brought back to order by the sheer intensity of the orchestra’s impassive response.  The solo violin returned briefly to its world of spectral, half-lit tones and muted impulse, so that the work proverbially ended “not with a bang but with a whimper”. Whew!

A delighted composer came onto the platform at the end to congratulate the musicians and acknowledge our applause – what a work, and what a committed performance! And what an inspiration Helene Pohl’s incredible mastery of the solo instrumental writing would have obviously been in terms of enabling the music to work its spell – all due credit to all concerned!

We needed an interval to take it all in sufficiently, of course, and especially in view of having another of Lili Boulanger’s heartfelt final compositions to give our attention to in the concert’s second half. I was wondering whether we would get Virginie Pacheco back to conduct the second Boulanger piece, D’un Soir Triste but it was Justus Rozemond’s turn as conductor to guide the players through the second of the composer’s pieces. It proved to be the diametrical opposite of the joyous “Spring Morning” piece we had enjoyed – though its title gave us some warning of what was to follow, the music unequivocally takes the word “Triste” in the title to near-unbearable depths of despair.

The piece began with a faint heartbeat rhythm whose trajectories awoke the senses with firstly the winds and then along with the strings beginning what seemed like a death-struggle with oncoming darkness. Each of the music’s upward-thrusting agitations took us towards a remorselessly grinding climax, in which percussion and brass savagely intoned their despairing message. The haunting throbbing of drums and a cello solo clothed in mourning delivered a scenario of intense sorrow, given tongue by the strings and winds. A harp and piano added to whatever consolation the music seemed capable of giving, though the brass and percussion didn’t hesitate to imbue the same themes with sterner, more fateful and sharper-edged accents. The strings aided by the winds continued their threnody of consolation, though the increased intensities led to tragic outcomes and eventual darkness.

The piece’s ending here seemed an incredible evocation of bravery and raw courage from a composer in the midst of the gathering darkness of impending death. Adding to the poignancy of it all was music-making from conductor and players which responded to the work’s heartfelt emotion with focus and commitment that was itself moving to experience at first hand.

Even so, after such rawly-unmitigated emotion, one was almost grateful for the relative distance and paradigmatic tragedy of the “Romeo and Juliet” story, as expressed by the variety of feeling, colour and action in Serge Prokofiev’s music for his famous eponymously-named 1935 ballet. Renowned as much for its initial neglect when first completed, the ballet had to wait until a 1938 production in Brno, Czechoslovakia, for its first public staging, and until 1940 for its first presentation on Russian soil by the Kirov Ballet. The composer meantime had resorted to compiling suites of dances from the complete work to be played in symphonic concerts, as well as extracting ten pieces arranged for solo piano, as a means of getting the music known.

We were given the composer’s arrangement of a second suite of dances from the work, beginning with the portentous “Montagues and Capulets” sequence of orchestral crescendi which serves as a prelude to the “Dance of the Knights” from the ballet’s first act. These famous crescendi were delivered with tremendous gusto by the brass and percussion here, with the sudden hushed ambiences leaving the string tones floating beautifully. Justus Rosamond took a wonderfully portentously tempo for the “Dance”, conveying the arrogance and brutality of the Capulet Knights and the contrasting minuet-like sequences depicting the disguised Montagues at the ball. And how wonderful to briefly hear the timbres of the saxophone taking up the resumption of the Knight’s Dance music towards the end.

The strings made an outstandingly nimble and winsome job of Juliet’s music, Rozamund allowing the clarinet no respite in the alternate sequence (beautifully played!), but relaxed expansively for the touching flute-and-solo-cello portrayals later. In his music Friar Lawrence was a younger, more vigorous priest than I’d been accustomed to, a refreshing alternative – the portrayal got lovely bassoon work, and was ably supported by the horn and the strings. A whimsical favourite of mine has been the “Dance of the Five Couples”, one in which the various players scampered about to great effect.

More expansive was the “Romeo and Juliet before Parting”, with gorgeous, lump-in-the-throat flute playing at the start, and beautiful replying strings, before the horn splendidly made its presence felt, along with the various winds, each “launching” the lines with real presence, such as with the viola solo, nicely animated and properly demonstrative.
The more concerted reprise of the “farewell” music was properly full-blooded, with the occasional “bloop” adding to the desperate, heartfelt nature of the scenario, setting in poignant relief the ostinato-like accompanying lines from the winds and strings as the lower instruments growled an ominous foretaste of the tragedy to come in the bass registers – a splendidly-wrought scenario!

More poignance was to be had with the old-fashioned-sounding “Dance of the Maids from the Antille”, here touchingly characterised by both solo and concerted violins, and contrasting clarinet and saxophone contributions. Came the  inevitable “Death of Romeo and Juliet”, the players digging into the rawly-wrought lines, and the brasses making a properly anguished array of tones, and the cellos and violins throwing out the lovers’ ill-fated theme with heart-wrenching resonance – the whole orchestra’s delivery of the “funeral procession” sequence made for a highlight of the afternoon’s presentation. All that was left at the end were the bleak, comfortless tones of the strings and piccolo, sounding without words the refrain – “for never was a tale of such woe/than that of Juliet and her Romeo”….

All in all, the concert made a truly memorable start to a year’s eagerly-awaited music-making, with every item representing and delivering “moments per minute”, rather than the other way round! A touching “extra” occasion-moment was the marking of Rowena Cullen’s retirement from ten years’ Presidency of the Wellington City Orchestra with a presentation and a warm-hearted ovation. But the afternoon’s music was splendid and special in many ways, not least of all due to composer Louise Webster and violinist Helene Pohl. And, to conductor Justus Rozemond, and his concert assistant conductor Virginie Pacheco, and to all the players, well done for a great beginning to 2026!

 

 

 

Still more musical miracles reported and evidenced in Wellington, this time at Roseneath’s The Long Hall!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The creative spirit continues to work wonders in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa – (“Kei te ora tonu te wairua auaha ki Te Whanganui-a-Tara o Aotearoa”)

Peter Gjelsten tackles a Bach Violin Sonata (No. 2 in A Minor BWV 1003) at The Long Hall, Roseneath

The Chamber Pot-Pourri Ensemble
A Kaibosh Food Rescue Benefit Concert

ROSS HARRIS – 2 Micro-Trios (2020)
Helene Pohl, Peter Gjelsten (violins), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
NICCOLO PAGANINI – Caprice No. 9 for solo violin
JS BACH – Sonata for solo violin in A Minor BWV 1003
Peter Gjelsten  (violin)
CRAIG UTTING – Four Wellington Dances for violin and cello
Helene Pohl (violin), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)
FRANZ JOSEF HAYDN – String Quartet in G Major Op.33 No. 5
Helene Pohl, Peter Gjelsten (violins)
Sophia Acheson (viola), Rolf Gjelsten (‘cello)

The Long Hall, Point Jerningham, Roseneath
Saturday 21st March, 2026

Fresh from attending my first St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace lunchtime concert earlier in the week, I had the good fortune to catch another. not dissimilar kind of musical happening – this one a 2026 “first” for the capital of a series instigated a year ago by violinist Helene Pohl at Roseneath’s “The Long Hall”, situated on the Point Jerningham lookout reserve next to Roseneath Primary School. The concerts are designed to alternatively support the Kaibosh Food Rescue charity, and the Arohanui Strings, the Sistema-inspired early intervention music education programme. The Kaibosh charity makes a significant difference to food and energy waste and carbon emissions, enabling thousands of kilos of food to be redistributed to community groups, resulting in renewed efforts by the same musicians over the present in continuing and supporting an eminently worthwhile venture.

Thanks to the inspiration, skills and capacity for hard work of Helene Pohl and ‘cellist Rolf Gjelsten, the 2025 concert series was a great success. The two musicians, aided by various colleagues, were able to simultaneously commemorate and take advantage of composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s 50th death anniversary, performing a number of the composer’s chamber works in tandem with a wide range of other pieces, including a couple of contemporary works written specifically for these concerts (and therefore both world premieres!) by composers currently both on-and off-shore, Ross Harris and Gao Ping, respectively.

Now, to begin the 2026 series the Long Hall’s opening Kaibosh Food Rescue programme paid appropriate homage to some of the previous year’s delights, including works by “resident” composers (two of whom were present today!), as well as instrumental solos which illustrated the power of a single voice’s communication, and a string quartet by the composer who effectively defined the form and whose efforts provided all kinds of “springboards’ for those others who followed suit.

First up was music representing a kind of timely antidote to Aotearoa New Zealand’s present version of Trumpish madness, two Micro-Trios by Ross Harris, written during the much-discussed lockdown period of 2020 for the Pohl/Gjelsten family members present today. The two works, as if conceived with different personalities in mind, displayed contrasting characters, the first beginning in a restless, slightly anxious 5/4 which developed more forthright impulses befitting a kind of “confused turmoil of being” in response to the isolated circumstances. The second work took a more lyrical approach, with long-linked lines attracting all kinds of impulses which attached themselves to the lines before dropping off the pace and wandering quizzically through unfamiliar vistas (like an ageing process, perhaps – with apologies to the composer!).

Violinist Peter Gjelsten followed up his 2025 performance of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Third Sonata (“Ballade”) for Solo Violin with another work by a virtuoso violinist-composer, perhaps the doyen of them all, Niccolo Paganini – The Ninth of his 24 Caprices for solo violin was given here with plenty of confidence and elan, the opening “hunting calls” resounding their thirds with spirited effect in dynamically-contrasted episodes readily suggesting the shouts of purpose and encouragement from the riders relishing the chase.  The “sport”was given plenty of incident by the violinist’s confident throwing-off a middle-section’s skitterish runs broken by stentorian phrases, suggesting both mishap and success in the pursuit!

Sterner stuff followed these hi-jinks, with Peter Gjelsten giving us JS Bach’s wonderful A Minor Sonata for solo violin, one of three Sonatas for the solo instrument, all of which are often coupled as a performing edition with three Partitas for the same instrument. An all-purpose differentiation between the two titles “Sonata” and “Partita” is that the former is traditionally a four-movement structure which often features linked slow-fast sections  and a fugue, whereas a Partita consists of different types of Renaissance/ Baroque dance movements. True to type this Sonata includes a fugue as the second movement.

First impressions of this work emphasised seriousness over gaiety, the solemn, declamatory opening commanding our attention with the player’s presence of intonation and command of nuance giving his listeners an engaging sense of exploration right to the movement’s final questioning note. The Fugue’s elegance and poise at the outset opens out, Gjelsten finding plenty of room for variations of tone and presenting an astonishing array of different voices – the music’s trajectories buildup and carry us along with wonderful ”heads of steam”, so that the phrases and statements really resonate.

Gjelsten’s control of the Andante’s pulse enabled both melody and rhythm to coexist, often in little more than whisperings, but with an underlying strength of overall purpose. We felt taken to another world by the second half of the movement, with the composer  seeming to allow us a lingering glimpse of his serenity of outlook and purpose of faith – I could imagine a young player in future years delving even further into the music’s timelessness that allow these sounds to linger long after the player ceases. The concluding Allegro is here excitingly launched and teasingly sustained with the antiphonal alternating phrases made here to dance through our sensibilities’ spaces. The rapidly-executed impulses have an exhilarating ring to them, and we’re “teased” with what seems like the approach of a final cadence, but with geyser-like irruptions that suddenly push the boundaries out further – tantalizing playing that keeps us on our toes and  enables us to relish the music all the more.

We had been promised a quick, “straight-through” concert at the beginning, so our kaleidoscopic musical journey  suddenly whirled us homewards via local composer Craig Utting’s engaging “Four Wellington Dances”, for violin and ‘cello (written in 2025 for Helene and Rolf.) The work began with an entirely apposite “Wind Dance”, a nagging 7/8 perpetuo-molto rhythm  by turns driving, teasing and cajoling the notes into sound-impulses whose insistence any Wellingtonians would recognise, and with alternating instruments adding a moaning-sighing figure over the agitations, catching their constant unpredictabilities. Next was the strangely mesmeric “Whale Song”, introduced by spectral “con sordino” violin tones (which set the scene for strangeness) and galvanised further by hauntingly-charged “vocalisings”, firstly in the lower and then upper registers of the ‘cello – an incredible soundscape, tapping into a “natural world” communication, with the instruments conveying a real sense of ambient surroundings and language essentially removed from human interaction.

“Seagulls”, the third dance, has an introduction flecked with further atmospheric touches, such as the ‘cello playing eerie glissandi to the violin’s arpeggiations and rather touching “seafarer’s song”, first played, incidentally, lower than the ‘cello’s accompaniments, though the instruments exchange their roles at certain points – the melody is a real charmer, replete with nostalgia! Finally, the “Habanada” imbues a well-known operatic rhythm with a mischievous spirit during short sequences of dance-tunes and  illicit collaborations with ostensibly unlikely partners such as Saint-Saens’s “The Swan” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Bumble Bee”, with even Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” making a brief appearance before falling down the stairs and (thankfully) coming to its concluding senses!

After all of this, what better finale than to be given a masterwork from a composer whose music paralleled the conditions that produced each of the concert’s preceding works – isolation, compositional mastery, instrumental fluency, and a need for entertainment? All these things come together in the string quartets of Franz Joseph Haydn, whose Op.33 set of six string quartets were written in 1781, and became known as the “Russian” Quartets, due to the dedication to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia. Another nickname given to these works is Gli Scherzi  (The Jokes) referring to the replacement of the older style Minuet with a quicker, more dynamic movement.

Here, then was the fifth of the Quartets from this Op.39 set, a work which itself has been nicknamed with the English sobriquet phrase “How do you do?”, drawing attention to the Quartet’s very beginning, a pianissimo galant cadence which actually returns to conclude the movement with which it started. the opening “How do you do?” cadence is only a prelude to the ensuing Molto Allegro, which seizes hold of the argument and propels it excitingly forwards. The mood lightens for the lyrical second subject, only to unexpectedly plunge into the almost “groaning downwards” chromatic modulation towards the end of the exposition. The volatile development dances, swoops and plunges as the music unfolds, releasing almost operatic surges of energy in places, with the “how do you do” cadence realigning the music’s focus for a recapitulation – we are, by this time, agog at the music’s volatilities, and marvel at how quickly the music races to its concluding cadences without missing a beat!

Our heartstrings are tugged immediately by the slow movement’s intensities, most strenuously propelled forwards with almost unrelenting energy, to which one simply has to surrender and allow oneself to be borne aloft and taken somewhere. What a contrast, therefore, with the impishly impulsive Scherzo, filled with all kinds of hesitancies and impulses!  The Trio brings a steadier, more genteel character, as if wishing to reform such excesses, though to no avail when the opening returns, as quirky and ornery as ever, though with a touch, perhaps, of guilt via its almost evanescent ending!

After this, the finale’s music is almost prim and proper, in what seems like variation form, with the first violin decorating and elaborating on the melodic line in both subsequent variation movements, and then, the viola and cello taking turns to decorate the dance steps for a subsequent movement. Finally, there’s a Presto which scampers to a satisfyingly breathless conclusion!

Such a lot packed into a relatively short time! Nevertheless, we were replete – delighted by the music and the playing, and honoured by the good and prestigious company – a truly memorable occasion!

 

Impactful Shostakovich unpacked -The New Zealand String Quartet and the Ghost Trio

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SHOSTAKOVICH UNPACKED
New Zealand String Quartet  / Ghost Trio

String Quartet No. 4 in D Major Op.83 (1949)
New Zealand String Quartet ; Peter Clark (violin) / Arna Morton (guest violinist)
Gillian Ansell (Viola) / Callum Hall (guest ‘cellist)

Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano (arr. Lev Atovmian, 1955)
Peter Clark and Monique Lapins (violins) / Gabriela Glapska (piano)

Piano Trio No. 2 in E Minor Op 67 (1943-44)
Ghost Trio: Monique Lapins (violin) / Ken Ichinose (‘cello) / Gabriela Glapska (piano)

With: ROBERT BURCH (1929-2007) – Essay to the Memory of Dmitri Shostakovich for
‘cello and piano (1975)  Callum Hall (‘cello) / Gabriela Glapska (piano)

Prefab Hall, Jessie St., Wellington
Wednesday, Ist October 2025

Part of a welcome (and essential) commemoration here in Wellington of the 50th anniversary of the death of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) has been “Shostakovich Unpacked”, a four-part series of concerts exploring some of the composer’s chamber music masterpieces. This was the third concert in the New Zealand String Quartet’s series which presents five of the composer’s fifteen string quartets along with various other chamber works from similar periods in Shostakovich’s creative life, much of which met by official disapproval, and for a time in the form of censure from no less threatening a figure than the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

I couldn’t make it to the two earlier concerts in the series; and after listening to the ensemble’s superbly-wrought reading of Shostakovich’s Fourth Quartet found myself wishing I had moved more sizeable portions of heaven and earth to try and do so! Still, gratitude for what one has and can do is a marvellous thing on its own terms – and the music-making in this evening’s concert was of an order that one was left to marvel at in astonishment! And, it was little short of luxury casting to have TWO ensembles of such quality performing in the same programme, with the added bonus of items featuring members of each group displaying as much enjoyment in the collaborations as the skills required to successfully bring them off.

I particularly enjoyed the contributions made by the two “guest” players in the NZSQ, each notable for their “blending into” the overall textures as for their individual voices, always alive to the potentialities of each phrase they articulated. Arna Morton’s violin sturdily and ambiently partnered leader Peter Clark’s instrument throughout the folksy first movement, while taking her instrument’s mosaic-like opportunities throughout the rest of the work with great surety. Callum Hall’s ‘cello had more opportunities for its solo voice to shine, repeatedly catching the ear with both rhythmic and lyrical enactments of resounding character. Both players seemed for the occasion a glove-like fit into the ensemble’s realisation of a work from a composer whose personal expressions of ideological belief frequently collided with censorious officialdom at the highest (and potentially deadliest) level.

Shostakovich wrote this quartet on a “high” after having attended as an official Soviet spokesman (amazingly, at the directive of Stalin himself) the “Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace” held in New York in March of 1949. Stalin also revoked a previous (1948) ban on the music of “formalist composers” in order to cast the visit of his “representative” to the US in a more positive light. Obviously emboldened by this, Shostakovich had straightaway begun work on the quartet on returning home in April, and finished it before the year was out. Five months later, after intense rehearsals and soul-searchings, the work was privately performed by the composer’s favourite Quartet, the Beethoven Quartet, to an invited audience, whose members immediately expressed alarm at the new work’s ostensible use of Jewish musical idioms. The upshot was that Shostakovich was persuaded to withhold the first public performance and wait “for better times” – which came with the death of Stalin in 1953, and the work’s premiere in December of that year. By this time, the composer’s cynicism at the “new era” was apparent, writing to a friend, “The times are new, but the informers are old”.

All of this history seemed of little concern as the work’s heartwarming introductory sounds were initially launched by the players – a lovely lyrical ambience whose trajectories first suggested something exotically folkish, almost bagpipe-like, with the droning lines of viola and ‘cello underpinning the rhapsodical outpourings of the two violins – tensions arose between the increasingly insistent, sometimes dissonant voices, before shifting harmonies brought viola and ‘cello into the discourse – a more sombre minor-key shift brings meanderings, a hint of a dance and a brief  return to drone-accompanied lyricism at the movement’s end. The Andantino’s first 4-note phrase on the violin straightaway had me thinking “Tchaikovsky”, but not the rest, an intensely-wrought waltz with the ‘cello silent until the player reintroduced the same “Tchaikovsky” theme  – the intensities rose and fell, with Peter Clark’s violin sounding a beautifully “covered” tone replicated by his companions, and  falling gradually away to echoed remembrances of what had gone before.

A gorgeously “chugging” figure introduced the Allegretto, Callum Hall’s ‘cello leading off with a workmanlike theme repeated by the violin, followed by a whimsical unison “trio” of violin viola and ‘cello, the ambience being of a ghostly kind of “night ride” that was then cranked up by the violin’s Jog-trot rhythms (Shostakovich paid a visit by Rossini?) and with wind-blown chromatic figurations introducing an eerie aspect to the journey. Where it eventually took us was to somewhere akin to Robert Schumann’s renowned “other realms” description of worlds of hitherto unexplored experience, a state of being often requiring courage and steadfastness for both performer and listener. Here Gillian Ansell’s viola was the ideal fulcrum for such action, a voice in the midst of the void inviting others to plunge with her into the throes of one of the composer’s most challenging, and in the circumstances, reckless undertakings.

With several audaciously delivered pizzicato chords the introduction to the finale revealed its creator’s raison d’etre for the work, which gradually built up from its robust, truculent beginnings into a kind of danse macabre drawn from Jewish-sounding dance motifs, an unbridled and unashamedly grotesque outpouring of lament in a similar vein to that sounded by the composer’s Second Piano Trio finale. It was no wonder that the work’s first private audience was disturbed at Shostakovich’s apparent insensibility to potential strife and condemnation with this music – its scale was almost orchestral in places, with powerful unisons, sharp accents, and massive chordings, all of which eventually unravelled to leave mere vestiges of desolation for us to marvel over at the music’s end.

Not in the above written order, the programme’s next item was, appropriately enough, a work written in 1975 by a little-known but still significant New Zealand composer, Robert Burch, as “An Essay to the Memory of Dmitri Shostakovich, for ‘cello and piano”, performed by Callum Hall and Gabriela Glapska, one introduced and preluded by Peter Clark, who read an additional posthumous word-tribute by Burch to his illustrious fellow-composer.

Much of the work was not inappropriately sombre, beginning with heavy introductory unison notes from both instruments, stern exchanges, either in unison between piano and ‘cello or in counterpoint with one another. The mood remained serious and studious at first, occasionally highlighting a particular rhythmic five-single-note figure on both instruments – a passage with the cello played pizzicato followed, as did afterwards an almost ad lib section, the cellist bouncing the bow on the instrument’s strings by way of advancing the theme in a different form. The piano suddenly embarked on a convoluted, rhythmically rugged expansion of the thematic material before taking up a fugue-like passage which the cello interrupted, again with the abrupt five-note passage. After a series of forceful chords from the piano, the instruments seem to enter into some kind of collusion, the ‘cello sounding long-breathed lines and Elgar-like pizzicato chordings, to which the piano replied with gently luminous harmonies in the higher registers, the cello continuing to draw out the five-note patternings in more contentedly-expressed terms of acceptance of the piano’s celestial-sounding representations.

In view of Shostakovich’s well-documented sense of somewhat ironic humour, it was appropriate to have some musical representation of his facility in this respect, with ample proof furnished by a performance of several pieces arranged for two violins and piano drawn from the composer’s various suites of “lighter” music for film and other “incidental music” activities. One of his composer-friends, Lev Atovmian, was frequently assigned by Shostakovich to produce arrangements from several of his stage and film scores, one of which was the collection Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano. I must admit to enjoying looking further into the individual pieces’ genesis (at the risk of further elongating this review!) – the opening Prelude was from the 1955 film score The Gadfly, a mixture of tenderness and ebullience which the players designated with considerable relish. Then came the Gavotte, lovely and “bouncy”, from incidental music to The Human Comedy (1934), and followed by a poignant Elegy from the same work, a sequence originally titled The Panorama of Paris. The succeeding Waltz, supposedly from music for a cartoon film The Tale of the Priest and his servant Balda moved by turns through tense, insinuating and buoyant sequences involving a pompous priest, his beautiful daughter and a resourceful servant – however, the concluding Polka certainly added to its interest with further clarification as to the source –  taken from the Ballet The Limpid Stream, its full title was Dance of the Milkmaid and the Tractor Driver.  (Surely no commentator would pass on an opportunity for such a colourful mention!)

It almost goes without saying that violinists Peter Clark and Monique Lapins, together with pianist Gabriela Glapska, all readily brought out the fun, the quirkiness and the tongue-in-cheek sentimentality of these pieces, making the presentations as much fun to watch as to listen to. Other qualities far removed from such innocent enjoyments, and ironically involving two of the same performers here, then took over the final part of the programme. This marked the appearance of the “other” ensemble, the Ghost Trio, in which Monique Lapins and Gabriela Glapska were joined by ‘cellist Ken Ichinose for a performance of Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio, one of the composer’s defining statements concerning, in Gabriela Glapska’s own moving notes about the music, “both intimate grief and the collective trauma of a war-torn nation”.

It was my privilege to have heard the same Ghost Trio play this work less than six weeks ago, at a concert at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, to simply overwhelming effect on that occasion  – https://middle-c.org/2025/08/ghost-trios-st-andrews-concert-haunts-the-memory/ –  I don’t propose to try and describe the music all over again, merely to report on the effect I thought the work and its performance had on a different audience. When experiencing the work alongside other music by Shostakovich I felt it made a different kind of impact for me, its “shock effect”  no longer as marked, but when performed in the wake of something like the Quartet, having a deeper, more lasting sense of unease at the enormity and insidious  power of the forces that were obviously arrayed all about the composer’s world in order to keep in place a status quo of power and control – in this case characterised by fear and terror enacted upon any refusing to co-operate. I thought the St.Andrew’s acoustic more responsive to the music as well, where every sliver of impulse seemed to send shock waves in all directions – the ambiences of the Prefab Hall made, I thought, the work’s impact a tad more diffuse, though a second hearing can easily produce variants, musicians being human beings. Though, in short, less of a “knockout” performance for me this time round, the Trio further intensified my awe and respect for the composer in this music and for the people who put themselves “on the line” to bring these works off with such searing commitment!

As did the rest of the programme – a great success for all concerned!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Musical Prodigy Night for Orchestra Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents “PRODIGY”

Georges BIZET – Symphony No. 1 in C Major
Felix MENDELSSOHN – Violin Concerto in E Minor Op.64
Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No. 1 in F Minor Op.10

Amalia Hall (violin)
Marc Taddei (Music Director)
Orchestra Wellington  (Peter Clark – acting Concertmaster)

Saturday 12th April, 2025
Michael Fowler Centre
Wellington

(pictured at right – Georges Bizet; below, Felix Mendelssohn-Barthody; and further below,  Dmitri Shostakovich)

Orchestra Wellington spectacularly lived up to its long-established reputation for innovative concert programming with the first presentation in its latest series “The Dictator’s Shadow”, one doing rich justice to the youthful creative achievements of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whose fiftieth anniversary is being celebrated world-wide this year. This opening concert showcases Shostakovich’s remarkable First Symphony, written during 1925 while still a teenaged student at the Leningrad Music Conservatory, and achieving a sensational success, both at home with its Leningrad premiere (May 1926)  and abroad, with the work receiving performances as far afield as Berlin and the United States the following year.

As a concert in itself, the scheme based on the idea of “Prodigy” could hardly have done better, even if any of the last three of the teenaged Mozart’s Violin Concerti could just as easily (and appositely) have been substituted for Mendelssohn’s famous E Minor Op.64 work as a vehicle for the gifted Amalia Hall to play – I must sneakily admit that I, for one, would have relished even more the opportunity to hear her play any of those last three Mozart masterpieces!). Still, the idea of using the Mendelssohn work (apart from the happy availability of such an accomplished soloist) was to bring to notice the composer’s own prodigious creativities with earlier works such as the Octet and the Overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, both of which were completed during Mendelssohn’s teens.

To complete the picture there was no happier way of demonstrating a young composer’s talent, inspiration and versatile technique than presenting the youthful (1855) Symphony of Georges Bizet – and though there were only the merest touches of greatness approaching the order of “Carmen” or “Les pêcheurs de perles” in this seventeen year-old’s enthusiastic concoctions of youthful endeavour, the overall impression of the music is that of a nature by turns vivacious and dreamily melancholic, equally at home in the town or the country, as portrayed by turns, in the various movements.

Marc Taddei’s spirited direction appropriately bounced the opening along, the high-spirited trajectories providing a lovely foil for the plangent beauty of the oboe’s floating second-subject lines soaring above the strings undulating patterns, then playing with the fanfare-like figures which frame the more lyrical sections, and the horn calls that both introduce and bid farewell to the movement’s development. After this, the slow movement’s dreamy, somewhat quasi-oriental meanderings were hauntingly voiced by the oboe after the most enchanting of openings (where did the young genius conjure up this mood from?) had been brought in by the strings. Just as engrossing was the ensuing string fugato with which the oboe then adroitly wove a reprise of the opening melody – had Robert Schumann been alive to hear this sequence, he might have uttered a judgement to rival his famous appraisal of one of Chopin’s youthful words many years before –  “Hats off, gentlemen – a genius!”.

I’ve always loved the Trio section of the charmingly rustic Menuetto-Scherzo which follows, not least because of what I’ve always thought was Bizet’s “gently poking fun in a Beethoven-like way” gesture at the wind players who have the Trio’s melody and repeat it a fourth higher at Fig.8 (in my score). Oboe and clarinet on all the recordings I’ve heard except for one play a delightfully astringent-sounding B-natural in that phrase instead of a B-flat, perhaps to indicate (as Beethoven did with his village band music in the “Pastoral” Symphony), that the players might not be fully up to the music’s demands! Here, I seemed to hear (if my ears were serving me correctly), that the wind-players were playing a B-flat, which of course sounded a lot more mellifluous, but not nearly so tangy and rustic! I have, as I’ve said, recorded evidence for both versions being acceptable, but I do wonder what the composer ACTUALLY wrote!

The finale was an exhilarating, momentum-plus performance, Taddei and his players bringing out the music’s fleet-fingered energies in a toe-tapping way, but giving attention to the shapes and trajectories of the melodies as well, contrasting the “perpetuum mobile” of the opening with the grander, more ceremonial second theme, and a more sinuous refrain, a more vulnerably human, song-like tune with which to “people” the soundscape (the “melodic gift” already strongly in evidence in the young composer!)

Oddly enough Bizet seemed to never give the work another thought as an entity, confining his interest to “cherry-picking” bits of it for use in more “serious” works, such as the opera Les pêcheurs de perles and his music for the play LArlesienne. Thanks to the French musicologist Jean Chantavoine who in 1933 published an article regarding the work’s existence, the symphony came to the attention of the conductor Felix Weingartner, who gave the work its belated premiere performance in 1935, earning for it a “wunderkind” status in league with the efforts of Mozart, Mendelssohn, Rossini and Shostakovich.

But next was Mendelssohn – and if the work chosen this evening was definitely not a “wunderkind” work in terms of years, it still evoked memories of hearing for oneself at another time those two outrageously precocious pieces which have for all time identified their then teenaged composer as one of nature’s creative marvels, the Octet for Strings and the Overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. This was the E Minor Violin Concerto, for many listeners the work that epitomises the romantic instrumental concerto with its manifest qualities, and one for which tonight’s soloist. Amalia Hall (the orchestra’s regular Concertmaster), seemed a near-ideal choice as its performer.

I’ve certainly not heard a more silvery-toned performance, one whose gossamer finish seemed in places almost unearthly, especially so in the rapid figurations when the notes seemed to “spill out” from the instrument like stardust from a comet arching across a firmament, with the couple of minor intonation stresses deserving the description (coined by a similarly entranced commentator in another, different context) “spots on the sun”. One might also occasionally have wanted a shade more tonal projection in places from the soloist; but to look for something different would be to besmirch the magic we were fortunate to find ourselves caught up in on this occasion  – and so we contented ourselves with the integral state of things as part of the excitement and wonder from both soloist and orchestra.

The music itself is too well-known to annotate at length – enough to say that the musicians here aptly probed the “character” of each of the work’s movements,  filling the ambient spaces with appropriately vibrant tones and gesturings across the instrumental spectrum, More of a dialogue than a contest throughout, the interaction between Hall and her conductor and players transmuted the first movement’s questings, proposings and              bargainings into concordance with the enticing sweetness of the slow movement’s exchanges before giving the exuberance of the finale its head,  violinist, conductor and orchestra revelling in the freely-shared elation of the work’s full expression.

Our readily-wrought appreciation of Amelia Hall’s playing was further enhanced by an encore item she performed with Peter Clark, her stand-in this evening as Concertmaster. This was a duo written by the Polish composer-virtuoso Henryk Wieniawski, his Etude-Caprice Op.18 No,4, in which the playing of both musicians was as remarkable for its delicacy and finesse as for its brilliance – a true sweetmeat of a bonus!

Casting about for ways to characterise the very “two different worlds”  kind of ambience which grew straightaway from the sounds of Dmitri Shostakovich’s singularly remarkable First Symphony, one has to find words for a “new era” of expression – and in this case, one with something of an almost hallucinatory quality in its music’s rapid-fire contrasts of atmosphere, outlook and motivation. One learns with no surprise that the composer spent much of this time earning a living as a cinema pianist, developing in the process a kind of penchant in his music for rapid movement and change, the introduction of disparate elements, and an almost expressionist delight in their surprising interactions.

These thoughts summed up something of the story of the Symphony’s first movement, presented here by Marc Taddei and his players with, in the wake of the concert’s first-half respectabilities, almost mind-boggling aplomb. It’s all superbly etched in, with the changes of pace and mood here nonchalantly and there explosively registered (though clearly articulated, whatever the voice), and the overall energies of the transitions driving one’s sensibilities on until reaching the droll  “did we dream you or you us?” fragments of out-and-out wonderment at the end that had previously tumbled past us all through the plethora of incident carried by the music.

By contrast, the second movement was here kept constantly and brilliantly on the move, either in a helter-skelter or a trance-like, sleepwalking kind of trajectory, each of which abruptly changed as if Shostakovich was  following a private movie-showing (here, Rachel Thomson relishing her occasional “cinema-pianist” role with gusto!). Or, perhaps, we were being asked to reimagine something grimmer – sequences of flight and agitation followed by funereal processions over desolate battlefields still resonating with crushing piano-chord hammerblows……

The music’s Lento mood darkened and deepened, with Taddei drawing from his players a remarkable soundscape of sorrow, with beautiful oboe and ‘cello-playing, taken up by the horns and strings, the repeated portentous brass call heightening the mood of tragedy – the performance brought out the music’s potent “funeral oration” character, moments of harshly unfettered despairing alternated with bleak, desolate voices, anticipating the Shostakovich of the great and harrowing symphonic adagios to come!

And so to the fourth movement, begun with a snare-drum crescendo which seemed at first an isolated, even fatuous gesture of promise, but which planted a rebellious seed in the Lento that returned, bearing its brass, wind and cello musings – suddenly, trumpets and lower strings were igniting the clarinets and upper strings, and whirling us away on a kaleidoscopic journey of contrasts too numerous and varied to fully describe,  but remarkable to experience in a single span of time! There seemed nothing which daunted these players and their valorous maestro – we were transported from the music’s deep recesses of gloom to its near-frenetic expression of exhilaration as the composer’s “end-game” imaginings were given their head in this engrossingly unpredictable but ultimately edifying ride!

If Orchestra Wellington continues to delight us with anything like the same adventurous spirit, emotional engagement and instrumental brilliance as we heard in this first “The Dictator’s Shadow” concert, the remainder of the series will, for me, be well-nigh unmissable! Full marks to all involved for such intelligent and innovative programming and for the sheer elan of execution (oops! – that word just slipped out, Comrade! – sorry!) of some glorious music!!

 

Wellington’s Youth Orchestras show the way through is together!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

“SYMPHONIC FUSION”
Wellington Youth Orchestra and Wellington Youth Sinfonietta
Mark Carter (WYO) and Christiaan van der Zee (WYS) – conductors
Xavier Ngaro (violin)

SUPPE – Overture “Poet and Peasant”
BRUCH – Violin Concerto No. 1 Op.26
WALTON – Suite from “Henry V”
PONCHIELLI – “Dance of the Hours” (from “La Gioconda”)
SHOSTAKOVICH – Waltz No. 2 (from “Jazz Suite”)
BIZET – “L’Arlesienne – Suite No. 2”

Alan Gibbs Centre, Wellington College, Dufferin St., Wellington

Saturday, 19th October, 2024

At a time that could be regarded as reaching an apex of dissatisfaction in a turbulent year for the capital, Wellington’s youthful orchestral musicians who make up both the Wellington Youth Orchestra and the Wellington Youth Sinfonietta came together triumphantly for a concert on Saturday afternoon at Wellington College’s Alan Gibbs Centre. The young players and their music directors demonstrated the kind of unity, strength and brilliance of purpose and achievement that comes with close co-operation and mutual understanding  –  a kind of example well worth emulating for those in public life! The  efforts of these young musicians at once highlighted and freely gave quantities of joy and motivation and fulfilment, to the enjoyment of all present.

Wellington Youth Orchestra is the major orchestra in the region for young musicians of Grade Eight and above status, the players working with Music Director Mark Carter on a number of projects each year including a concerto award for an orchestra member who excels at a particular instrument – this year the Concerto Award was won by Xavier Ngaro, who today performed the Bruch First Violin Concerto. The orchestra’s membership is “fed” by players whose training takes place with the “other” youth ensemble in the capital, the Wellington Youth Sinfonietta, whose members have achieved a Grade Five-plus level of proficiency, and whose conductor is Christiaan Van der Zee. Both groups encourage opportunities for soloists and composers and would-be conductors to develop their skills, with the Sinfonietta occasionally collaborating with other youth ensembles from other regions in valuable combined training weekends.

A “manifestation” of all of this was Saturday’s concert, a concentrated youth-fest of artistic expression during which the musicians’ committed energies and efforts seemed to thrill its audience to pieces! – a gathering which, what was more, included people like myself who were there for the music alone, and not “connected” through any ostensible on-stage representation – in fact after the concert I walked down to the road to my car alongside a young man whom I happened to ask “how he had enjoyed the concert and whether a family member was participating” to which he replied that he had no such connection with the event but merely an interest in the programme that was being played, which, he told me, he had seen advertised, and had, upon attending, enjoyed immensely!

The older “Youth Orchestra” under Mark Carter’s direction took the stage for the first half, which opened with an item promising plenty of excitement and variety – the colourful evergreen favourite by Franz von Suppé, the Overture “Poet and Peasant”. Such a beautifully-nuanced, velvet-like brass sound at the music’s very beginning, we got here! – and answered with gorgeously-hushed strings. The orchestral tutti, as was the case all through the concert, sounded somewhat muffled due to the stage’s curtained surroundings, but it didn’t lessen the excitement of the playing, and allowed the beauty of the cello-and-harp passage which followed to make its effect,  with the winds adding a gracefully-shaped melody along the way, the cellist’s awkward ascending phrase midway a shade unconfident-sounding but still resolute and determined! And what a great start there was to the allegro, with furiously buzzing strings and thunderous brass and percussion, and plenty of “snap” to the brass chording – Carter didn’t rush the players through the orchestral turmoil, but allowed it all plenty of weight and tremendous momentum, after which the famous waltz-theme glided in most beguilingly, with properly winsome textures, and with the phrasings allowing the “Viennese” charm of the music its proper effect. The closing passages of the work were no less impressively done, the strings’ “swirling figurations” leading to a scalp-tingling acceleration into the coda, and a “bringing the house down” effect at the end – great stuff!

A space then had to be cleared on the platform for a soloist for today’s concerto, which was Max Bruch’s G Minor Violin Concerto No. 1, here performed by the winner of the orchestra’s 2024 Concerto Competition, 17 year-old Xavier Ngaro from Lower Hutt, Wellington, an orchestra member and a pupil of ex-NZSQ violinist Douglas Beilman. The work is, of course one of the most popular works in the violin concerto repertoire, and (judging by the number of performances I’ve heard from young violinists over the years) obviously a popular choice for budding virtuosi wishing to demonstrate their skills, Xavier Ngaro on this showing certainly being no exception.

The work’s famous “laden” opening atmosphere properly set the scene for the violinist’s first entry – Ngaro’s opening notes were richly sounded and filled with properly burgeoning intent, inspiring a full-blooded response from the orchestra, and a forceful series of further “challenges” from the soloist. The latter sounded completely in command of his passagework before dropping into a beautiful cantabile tone for the second subject material, all sensitively and resolutely accompanied, as were the feathery sinuous solo passages which followed, leading up to a great and vigorous orchestra “tutti” with the conductor getting trenchant playing from his strings, the stuff romantic concerti are made of!

The soloist’s cadenza-like flourishes which followed then led to the orchestra’s great and luxurious announcement of the slow movement’s introduction (beautiful playing!), which the violinist joined via both hushed and forthright passages, a performance which here had plenty of emotional give-and-take (I could imagine the young man over time finding even more “heartbreak” in this music, more “hushed” tones than we got here – but these will doubtless develop naturally in due course…) Though his tone was “swallowed up” by the orchestra’s counter-themes in the movement’s climax, where there appeared some awkwardness when trying to reassert his lines, his re-entry just after the ‘tutti” was suitably big-hearted – and he managed a wonderful “soft-to-loud” transition passage which brought the movement to a close.

A well-rounded tutti was built up at the finale’s beginning, with Ngaro’s solo passages nimble and confident, if perhaps needing to develop a surer touch on the once-repeated three-note ascent of the opening theme, which seemed very slightly “skipped” (an interpretative choice, perhaps?) – elsewhere, there was confidently-essayed passagework leading up to the “big tune” of the movement, gloriously played by the orchestra and nicely “varied” by the soloist on repetition. He then confidently attacked the reprise of the finale’s opening, though I thought perhaps a degree of fatigue at this stage might have momentarily slowed his responses to some of the trenchant passagework which followed – however, towards the end I thought he pulled off that treacherous double stopped ascending hand-position that precedes the final orchestral tutti really well, which then in turn led to the coda – soloist, conductor and players gave these final bars plenty of excitement, earning everybody concerned a great ovation! It was appropriate that the young soloist was then presented with the Tom Gott Cup by none other than the award’s donor, in honour of the player’s Concerto Competition success – a memorable occasion!

An occasion of a different kind then followed – a performance of William Walton’s Suite for the film Henry V, with each of the movements preceded by speakers/actors reading lines from the play associated with the music. Two speakers were used, both giving their readings plenty of pleasing “oomph”, though I preferred having their faces and expressions visible at the front of the hall instead of (as one did) having them wandering down the aisle out of sight and to an extent out of earshot! But the added theatricality of it all was splendid, and certainly added to the impact of the music!

The famous “Prologue”, the “O for a muse of fire….” set the scene, paving the way for the music’s evocative beginning with gorgeous strings and a ravishing flute solo, followed by suitably ceremonial gesturings from brass and percussion, and stirringly martial expressions of intent. These were followed by a description of the death of Falstaff, King Henry’s spurned friend, the words in the play spoken by Mistress Quickly, but here by the second speaker regarding the Knight’s demise – “…all was cold as stone” – the music, a Passacaglia, touchingly capturing the mood of the scene.

Next came Henry’s “Once more into the breach, dear friends!….” from the first speaker, then augmented by the second with “On, on, you noble English!…..”, and concluding with the famous statement, “Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George!”. Walton’s music was here wonderfully “pregnant” with foreboding and portent, the players capturing the scene’s growing excitement as the warlike gestures grew in intensity before breaking into action, the brass signalling the charge and the orchestra building the trajectories towards a grand tattoo of drums – fantastic playing from all concerned!

A subsidence to a contrasting sweetness was ushered in by lovely wind-playing, leading to a quote by Walton from Canteloube’s “Songs of the Auvergne”, the lovely Bailiero melody – perhaps a third female actor/reader was again needed as the object of Pistol’s Act 2 Scene 3 farewell to his wife, Mistress Quickly “My love, give me thy lips…..” (its generality here provoked some amusement!), and his comrade Nym’s abashed refusal to do the same, with  “I cannot kiss – but that’s the humour of’t!…..Adieu!” – however, these words were the prelude to some of the score’s most beautiful music “Touch her sweet lips and part”, with the envoy-like strains most poignantly sounded by the players.

The work concluded with perhaps the most rousing of all of Shakespeare’s speeches, the famous “St.Crispin’s Day” exhortation made by Henry V at Agincourt to his soldiers, here  rather more thoughtfully proclaimed by the speaker than was perhaps usual, though still with its own resounding effect! Great ceremonial roulades then surrounded and threaded through the melody, all very festive and redolent of celebrations with accompanying  bell-like cascades of bells, brought off with true splendour by Carter and his musicians! This performance was actually my introduction to this music, due to my long-misplaced lack of regard for film music in general – and the occasion certainly shook my prejudices from off their foundations in this case, thanks largely to the playing’s vitality and atmosphere.

The interval saw the stage almost transmorgrified with the appearance of a different orchestra and conductor – this was the Wellington Youth Sinfonietta, with their director, Christiaan van der Zee, a group exuding a similar “aura” of animated anticipation of a kind that one relishes so readily with youth performers! The group’s programme featured two “Sinfonietta-only” items, and a combined performance with the older orchestra to conclude the concert, a most enticing prospect for all concerned.

First came Italian composer Amilcare Ponchielli’s justly famous “Dance of the Hours”, an orchestral interlude from his one-operatic-hit stage-work “La Gioconda”, something of a concert-hall classic, and made popularly famous some years ago when its principal melody was parodied by American comedian Allan Sherman in a hit song “Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda” – one that has seemed to have, these days, mercifully sunk almost without a trace! this was a slightly “smoothed out” arrangement of the one I knew from the opera, missing out a whole middle section but finishing with the original’s fast-and-furious galop! Despite the simplifications it still all caught the original piquancy of the opening and the hell-for-leather excitement of the chase in the finale! After this, it was a great idea to feature Shostakovich’s wonderfully tongue-in-cheek “Waltz” from his “Jazz Suite No. 2” – I didn’t know the piece well enough to compare the performance with an “original”, but it all sounded “echt-Shostakovich” to my ears, with a sense of lurking unease, something almost sinister, about it – and, of course, the ironies of these “sweet young things” playing such music were almost palpable!

Came the finale of the concert – and we were warmly enjoined to “bear with us” by the organisers as they undertook the task of fitting two complete orchestras onto the concert platform (there was some inevitable “spillage” onto the auditorium floor in front, which neither mattered nor deterred the palpable excitement of it all!)  Christian van der Zee took the podium when all was ready, and the players plunged into the opening movement of Bizet’s “L’Arlesienne Suite No.2”. This set had become a sequel to the composer’s own selection of pieces from his incidental music for a play by Alphonse Daudet after the original production was a failure. Bizet’s first “Suite” of pieces proved entirely successful, but the composer died before he could make a second selection from the music – his friend Ernest Giuraud chose three more movements and added a Minuet from other music Bizet had composed, making a four-movement “L’Arlesienne – Suite No. 2”.

The opening Pastorale began grandly and somewhat unexpectedly, given its rustic title! – a big, rolling ball of orchestral texture, relieved somewhat by a charming  wind version of the opening and piquant changes between the winds and a saxophone – the two orchestras together made a splendid sound at the opening’s reprise – again the music detoured to more pastoral realms with a trio-like dance for winds  over “chugging” string rhythms almost resembling a polonaise, before the music modulated imposingly back to the opening!

The second movement sounded no less formidable at its a solemn full-orchestra unison beginning, eventually giving way to a lilting melody for the saxophone (a relatively “new” instrument to orchestras at that time), all very “nostalgic-sounding” in a slightly disturbing way, and even more so when the great orchestral “unison” reappeared! The young players, however, sailed through the piece’s emotional ambivalences, giving it all they had! The beautiful Minuet which followed featured the harp and flute, both enchantingly sounded, and then joined by the ubiquitous saxophone. As for the final riotous Farandole, introduced by an excerpt from the composer’s own Prelude from the First L’Arlesienne Suite, it began quietly, gathered inexorable momentum throughout the sequences and finally burst out with both the Prelude and Farandole themes combined, to prodigiously festive effect! Such was its impact that at the conclusion the players spontaneously took up their instruments and repeated the piece, creating a “second wave” of energy and exuberance that rocked the auditorium with delight at its conclusion. A better advertisement for the general, all-round efficacy of youthful music-making could never have been devised!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orchestra Wellington’s “The Grand Gesture” presentation casts its spell

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
THE GRAND GESTURE – a reflection of music and art of the Baroque era

IGOR STRAVINSKY – Suite from the Ballet “Pulcinella”
JOHANN SEBASTIEN BACH – Concerto for two Violins and Orchestra in D Minor BWV 1043
GEORGE FRIDERICH HANDEL – Concerto Grosso Op.6 No.12 in B Minor
LUKAS FOSS – Baroque Variations (1967)

Amalia Hall (violin)
Monique Lapins (violin)
Jonathan Berkahn (harpsichord)
Orchestra Wellington (Concertmaster – Justine Cormack)
Marc Taddei – Conductor

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 4th May, 2024

On this occasion I couldn’t get to the usual pre-concert presentation which can so rewardingly illuminate what’s about to be presented in the concert – I arrived to catch only the final stages, and caught some musical excerpts from the oncoming concert played in the foyer by members of The Queen’s Closet for the audience’s pleasure and delight. It was obviously enough to whet appetites of even those like myself who were standing at the back, probably feeling a bit like those “Gentlemen of England now abed (who) shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here!”

A few empty seats on the fringes of the downstairs auditorium apart, the concert appeared well-attended, and the mood expectant – as is the usual wont with any Orchestra Wellington concert these days, thanks to the sterling efforts of the players and maestro Marc Taddei in obviously putting body and soul into their presentations, and bringing to life even what might seem at times like somewhat intractable material!

Tonight’s presentation title “The Grand Gesture” set out to demonstrate some of the continuing resonances of the work of composers from the Baroque era – if not for our present specific time, certainly of living memory for some in the case of the work of German-born American composer and conductor Lucas Foss, and delightfully so regarding a neo-classical response from twentieth-century giant Igor Stravinsky to the music supposedly the work of a contemporary of Bach, Handel and Scarlatti, one Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-36), more of which circumstance below.

A good deal of thought had obviously gone into the concert’s structure (a valued characteristic of this Orchestra’s work), including what were some unscheduled appearances of musicians playing what appeared to be on “first take” simply further examples of memorable and enduring Baroque music – thus to begin the concert we were treated to a dream-like vignette of violinist Amalia Hall spotlit amid the darkness and high up on the stage platform giving us a stellar performance of the Prelude to JS Bach’s Violin Partita in E Major that transported all of us to our own “other” places for its duration, and for some time afterwards.

Then came the Stravinsky all splendidly articulated, robustly trajectoried and beautifully-voiced throughout. The original “Pulcinella” ballet had its genesis in an idea by the great impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who wanted a work based on the long-established Italian theatre tradition of “commedia dell’arte”, one that used age-old characters wearing masks, “types” such as foolish old men, wanton courtesans, devious servants, and jesters or clowns – a well-known type of the latter was Harlequin, who became the “Pulcinella” of Diaghilev’s scheme.

At that time, the music Diaghilev gave to Stravinsky was believed to have been by Pergolesi (Stravinsky regarded his contact with this music as “a love affair” with the older composer), but much of it has subsequently proved to have been the work of others. In Stravinsky’s original ballet, the vocal sections of the score were based on songs genuinely by Pergolesi which Diaghilev had found, but the purely orchestral music used by Stravinsky from the suite we heard tonight was all adapted from the works of different composers, names otherwise unknown to history – Gallo, van Wassenaer, Monza and Parisotti.

Such an “inconvenient truth” hasn’t been allowed to get in the way of anybody’s enjoyment of what Stravinsky did with this music, who added to the original themes his own twentieth-century harmonies, cadences and rhythms, producing a suitably light-textured and nimble-footed score which served Diaghilev’s purposes admirably. The suite which the composer extracted from the ballet was written in 1922, two years after the ballet’s first performance, and uses eight of the latter’s original twenty movements.

Though Stravinsky took pains to reproduce in Pulcinella something of the reduced orchestral forces of earlier times, there were certain touches that “advanced” the musical language beyond the scope of eighteenth-century practice, mainly found in the “Vivo” movement towards the Suite’s end, such as the use of the solo trombone and double-bass with their “glissando” passages. I’ve always loved this Suite, and Marc Taddei’s and Orchestra Wellington’s performance was, I thought, musically engaging, stylistically evocative and technically outstanding!

Next came what for many would have been the “jewel” of the evening’s presentations, the adorable D Minor Double Violin Concerto of JS Bach, and with two soloists whose performances I wouldn’t imagine being bettered anywhere – Amalia Hall, the usual concertmaster of Orchestra Wellington, but a frequent concerto soloist with the orchestra itself to impressive effect was here joined by Monique Lapins, the sadly-about-to-depart second violinist of the illustrious New Zealand String Quartet, leaving for pastures afresh after eight years with the Quartet. Together with the orchestra they wove a diaphanous continuum of textured interaction that allowed the music to express whatever range of emotions and awareness of structural potentialities this performance couldn’t help but inspire among its listeners.

By inclination I tend to go for warmer, fuller performances than what I sometimes hear from so-called ”authentic” ones – but this performance seemed to tread securely between heart and mind, warmth and clarity, breathing-space and momentum, and deliver spades of intent and realisation from both worlds. And though ideally matched, the pair were not carbon copies of one another’s sound – I imagined a tad rounder, and more sensuous tone from Monique Lapins’ playing compared with Amalia Hall’s marginally brighter and shinier sound, as if what was passing between them was a REAL conversation. But, ah! – that slow movement! – why does it ALWAYS seem as though it’s over too quickly, no matter who the performers are?…….

As with the concert’s opening, the second half began with another performer “spotlit” up behind the orchestral platform in almost “deus ex machina” fashion! This time it was Jonathan Berkahn at the harpsichord performing a relaxed, even somewhat “other-worldly” rendition of one of Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas, the well-known E Major (K.380/L.23). As with the violinist’s rendition of the Bach Partita’s Prelude at the concert’s beginning, the episode had the air of some kind of “visitation” from distant realms – both beautifully-wrought moments.

In more “down-to-earth” mode then came the Handel Concerto Grosso Op.6 No.12, the last of the set of concertos inspired by Handel’s great Italian contemporary, Archangelo Corelli. I was hoping we might get my favourite of the Op. 6 set, No. 9 (with its wonderful borrowings from the composer’s famous Organ Concerto “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale”). But this work, which I didn’t know as well, was itself, in the words of the vernacular, a “real doozy”, with plenty to do for soloists Amalia Hall and Monique Lapins once again, in the form of some enchanting moments along the way. There was appropriately ”grand gesturing” at the beginning, with the two violins sharing solo passages with a solo ‘cello, both in reply to and augmenting the orchestra. And what a delicious allegro to follow! – with some enchanting dovetailing of parts, and the silvery tones of the violin soloists inspiring some similarly feathery playing from the orchestra strings. A lovely and graceful Larghetto was followed by an even more enchanting Largo section, the soloists (both, I think) playing with mutes and producing, along with the solo ‘cello, some breathtakingly unworldly textures – brief but memorable moments in time to be savoured long afterwards. A sprightly dotted-rhythmed fugal Allegro brought us home with a no-nonsense, but still ceremonial finish.

Conductor Marc Taddei then issued for us something in the nature of the old-fashioned “Government Health Warning” regarding the programme’s final item, Lucas Foss’s “Baroque Variations”. He spoke of the piece being very much of the “psychedelic era” of the 1960s during which the work was composed, with numerous allusions to sounds associated with various electronic gadgetry of that time, but with its composer bent also upon reaching back to resonances as far distant as the music from the Baroque era which we had heard earlier in the concert, including the two pieces which our celestial-like “visitors” had performed in those uplifted and spotlit places!

The first of the three movements “On a Handel Larghetto” quietly and almost spectrally elaborated on fragments of the corresponding sequence in Handel’s Op 6 No.12 Concerto, the sounds seeming to do little more than resonate each other’s muted repetitions between strings and brass, lines occasionally drifting away from one another and exploring dream-like imaginings as more instruments joined in with the reminiscings, gathering tonal weight as notes were sustained for longer periods and percussive irruptions became more frequent.

A second movement also began mysteriously, its diaphanously filmic texture of sound featuring floating droplets of notes and occasional percussive thuds, into which sounded the strains of fragments of the Scarlatti sonata we had heard in full on the harpsichord. Here its themes and rhythms seemed as if they were being disconcertingly dismembered for us, as if the music was “a patient etherised upon a table” and referred to in fragmented and mesmerizingly repetitive terms.

After two somewhat restrained movements, the third “On a Bach Prelude (Phorion)” opened up the air-waves somewhat, beginning with the reappearance of the “phantom” Bach Partita violinist, whose playing was this time “echoed” in a fragmented way by the orchestra concertmaster and the other orchestral strings, as well as being “pecked at” by the orchestral winds and “wailed over” by the brass. This process became rather Charles Ives-like as the violas and the brasses played echoing notes and phrases against skittering winds and violins “chasing down” the lines, until the orchestra seemed to lose its patience with its wayward children and exploded a volley of indiscriminate sounds that added to the “things running wild” atmosphere, awakening an electric organ’s more seismic qualities. The “Phorion” part of the movement’s title was a reference to a Greek word meaning “stolen goods”, perhaps indicating how Bach’s violin prelude music was being chaotically rent via a plethora of sounds indicating an exhilarating (and liberating?) loss of control.

Afterwards I found myself talking with others of our different impressions of the work, the opinions ranging from “genius” to “madness” in general terms, but concurring regarding the hugely fascinating range and scope of the programming and the dedication and skill with which conductor and orchestra carried out its philosophy and execution – above all else, with a whole-heartedness whose qualities we’ve come to expect and hope to continue to enjoy.

Haydn and Mozart Camerata’s perfect fellow-churchgoers at Wellington’s St.Peter’s-0n-Willis

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Camerata presents: HAYDN IN THE CHURCH 2023

Josef HAYDN – Symphony No. 17 in F Major Hob.1.17
Wolfgang MOZART – Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat K.364

Anne Loeser (violin) / Victoria Jaenecke (viola)
Camerata Ensemble

St.Peter’s Church-on-Willis, Wellington

Friday, October 20th, 2023

Sometimes one goes to a concert which by dint of the music and the playing seems  not a moment too short or too long – this evening, with merely two works on the programme (one of which took  less than two thirds of the time of the other), it felt as though we were transported from one to the other by a kind of osmosis, as there was no “proper” interval between the two, merely what felt like a “luftpause” to allow the slightly different arrangement of the two works to be set up.

The programme opened with a Haydn symphony (No.17 in F Major), part of a series that has been a feature of the ensemble’s presentations of late. This was an early work of the composer’s , and not unlike some kind of extended three-part operatic overture in effect – certainly a grand and varied beginning to one’s listening for the evening.

Straightaway I was transported by the openness of the sound during the work’s first few bars, with the horn timbres taking the music al fresco, and the joyfulness of the dancing rhythms doing the rest  As in some of the earlier Mozart symphonies, the winds also frequently coloured the texture with long but supple lines –  so although the strings had the bulk of the melodic material, the winds  (including the horns) frequently “coloured’ the ambiences, which in this symphony were lively and not a little exploratory, developing both the theme’s upward-rushing muscularity and making use of numerous “offshoots” of impulse in unexpected ways.

The slow movement was graciousness itself at the beginning, its sequences seeming to weave an endless continuation of variants of the opening – I became lost in its enchantment and its apparent inexhaustibility – no contrivance or striving for effect, but simply creativity being given quiet but purposeful energy. As with the previous two movements, the finale finds ways of making the expected unexpected – the triple-time Allegro turns, twists, runs and jumps, and generally led our ears a merry dance! Again, the horns open up the spaces suggested by the music’s energies, and the winds’ rustic colourings delight the sensibilities. Despite the movement’s brevity, Haydn’s seemingly boundless invention seemed to once more carry our interest along with the sounds’ continued delight in discovery.

Nothing could have better prepared us for the delights that were to follow, with Camerata leader Anne Loeser and violist Victoria Jaenecke entering to play for us Mozart’s adorable K.364, the Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat for violin and viola. From the beginning the sound was lovely, with especially telling dynamic variation from winds and horns and lower strings – the violins themselves seemed a trifle overwhelmed by their colleagues’ characterful strains at first, though the wonderful “Mannheim crescendo” that Mozart gives us in this first tutti here really made an exciting impact. Both soloists with their first notes were silver-toned and ethereal, each more so than I expected they would be, even though their passage-work was exemplary. Anne Loeser led the way into the beautiful minor-key development, each soloist making the most of the music’s pathos, and supported by the orchestra players so well. And their teamwork during the cadenza was exemplary, playing into each others’ music with real aplomb, though both gave me a start by plunging back into the allegro more quickly with their concluding trills than those on my favourite recording (the Oistrakhs pere and fils).

I couldn’t imagine the slow movement being better done than here, with each of the soloists seeming to “play out” more than in the first movement, while integrating their tones clearly and sensitively in the exchanges, the cadenza passage a highlight of the performance with its heart-stopping sense of time almost standing still. And the finale reinforced this “playing as one” kind of Elysium-like culmination of energies and purposes throughout the work – we all  enjoyed the  tidal ebbing and flowing between violin and viola, and also soloists and orchestra, as the work arched upwards towards its culmination in a final grand accord.

Orchestra Wellington’s “Prophecy” – promise and fulfilment by young composers

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Orchestra Wellington presents:
PROPHECY – Music by Thomas Ades, Benjamin Britten, Briar Prastiti and William Walton

THOMAS ADES – ….but all shall be well 1993
BENJAMIN BRITTEN – Violin Concerto 1939
BRIAR PRASTITI – Akri
WILLIAM WALTON – Belshazzar’s Feast 1931

Amalia Hall (violin)
Benson Wilson (baritone)
Orpheus Choir, Wellington (director Brent Stewart)
Wellington Brass band
Hutt City Brass
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday, 5th August, 2023

 

What appeared to be a nearly-full-house turned up at the Michael Fowler Centre for the latest of the 2023 season’s inspirational Orchestra Wellington concerts – I was intrigued to learn from Marc Taddei during the course of his welcoming remarks regarding the concert that the presented works were all written by composers when in their twenties or early thirties, and thus making up a bevy of youthful creative efforts, augmenting the concert’s “Prophecy” title with the idea of a foretaste of creativity still to come at that time. I hadn’t fully “taken in” the youthfulness of William Walton, for one, in relation to his work, so it certainly added an energy-charged degree of expectation to the proceedings!

The title of Thomas Ades’  1993 work “….but all shall be well” is a quote from poet TS Eliot quoting in turn the fourteenth-century mystic seer Julian of Norwich, whose Revelations of Divine Love which she wrote at the time of the Plague and other widespread human tribulations continue to this day to inspire hope in people in the midst of human privations of great suffering, and of thus “finding calm and quiet and focus in a chaotic world”. Ades’s music begins as slivers of percussion, with additional keyboard notes gradually morphing into orchestrally-conceived impulses, which in turn give rise to repeated scales rising and falling half-an-octave, frequently counterpointed by deep percussion notes and occasional figures resembling dance-band scraps of melody, and evolving a seemingly limitless panoply of texture, timbre and colour in this constant mesmeric movement of impulse – an effect not unlike a slowly-revolving mirror-ball reflecting an entire surrounding world of contrasts, including an almost malevolent avalanche of sounds in one sequence which are eventually quelled.  The fine programme notes (well-nigh impossible to read when the auditorium lights, as here, are dimmed, for whatever reason) performed a great service, here, if only in retrospect! – with new music (this being a New Zealand premiere) it can be helpful to have a guide to lead one through what can seem in some cases like a thicket of unfamiliar sounds. These from Thomas Ades, though relatively easy on the ear, still benefitted from the written commentary (presumably the meticulous work of Erica Challis) and allowed us, if largely in retrospect, to enjoy the expertise of playing and direction of this music all the more.

Next was Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto, completed in the United States in 1939, a work which reflects the composer’s reaction to both the horrors of  the Spanish Civil War and the growing unrest in Europe leading to World War II. Inspired at first by the “intellectually emotional” character of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto which he had heard in 1936, Britten’s work runs a gamut of conflicting emotional states (he was in the company of his lover, tenor Peter Pears, throughout this time), which his partnership with the work’s first performer, Spanish violinist Antonio Brosa further refracted through the inclusion of technical demands of the utmost virtuosity. Various violinists have since remarked on the works’ difficulty, though with the consensus being that such obstacles are, in the words of one of the work‘s exponents, “always in the service of the music, and not for its own sake – sometimes the strain of the performer is actually the point! If the piece was too easy it wouldn’t communicate the struggle and anguish that Britten was going for”.

Amalia Hall, tonight’s soloist, certainly conveyed a no-holds-barred aspect to her addressing of the work’s many differing moods, even if the relatively unsupportive character of the MFC acoustic meant she had to work hard to make detail really “tell” in places for people like myself sitting some distance away. The first movement, with its portentous exchanges between the violin and the orchestra’s insistent rhythms, moved between a kind of charged serenity (lovely silvery violin tones alternated with chunky pizzicato interpolations from Hall) and more rumbustious declarations from orchestral winds and brasses, with the movement seeming to express its “soul” at the point where  the strings, introduced by the harp, take up the beautiful cantilena theme, and the violin provides the motto-like accompaniment with a combination of arco and pizzicato notes, which exchange grows in intensity until soloist and orchestra seem entranced in a sea of dreamlike harmonics and gently plucked notes.

The Scherzo which then bursts in is driving and dangerous, Hall pushing her instrument over a number of obstacle-like ascents with verve and surety, with the orchestra both supporting and occasionally seeming to “duel” with the soloist! Hall and Taddei relish the sparrings of sequences such as the soloist’s exotically sensual theme gleefully “trounced” with boisterous chordings by the orchestral brass and percussion, leading to an amazing “trio” involving piccolos and the tuba whose angularity recalls Berlioz! And the orchestra reacts accordingly, with a crescendo that threatens to engulf all and sundry, breaking off at the point of internal collapse, and leaving the soloist to reassemble the music’s fragments in a cadenza, Hall displaying her technical armoury with unrelenting resolve, taking the music to its uppermost reaches before being joined by the trombones from out of the depths, intoning the first notes of the final Passacaglia movement.

Trombones, strings, trumpets, winds, percussion all impressively have their say, before the violin embarks on its journey of infinite variation, a journey made in conjunction with orchestral forces requiring utmost virtuosity from the soloist and big-boned responses from all orchestra departments in a magnificently resonant middle section whose aftermaths include a long-breathed kind of lament by the soloist over a D major chord in the orchestra, Hall’s instrument however, hovering undecidedly between F and G-flat, and seeming to tread a fine line between hope and despair, before letting the silence being the judge, and with it our enthusiastic, if somewhat dumbfounded, applause!

The interval gave us all time and space to realign our thoughts before squaring up to a new work by a composer presently making a name for herself, locally. This was Briar Prastiti whose work Akri we were about to hear and who has another work scheduled for the orchestra in a concert later in the year, besides having completed music written for a play, Prima Facie by Suzie Miller, recently staged at Circa Theatre.  The title of Prastiti’s piece, Akri, means “edge” and symbolises a certain predicament experienced by people such as herself, who belong to two different cultures (Prasititi is of mixed New Zealand/Greek heritage), and feel never wholly at one with either.

Carrying the thought in my own head of having to experience such a conflict when preparing to listen to Prastiti’s piece I was surprised to find myself engulfed in the sounds of a gorgeously ambient opening chord which developed its own oceanic-type modulatory patterns, vaguely Sibelian or Baxian in character, resonant and flexible in surface aspect, the tones “bending” and pliably responding to impulse, somewhat belying the “edge” sobriquet borne by the composition’s title. The music opens up with full brass and percussion textures widening the sounds’ vistas, but with an intensity of focus giving birth to both rhythmic and thematic material, with particularly lovely writing for winds “caught” between gestures that have a rounded monumentality to my ears rather than any abrasive or intransient surface. I was naturally looking for tensions that would suggest alienation of a kind suggested by the piece’s name, but found instead a kind of kaleidoscopic change whose “dramatic contrasts” had more holistic “centres” whose presence meant life that had learned to coexist, though (as the piece’s abrupt ending seemed to demonstrate)  not without a certain volatility…….I liked Prastiti’s  idea of a unifying “thread” which holds the characters together and facititates the process of journeying from one kind of awareness to another…….it was. I thought, music with a certain filmic power of expression that I would be interested in hearing again…..

How ear-opening, therefore, to encounter in this same concert such marked variances of expression, when setting Prastiti’s all-encompassing soundscape variants against the young William Walton’s fervently bardic declamations delineating oppression, captivity and liberation of peoples from privation and slavery. Walton’s oratorio “Belshazzar’s Feast” is splendidly virile Old Testament stuff whose text is taken straight from the Bible (the Book of Daniel and Psalm 137) courtesy of Osbert Sitwell with whose family the young Walton had already formed a long-lasting association, most famously with the 1923 work Façade, its poetry by Osbert‘s sister, Edith having inspired Walton’s music.

First performed in 1931 under Malcolm Sargent, Belshazzar had a colourful genesis, with Walton originally commissioned by the BBC for a work with “a small choir, soloist, and an orchestra not exceeding 15 players! Walton found that, as the work proceeded so did his conception of the work “enlarge”. When the Leeds Festival agreed to stage the work’s first performance its director Thomas Beecham famously suggested to the young composer that he should “throw in a couple of brass bands” to the work (the Berlioz Requiem was being performed at the same Festival, and there were plenty of brass players on hand), as this was likely, Beecham opinioned, to be the only performance he would ever hear! However, thanks in part to the outstanding choral skills of Sargent the work was a great success, with Walton himself subsequently conducting (and recording) the work.  In fact, on a visit to New Zealand in 1956 Walton himself conducted the work in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland, all with the Christchurch Harmonic Society Choir and the (then) NZBC Symphony Orchestra!

Doing the honours with Marc Taddei and Orchestra Wellington this time round were baritone Benson Wilson (presently developing a career in the UK with the English National Opera), the Orpheus Choir of Wellington, and players from both the Wellington Brass Band (current New Zealand champions) and the Hutt City Brass. With the mentioning of Berlioz and all those brass players I was hoping for a similarly splendid kind of effect in places to that I’d experienced when hearing my first live Berlioz Requiem! – alas, the Michael Fowler Centre is certainly no Wellington Town Hall, acoustically speaking, so I had to be content with modified rapture….

What could be wrought from the occasion both the Orpheus Choir and the brass-augmented Orchestra Wellington splendidly achieved under Marc Taddei’s incisive leadership! The opening brass calls pinned back our ears, as did the stenorian “Thus spake Isaiah!” responses  from the choir, the introduction’s essential theatricality given full rein with its pauses and dynamic contrasts, and the baritone’s sorrowful entry at “If I forget thee, Jerusalem”, intoning his words like a character rather than as a mere narrator. The choir, too conveyed the angst of the captive Israelites, both in the aching, arching lament “By the waters of Babylon”, and in the vengeful tones of the prophet at “O Daughter of Babylon”, hurling forth the words of doom, which resonated a kind of fateful ambience over what was to follow.

Benson Wilson made the most of his Babylonic “shopping-list”, allowing rather more fateful tones to take over his concluding item of currency “…and the souls of men”. In contrast to the lament-like aspect of the opening the Orpheus voices then relished their energetic and enthusiastic descriptions of the revels of the Babylonian king and his courtiers, backed up by terrific orchestral detailing,  Benson Wilson leading in kingly fashion the acclamation for the pagan gods of Gold, Silver, Iron and others, echoed by the choir and amplified by the orchestral voices, including the brass players from their antiphonal positions with voices such as the saxophone underlining the composer’s jazzed-up rhythmic inflections, and the extra brasses adding splendour to the general acclaim for the heathen deities.

The fateful scene of the “fingers of a man’s hand” and the fateful words written on the wall was declaimed in suitably chilling tones by the baritone, then translated by the implacable choral voices – and the choir, of course, relished its famous “shouted” exclamation “slain!” in response to the soloist’s utterance of Belshazzar’s grim fate. The silences that followed were beset and then overcome with joyous energies from voices and instruments alike, with the bandspeople on each side rising to their feet to join in the acclamations, which, with the exception of a more reflective sequence, “…..the trumpeters and pilers are silent, and the harpers have ceased to harp, and the light of a candle shall sign no more….” express full, unalloyed joy at the deliverance of the Children of Israel from their yoke of captivity – and Marc Taddei and his players, to use the vernacular, “go for it” over the work’s final pages, with the youthful Walton’s exuberant writing for both voices and instruments given free and joyous rein. Even the relatively unresponsive recesses of the MFC could scarcely  forbear to resonate in acknowledgement!

Worlds of difference and sympathy – rapturous Beethoven and Saint-Saens from the Wellington City Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington City Orchestra presents
BEETHOVEN and SAINT-SAENS

BEETHOVEN – Violin Concerto in D Op.61
SAINT-SAENS – Symphony No. 3 in C Minor “Organ” Op.78

Helene Pohl (violin)
Max Toth (organ)
Wellington City Orchestra
Rachel Hyde (conductor)

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

Saturday 24th June, 2023

Small wonder that this concert drew what seemed like a full house to St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church in Wellington on Saturday afternoon. – not only were the two featured works on the programme sure-fire drawcards, but each presentation had the kind of “ädded value” that made their pairing difficult to resist.

The lately-renamed Wellington City Orchestra’s second 2023 outing was this time with the much-respected Rachel Hyde taking her turn on the podium. First up was Beethoven’s adorable Violin Concerto, with great interest centred around the soloist, none other than Helene Pohl, the leader of the internationally renowned New Zealand String Quartet. Having heard Pohl lead her ensemble with enormous distinction through complete cycles of the composer’s string quartets I was naturally intrigued to hear how she would tackle the very different role of a concerto soloist, albeit in the same composer’s music .

What first grabbed my attention.however, was the sharply-defined focus of the orchestra’s introduction to the work, once the slight uncertaincy of the timpanist’s opening strokes had passed – Rachel Hyde secured finely-wrought dynamic contrasts between tutti and chamber-like passages with solo wind lines imparting great character. It was playing that created great expectancy regarding Pohl’s first, ascending-octaved entry, her tones beautifully “growing” out of the orchestral ambiences that had preceded the solo violin’s arrival.

I loved the “elfin” quality of Pohl’s tone throughout, with its shades of expression whose every utterance seemed to simultaneously evolve from whatever she had previously played and respond to whatever solo or ensembled phrases accompanied hers. Her instrument’s voice had a silvery quality which took on a more burnished- golden aspect in places where Beethoven’s thoughts were at his most profound, then returning to a diaphanous quality when, in places, dancing with similarly delicate orchestral solos. For their part, Hyde and her players both supported the soloist and took the lead when necessary, splendidly initiating and controlling the tensions leading up to the tutti outbursts leading to the movement’s solo cadenza.

Pohl’s sounding of this was like a prayer, chordal-like ascendings, followed by playful duettings of themes, and heroic passages in thirds, before her summonsing of the orchestra once more, true greatness in her playing of the melody’s valediction, and of the single note which sang out so purely at the top of the phrase’s final contouring – exquisite!

Hyde got her string players to sound the slow movement’s first trance-like phrases with wonderful “innigkeit”, horns, and then clarinets confidently taking over from the strings and preparing the way for the soloist’s birdsong-like rhapsodisings. Even more rapt was the movement’s central section, Pohl’s playing resembling a kind of hymn to existence, even more so when orchestral pizzicati provided an enchanting backdrop for the solo violin’s spell-weavings.

An orchestral call to arms, and a short, cadenza-like flourish from the soloist brought in the work’s finale, the orchestra taking a while to settle into the soloist’s rhythm, possibly the result of the players having, like the rest of us, “blissed out” during the heavenly Larghetto! Pohl took it all in her stride, alternating a characterfully rustic treatment of the main theme with more quixotic-like poise when repeating the same an octave higher. Then, in the more pensive minor-key second subject, the line was delivered with great emotion, ably supported by the bassoon – and, when the opening returned Hyde seemed to have reawakened her players so that they were with their soloist all the way, building those horn and wind fanfares into a mighty cadenza-welcoming shout! This was one to which Pohl responded with a cadenza I wasn’t as familiar with as I could have been, but which, using material from the finale itself, built quickly and spectacularly to the point where the orchestral cellos and basses were INVITED to make a “what do we think?” comment on the proceedings! – duly satisfied, soloist and orchestra here exchanged, syncopated, inverted and brought things to a by-then ecstatic close!

During the interval that followed, I gleaned. from all sides of where I was sitting. that things had been extremely pleasing thus far, the performance having created a suitable buzz in the minds of my neighbours, young and old. It seemed to augur well for what was to follow next, the orchestra having meanwhile “growed” some extra personnel for the second-half performance of Camille Saint-Saens’s well-known “Organ” Symphony, an undertaking obviously sparked by the not-too-distant (April 2021) refurbishment of the St.Andrew’s church organ.

I was a bit surprised that the organist for this occasion, Max Toth, was not given a special mention in the printed programme – though to be fair Saint-Saens’ work is not a “concerto” with a star soloist, but a “symphony”, and with works described as such individual instrumentalists’ names are normally mentioned only in orchestral listings of players. And the organist’s name was certainly there, even if the noise he conjured up from his splendid instrument was out of all proportion to his modest rank-and-file listing – a minor matter, and certainly in the light of the “special ovation” he was accorded at the piece’s end, at the prompting of Rachel Hyde herself…

As to the piece we were about to hear, Saint-Saens once remarked of himself that, as a composer he produced music as an apple tree produced apples, though he obviously meant he had great facility, and not that he considered his work facile and repetitive. The “Organ” Symphony was something of a biological “sport” for its time – the only reference I have found to a previous use of the organ in an orchestral symphony (1877) is by the nearly-forgotten Austrian composer Johann Ritter von Herbeck (1831-1877), though the fame of Saint-Saens’1886 work spawned a number of imitators, most of them French!

Right at the beginning, Hyde and her players opened up the work’s spaces, the strings’ first floating chords answered first by the oboe and then the flutes, their upward phrases drifting into what seemed like a void, but sparking a response from pizzicato strings and winds which suddenly and excitedly awoke the rest of the strings whose tumbling, chattering phrases spread through the textures galvanising the entire orchestra.

Hyde’s direction imparted just enough urgent impetus for the movement to maintain its course and for the players to keep the syncopated rhythms together, which they did most impressively throughout. And I enjoyed the occasional bedecking of the textures with detailed impulse, such as the tuba making its presence “tell” for a moment of glory, along with the brass and timpani, in underlining the importance to the work of the composer’s use of the “Dies Irae” variant by capping the climax of the excitement with great elan.

The slow movement was beautifully “prepared” for by pizzicato strings and brass, the organ establishing the requisite mood for the strings to fill the spaces with gorgeous tones, then allowing the wind and brass the chance to sing the same melody, the organ judiciously providing the transitions between the different orchestral forces’ sequences. Apart from some slight imprecision between the string “voices” in the duet-like-like sequences, the players delighted us with the beauty and focus of their playing of the movement’s gorgeous outpourings. At first I thought the organ pedal during the lyrical theme’s last great reprise not robust enough, but its deliciously tummy-wobbling aspect began to tell as the music soared to its conclusion – moments of glorious, ultra-Romanticism, capped off by the authentic-sounding reediness of the organ’s registrations at the end.

In terms of commitment from the players and cool-headed control from the conductor, the symphony’s Scherzo was for me a highlight of the performance (also bringing back vivid memories of my days as a percussionist, and our orchestra in Palmerston North tackling this work!). Strong, vibrant attack at the opening was capped off by on-the-spot timpani, and vibrant playing from the winds – Hyde kept the tempo steady, allowing her players room to shape and “point” the rhythms. As for the Trio, it was very properly a riot of impulse every which way, with the piano’s tumbling figurations adding to the excitement. The players did so well with these vertiginous rhythms and syncopations – while not every detail was perfect, the few spills simply added to the excitement and dare-devilry of the whole.

Both the Scherzo and the opening of the Trio were repeated, the latter dominated by the brass, with the winds capering all about underneath, and the strings steadying the euphoria with some meltingly beautiful playing, joined by the winds and brass, with the “Dies Irae” ominously sounded by the basses below – after all of this one could easily forgive the not-quite-together wind chord which prefaced the finale!

The voices awaiting within those organ pipes to sound their utmost simply burst forth magnificently as organist Max Toth activated the instrument! How emotional it all seemed, with the C major melody (the much-lauded “Babe” tune as garnered for use in the eponymous movie!) firstly stealing in via the strings and piano duettists underpinned by the deep organ pedal notes, then allowed its full magnificence with organ and orchestra each given its head, cymbal crashes, bass drum thwacks, brasses and all replying to the organ’s splendour! The strings made a sterling job of their fugal passage which followed, taken up vociferously by the brasses and then quelled by the lines being allowed to soar and “float” by the strings and winds, as a respite from the energies and excitements already unleashed and still to come. Enough to say that the performance of the rest fully expressed the “cri de coeur” of the composer: – “I gave everything to it I was able to give! – what I have here accomplished I will never achieve again….”

It seemed fitting that, right at the end Rachel Hyde gave the last voice to the organ, allowing the instrument to hold the final chord for a few moments after the orchestra had ceased playing (a gesture I’d not previously heard made in this work, but which certainly had its effect – not unlike the organ chord which continues sounding at the end of the opening (!) of Richard Strauss’s tone-poem “Also Sprach Zarathustra”). But the glory was as much the Wellington City Orchestra players’ and conductor’s as the organ’s, and of course the music’s. Both composers and their respective works were on this occasion certainly done proud.

Mark Menzies and Michael Endres – linking worlds with violin and piano

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Chamber Music presents
THE MENZIES/ENDRES DUO – Music by Schubert, Schnittke, Fisher and Beethoven

FRANZ SCHUBERT – Rondo in B Minor “Rondo Brilliant”
ALFRED SCHNITTKE – Violin Sonata No. 2 (quasi una sonata)
SALINA FISHER – Mono no aware
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Violin Sonata No. 9 “Kreutzer”

Mark Menzies (violin) and Michael Endres (piano)

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

Sunday, 18th June, 2023

This was a well structured, interesting programme, culminating in Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, perhaps the greatest of violin sonatas. The programme notes the connection of the works on the programme to this Sonata and Beethoven: the main theme of Schubert’s Rondo has reference to the first movement of the Kreutzer Sonata, while Schnittke’s Sonata echoes the structure of  Beethoven’s Op 27 piano sonatas, “quasi una fantasia”. This may be a little far fetched, but undoubtedly the programme built up to the climax of Beethoven, while exploring a range of musical idioms in the violin and piano repertoire.

Franz Schubert Rondo in B minor ‘Rondo Brilliant’

Schubert wrote this work for the Czech violinist Josef Slavik. The latter was compared in his circles to Paganini, and was a friend of Schubert. Schubert was essentially a composer of songs, not one noted for the elaborate structures of his works. This piece has beautiful melodic passages interposed with virtuoso displays. It is joyful music, with suggestions of rustic wind band music in places, but ultimately it was not an entirely convincing reading, being very difficult to bring off. In the dialogues between the violin and the piano, some of the nuances of the exchamges were lost. The placing of the violinist with his back to the pianist didn’t help in places, with the voicings not being ideally balanced.

Alfred Schnittke Violin Sonata No 2 (quasi una sonata)

Schnittke’s Second Violin Sonata is a very challenging work, both for the musicians and the audience.  It opens with powerful, discordant chords, separated by precisely timed pauses. This section is followed by a number of distinct episodes, with references to past musicians, from Bach through Beethoven, Wagner, Stravinsky, to Shostakovitch, though to the listener, hearing the sonata for the first time, none of this is obvious. What is clear is the unrelenting drama, the thought provoking process that pose questions about the nature of music. The musicians have to perform actions that are not part of the normal skill sets of violinists or pianists, free ranging glissandos, unpitched tremolos, drum-like chords.

To add to the drama, one of the strings snapped on the violin. Mark Menzies stopped, walked off the stage, came back with the violin re-strung, carried on, and resumed where had left off. This sonata is one of the masterpieces of the post-Soviet Russian era, but it requires vast preparation and deep understanding. The performance was a true partnership between violin and piano, and whatever misgivings one might have had about the balance of the two instruments in the first work no longer applied.

Salina Fisher Mono no aware

This was a peaceful contrast to the drama of Schnittke’s work. It is a calm ethereal piece of music, simple on the surface, plaintive, a meditation on nature. Is it about the ephemeral beauty of cherry blossoms, an awareness of their fragility and their inherent impermanence, as the composer says in her notes, or is it just a sequel of lovely sounds? It was a “breather” in the midst of an afternoon of intense music.

Ludwig van Beethoven Sonata No 9 ‘Kreutzer’

This is, arguable, the greatest violin and piano sonata ever written. It marked the beginning of what is at times termed, Beethoven’s ‘middle period’, beyond the elegant music of the period of Mozart and Haydn, pointing to an era of more expressive, more emotional, romantic music of the years of his Third and Fifth Symphonies. Beethoven had gone deaf, his life was in turmoil, and he wrote some of his most profound music. The Kreutzer foreshadowed the Waldsdtein and Appassionata sonatas, the Rasumovsky quartets. The sonata is so well known that it is a special challenge for performers not to make it just another Kreutzer, to fathom its meaning in their own individual way. Menzies and Endres started with a leisurely opening, flexible, lyrical. They brought out the grandeur and lyricism of the piece, playing it with a nice, controlled tempo. They had a grand conception of the work, bringing out its sublime beauty, particularly in the second, variation movement, with each variation sensitively articulated. The final movement was played with measured energy. It was a very fine performance and both players appeared to share its enjoyment.

For an encore they returned to Schubert with an arrangement of Schubert’s Hark! Hark! The Lark!

This Sunday afternoon concert was notable for its range, the thought-provoking questions it raised about music. No one went home whistling the tunes from the Schnittke Sonata, or even Salina Fisher’s piece,  but everybody left on a high note after the Beethoven.

Both artists, Mark Menzies and Michael Endres, teach at Canterbury University. They both have established international careers.  Mark Menzies taught at the California Institute of the Arts, and gave violin and viola recitals in Los Angeles. He is an advocate of contemporary music, and tours widely.

Michael Endres performs worldwide as soloist and chamber music partner. He has played at festivals in Europe, America, and Asia, including the Beethoven Fest Bonn and the Salzburg Festival.

We are fortunate to have them here in New Zealand.