Tag: violin

Ken Young’s final outing with the NZSM Orchestra with a new composition and a concerto with a gifted violinist

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young

Luka Venter: ts’onot
Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor Op 47 (violin – Nickolas Majić)
Prokofiev: Symphony No 5 in B flat, Op 100

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Friday 4 October, 7:30 pm

This was a little more than a routine concert by the music school of Victoria University, featuring a couple of its post graduate students: one, composer Luka Venter and the other, violinist Nickolas Majić.

At the end  of the concert it emerged, with a large cluster of flowers and speeches, that this was the last concert with the orchestra’s regular conductor, Kenneth Young; it marked his retirement from the position in the school of music, as he is about to take up the Mozart Fellowship at Otago University.

Limestone to music
Venter’s piece was inspired by an unusual geological feature in limestone areas of Mesoamerica, a recondite name for the region inhabited by the Mayan or pre-Columban peoples in what we’d call Mexico and the central American states as far south as Costa Rica. He explains that ‘ts’onot’ is the Yucatec Mayan name for these limestone features, “labyrinths of subterranean tunnels where sheaths of light cut through turquoise groundwater”.

It began with an underlay of strings that was soon joined by an oboe, then horns and soon the involvement of the large orchestra.  It’s not easy to conjure musical sounds from limestone caves and sinks and one had to attempt to relate the sounds and visual impressions that Venter has presumably experienced himself, to what emerged in the music he’d written. It was a shapely sequence, sensitively orchestrated, employing marimbas and a variety of other percussion in an attractive if elusive way. The composer himself conducted his piece with particularly clear and expressive gestures.

Majić with Sibelius
Violinist Nickolas Majić is completing an honours degree under Martin Riseley head of strings at the school. He’s been concert master of the NZSM Orchestra, associate concertmaster of the National Youth Orchestra and a casual player in Orchestra Wellington.

The orchestra supported the Sibelius violin concerto splendidly under Young’s vivid and decisive guidance, providing balanced and rich support for Majić’s violin. His playing was confident and colourfully nuanced, yet perfectly unpretentious. In the past I have sometimes found orchestral performance in St Andrew’s an uncomfortable experience as a result of the position of brass and percussion, not very carefully engaged. Not this time, as brass and timpani were clear of the sanctuary which tends to amplify excessively.

This is a taxing concerto, in no way accommodating an any less than thoroughly accomplished violinist, and there was hardly a moment when a less than fully professional performance would have been heard by an unknowing listener.

Prokofiev Five
The second half was rather in recognition of Ken Young’s long involvement with the orchestra: Prokofiev’s 5th is a celebration of victory by the Red Army over the Nazis approaching the end of the 2nd World War, and its optimism and rejoicing was an excellent way of acknowledging Young’s commitment and achievement in his years at the school of music, and leading and inspiring the orchestra.

The last movement epitomises hopes of a new beginning for the Soviet Union, with its renewed opportunities for material and social progress; it’s undoubtedly one of the most brilliant celebratory orchestral works of the mid 20th century – never mind the cruel realities that were soon to emerge.

For the audience it was a dynamic and stirring musical experience, drawing attention to the musicianship of the players as well as the ensemble coherence and polish of the orchestra under pressure.

 

Wellington Chamber Music’s fine, imaginative violin and piano recital from Beer and Watkins

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Wellington Chamber Music
Andrew Beer (violin) and Sarah Watkins (piano)

Ravel: Sonata No. 1 in A minor
Leonie Holmes: Dance of the Wintersmith
Gareth Farr’s Unforeseen Evolution
Franck: Violin Sonata

St Andrews on the Terrace, Wellington

Sunday 7 July, 2019, 3 pm

Andrew Beer, Concert Master of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and Sarah Watkins, highly regarded chamber musician played an interesting recital in the Wellington Chamber music Sunday Concerts series. Two new New Zealand works were sandwiched in between a rarely heard sonata by Ravel and one of the most popular pieces of the violin repertoire, César Franck’s violin sonata.

Leonie Holmes is a prolific and versatile composer, teaching composition at the University of Auckland. Sarah Watkins and Andrew Beer commissioned her to write a piece for them. She happened to be reading Terry Pratchett’s Wintersmith at the time and decided to take that as a subject of her composition. She found the book funny, but meaningful. She had not written program music before, but this challenge appealed to her. Her Dance of the Wintersmith opens with a long violin solo, soulful, meditative, that explores the singing quality of the instrument. The piano enters with a dialogue that seems to question the violin. In Pratchett’s story the young witch girl joins the dance of otherworldly men in the forest. In the music this is depicted with a quirky dance section that leads to the gentle melodious epilogue in which the violinist joins in humming and later whistling a tune, a huge surprise to listeners. Does one need to know the story that inspired the music or does the music stand on its own? Even if those who have not read the program notes and know nothing about Terry Pratchett would find the music haunting and beautiful. The work was one of the finalists of the SOUNZ Contemporary Awards for 2018.

The Dance of the Wintersmith was followed by Gareth Farr’s Unforeseen Evolution. This is a very different piece. Farr’s music is coloured by his studies as a percussionist and an immersion in the sounds, textures and rhythms of the Indonesian gamelan ensemble. For him the violin is not a melodic but a percussive instrument. He aimed to pit two wildly contrasting ideas against each other without transition, everything abrupt and unforeseen. The piece has rhythmic drum like elements contrasting the ethereal mysterious violin harmonics and delicate arpeggios on the piano in the first section, then violent rhythms around the entire range of the two instruments. It is a work in which rhythm and beat prevail over melody.

The concert had opened with the relatively seldom heard, Ravel’s Sonata No. 1 in A minor. It is an early student composition discovered long after the composer’s death. Written in 1897 it already has the hallmarks of impressionism. It has an aerie, mysterious quality, some of which is very difficult to bring off. This performance was a sound rendition of the work, but for this listener a touch of the inexpressible magic was missing.

The final work on the program was César Franck’s much loved Violin Sonata. It was played with passion, appropriate for this heartfelt piece. The performance was notable at times for its beautifully phrased singing quality. It had had some real magic moments.

The audience was rewarded at the end of the concert on the program with an encore, the second of Prokofiev’s Five Melodies for violin and piano.

Perhaps it was the cold weather, or the unknown New Zealand compositions that kept people away, but it is regrettable that this fine concert didn’t attract a larger audience. The Wellington Chamber Music Society is to be complemented on their imaginative programming for their concerts on Sunday afternoons.

NZSO marks Blake’s retirement with his haunting ‘Angel at Ahipara’, plus splendid Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky

Posted on by Steven Sedley

Winter Daydreams

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Fawzi Haimor, conductor and Carolin Widman, violin

Christopher Blake: Angel at Ahipara
Stravinsky: Violin Concerto in D Major
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op.13, ‘Winter Daydreams’

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Thursday, 20 June, 2019

Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, and a piece by a significant contemporary composer, Christopher Blake, might seem like popular programming, but as was evident by the large number of empty seats, the programme lacked wide appeal. Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony is seldom performed, Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto is very different from other more popular twentieth century violin concertos and Christopher Blake’s music is unknown territory. Yet it is important both for the orchestra and the audience to be confronted from time to time with the little known or unknown.

The theme common to all of these three works is the idea of exploration. Blake and Tchaikovsky attempted to give voice to a national identity, New Zealand and Russian, while Stravinsky looked for the bare bones of a violin concerto outside the lush romanticism of his contemporaries.

The inspiration for Blake’s Angel at Ahipara came from a black and white photo of a sculpture on a grave at a remote settlement of Ahipara, as well as from Colin McCahon’s colourful Northland Panels. Blake attempted to represent in music the idea of the Angel that Morrison expressed in photography and McCahon in painting. It is written for a string orchestra and describes seven aspects of the Angel in continuous development of largely minimalist themes, ranging from, peaceful, gentle, meditative, to the turbulent, reflecting the Angel giving hope, the soaring of his spirit, his vigil, the joy he brings and the storm that he calms. It is haunting, beautiful music that stays with you.

Stravinsky had misgivings about writing a violin concerto, but encouraged by Samuel Dushkin, for whom the concerto was commissioned and by Paul Hindemith, he produced a stripped down neo-Baroque work with chamber music texture. The concerto avoids virtuoso display and focuses on the dialogue between the solo violin and the orchestra. The four movements reflect Stravinsky’s interest in the Baroque. The sparkling Toccata has changes of meter, pulsating repeated notes and joyous violin acrobatics. The middle movements, the two Arias are lyrical, while the final movement, Capriccio is full of dazzling demonic energy. Carolin Widman played these with great authority and energy. It was a fine, insightful performance.

Tchaikovsky was just 25 when he embarked on his First Symphony. His teachers didn’t like it. It was different, it didn’t fit the German symphonic tradition. Tchaikovsky wrote a Russian work within the symphonic framework, using Russian folk song themes and strong dance rhythms. Unlike his teachers, Tchaikovsky liked the work and kept revising it. It is a long symphony, over 40 minutes long, but to the credit of the performance and Fawzi Haimor’s direction, it never flagged. An early work, it has its weaknesses. At times the flow of the music seems to stand still while another theme, another ideas is introduced, but these hiatuses lead to glorious, rich passages; and the second movement is one of the Tchaikovsky’s most enthralling pieces. The symphony required superb playing by brass and wind, and a luscious string tone from the strings.

At the end of the concert one came away with the feeling that your musical experiences had been greatly enriched, a testament to the playing by the orchestra under the direction of a fine conductor and with the contribution of a dazzling soloist.

 

 

Martin Riseley in the second splendid recital of Bach solo violin sonatas and partitas, benefit for St Andrew’s organ restoration

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Martin Riseley (violin)
Bach solo violin partitas and sonatas plus New Zealand composers

Bach: Partita No 3 in E major; Sonata No 3 in C major; Partita No. 2 in D minor
Gareth Farr: Wakatipu
Psathas: Gyftiko

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Friday 7 June, 6:30 pm

At one of last year’s lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s Martin Riseley played one each of Bach’s solo partitas and sonatas, and it led to the suggestion that he might play all six of them. And so he did: he played the first three last month and here were the last three.

This second recital was a generous benefit concert to assist with the restoration of the pipe organ; and Susan Jones spoke about its necessity while organist Peter Franklin gave pithy demonstrations of the character of the organ and examples of its deficiencies.

I should also remark at my surprise that this splendid recital didn’t attract a full house, as I think there are no greater works in the violin repertoire, and Riseley is among the finest violinists in the country.

Though Martin’s notes printed in the programme leaflet are admirable and revelatory (and worth asking St Andrew’s whether they can be emailed), I cannot resist the temptation to share some other particularly illuminating remarks. Here’s what Hilary Hahn wrote to accompany her performances recorded on YouTube: Alongside Paganini’s 24 Caprices for solo violin and Bach’s six cello suites, his Partitas and Sonatas (three apiece) for solo violin stand out among their comparatively few siblings as magnificent music written for an unaccompanied stringed instrument. And while they also represent the zenith of polyphonic writing for a non-keyboard instrument, Bach’s sonatas and partitas were also crucially important in the development of violin technique. With their colossal scope, huge technical demands, and musical complexity, and notwithstanding their awesome intellectual intensity, these creations greatly transcended anything that had preceded them…’

Partita No 3 in E
Riseley began with the third partita and worked in the reverse of the order in which they appear in the Bach catalogue; so that he could end with the second Partita and its great Chaconne. 

The Preludio of the E major Partita is a cheerful, energetic movement to which Riseley contributed the warmth of his fine violin and his own expansive and generous playing. But it’s the Loure that strikes one as contributing something rather special. Forgive me for commenting on this unusual musical dances: best described, from an Internet site: ‘A slow, dignified, French dance of the 17th and 18th centuries usually in 3/4 or 6/4 time. The name derived from a bagpipe used in Normandy; the dance is usually in 6/4 time and has been described as a slow gigue. Examples are found in Bach’s E major partita and in the fifth of his French suites’ (musicterms.artopium.com).  It’s a reticent, meditative piece whose spirit seems to remain throughout the whole partita.

The Gavotte is one of the more familiar pieces, fresh and spontaneous, while the obligatory menuets are more subdued, the second one takes a more subdued character, almost sounding as if it’s moved to the minor key, though it hasn’t.

Psathas: Gyftiko 
Then came the first of the New Zealand interludes: Psathas’s Gyftiko (or γυφτικο; though not in my Greek dictionary, ‘daddy’ according to ‘Google translate’). Though a test-piece for the Michael Hill Violin Competition, it’s quite an elaborate and substantial piece: melodic, frenzied, unpredictable, and Riseley would presumably have impressed the judges if he had been a competitor.

Bach Sonata No 3 in C 
The third sonata is an imposing piece too: sombre, polyphonic in its Adagio, but its extended Fuga is its core and Riseley allowed its rather near spiritual affinity with the Chaconne of the last partita into view; its imposing fugal structure was its most impressive feature, often sounding as if two or more instruments were involved. Its tone was often so mellow and rich that I looked for a mute on the bridge, but it wasn’t there. The subdued Largo offered no foretaste of the splendid, well-known finale – an Allegro assai with which Riseley brought the first half to a joyous and brilliant conclusion.

Wakatipu 
Gareth Farr’s piece for the Michael Hill competition, Wakatipu, provided the filling before the second partita, and its Chaconne. Competition pieces have historically been little more than hair-raising technical exploits, but both Psathas and Farr offered much more significant and interesting works and I enjoyed the chance to hear both, so seriously and brilliantly played.

Partita No 2 in D minor 
The second Partita is about half an hour in length. Its movements were omitted from the programme: Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Gigue, Chaconne. Riseley noted that it should really be heard in the order that Bach prescribed – after the A minor Sonata (unlike other sets of pieces, the first four sonatas and partitas are in minor keys; only the third of each is in the major). Its D minor key takes charge of its spirit: sombre and serious and profound. The Allemande opened with a sense of wonder, with long, even passages that anchored it through its long piano episodes. The Courante can hardly be called jocular; neither is it spectacular technically, simply preparing us for the first of the two slow, triple-time movements: the Sarabande, which in turn offers in mood, a hint of the spirit and complexity of the Chaconne, though we pass through the humane, cheerful Gigue that’s not really a great technical feat, unlike the great Chaconne to come.

To be present for this performance was a wonderful experience: no hearing from even the greatest violinist on air or an excellent recording can match the live experience; certainly not one as excellent and as satisfying as we heard from Martin Riseley. All the complex emotional, technical and interpretative demands that Bach presents were so beautifully executed and revealed. Here was a performance that made me quite forget Busoni (whose famous piano version I do love), as I became enchanted and overcome by the music’s endless invention and the dynamic and rhythmic variety that the player must deal with. As a long-time lover of the cello suites, this made me realise that none of them contains a movement that approaches this Chaconne.

The audience response at the end was immediate, noisy, even rapturous, and they all knew they has made an infinitely better choice for a Friday evening than the unfortunates who weren’t at this unique recital.

“Under every grief & pine/runs a joy with silken twine” – Martin Riesley plays unaccompanied Bach at St.Andrew’s, Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s on-The-Terrace Church presents:
MARTIN RISELEY (violin)  – Music by JS BACH and LYELL CRESSWELL

JS BACH – Sonata in G Minor BWV 1001
Adagio / Fuga / Siciliana / Presto

JS BACH – Partita in B Minor BWV 1002
Allemanda / Corrente / Sarabande / Tempo di Borea

Interval –  Talking about the organ
Susan Jones (minister) and Peter Franklin (organist)

LYELL CRESSWELL – “Burla” for solo violin (from “Whira”)

JS BACH – Sonata in A Minor BWV 1003
Grave / Fuga / Andante / Allegro

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

Friday 24th May, 2019

This was a benefit concert to help raise funds for refurbishing the Church’s pipe organ.

Bach himself wasn’t known as a violinist to the same extent as he was a keyboard player, yet according to his son, Carl Philippe Emanuel, “he played the violin cleanly and powerfully”, and his familiarity with the instrument is evident in the way he wrote his six Violin Sonatas and Partitas (BWV 1001-1006), so they could “stand alone” as compositions without the customary basso continuo (“senza Basso”), as were the six Suites for Violincello solo (BWV 1007-1012). All were written during the years around 1720, while Bach was Court Musician to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cőthen, at a time when he was taken up with secular music – his Brandenburg Concerti and Orchestral Suites also date from the same period.

In his excellent programme note accompanying the concert (though it was uncredited, the use of the first person singular pronoun when talking about performing this music was an obvious giveaway!) violinist Martin Riseley refers obliquely to Bach’s possible intention, as expressed on the autograph with the words “Sei solo” (You are alone), of enshrining something deeply personal within this music. In 1720 the composer’s first wife had died, even more tragically, unbeknown to him while he was absent from the court, perhaps giving rise to the remark “the loneliness and intimacy of the violin, without bass” in Riseley’s commentary, examples of which quality abound in these works.

As with the playing of a different soloist in a concert last year here in Wellington featuring Bach’s music (Raeul Pierard playing the ‘Cello Suites – see the review at https://middle-c.org/2018/11/baching-at-the-moon-cellist-raeul-pierard-at-st-peters-on-willis-wellington/)  it was revelatory to experience this music in an “ongoing” rather than a “single work” context, with Riseley also making reference to the “journey” made by this music across the different individual pieces, for him, unequivocally linking the music in between the opening G minor Sonata and the Chaconne of the D Minor Partita – something of a pity, therefore, that we weren’t able to physically experience this entire span, here, in a single concert. Still, the point was made sufficiently by what WAS played this evening – and despite both an interval and a separate, unrelated item by New Zealand composer Lyell Cresswell interpolated in the flow, the connections seemed to “crackle into life” again when the violinist returned to Bach’s music, the A Minor Sonata BWV 1003, to conclude the evening’s concert.

Beginning with the Sonata No.1 in G Minor, I was immediately struck by the violinist’s variety of timbre, colour, tone and intensity as the music’s phrases were “sounded”. It was as if my sensibilities were being taken on a constantly augmented journey whose trajectories were beguilingly difficult to predict, and diverting to try and follow. Following the opening Adagio, the Fuga (Fugue) presented us with an equally compelling game of double-voiced propositions and potential resolutions. The voices were inseparable, yet constantly seeming to challenge one another to undertake intervals or harmonies that led to worlds of expression one didn’t anticipate. And what trenchant intensities at the end of the movement!

Angular, almost awkward-sounding in places, the Siciliano seemed “overladen’ with its own material at first, before the gentle rhythms gradually shaped the figurations with resonances of what had gone before. By contrast, the Presto’s tumbling 3/8 urgency teased my ear with its rhythmic ambiguities in places, Riseley marking the repeats with great flourishes and compelling attention with his playing’s molto perpetuo energies and variety of touch.

Each of the movements in the following B Minor Partita were followed by a “double” or variation, thus named by the ‘halving” of time values and the resulting “doubling” of note numbers. Hence the opening Allemanda, with strong, stately dotted rhythms whose figurations alternate between a ‘snap” and a triplet, was transformed into a dance of evenly-paired semiquavers for its “double”. The Courante (taken from a French term, to “run”) had a strength and rigour which in the “double” became a Presto, marked by bowing whose variety gave great cause for delight.

Next came the dignified Sarabande, profound and ritualistic with spread chords and sustained tones of great intensity – perhaps not every single note here hit its mark directly, but the commitment to the task was compelling. The “double” used triplet quavers to enliven the Sarabande’s stateliness, the piece’s beautiful symmetries filled with variations of touch and tone. Finally, the Tempo di Borea (like a Bouree) featured a well-known double-stopped opening, by turns energetic and whimsical, its “double” a more flowing, less “punctuated” outpouring, emphasising the piece’s line rather than its rhythm, with plenty of variety of touch, if a somewhat po-faced concluding note.

At this point in the concert we were “diverted” by an interval with a special feature, a plea for “organ donors” to make themselves known, re the individual pipes of the somewhat ailing St.Andrew’s organ. With the parish minister Susan Jones and the organist Peter Franklin providing an entertaining commentary with music, they made the best possible case for the cause of making a commitment to the organ’s refurbishment, suggesting individual donors “sponsor a pipe” from the organ – a brilliant and attractive idea!

In no time at all we were off again, on a different kind of diversion, one involving the music of New Zealand composer Lyell Cresswell, a piece  called “Burla” (suggesting a kind of burlesque?) , written for Douglas Lilburn’s eightieth birthday, but also part of a larger work “Whira” (Maori for “violin” or “fiddle”). The music in effect sounded not unlike overtures made by a terpsichordian wasp attempting to form a dance-duo with a somewhat reluctant hornet! The piece had a striking “visceral” effect in places, employing some deep, grainy “horse-hair on gut” sounds which illustrated the mechanics of friction rather than the latter’s more conventionally musical application – and then included a throwaway fragment of what sounded to me like the phrase “Sings Harry” from Lilburn’s eponymous song-cycle, right at the end. An Antipodean, heat-of-day variant of Bartok’s “Night Music” perhaps? Whatever the case, a brilliant and engaging performance of the piece by the violinist.

Concluding the programme was Bach’s A Minor Sonata for Solo Violin BWV 1003. The music’s dignified, easily-moving opening encompassed both contemplation and exploration at the beginning, while opening the music’s vistas as it proceeded. Riseley’s performance  didn’t hold anything back, embracing whole moments of circumspection and ambivalence of intent, even as the music went straight into the Fuga, maintaining an alternate relaxation and emphasis that brought out an extraordinary kind of 3-d aspect to the music, a view encompassing both the immediate and the middle distance – masterly playing! He had the measure of those seemingly endless”spins” which transcend time and place so that we were ourselves transported, particularly throughout the Fuga’s second half.

The C Major Andante was compellingly and expansively-phrased – it had something of the itinerant fiddler about it, something big-boned, yet with a “musing”, self-absorbed trajectory, sounding very “folky”, and with a suggestion of the “drone” in the bass – almost a kind of “Winter Journey” in itself – amazing music! The minor-key figurations of the Allegro finale had echo-like phrases following one another in quick succession, filled with suggestiveness and playful touches amid the po-faced purpose of it all – the piece’s concluding low A was enough, I would think, to ensure that we would all want to come back to St Andrew’s in a fortnight’s time to conclude the music’s journey!

Note: Martin Riseley will be playing the three remaining Sonatas and Partitas of JS Bach at St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Church on Friday 7th June, at 6:30pm

An excellent lunchtime concert from university string students at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concert
Performances by string students of the New Zealand School of Music

Zephyr Wills (viola), Rebecca Warnes (cello), Hayden Nickel (violin), Ellen Murfitt (violin), Emily Paterson (cello), Tamina Beveridge (piano)

Music by Bach, Hindemith, Saint-Saëns, Mendelssohn

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 8 May, 12:15 pm

Though I had thought not to write a review of this lunchtime concert, but simply to have a pleasant hour listening, I found my mind changing however, a couple of minutes in to the first item: the Allemande from Bach’s fourth Cello Suite, in E flat, played on the viola by Zephyr Wills. Sometimes such transpositions don’t work, but this one did, beautifully. Wills, only a second-year student, has acquired a warm flawless technique on his instrument. The Allemande is a relatively sedate, moderately paced dance and it flourished in his flowing, note-perfect playing. I’m not always happy about other instruments playing music the composer carefully crafted for one in particular. Here, it sounded as if the viola was what Bach really had in mind.

Hindemith’s viola 
More challenging in a sense was the first two movements (Breit and Sehr Frisch und straff) of Hindemith’s sonata for solo viola, Op 25 No 1 (it has five movements). Though opening with an arresting dissonance, it quickly settled into the sort of piece one expects from the Weimar Republic in the 1920s.

The viola was Hindemith’s own instrument and he wrote several sonatas for solo viola as well for viola and piano. I came across a good quote in Gramophone magazine:

“Throughout these works … there is an almost overwhelming competence. The sheer mastery with which he was able to go about making one instrument express the creativity of his extraordinarily fertile mind is quite breathtaking. … There is a strong feeling that it emanates from an era of unrest: the constant moving-on from one idea to another and the rapid harmonic shifts are symptomatic of this. The role of the viola is somewhat solitary.
“Alfred Einstein encapsulated Hindemith’s relationship to his audience thus: ‘’He is unwilling to exploit his feelings publicly and he keeps his two feet on the ground. He merely writes music, the best that he can produce.’ … it is in the four sonatas for solo viola that one is closest to his essence, an essence that is rather bleak and certainly highly cerebral.”

I felt that, for a young student (yet only about four years younger than Hindemith at the time), this sample of the sonata also showed a surprising grasp of the essence of Hindemith.

Saint-Saëns: the whole concerto
The next piece was advertised as the first movement of Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto in A minor (No 1). Rebecca Warnes is a fifth year student at the School of Music (which perhaps means she’s studying for her Masters’, or even a PhD). No high degree of musical discernment was needed to hear a highly accomplished performance from her and her pianist Tamina Beveridge who was a more than adequate orchestra substitute. If it wasn’t for the conspicuously concerto-flavoured cello part, it wouldn’t have been hard to hear it as a cello sonata.  Because I’d forgotten how short the first movement is (about 5 to 6 minutes), I thought the more charming and lyrical second movement was an episode of the first, but realised by the time the third movement began that I was listening to the whole concerto which usually runs a bit over 20 minutes. The excellence of the playing never diminished, and the many virtuosic sections were dealt with, by both players, with undiminished competence and that sense of delight that a mid-30s composer and an early-20s cellist can deliver.

Mendelssohn was still to come (and it was already about 12.50). Hayden Nickel played the first movement of his violin concerto as Tamina Beveridge stayed at the piano. His violin had a bright tone well suited to the spirit of the first movement (this time it was only the first); though it might have exposed both instruments in the more taxing passages. But that accelerating cadenza that leads excitingly into the second movement came off excellently.

And to end, the first movement of Mendelssohn’s last string quartet, Op 80. The players were Haydn Nickel and Zephyr Wills again, plus second violinist Ellen Murfitt and cellist Emily Paterson. They captured the anguished urgency of the Allegro vivace assai (which might as well have been named the ‘appassionata’) music that creates, for me, one of Mendelssohn’s rare, thoughtful, deeply felt utterances.

‘Twas an excellent lunchtime concert!

 

Adam Chamber Music Festival in Nelson: the first days

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Grand Opening Concert

Mozart: Horn Quintet in E flat, K 407    Sam Jacobs – horn, Helene Pohl – violin, Gillian Ansell – viola, Monique Lapins – viola, Rolf Gjelsten – cello
Brahms: Three Intermezzi from Op 118 (Nos 1, 2, 6)    Dénes Várjon
Prokofiev: Sonata for two violins, Op 58    Anthony Marwood and Nikki Chooi – violins
Brahms: String Quintet No 2 in G, Op 111    Jerusalem Quartet (Alexander Pavlovsky and Sergei Bresler – violins, Ori Kam – viola, Kyril Zlotnikov – cello), with Gillian Ansell – second viola

Nelson Centre of Musical Arts (Nelson School of Music)

Friday 1 February 2019, 7:30 pm

This was the first festival for five years that has been able to move back to the now magnificently enhanced Nelson School of Music (now called the Nelson Centre of Musical Arts). That, as well as the line-up of many top international musicians, saw the early sell-out of all but one of the nine superb evening concerts. That’s attributable also to the festival’s international reputation, attracting many people from around New Zealand and increasing numbers from overseas. My frequent comment that for the past 20 years, it’s been the finest classical music festival in New Zealand bears reiterating: its only earlier competitor was the three weeks duration New Zealand International Arts Festival in Wellington which has long ceased to be one of the richest classical music festivals in the world.

The first concert on Friday 1 February happened to be the birthday of the festival’s most important and longest standing sponsor, Denis Adam, who died last October. In their opening remarks former minister for the arts, Chris Finlayson, as well as festival chair Colleen Marshall, paid deeply-felt tributes to his 25 years of support.

The opening concert was an opportunity to show-case most of the artists scheduled in the early days of the festival. So the New Zealand String Quartet plus NZSO principal horn Samuel Jacobs opened this first concert with Mozart’s Horn Quintet in E flat, one of several challenging pieces that Mozart wrote for his horn-playing friend Joseph Leutgeb; it’s an unusual work, made more curious by employing two violas instead of two violins. The quartet’s second violinist, Monique Lapins, switched to the viola. It enriched the sound beautifully, even though in the beginning there was some imbalance between horn and strings in this very clear acoustic; the players soon settled to a performance of great delight.

Returning Hungarian pianist Dénes Várjon then played three of the Six Pieces, Op 118, some of the many small piano pieces that Brahms wrote near the end of his life. Intermezzi nos 1, 2, and 6 of the set are sharply different in spirit and style, and they whetted the appetite to hear Várjon playing Beethoven and other music during the week.

Brahms’s 2nd string quintet and three intermezzi
There was a connection between the three intermezzi and the Jerusalem Quartet’s performance in the second half of Brahms’s second String Quintet (this time, the second violist being Gillian Ansell of the New Zealand String Quartet). Though he intended that the quintet would be his last composition, as his health was failing, its great success encouraged him to write a lot more chamber music in his last years, specifically the 20 pieces of opp 116 to 119. They were three well-contrasted pieces in which Várjon found subtle and interesting characteristics, No 6 traversing a sad, reflective mood that grew suddenly more exciting, even overwhelming by the end. I rather wished he’d played more of them.

The quintet is not one of Brahms most familiar pieces, but this performance made it easy to understand the warm reception its premiere in Vienna in 1890 received; somewhere described as ‘a sensation’. And this performance, celebratory and confident, with all five players producing a rapturous first movement with warm, heart-felt, sometimes boisterous playing promised a similar response. The second movement may be rather more enigmatic, but there was no lack of unanimity in their playing, particularly in the uniform warmth and richness of tone that they drew from their instruments. Although the last movement might not have seemed as spirited and moving as the first, at the end the audience responded with a sort of hushed awe.

The 20th century was represented by a not-well-known piece by Prokofiev, his Sonata for two violins, Op 58. Its four movements, vividly contrasted, and ferociously challenging were played by Canadian Nikki Chooi and British Anthony Marwood. Though alternating in musical sense and mood from phrase to phrase, seeming to speak different languages, ultimately an astonishing integrity and a shared purpose was revealed both in the music itself and its performance.

 

Saturday: Meeting the artists and discussing the music

The Jerusalem Quartet, talking with Gillian Ansell

Bartók’s music in the Festival: members of the Jerusalem Quartet, Dénes Várjon with Helene Pohl and Monique Lapins

Nelson Centre of Musical Arts

Saturday 2 February, 10 am and 2 pm

Talking with the Jerusalem Quartet 
The day had started with a morning appointment in which NZSQ violist Gillian Ansell talked with the four members of the Jerusalem Quartet. It was one of those occasions when the public gets to glimpse the sort of relationship that exists between those musicians who appear to the audience as rather super-human beings. The light shone not just on the four Israelis, but also on the normality of their rapport with at least one other musician of comparable gifts and insight: here, Gillian Ansell.

Their lives: the two violinists born in Kiev in Ukraine, the cellist from Minsk in Belarus, and violist Ori Kam who was born of Ukrainian parentage in California. While the other three were original members, he joined the quartet in 2009. Their various backgrounds have naturally become of special interest through the political and military activities that have forced on the rest of the world, some understanding of cynical post-Soviet adventurism and the unwise behaviour of the Ukrainian and Belarusian regimes. Each revealed careers that existed before and continued after the formation of the Jerusalem Quartet, when the players were about 17. And their careers have been troubled by reactions to their evident nature of their relationship with the Israeli Government.

No doubt because of his fluency in English, Ori Kam tended to lead entertainingly, with interesting detail about his own and the quartet’s background.

Bartók
In the afternoon, Dénes Várjon, members of the Jerusalem Quartet, and Helene Pohl and Monique Lapins, talked about the three Bartók pieces to be played in the following days. The relevant works discussed and illustrated were the Suite for piano, Op 14, written in 1916, on Sunday evening, the second violin sonata, written in 1922 on Tuesday evening, and the 5th String quartet played after I’d left Nelson. Várjon spoke in some detail about the Suite and the influence of his early exploration and recording of folk music in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Algeria. He mentioned Bartók’s own comments in the recordings which had a singular impact.

Monique Lapins was given space to play excerpts from, and talk about Bartók’s violin sonata; I found her presentation rarely illuminating, especially through her near-seductive movements that created an almost balletic interpretation of the music. The excerpts chosen from several movements of each work were a revelation, preparing the ground so illuminatingly for all three. I heard the full performances of only the first two works, neither of which I was familiar with.   Like many others, I find Bartók a gritty composer, his music not especially engaging, though it richly repays perseverance and close attention.

The members of the Jerusalem Quartet then discussed Bartók’s fifth string quartet to which all contributed, though it was violist Ori Kam who tended to lead the way, guiding the quartet’s playing of significant passages, pointing to bits that reflected the folk music of this or that Balkan people, even Turkish, and he remarked on the readiness of the Balkan Christian population, even when faced with imminent Turkish invasion, to enjoy Turkish music. He contributed encouraging remarks like, “Cool, isn’t it!”.

Saturday evening: Schubert, Dorati, Schumann and Brahms

Schubert: Violin Sonata No 3 in G minor, D 408    Alexander Pavlovsky – violin and Dénes Várjon – piano
Antal Dorati: Three pieces for oboe solo – La cigale et la fourmi, Lettre d’amour, Legerdemain    Thomas Hutchinson – oboe
Schumann: Piano Quartet in E flat, Op 47    Helene Pohl – violin, Gillian Ansell – viola, Kyril Zlotnikov – cello, Dénes Várjon – piano
Brahms: Horn Trio in E flat, Op 40    Sam Jacobs – horn, Anthony Marwood – violin, Dénes Várjon – piano

Nelson Centre of Musical Arts

Saturday 2 February, 7:30 pm

The Saturday evening concert opened with the first of one of the festival themes: the four Schubert sonatas, three of them called sonatinas in their first publication, after his death. Indeed, they are not heavy-weight in length or tone. Each was played by a different violinist: the first, No 3, D 408, played here by Alexander Pavkovsky and Várjon. There might have been a lingering trace of Bartókian urgency under the warmth and delight that the first movement produces, and one might have thought about the very short distance between Vienna and Budapest, or towns in which Bartók lived as a child, such as Pozsony (now Bratislava in Slovakia). The violin produced a sound that had the burnished glow of Rimu.

Prize-winning New Zealand oboist Thomas Hutchinson chose an unusual solo piece for his offering in this recital of huge variety: a set of three pieces by composer Antal Dorati, who was also a conductor of considerable distinction: a Hungarian (to keep Bartók company).  Bartók taught him at the Franz Liszt Academy and he conducted the world premiere of Bartók’s viola concerto. To modern audiences his fame rests substantially on his complete recordings of Haydn’s 104 symphonies with the Philharmonia Hungarica, an orchestra created from refugee musicians who fled Communist Hungary after Soviet troops invaded to put down the 1956 revolutionary attempt.

Hutchinson’s oboe was rich and virtuosic in the performance of the three sharply contrasted pieces, ending with beautifully articulated playing of the fast, highly imaginative last piece, Legerdemain.

Schumann’s piano quartet
Two major chamber works followed: Brahms’s Horn Trio and Schumann’s Piano Quartet. The latter was played by the NZSQ’s Helene Pohl and Gillian Ansell with cellist Kyril Zlotnikov from the Jerusalem Quartet. Várjon emerged the hero however; though the balance between piano and strings was admirable and all the most remarkable aspects of Schumann’s genius were there to delight us. It is not an everyday experience to hear such an impassioned performance; and one’s attention kept shifting from individual string players to the ensemble sounds and then realising that I was not listening attentively enough to Várjon at the piano, playing with the sort of passion that’s more characteristic of eastern European musicians than to those of the western countries; after all, Schumann was brought up in Saxony (in Zwickau), very close to the Czech border.

Brahms’s Horn Trio brought back Samuel Jacobs and Anthony Marwood, again with Várjon. I found Marwood’s demeanour a little distracting, weaving about excessively, in contrast to his perfectly restrained performance with Nikki Chooi in the Prokofiev sonata for two violins on Friday. However, it detracted not at all from the sense of delight that his omnipresent violin produced. There was perfect accord between the three musicians, with the result that impressions from my earlier hearings of the trio when I had never been wholly persuaded that Brahms had succeeded in creating an intimate threesome, had to be revised. In fact, Brahms here seemed to have absorbed entirely the character of the horn and the way it could most naturally be blended with two other very distinct instruments. The energy of the first and last movements was remarkable. Though the piano might have been visually in the background, and risked being heard merely as providing accompaniment, I’ve never been so engrossed by the work, particularly in heartfelt passages in the gorgeous, elegiac third movement.

Sunday: Várjon in Beethoven and Bartók

Beethoven: Piano Sonatas No 29 in B flat, Op 106 ‘Hammerklavier’ and No 32 in C minor, Op 111
Bartók: Suite for Piano, Op 14

Nelson Centre of Musical Arts

Sunday 3 February, 7:30 pm

I did not go to the Sunday afternoon concert, even though I would certainly have loved to hear Monique Lapins play the third violin Sonata of Schubert, with Izabella Simon at the piano, and probably the pieces by Lohei Mukai and New Zealanders John Rimmer and Simon Eastwood.

Perhaps I felt that I needed to conserve my listening energies for the extraordinary Beethoven project in the evening. The mere thought of playing the Hammerklavier in the same programme as the Op 111 seemed to demand physical and spiritual preparation and calm.

The Hammerklavier
There were no preliminaries to prepare for the big one: Várjon opened as he clearly intended to carry on, with an attack of unbridled power that gave no room at all for gentility or decorum. In fact, it spoke at once to prompt the first scribble in my notebook about ‘the rough and tumble’ opening in which he attacked the keyboard with abandon, with no apparent concern about the inevitable fluff that listeners bothered by such trivia might have spotted. But any of that was utterly unimportant in the overwhelming strength and compulsion that drove Várjon’s playing.

It recalled a comment that I’d come across in a YouTube recording I’d listened to a few days before: “weird, titanic, gnarled, joyous, grief-stricken monster that is the Hammerklavier”. Though the recording in question was courteous and disciplined in comparison to what I heard from Várjon. Confirmation of the wild character of the performance came right at the start, with the sudden modulation, mid-measure, from B flat to D within the first minute, which seemed a far more rebellious act than one had ever encountered before.

At the beginning of the development section, following an unresolved cadence, there are several pauses which Várjon held for what seemed unusual length and which further sustained the sense of ferocity and recklessness. And unusually long pauses continued to characterise the development section, and particularly the recapitulation, always with extraordinary dramatic effect.

The contrast with the brief Scherzo was perhaps more than usually striking: bright and clear, yet with these more restrained rhythmic and tonal shifts Várjon maintained the dramatic mood of the first movement. Then the Adagio sostenuto offered an extended, painstaking retreat to a peaceful, contemplative quarter hour, certain passages feeling as if the pervasive 6/8 tempo has turned it into a Ländler, though Várjon seemed to treat it as if Beethoven was struggling, painfully to find some sort of equilibrium.  Throughout the last movement which starts in deathly quiet, he continued to illuminate the composer’s determination to exploit every possible disturbing and dramatic element that could be found in it.

The last movement is no ordinary fast and sunny affair. It opens in deathly quiet, and gradually accelerates to regain the spirit of fierce determination that had dominated the first movement. Many performances seem to recover a feeling of peace and acceptance, but by the end that spirit was scarce; I simply knew that I’d never heard such a tumultuous, wildly Romantic performance of this masterpiece. And I loved it.

Bartók’s Suite for piano  
The programme notes point out that although Bartók was a fine pianist, he wrote little for the piano; this Suite, Op 14, written in 1916, and a later sonata are his only significant piano pieces. It is in four shortish movements: Allegretto, Scherzo, Allegro Molto and Sostenuto. The first sounds like a folk dance, though none of the themes in the suite are said to be taken from his collection of folk tunes. It’s spiky, unmistakably Bartók, as are the other movements; both the second and third are also fast and only the fourth, Sostenuto, relaxes to allow a feeling of calm to descend, though Várjon never allowed us to relax, persuading us that the work deserved to be much better known.

Opus 111 
The recital ended with Beethoven’s last sonata, Op 111 and although separated by the Bartók from the Hammerklavier, it felt very much from the same source, providing just a rather more metaphysical, less ferocious version of the earlier work, though in the Op 111 Várjon sought to find comparable unease and power. Its long second movement, Arietta, which Beethoven carefully describes as Adagio molto semplice e cantabile, all hardly departing from C major throughout the 20-odd minutes of its five variations, builds the most profound musical creation starting with several slow, repeated passages, then minutes of rolling triplets, before breaking out with a sort of ecstatic episode with rising and falling arpeggios in dotted rhythms (you don’t often find time signatures like 9/16). Várjon built this marvellous movement steadily, creating a near-hypnotic state, ecstatic and profoundly spiritual. His playing seemed never really to return to earth as feathery phrases went on and on, long sequences of trills, all elaborating a profoundly moving melody that is spun endlessly, coming to a simple ending that called for and got a long held silence before an immediate standing ovation.

 

An “Enchanted Evening” from The Virtuoso Strings with Jonathan Lemalu

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Virtuoso Strings presents:
SOME ENCHANTED EVENING
(with Grammy award-winning bass, Jonathan Lemalu)

Music by JS BACH, MOZART, MASCAGNI, BELLINI, VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, COPLAND, BARBER, GERSHWIN, and RODGERS

Introduction: James Faraimo, Virtuoso Strings Charitable Trust Board
Opening Address: Justin Lester, Mayor of Wellington
MC: Luamanuvao Dame Winifred Laban

Jonathan Lemalu (bass)
Toloa Faraimo (violin)
Concertmistress (Avril Stil)
Virtuoso Strings Players and Guests
Kenneth Young (conductor)

Wellington Opera House, Manners St.

Monday 3rd December, 2018

It had all the makings of a large and vital extended-family affair, with the usual concert rituals and parameters given a relaxed and informal spontaneity that readily brought musicians and audience together. I liked the buzz of excitement in both the foyer and the auditorium, one growing out of a sense of being in a friendly crowd and anticipating the delights to come!

This was “Some Enchanted Evening”, a presentation by The Virtuoso Strings, a group drawing its members from young musicians in the Wellington and Porirua areas. The ensemble’s Concertmistress, Avril Stil, put things succinctly in her welcoming note printed in the programme, referring to the group’s determination to “change the classical music landscape of New Zealand and the world”, by dint of “hard work, dedication and a lot of practice and perseverance”. The results of what she was talking about spoke for themselves this evening.

Central to the operation was bass Jonathan Lemalu, the ensemble’s Patron, and the soloist in the vocal numbers performed in tonight’s concert. Inspired by the visionary zeal of the group’s organisers, Lemalu readily agreed to assist the venture in all possible ways, resulting in his patronage and his inspirational presence as a performer with the group. The singer paid tribute to the group’s principal sponsors in his welcoming programme note, the Deane Endowment Trust, and the Wright Family Foundation.

Beginning proceedings was an “official” welcome to everybody from James Faraimo, representing the Virtuoso Strings Charitable Trust Board, followed by an address from the Mayor of Wellington, Justin Lester. This prepared the way for the evening’s opening item, James Faraimo introducing the evening’s Musical Director Kenneth Young by way of inviting him to the podium to direct the first movement of Bach’s Third Brandenburg Concerto. This was quite a work-out for the strings, but under Young’s “steady-as-she-goes” guidance the players bent their backs to the task with great spirit, keeping their rhythms buoyant, attacking the beginnings of the lines fearlessly and “terracing” the dynamics so that the sounds had ear-catching ebb-and-flow. Though the intonation sounded a bit raw in places, especially the exposed, single-line sequences, other parts were strongly and vigorously characterised, such as the famous “descent” through the orchestral sections, finishing with the engagingly “growly” double-basses!

James Faraimo then introduced the MC for the remainder of the concert, Luamanuvao Dame Winifred Laban, Associate Professor and Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Pasifika) at Victoria University of Wellington.  After greeting us she then in turn introduced the evening’s soloist, bass Jonathan Lemalu, inviting him to take the stage and perform for us some more Bach, this time the beautiful “Mache, dich, mein Herz rein“ (Make my heart pure) from the “St Matthew Passion”. Lemalu treated the music reverentially, almost to a fault in places where it was difficult to hear him – his tones came through more readily to the ear during the less heavily-accompanied middle section of the aria. However, his capturing of the music’s spirit was extremely moving, as was the players’ rendering of the “lullaby-like” quality of much of the music.

Completely different in character was the following item, from Mozart’s opera “The Marriage of Figaro”, the aria “Non piu andrai” (No more will you go), during which Figaro gleefully describes to a young lovesick boy, Cherubino, how life in the army and in the thick of battle will make a “man” out of him! Lemalu’s acting skills came to the fore, here, characterising the words with glee, and gently mocking the boy’s amorous inclinations by presenting him with the grimmer realities of a soldier’s life! Though some of the vocal detail was hard to pick up, the more “martial” bits were put across by Lemalu with great relish!

Another great Mozartean “character” followed, that of “Papageno”, the bird-catcher from “the Magic Flute”. Lemalu lost no chance to “act up” to the audience while describing his living and his longing for a pretty little wife – the recurring flute-call here made the singer check his cell-phone, to the amusement of us all in the auditorium. After this, we heard a strings-only item, again operatic in origin, the beautiful “Intermezzo” from a much later opera than Mozart’s, a one-acter by Pietro Mascagni, called “Cavalleria Rusticana”. The lines were sweetly and sensitively realised, the phrasing kept simple and direct, Young resisting the temptation to inflate the piece’s overt emotion in any way.

The changes were rung again for the next operatic excerpt, again from Mozart, and this time from one of the most famous of all operas, “Don Giovanni”. Lemalu gave us an Act One aria from the Don’s servant Leoporello, who recounts to one of the Don’s abandoned female conquests the extent of his master’s sexual proclivities, a piece popularly known as the “Catalogue Aria”. Here, Andrew Atkins’ piano-playing helped out with some of the wind-parts of the original! Lemalu’s voice, though not ideally clear against the busy orchestral background during the first half of the aria, nicely caught the mock-serenade mood of the slower second part, with its naughtily-characterised final phrases.

I didn’t know the next aria, from Vincenzo Bellini’s “La Sonnambula”, one which sounded to me very like Rossini in places, but had heard and knew the splendid Vaughan Williams song “The Vagabond’ from the composer’s “Songs of Travel” – here most energetically sung and with great and forthright out-of-doors orchestral playing!

After the interval came the first of two items during this half of the programme that moved me almost to the point of tears, the first of which again being by Vaughan Williams. This time the soloist was a violinist, sixteen year-old Toloa Faraimo, giving us a performance of the composer’s orchestral rhapsody “The Lark Ascending” which was received throughout its duration with the kind of awed silence one associates with truly heart-stopping performances. For here was a beautifully-realised, exquisitely-sounded evocation of a world of loveliness and natural order and simplicity, played with exquisite timing and sense of atmosphere, soloist and orchestral accompaniment mindful as much of the silences as of the notes. Only one or two slightly “drooped” ascending note-tunings from Faraimo caused any sort of “blip” on the radar of the bird’s celestial peregrinations, the rest (including confidently-addressed double-stoppings and diaphanous cadenza-like warblings near the piece’s end) addressed with a serene patience and surety of focus that belied the violinist’s young years. Naturally the audience erupted at the end of it all, the reception all the more tumultuous in the wake of such rapt interweavings of beauty and stillness from the youthful player and his sensitively-wrought orchestral support.

We needed to come back down to earth after this, and Jonathan Lemalu gave us just the thing in the form of three of Aaron Copland’s “Old American Songs”, the first the well-known “Simple Gifts”, here sung in simple, ballad-like fashion. The more declamatory “Zion Halls” I thought suited Lemalu’s gentler voice less than did the lovely “At the River”, the latter sung with ineffable longing and sense of quiet faith.

Samuel Barber’s “Adagio”, originally a movement from a string quartet, has long since found another “life” in a later, string-orchestra guise, as a much-loved and often-performed elegiac piece at times and occasions marked by great sorrow. Ken Young got a beautiful performance of this from his young players – after a lovely, inward-sounding opening, the cellos “opened up” the music’s expressive qualities, stimulating ever-burgeoning feeling and intensity which reached a climax, then quietly retreated , returning to the deep well of hushed emotion awakened by the piece’s opening.

All four remaining items in the concert (including the encore) were sung by Lemalu with a “to the manner born” kind of style, firstly Gershwin’s “I got plenty o’ nuttin’” from “Porgy and Bess, put across with plenty of swagger in the more forthright places, including a properly uninhibited “No use complainin’!” parlando utterance that summed up the spirit of the song in an instant!  I would still have liked more tonal weight from the singer, but by way of compensation got here and in other places some wonderfully alive responses from Lemalu to words and their evocations.

The most affecting were two whose strains instantly took me back in time to childhood experiences of hearing these performed “live” on stage, particularly so in the case of “Some Enchanted Evening” from Richard Rodgers’ “South Pacific”, but just as strongly (through being more richly-voiced in performance) the concert’s encore, a performance of the famous song “Ole’ Man River” from Jerome Kern’s “Showboat”. Here the singer’s deepest resonances were brought into play most effectively with the song’s lowest notes being caught well and truly, and used as the basis of building up intensity of feeling towards the climax – overwhelming in its effect, and a marvellous way to end this truly heart-warming concert.

Recital from pianist and concertmaster at Orchestra Wellington’s Saturday concert

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Christopher Park – piano (who was soloist in Bartok’s piano concerto No 1 with Orchestra Wellington at the concert in the MFC on 27 October, and Amalia Hall, the orchestra’s concert master
Mozart: Violin Sonata No 17 in C, K 296
Brahms: Violin Sonata No 1 in G, Op 78
Scharwenka: Suite for violin and piano, Op 99

St Andrews on The Terrace

Tuesday October 30, 12:30 pm

The audience at Orchestra Wellington’s Saturday concert in which Christopher Park played Bartok’s piano concerto No 1 was invited to this lunchtime concert, and came along in good numbers (though fewer than for Johannes Moser after the NZSO concert where he’d played Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto); he was joined by the orchestra’s concert master Amalia Hall, a friend, who was apparently instrumental in getting him to New Zealand to play the terrifying Bartok piece.

Mozart’s Violin Sonata No. 17 in C major, K. 296, is the first of his fifteen ‘mature’ sonatas; it was composed in 1778, aged 22, in Mannheim when Wolfgang and his mother were on their unhappy journey to Paris (his mother died there, and father Leopold never forgave Wolfgang for his carelessness). It must nevertheless by considered a ‘middle period’ work, since there were 16 earlier ones written in childhood and adolescence.

Few ordinary music lovers would have all of Mozart’s violin sonatas systematically embedded in their minds: there are as many as 36, including several incomplete ones, and the 16 composed in his childhood, which occupy most of the Köchel numbers below 30. This one was familiar to me but no more.

Initially, the piano dominated the violin somewhat, though given the fact that Mozart’s instrumental sonatas were published as for piano (or harpsichord) ‘accompanied by’ the other instrument, the violin’s inferior role in it was hardly conspicuous. Writing for both instruments was sparkling, offering opportunities for technical display and exuberance, with many decorative, flamboyant arpeggios. There’s a contrasting middle section, in contemplative minor key. It was marked by striking originality and character.

The second movement, Andante sostenuto, opens with a rather routine first theme, but continued with a warm, more flowing second melody. It’s probably unfamiliarity with the work that left me with the feeling that the last movement, a Rondeau, was not especially memorable, rather suggesting the tone of Boccherini, though a march-like middle section created a well-balanced composition. In all, the performance by both players captured its characteristics and its distinctly Mozartian virtues with great accomplishment.

Brahms’s first violin sonata was obviously a far more mature work, with emotional and musical qualities to which the two players gave conspicuous attention. Amalia’s playing delighted in the swaying rhythm in the first movement, as well as in the subtle dynamic changes that accompanied the variations of tempo, all encompassed by the instruction Vivace ma non troppo.(mainly ‘non troppo’). Even though the Mozart sonata had singular strengths, given the composer’s age at the time, the elaborateness of Brahms’s composition and the stylistic variety dramatized the way music had evolved in the hundred years (exactly) between the two works. In the Brahms there’s a feeling of sobriety, compositional sophistication and depth that characterised the late Romantic period; it was an interesting case study in the evolution of music. These thoughts were highlighted by the polish and conviction of the playing.

A singular seriousness of purpose colours the second movement and the pair captured its meditative beauty, especially in their handling of the lovely second theme, given richness and warmth with double stopping by the violin and complementary treatment on the piano part.

The last movement is no bold heroic finale, just Allegro molto moderato, emphasis on the ‘Moderato’. was again the opportunity to be touched by her ability to sustain long melodic lines filled with genuine emotion.

Philipp Scharwenka 
The totally unfamiliar piece in the recital was a Suite by Philipp Scharwenka. I had assumed that this was the composer whose name cropped up in old piano albums – the composer of a popular, outwardly impressive Polish Dance, not really all that difficult. But the pianist told me that the latter was by Xaver Scharwenka, the younger brother of the composer of today’s Suite. The two bothers attract similar space in most musical reference books.

Philipp was born in 1847, in the then-Prussian-occupied Poland – the Grand Duchy of Posen (now Poznan). Perhaps they both help fill that empty space in the chronology of German/Austrian composers between Brahms and Mahler, thinly inhabited by Bruch, Humperdinck and ???… – The surname as well as his birth and early life in Polish-majority territory, suggests, like his contemporary Moritz Moszkowski, possible Polish family origins but I find no mention of that.

The four-movement Suite suggested Brahmsian influences (though that would have been almost impossible to avoid in late 19th century Germany, unless a Wagner/Liszt acolyte). Though he avoids the word ‘sonata’ its shape and scale might have invited that description. The first movement, Toccata, passes through an interesting sequence of musical ideas and treatments, often agitated, which suggest a more genuine imagination than a marginally gifted composer might produce, with its several shifts of tempo and mood, a feeling of substance and creative talent. And the performance by the two excellent musicians demanded serious attention, persuading one that a second hearing might bring increased admiration and even pleasure.

The other movements are Ballade, Intermezzo and Recitativ und Tarantella. The Ballade was slower and more contemplative, with touches of attractive melody that even became implanted. The scherzo-like third movement changed the tone again, with a fast cross-string work-out for the violin, leaving a very lively impression that could well have suggested earlier origins, Schumann or even Schubert. And the last movement, after a tentative sort of opening – the Recitative, continued in a comparable, energetic vein, calming for a moment, but soon plunging again into the rapids; it then picked up folk-dance rhythms that became distinctly challenging, especially for the violin, though both instruments were treated to music of very similar interest and demands.

Though I had had no idea what to expect from this piece by a composer unknown to me, well before the end and thanks to a splendidly committed and accomplished performance, I had concluded that this was a most interesting piece and that one should explore more of Philipp Scharwenka’s music.

So this recital of over an hour’s length offered interesting discoveries, performed with great flair and accomplishment.

A lunchtime concert for the exploratory and spirited on violin and cello

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

St Andrew’s lunchtime concerts

Rupa Maitra (violin) and Margaret Guldborg (cello)

Pieces by Halvorsen, Bréval and Ravel

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 24 October, 12:15 pm

Duos between the piano and many other instruments are numerous, but between pairs of other instruments, without a keyboard, rare; though string quartets and less often string trios and quintets seem to be popular and work well.

This was an opportunity to put it to the test.

Halvorsen’s Passacaglia based on a theme from Handel’s harpsichord suite in G minor is not completely obscure. The tune lends itself to variations and Halvorsen made it into something of a virtuoso showpiece, though it’s rather more than that; and though this performance didn’t exploit its bravura character, it was played with imagination. While Handel’s fingerprints were evident in the character of the melody, the late 19th century, a Paganini/Sarasate spirit guides these variations. In some ways it was not a propitious opening piece as it drew attention to a contrast in tone, even in control of articulation, between the two instruments; the cello tone was rather more polished and mellow than the violin’s where the high register tended to be thin.

The Duo by Jean-Baptiste Bréval, cellist, and a close contemporary of Mozart, was found in a collection of Airs varies for violin and cello and produced a curious sound that probably reflected the very different musical climates between Italy/German lands and France. The variation character was not as conspicuous, wide-ranging as might be found in German music of the period; the composer called for a lot of harmonics as well as very high normal fingering on the cello, and Guldborg handled them comfortably. As might be expected from a cellist-composer, that instrument tended to be more conspicuous.

The major work in the recital was Ravel’s Sonata for violin and cello of 1922. I think most listeners, blindfold, would find it hard to identify the composer, other than through a process of elimination, and even then ‘Ravel’ might be deleted. Nor is identification easier because of its connection with Debussy’s death four years before.

Each of the four movements is emotionally and stylistically distinct.  The first movement, Allegro, calls for curious kinds of duetting, counterpointing, handling the two instruments, sometimes in happy accord, sometimes as if in different universes; lots of demanding playing high on the fingerboards of both instruments.

The second movement, Très vif, rhythmically a different creature from the Allegro, insistent, short motifs, but then a long, almost elegiac, passage from the violin, its pedigree still very obscure. In many ways it struck me as singularly avant-garde, not inconceivable in the immediate post-war years, post dodecaphonic, Schoenbergian era, yet essentially tonal.

The only quasi peaceful episode is the ‘Lent’ third movement. It’s thoughtful but even here there is nothing of a more familiar character that might shackle it to Ravel. Margaret Guldborg had spoken briefly about it, hinting at its possible kinship with Shostakovich (and the 2nd movement with Stravinsky), but neither helped. There were tortured, abrasive elements; and there were moments that I thought listeners with more open-minded ears than mine might have rated as melodic; and there were passages of dialogue between the two instruments that were arresting, though not in a language in which I am fluent.

The cello opened the last movement, Vif, actually, ‘Vif avec entrain’, (lively with enthusiasm), gruffly, in the cello’s low register, as was Maitra’s violin, which also revealed an adventurous spirit. I also enjoyed what I felt as a characteristically Ravellian, comedic element, notably in the rhythmic games played: in the way the two challenged each other. It is some years since I heard it played live, and again I was persuaded by its considerable musical value, though its beauties are probably not to be enjoyed without effort.

In this, the contrast in timbres and colour between the two instruments, to a certain disadvantage in the other two pieces, became a positive element in a piece that demanded attention to every detail. So it proved a lunchtime concert that challenged a little, as well as opening one’s mind to unfamiliar but worthwhile repertoire.