Tag: vocal

Bach Choir recovers its earlier renown with fine concert of Mendelssohn and Brahms

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The Bach Choir of Wellington conducted by Stephen Rowley, accompanied by pianists Douglas Mews and Diedre Irons

Mendelssohn: Six songs to sing in the open air (Sechs Lieder im Freien zu singer), Op 41 and Six duets for voice and piano, Op 63 (with Rebekah Giesbers – mezzo soprano and Ailsa Lipscombe – soprano)
Brahms: Die Mainacht, No 2 from Op 43; Feldeinsamkeit, No 2 from Op 86; Botschaft, No 1 from Op 47 (with Rory Sweeney – baritone)
Hungarian Dances Nos 1, 3, 6
Liebeslieder Walzer, Op 52

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Saturday 28 July, 5pm

This concert had been originally scheduled for the evening, but was moved to 5pm when it was realised that it clashed with the Orpheus Choir’s major performance of Bernstein’s Candide in the Town Hall.

The clash would probably have been more damaging to the Bach Choir than to its big cousin. As a result (I suppose), quite a large audience came to this concert. A good programme was available giving words in both German and English with informative notes about the composers and the works.

The choir was on very good form. The balance and ensemble were admirable and the choir held audience attention through their sensitive variations in dynamics and articulation. Though probably with too few tenors, and perhaps as a whole, not presenting quite the level of vocal polish of the women, the men’s contribution was more than adequate.

Mendelssohn composed the set of open air songs to be sung on a summer evening in a forest near Frankfurt and a letter to his mother described their delightful effect in words that could, with a few modifications, describe this performance. They were, naturally, set for unaccompanied singing, and the choir generally avoided the problem of slipping intonation.  The texts included three poems by Heine, together entitled Tragödie, first published in 1837 in a collection called ‘Salon’, and later collected in Neue Gedichte of 1844. They tell a typical tale of ill-fated love, but in the last poem the lovers’ common grave is the tryst of blissful lovers of a later time,  oblivious of the earlier event. The musical settings did not perhaps capture the tone of fatalism though it was hinted through understated musical figures and moods. The sixth poem, Auf dem See by Goethe, expresses in words and music an optimism in the superiority of present life and love over the longings of a dream world, and the choir captured it in fast, joyous triple time.

Mendelssohn’s six open air songs are hardly masterpieces; the settings follow a conventional strophic pattern, in which the last two lines of the text are usually repeated; melodies are pleasant if not especially memorable.

The other Mendelssohn songs were four of his Six Duets, Op 63, and they were scattered through the rest of the programme. They were sung, with Douglas Mews at the piano, by Rebekah Giesbers, mezzo soprano and Ailsa Lipscombe, soprano; the two voices blended very agreeably and the guileless spirit of words and music emerged happily from them. Again, however, the somewhat formulaic pattern of the settings and their avoidance of anything in the nature of tragedy or fatefulness lent them an air of blandness.

So it was a good idea to intersperse them with the three somewhat more profound and complex Brahms songs, taken from different collections, between the late 1860s and 1877, all sung by baritone Rory Sweeney.  The first, Die Mainacht by Hölty, was a bit of a warm-up for the singer, but he dealt very capably with the second and third songs, Feldeinsamkeit and Botschaft, minor poems but both intrinsically more interesting songs than Mendelssohn’s, capturing a more enigmatic mood and Brahms’s gift for illuminating the words. He managed to highlight the quoted words of the message (Botschaft), creating an effective little dramatic scene.

Diedre Irons joined Mews to play three of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, in the original piano duet form. With the piano lid off, the sound, at least at the start, was rather coarse, and while Nos 3 and 6 were more refined there was an air of spontaneity about the performances.

Finally, the original version of Brahms’s Liebeslieder waltzes, Op 52, with both pianists, and the chorus (the original was envisaged for vocal quartet). Initially it sounded slightly loose in ensemble and articulation but by the third song things were going very well and the whole half-hour sequence was carried off with a panache and delight, an ever-changing spirit as Brahms was inspired by the light-hearted folk-based words with their little dramas and tableaux, that was hardly to have been expected.

With this concert of not altogether great and profound music, as well as other recent outings, the Bach Choir has recovered its position as one of Wellington’s important choirs, which causes one to look forward to their November concert of Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Vivaldi’s Beatus Vir.

 

 

 

 

The Full Monte – music of love’s distraction, from Baroque Voices

Posted on by Peter Mechen

BAROQUE VOICES PRESENTS THE FULL MONTE (Concert Three)

Claudio Monteverdi – Madrigals : Books 3 (complete) and 7 (excerpts)

Baroque Voices, directed by Pepe Becker

Pepe Becker, Jayne Tankersley (sopranos) / Andrea Cochrane (alto)

Oliver Sewell, Geoffrey Chang (tenors) / David Morriss (bass)

Continuo: Robert Oliver (bass viol) / Stephen Pickett (theorbo and chitarrino)

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Wellington

Monday, 16th July, 2012

The third instalment of Wellington vocal group Baroque Voices’ stupendous traversal of “The Full Monte”, or the complete Madrigals of Claudio Monteverdi, drew forth a vein of riches and delights similar in broad-brush stroke terms to the first two concerts. Artistic director Pepe Becker’s idea of combining books of madrigals from different ends of the spectrum of the composer’s output has made for startling contrasts in performance style and emphasis within single concerts.

One would have thought that, as the gap between the two divergent creative periods lessened, there would be more commonality in evidence – but to my ears, the gulf between the composer’s “Prima Practica” (traditional practice) and “Seconda Practica” (innovative practice) seemed throughout this concert as marked as throughout the first two concerts of the series. Of course, the instrumental accompaniments used by the later books (beginning with the Fifth Book of 1605) markedly change the entire sound-picture of the works, but the vocal writing is different as well – more spontaneous, dramatic and volatile than with many of the earlier works.

I confess to not knowing the music of Monteverdi’s contemporaries sufficiently well to comment on the individuality of his earlier works – still, these concerts do allow the unschooled listener to register differences between music written by the same composer at different stages of his life. And one can glean by association how the music of Monteverdi’s more conservative fellow-composers might have sounded.

I must say that, had Baroque Voices decided to proceed through the madrigals chronologically, I would have been just as enchanted, if less informed, by what I encountered. In context, even in the earlier Monteverdi pieces the music has what seems to my ears an enormous variety of expression. The present concert began with two madrigals from Book Three, works whose sounds represented for me a wonderful marriage of energy and delicacy, the contrasts of pure light and oscillating energies in the writing producing a totally enchanting effect throughout.

The second madrigal, “O come è gran martire” had its stratospheric opening marred by a banging door, but the singers continued undeterred, the music expanding like the light of dawn as the men’s voices joined the women’s at “O soave mio adore”. Pepe Becker’s and Jayne Tankersley’s soprano voices were able to spin their lines in thirds over vistas of great enchantment, to breathtaking effect.

True, the instrumental opening of the first of the Book Seven madrigals which followed immediately threw a startlingly-focused interval of a second at us, its instantaneous resolution heightening the passionate marriage of beauty with tension in a way that the earlier madrigals don’t often explore. This madrigal Romanesca for two soprano voices allowed us to savor the differences between two exceptional singers – Pepe Becker’s voice here sounding to my ears richer and mellower, and Jayne Tankersley’s sharper, more pungent and flavoursome.

Together the voices set one another off beautifully – both singers used the music’s figurations compellingly, their bodies expressing by movement and expression the agitations/excitements/ecstasies suggested by the heartfelt (anonymous) text. I especially liked the way the singers would push their voices past the “beautiful singing” threshold and into a world of expression that occasionally touched raw nerves but in doing so reached those intensities required by both poet and composer in each madrigal.

Monteverdi’s theatrical sense was never far away from these settings, the singers here relishing such interactions, as in Book 7’s Al lume dell stelle (mistakenly listed as from Book 3 in the program), where the men (tenor and bass) begin their invocation to the stars, the lines resembling tendrils of light floating upwards and falling back in a kind of spent ecstasy. Tenor Oliver Sewell and bass David Morriss together brought a fine, surging passion to “O celesti facelle…”, while in reply the two sopranos made something equally tremulous out of “Luci care e serene…” And there were stunning harmonic juxtapositionings with seconds grinding and being resolved to thirds, squeezing every drop of angst and sweet release from the situation.

In the beautiful Se per estremo, the alto voice of Andrea Cochrane led off, firm, sonorous and lovely – with the two tenors the middle voices were able to conjure up wondrous harmonic colorations throughout, the tenors, Oliver Sewell and Jeffrey Chang, essaying some finely-nuanced work in thirds, and judiciously pouring their tones into those ambient harmonies to beguiling effect. What a contrast with the vigorous and impassioned utterances of the following Tornate, the two tenors accompanied by Robert Oliver’s ever-reliable bass viol and Stephen Pickett’s perky chitarrino (renaissance guitar), and with the long-breathed sighings of “Voi de quel dolce” interrupted by hot-blooded exhortations – marvellous!

The evening was further enhanced by the spoken contribution of David Groves, responsible for the English translations of these madrigals, who made an appearance in each half of the concert. He explained briefly the context of the poetry (by Tasso) concerning the enchantress Armida, and her would-be-lover Rinaldo, who has abandoned her. One didn’t really have to understand Italian to catch the reader’s impassioned range of expression, and glean the depth and breadth of emotion in the poetry. So, each of a group of three madrigals had their texts read, and then sung by the Voices. The results were astonishing, especially in the first two of the three pieces. The singers vividly evoked the enchantress’s fury and despair at her abandonment – some of the lines stung and burnt with astonishing candor – and the dying fall of the music at “Hor qui manco lo spirto a la dolente” was almost Wagnerian in its impact.

In the third of these, Poi ch’ella (When she came to herself), both soprano voices sounded, I thought, a bit strained (not surprisingly, considering what and how they had sung throughout the first half of the concert) – this was music of resignation, though again impassioned at the end as Armida bemoans her abandonment. The alto and tenors kept the middle lines alive, and the sopranos overcame their vocal discomfiture to manage the final cadence convincingly.

As with the other concerts in the series there were in the programme so many delights to be had that it would take as long as the concert took to both mention and read about all of them! My notes contain exclamations written at the time such as “excellent teamwork between the two sopranos….making something amazingly expressive out of the final line” for the Book 7 O come sei gentile (How gracious you are), and in the following Book 3 Chi’o non t’ami (That I might not love you), “Hymn-like, beautifully modulated…..alto and tenor 2 beautifully amalgamate their tones at “Come poss’io lasciarti e non morire”…..”.

David Groves returned to read us the poems (again by Tasso) describing the anguish of Tancredi, who has killed his disguised lover, Clorinda, in armed combat, and looks for her body in the darkness. (Monteverdi also set an account of the battle between the two, in the “Combattimento” , found in Book 8 of the madrigals.) My overriding on-the-spot comment regarding the performance of the trio of settings was that “the intensity simply keeps coming in waves from all of the singers”. Despite Pepe Becker obviously having some kind of cough, she was still able to deliver those astonishing stratospheric notes needed for “Ma dove o lasso?”, a sombre processional of growing grief, culminating in the cries of “Ahi, sfortunato!…” Certainly no-one would have felt emotionally short-changed in any way in the face of such knife-edged feeling throughout these performances.

One of my favorites from the many splendid things we heard throughout the concert’s second half was the Book 7 Ecco vicine, sung by the soprano 2, Jayne Tankersley and alto Andrea Cochrane. The playing of the continuo, especially Robert Oliver’s bass viol, beautifully underpinned this Book 7 madrigal’s somewhat hyper-expressive outpourings. The words, so important for the composer throughout his entire oeuvre, exotically describe the “beloved” as a “fair Tigress”, and entertain the conceit that wherever the beloved goes, through all kinds of different geographies and under foreign skies, the lover will follow her, with a “lover’s heart”.

Monteverdi boldly renders these words and ideas in his music, great urgency at “Fuggimi pur con sempiterno orrore”, and lovely, spare, al fresco writing about the valleys, rocks, and mountains where the beloved’s footprints are found – lots of air and space in the textures.Then comes music of great and certain devotion: “Ch’andrei la dove spire e dove passi…..bacciando l’aria e adorando i passi……” Wonderful performances by all of such characterful music!

Very great credit to Baroque Voices and their intrepid instrumentalists! We were an extremely appreciative audience on this occasion, but not a large one – whatever it takes to get more people interested in the splendors of this music and its performance here in Wellington, needs to be done before the next of these concerts (the date for “The Full Monte 4” is yet to be finalized). The music is searingly beautiful, the accompanying emotions and responses are eminently accessible, and the performances are often spellbinding. What more could one ask for?

Triumphant anniversary concert for Dame Malvina Major Foundation

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

The Dame Malvina Major Foundation 21st Anniversary Celebration Concert

Excerpts from operas by Mozart, Donizetti, Verdi, Gounod, Humperdinck and Johann Strauss; items by Vaughan Williams, Richard Strauss, Sibelius and Saint-Saëns

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Wyn Davies, with Teddy Tahu Rhodes (bass-baritone), Ben Morrison (violin), Phillip Rhodes, Kieran Rayner (baritones), Aivale Cole, Carleen Ebbs (sopranos), Kristin Darragh, Bianca Andrew (mezzo-sopranos), Andrew Grenon, Darren Pene Pati (tenors)

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday, 30 June 2012, 7.30pm

A wonderful concert of superb singing and playing celebrated the milestone in the life of Dame Malvina’s Foundation, which has assisted literally hundreds of young performers, and distributed tens of thousands of dollars.  Much training in the operatic arts has been provided in co-operation with New Zealand Opera, and mentoring given to young aspirants by Dame Malvina herself, and others.

An ample printed programme of biographies and notes was supplemented by an introductory speech and interspersed programme information from Dame Malvina.  The well-planned programme gave plenty of variety, and introduced numerous ensembles, which gave opportunity for a modicum of acting, and afforded the audience the pleasure of hearing numbers of these excellent voices together.  These were interspersed with solos.  All the items were of a high standard.

First up was Vaughan Williams’s beautiful Serenade to Music, written for the 50th anniversary of Sir Henry Wood’s conducting career, and so appropriate for this anniversary, and for the fact that it uses so many voices.  Written for 16 voices (and last heard live by me in 2002 at the 50th anniversary concert of The Orpheus Choir, with 16 voices), it was sung here by eight voices.

Throughout the evening, the performers stood forward of the conductor and orchestra; it was impressive how their ensemble and intonation were always immaculate despite this apparent disadvantage.  Aivale Cole was a little flat on a couple of notes early in her first solo passage, but soon got into her stride.

The work is a setting of the words from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice:
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! 
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

What an amazing marriage of words and music this piece is!  The ethereal nature of much of the music and the delicious harmonies provided a very sweet start to the evening.  All the singers apart from Kieran Rayner and Dame Malvina herself took part in this opening item, as did Ben Morrison, playing the solo violin passages in captivating style, and also a fine duet with lead viola, Julia Joyce.  His tone in solo and ensembles was delicious.  The harp is most important in this work, adding to its serenade quality.

The first solos were from Teddy Tahu Rhodes: ‘Fin ch’han dal vino’ from Don Giovanni and ‘Non più andrai’ from Le Nozze di Figaro.  The first was taken quite fast; Rhodes’s fluency and rich timbre coped with this splendidly.  His gestures provided an additional element to the story-telling.  The second aria, being a little slower, conveyed the words better, and we got more of his rolling bass sound and the thrilling sustained notes.  The orchestra’s brass and woodwind created the mock military march superbly.  It was great to hear this internationally successful singer.

He has great stage presence, yet seemed very relaxed on stage.

Although the printed programme said that Darren Peni Pati would sing the Donizetti aria from Don Pasquale, it was actually Andrew Grenon who sang ‘Tornami a dir che m’ami’, with Carleen Ebbs.  The latter’s voice has developed remarkably since I last heard her, prior to her travelling to Cardiff to study.  The two voices matched very well, Ebbs producing a rich, contralto sound in the lower register, of which there was plenty in her Don Carlos solo that followed in Scene from Act IV of that opera.  She was marvellously robust and characterful.

Aivale Cole’s warm and lovely voice did not fail to excite in her part of that scene.  Her top was secure and dramatic, her low notes thrilling.  Teddy Tahu Rhodes’s contribution was deep and rich, while Phillip Rhodes was strong and noble.  Acting in  this scene saw Teddy Tahu Rhodes holding a jewel casket and showing the portrait of  his son therein to Aivale Cole, who faints, and Eboli, the jealous princess (Kristin Darragh) conveying emotion well through gesture and facial expression; Phillip Rhodes a little more wooden as he sympathises with Elisabeth (Aivale Cole).  Despite no set or costumes (though Cole’s outfit fitted the bill very well), the drama and emotion were portrayed sufficiently through voices, actions and faces.  Ensemble and balance were first-class.

Cole’s treatment of the words in Richard Strauss’s Zueignung (Dedication) was exemplary, while her tone was creamy and gorgeous.  This song always turns my ‘innards’ into jelly; Aivale did not disappoint, nor did the NZSO.  The Sibelius song Illale (To Evening) was new to me.  Cole sang it with plenty of power, horns and trumpets in the orchestration notwithstanding.

Two quintets from Act I of Così fan tutte gave more opportunity for acting, this time with Carleen Ebbs, Bianca Andres, Phillip Rhodes, Andrew Grenon and Kieran Rayner.  Again, the ensemble singing was near perfect.  All projected well, the orchestra was fabulous, and the whole was made into a very believable story with the use of gesture and movement.  Bianca Andrew’s voice does not have the richness of Darragh’s, but it is very clear and pleasing, and her performance was thoroughly confident and committed.

Darren Pene Pati sang from Gounod’s Faust ‘Salut, demeure chaste et pure’.   His voice has a beautiful operatic timbre.  His French language, phrasing and emphasis were ideal, and his voice production seemed easy and relaxed, not tight or forced in any way.  His top C was not only achieved, it had beautiful tone and a superbly controlled diminuendo – more than can be said for some famous singers who have recorded this aria.

It was pleasant to return to the violin for a break from the passions of opera.  Ben Morrison played the well-known Havanaise by Saint-Saëns with warm tone, precision, the technical skill needed for this show-piece, but very much in the spirit of the habanera.

Kristin Darragh had an advantage in the ensemble from Rigoletto, since she sung her role of Maddalena in the recent New Zealand Opera production.  Nevertheless, the entire quartet were all impressive in ‘Bella figlia dell’amore’: Cole, Pati and Phillip Rhodes were just as good.  Timing was spot on.  This quartet would grace any operatic stage, both individually and as an ensemble.

Again, the passion was cooled, this time by the beautiful ‘Children’s Prayer’ from Hänsel und Gretel by Humperdinck.  It was sung charmingly by Carleen Ebbs and Bianca Andrew.

We then heard from Dame Malvina herself, singing ‘Mercè, dilette amiche’ from Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani.  While not having the volume it once would have, her voice is in fine shape.  She sang with flair and demonstrated more than most of the younger singers the use of the resonators in the face, and extraordinary breath control.  Trills, and all her singing, were abundantly accurate.  Although her voice has inevitably changed with time, she certainly has not lost her power to communicate with an audience or to put over an affecting performance of beauty and character.

The final item was an ensemble from Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus: an excerpt from Act II that included the famous ‘Champagne Chorus.  Seven singers (that is, all except Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Kieran Rayner) were sang in this.  Phillip Rhodes stood out for me as having a splendid voice and singing excellent German.  Bianca Andrew showed great stage presence, and entered into the spirit of the piece.  But so did all the others.

There were no ‘duds’ in this concert; every singer was very fine, and every item thoroughly prepared.  The singers were assured and confident, and vindicated the work of the Dame Malvina Major Foundation as funder and mentor.  It was gratifying to think that all these performers had been assisted by the Foundation.

The orchestra was in its usual splendid form.  Sponsorship seems, however, to have been taken beyond its usual limits, with the concertmaster’s name appearing at the head of the orchestra page (though not in the listings below) as ‘Visa-Matti Leppänen’!  At times, a full-sized symphony orchestra on the same level as the singers proved to be too much, but these fairly brief occasions were relatively infrequent.  An advantage of this arrangement was that one could hear (and see) orchestral solos, and the various parts of the orchestra very well, in a way that is almost impossible in an opera house.

The Michael Fowler Centre was not full; there were many empty seats at the back and sides downstairs, and scattered throughout the gallery.  I can’t help wondering if the ticket prices were too high, and that a lower price-tag would have actually produced greater returns.

But the entire concert sparkled with élan, and provided the audience with an evening of great singing and playing, the singers proving the value of The Dame Malvina Major Foundation on this, its 21st birthday.  It was indeed a happy birthday.

 

 

Fine exploratory recital of Shakespeare songs from Corby and Beardsworth

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

A feast of Shakespeare with Megan Corby (soprano) and Craig Beardsworth (baritone), who trade as ‘Voxbox’, with Catherine Norton (piano)

Old Saint Paul’s

Tuesday 19 June, 12.15pm

Here was a splendid recital by two polished and practised singers, grasping a theme that lends itself to a varied programme. Well, varied if I ignore the fact that the only non-English settings were by Strauss.

The songs were shared, roughly, alternately between the two, starting with Megan singing two early settings (except that the first, said to be anonymous 16th century, overlooked the fact that Othello, from which the Willow Song came, wasn’t written till about 1604).

However, Megan began as she would continue, singing without the score in front of her, in a bright, attractive voice, well articulated, with clear diction.

Two settings of several songs were offered. Craig’s first was ‘Orpheus with his Lute’ from Henry VIII (one of the last plays believed to be a collaboration with John Fletcher), set by Arthur Sullivan. His high opening note emerged in a remarkable falsetto, beautifully controlled, that increased in volume, and continued in phrases that demonstrated impressive discipline over tone colours and dynamics.

The same words reappeared later from Megan in a setting by American composer William Schuman, neither especially memorable nor unmelodious, but given a thoughtful performance.

‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind’ from As you like it also appeared in two settings: Thomas Arne’s of 1740 from Megan and Roger Quilter’s of around 1922 from Craig, an open-voice alternating with more conversational tones, ending with striking dramatic notes.

From the same composer came the setting of ‘Take, o take those lily lips’ from Measure for Measure (perhaps more famous among music-lovers as the play Wagner’s early Das Liebesverbot was based on); and again Craig’s velvety voice found a fruitful role in it.

Megan sang the deeply moving dirge, ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun’ from Cymbeline, composed by Ian Higginson (to me unknown, though the Internet tells me he was born in Merseyside and works around the Midlands) , in tones that reflected the emotion, though the quite elegant setting didn’t, for me, match the power of the words (the greatest, best-known poetry is the hardest to set to music, for nothing can improve on the way the poet himself has used the rhythms and sounds of words to convey the intellectual and emotional force of beautiful poetry, which is why, many believe, Schubert set so many poems by poets of the second rank).

However, Gerald Finzi’s setting of that poem does approach it more nearly, and it appeared in the group of Finzi songs that Craig sang later. That group was a highlight of the recital, and that, probably the most striking performance, with the slow rise and fall of dynamics, and the piano’s contribution that somehow evoked the presence of death. And it must be recorded that Catherine Norton’s playing was far more than simply appropriate, sensitive and supportive.

Twelfth Night also yields some of the most poignant lyrics such as the concluding ‘When that I was a little, tiny boy’, ‘O Mistress mine’ and ‘Come away death’. The latter two, as well as ‘Who is Sylvia’ from Two gentlemen of Verona and ‘It was a lover and his lass’ from As you like it, were also in the beautiful Finzi group.

The latter song, from Megan, also appeared in a setting by Frederic Austin, a singer/organist/composer of the early 20th century.

It leaves the penultimate group, sung by Megan: Strauss’s Three songs of Ophelia (from Op 67) from Act IV, scene 5 of Hamlet, in which he conveys the girl’s growing madness, in tones that found acute expression of the unhinged mind.

She sang them most persuasively, from memory, in excellent German: ‘How should I your true love know’, ‘Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day’, and ‘They bore him barefaced on the bier’.

[And as I load this about 1.45pm, I listen to RNZ Concert broadcasting Patricia Wright, accompanied by Rosemary Barnes, singing these very songs, beautifully, though perhaps with not quite the degree of mental disorder that Corby brought to them].

The concert ended with the duet, ‘Sigh no more, ladies’ from Much ado about nothing (this one the basis of Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict) by one Sally Albrecht (born in Ohio in 1954), in jolly, galloping 3/8 rhythm, befitting the servant Balthazar’s ditty that Benedict at once ridicules. The pair, inauthentically perhaps, but most agreeably, brought things to an end with a droll note of cheerful cynicism.

It was interesting to observe that hardly any of the plays that opera composers have drawn on were among these, mainly the comedies, that song composers are attracted to. So we got no Bellini, Thomas, Gounod, Verdi, Britten…

 

Superb, well-attended recital of rare Lieder at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Brahms: Zigeunerlieder (Gypsy Songs) Op.103
Schumann: Spanisches Liederspiel (Spanish Songs) Op.74

Lesley Graham (soprano), Linden Loader (mezzo-soprano), Richard Greager(tenor), Roger Wilson (bass), Mark Dorrell (piano)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 13 June 2012, 12.15pm

The large audience could consider itself fortunate in having these singers of professional standing performing at a free lunch-hour concert.  Obviously the singers enjoy singing this ensemble repertoire, so seldom heard, and equally obviously, put a lot of work into it.  Such was the popularity of this concert, the pile of printed programmes ran out.

In essence, both sets of songs comprised romantic love-songs, but in differing moods.  Brahms’s songs were German translations from Hungarian poems by Hugo Conrat, and are more often sung in solo format, but we were informed by the programme notes that the vocal quartet version was written first.

The songs involved much word-painting, well-observed by the singers, and by Mark Dorrell’s immaculate accompaniments, which interpreted the buoyant feelings of the songs as joyously or soulfully as did the words of the singers, which were marked by unified pronunciation and projection of the words as well as by the quality of the sound.

The songs were delightful, though quite stretching in their vocal range.  However, these performers had them well under their belts.

The second-last song of the eight, ‘Kommt dir manchmal in den Sinn’ was a regretful song, especially solemn in the solo passages for tenor.

Schumann’s songs were German translations by Emanuel Geibel, from Spanish poems.  These songs were for a succession of different combinations of voices.

The first titled ‘Erste Begugnung’ or ‘First Meeting’ was for soprano and alto. (It was good to have German, Spanish and English versions of the titles in the printed programme.) It is always en enjoyable experience to hear Lesley Graham and Linden Loader sing duets; their voices match and blend amazingly well, and adorned this beautiful song about plucking flowers from a rose-bush.

The next song was for tenor and bass.  These two voices do not have the same matching quality, but it was a gorgeous rendition of ‘Intermezzo’, nevertheless.

‘Love’s Sorrow’ followed, for the two female voices.  It was sung very expressively; one felt swept into the touching sorrow conveyed by the singers.

‘In der Nacht’ for soprano and tenor featured a beautiful opening from Lesley Graham.  When the tenor entered, he carried on the mood and tone perfectly.  This was a quiet song, but carried well.

‘The secret is out’ was a complete change of mood – back to something like the joyful, dancing rhythms of the Brahms songs.  All four singers were in utter unanimity.  And all four are teachers of singing; their students are fortunate indeed.  The poem had the interesting words “Love, money and sorrow are, I think, the most difficult to conceal… the cheeks reveal what lies secretly in the heart.”

‘Melancholy’, a solo for Linden Loader, was heartfelt and beautifully expressed.

A short but appealing tenor solo, ‘Confession’, followed.  Along with the other songs, this was typical Romantic era stuff, concerned with longing, and unrequited or unfulfilled love.

‘Botschaft’, or ‘Message’ was next, sung by the two women.  This song was more complex musically, with the parts crossing and diverging.  It was a charming expression of the delight of flowers.

A hearty final number, ‘I am loved’, had all four voices expatiating on the evil tongues that whisper about the love the writer experiences.  The wicked tongues could be heard in the marvellous accompaniment of this characterful song, as well as in the words.  The ending was quite superb.

Illustrations and a humorous biographical note (obviously by Roger Wilson) set a nice touch to the printed programme.

What ensemble these singers have!  Perfect timing, intonation, unanimity and attractive, expressive voices.  It is a crying shame that Radio New Zealand Concert no longer do studio broadcasts; this programme deserved to be heard by a wider audience.

 

Wonderland in name and deed – Made In New Zealand

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WONDERLAND – MADE IN NEW ZEALAND 2012

CREE BROWN – Celestial Bodies

CRESSWELL – Concerto for Orchestra and String Quartet

WHITEHEAD – Alice

New Zealand String Quartet

Helen Medlyn (mezzo-soprano)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

Wellington Town Hall

Friday 25th May 2012

This was a “Made In New Zealand” concert which packed a real wallop, featuring three substantial pieces of music by different New Zealand composers – all of whom, incidentally, were present.  While none of the performances on this occasion were premieres, each one seemed to me to freshly unwrap the music, and square up whole-heartedly to the technical and emotional challenges of each of the pieces’ different physical and spiritual worlds.

It seems to me to be important that any orchestra can play and sound as if it “owns” music written by composers who live in the same geographical space, however “global” or “multi-national” an outlook certain forces of darkness seek constantly to try and impose on our lives. And, as Douglas Lilburn was fond of pointing out, there are aspects of the New Zealand experience which even Mozart, for all his music’s greatness and universality, couldn’t express – and an orchestra such as the NZSO which both encourages and can brilliantly play music by local composers that CAN express these things, is, purely and simply, above rubies. At least, in the expert hands of conductor Hamish McKeich, this was certainly the case throughout Friday evening’s concert.

While I’m still convinced of the need for integrating New Zealand music into “normal” concert programs and schedules, rather than treating it as a kind of separate species  confined to its own enclosure (open to the public only at certain times throughout the year!) I’m certain that having a “Made In New Zealand” concert gives additional opportunities for the NZSO to (as orchestra CEO Chris Blake puts it) “support and stimulate the creation and development of a New Zealand symphonic repertoire”.  And it’s fortunate we have conductors such as Hamish McKeich and Kenneth Young who can, when given opportunities to do so, make good that statement of intent with fully-committed advocacy.

Without wanting to “limpet-mine” this review with any suggestion of a subaqueous agenda, I feel nevertheless compelled to mention, quite offhandedly, that one of the greatest (in my opinion) of New Zealand symphonies – David Farquhar’s first, performed in concert in 1960, a year after it was written –  still awaits its SECOND public performance. Ironically, the work has enjoyed two recordings throughout the interim, and thus can’t claim to be completely neglected – but how else would one characterize something that’s had a single public airing in fifty-two years? To my ears the work urgently has a part to play in any such “development of a New Zealand symphonic repertoire”.

Back with the business in hand, I was interested to read that the first work on the evening’s program, Chris Cree Brown’s Celestial Bodies, was first presented in 2005 in Christchurch as an audio-visual collaboration with the artist Julia Morison. It would have been interesting to have experienced something of the composer’s original conception for this work, though previous “Made In New Zealand” concerts which used visual elements encountered a good deal of criticism from concertgoers, myself included, which might have been off-putting for the organizers. However, it must be said that the criticism was directed almost exclusively at instances where visual elements were imposed on existing music, not where it was part of the composer’s own initial scheme.

This accounted for those parts of the work so readily and cheerfully dispensing entirely with the “live” orchestra (the whole of the fourth section “Dark Matter” for example.) Having visual imagery interacting with the taped material would at this point have, I feel sure, removed some of the incongruity for me of having to watch an entire orchestra sitting on a concert platform listening to prerecorded sounds. For the rest I enjoyed the players’ skilful acoustic dovetailing with some of the sounds on the tape throughout (a sign of the times being a reference to an “electroacoustic CD” instead!).

Celestial Bodies is a work in ten sections, the parts named for various phenomena found throughout space, the composer describing them as “overwhelming in their size, awe-inspiring in their diversity and breathtaking in their beauty”. New Zealand composers have written outer space-inspired music before, an example being Edwin Carr’s ‘The Twelve Signs”, though Cree Brown’s work avoided any astrological reference-points. Instead, his pieces unfolded for us, one by one, aspects of the cosmos with titles such as Galaxy, Globular Cluster, Pulsar, Nebula and Supernova, as well as those with a more sinister ambience like Dark Matter and Black Hole.

These were brilliantly crafted sounds, atmospheric and pictorial, with plenty of variation, and readily suggesting their subject matter in practically every case. They were not for everybody, as I discovered when talking with people, some of whom said they struggled to feel any connection with the music, while admiring the composer’s craft and skill. I felt involved in almost every episode, and particularly enjoyed the orchestra’s interactions with the pre-recorded sounds, a process which I thought set up interesting performance tensions in places and pushed my listening boundaries outwards, towards places that felt quite eerie – the second piece, Globular Cluster, worked on my imagination readily in that respect.

I also enjoyed the pieces’ contrasts, for example, when going to the following piece, Pulsar, and encountering those strongly-etched rhythms pulsating through spaces that had seemed up to this point pleasantly nebulous. Black Hole was another piece whose elemental irruptions gave a real sense of menacing power, thrillingly at odds with one’s accustomed sense of vast stillness when looking at the night sky, the orchestra’s heavy batteries making splendidly frightening noises, complete with a startlingly anarchic chord at the end.

Where I didn’t especially “connect” with Cree Brown’s music was, as I’ve said, with any “pre-recorded only” episodes of any length – the fourth piece, Dark Matter, the most ready example. I’m certain that, had we seen Julia Morison’s images, the sequence would have told more readily and maintained enough interactive tension – perhaps a soloist or group of soloists from the orchestra needed to play ad lib with the pre-record, in the absence of any visuals, to keep the impulses alive and flowing.

Interactive tension was the name of the game with Lyell Cresswell’s Concerto for Orchestra and String Quartet. In one continuous movement, the work spun its listeners excitingly through what seemed like an endless variety of episodes involving interchange between the performers – in this case the New Zealand String Quartet and the orchestra. Although this concerto wasn’t written for the NZSQ, (it was premiered in Scotland by the Yggdrasil Quartet and the Scottish National Orchestra in 1997), Cresswell has written other works specifically for the group, a piano quintet And Every Sparkle Shivering, first given here in 2000 with Michael Houstoun, and a string quartet, Kotetetete, which the NZSQ performed last year in the City of London Festival. Cresswell has described the NZSQ as “a quartet that can play anything”, and felt that whatever demands he made of the players in writing the Quartet, they would relish the challenges.

The group has played the Quartet Concerto before, the first time in 2001 with the BBC Scottish Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young. From the start, Cresswell wanted to write a piece that was a genuine partnership between quartet and orchestra, and not merely with the latter group providing some sort of “accompaniment”. And neither did he want the piece to be a kind of Concerto for orchestra, with string quartet. On the “genuine partnership” count alone, the work seemed to me a truly egalitarian tour de force – one noted a constant flow of creative happenings between solo instruments, small groups and larger forces, a kind of all-encompassing concerto grosso, with all the attendant tensions and resolutions which one might expect would throw up between such elements.

Cheryl Hollinger’s magically-phrased trumpet-playing, introduced by scintillations of percussion and airborne, ethereal orchestral strings, got the work way to a suitably “storyteller-like” beginning, the theme hinting at a kind of unfolding aspect, as in the best tales. And though the quartet’s viola-led instrument-by-instrument configurings, supported by the orchestra strings and commented upon abruptly by brass punctuations, were carefully terraced by the composer, the effect seemed always natural and organic, never forced or contrived. As with genuine human interaction, the exchanges occasionally flared up excitingly, the music expressing its fair share of marked contrast and volatility, but was then balanced by slower, more reflective and meditative episodes midway through the work. Here, I loved the heartfelt duo lines between various pairings of solo strings from the quartet, seeming to me expressing great beauty against what felt in places like a backdrop of ambient desolation.

There were places throughout the final section during which I wondered whether the writing fell back on itself every now and then, and could have benefitted from some  “tightening” by the composer – but always a succeeding episode would scoop up and whisk away my misgivings, generating so intense an excitement of quicksilver exchanges of texture, colour and rhythmic patterning between quartet and orchestra. Cresswell’s orchestral writing in particular I thought so very virtuosic in places, the music’s occasionally vertiginous momentum creating exhilaration aplenty. The quartet players, as always, gave their all, and each section of the orchestra, directed and balanced with admirable skill by conductor Hamish McKeich, seemed switched-on to razor-sharp mode with the timing and focus of their rapid exchanges.

After the interval came intensities of another, more directly human kind, Gillian Whitehead’s setting of poet Fleur Adcock’s retelling in verse of an ancestor’s emigration from Britain to begin a new life in New Zealand in 1909. Twenty-three year-old Alice Adcock, showing symptoms of tuberculosis, and hoping that a change of climate would help effect some kind of cure came to this country from Manchester, to the consternation of her family. She lived for a further fifty years, during which time she lost her husband and was then rejected and dispossessed by his family, having to relocate with her children to another part of New Zealand and start a new life.

Fleur Adcock felt Alice’s story was, in a sense, that of all those who came across the seas to establish a new life, the commonalities having, in her words, “the resonances of a universal myth, known to all of us who live here”. Making the most of the deceptively simple poetry, singing with great power and beauty, and relishing occasional forays into a kind of sprechtgesang, Helen Medlyn here became the heroine, Alice, body and soul, pretty much as she would have done when she “created” the role in 2003 at the premiere performance. She brought out all the different elements of the text – its humor (much talk of lice, using terms like “gentle creepers” and “big crawlers”), positive energy (revelling in the clean air of a new country), unflagging optimism (happiness at finding a man to marry who will take and accept her child) and a sense of loss and grief over deaths of loved ones (father and husband) – but also gave the sung lines plenty of theatrical (even operatic) presence and vibrancy.

No praise is too high for orchestra and conductor, Hamish McKeich, living the different scenarios with Medlyn every inch of the way throughout the story-line, and continuing to deliver, right through the unfortunate contretemps which quietly erupted in the gallery, where an audience member suddenly took seriously ill ten or so minutes before the end of the piece. This, of course, occasioned a flurry of piteous activity (those on the ground floor, along with many of the musicians, largely oblivious to what was going on) – but evidently the revival efforts of those brought to help were successful.

A stimulating and colorful “Made In New Zealand” concert then, with three substantial works whose effect will have won for the orchestra, its conductor, and the special solo performers many plaudits from a delighted audience and from three grateful composers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wellington NZ Choral Federation – celebrating 25 years of workshops with the best of ’em!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

VERDI – Requiem Mass

Bryony Williams (soprano) / Margaret Medlyn (m-sop) / Richard Greager (tenor) / Rodney Macann (bass)

NZ Choral Federation May Workshop Choir

Rosemary Russell (assistant director) / Thomas Gaynor (organ and piano)

Michael Fulcher (conductor)

Brass: Danny Kirgan / Chris Clark / Chris Woolley / David Kempton / Matthew Stein (trumpets)

Benjamin Zilber / Ben Robertson / Tim Walsh (trombones)

Percussion (timpani): Brent Stewart

Salvation Army Citadel, Vivian St., Wellington

Saturday 12th May, 2012

Twenty-five years ago this year, Sir David Willcocks, doyen of British choral conductors at the time, came to New Zealand  and took the very first of the New Zealand Choral Federation Wellington workshops. Local  choral conductor John Knox, who had sung in the Bach Choir in London under Willcocks, had formed a friendship with him over time, and invited him to come and conduct choirs in New Zealand (one of which occasions I well remember, that of a performance of the Berlioz Requiem in Wellington in 1986). It was on Willcocks’ third visit here, in 1988, that he took that now-historic first NZCF workshop,  which featured music by one of the Venetian Gabrielis and the North German Samuel Scheidt.

New Zealand’s equivalent to David Willcocks was and is undoubtedly Peter Godfrey, now aged 90, and present at the concert on Saturday evening. Godfrey took over the workshops for the next seven years, returning in 2002 after a break of another seven years (all very Biblical) to direct a workshop featuring this evening’s work, the Verdi Requiem. So there were wheels and circles clicking and circling around and about and coming full circle with tonight’s performance of that same work, the director on this occasion being Michael Fulcher, taking part in his (you’ve guessed it!) seventh workshop for the NZCF.

In all, nine directors have led the workshops over the duration, with Peter Godfrey and Michael Fulcher clocking up the most frequent appearances between them. As well, a goodly proportion of the singers present (requested by chairperson Elizabeth Crayford during her closing speech at the end of the concert, to show their hands) indicated that they were also at various of these earlier occasions – in fact, several indicated that they had attended that very first workshop directed by Willcocks. All of which contributed to the festive atmosphere and undoubted emotion of this, the most recent event, one that was fortunately crowned by a remarkable performance of the Verdi Mass, put together by Michael Fulcher and his assistant director, Rosemary Russell (replacing an indisposed Mark Dorrell), with just two days’ rehearsal for the singers and instrumentalists – “born in fiery hour!” as Robert Schumann would have said.

Actually “two days’ rehearsal” suggests more time than was actually given the performers, as the two hundred and eighty or so choir members met together for the first time on Friday evening, working for two hours from seven until nine o’clock. They began again at nine o’clock on Saturday morning and workshopped it all until five o’clock in the afternoon. The soloists and instrumentalists (pianist, brass players, percussionist) came in on Saturday afternoon. True, some people had done a bit of preparation with their own choirs (eg. the Festival Singers), and some got the music in advance. Most people, however, were issued with their scores on Friday night.

All of which suggests some kind of alchemy on the part of Michael Fulcher and assistant Rosemary Russell, in pulling such a massive work together in such a short time with people in various stages of preparation. But far more than simply getting the music to hold recognizably together, the performance sounded truly inspired – here was one of those instances where enthusiasm and sheer will combined with skill and experience to produce something memorable and satisfying for all concerned.

From the first, opening bars of the work, spare, plaintive-sounding tones from Thomas Gaynor’s piano (with an unexpectedly arpeggiated chord at one point!), followed by the murmured hush of those first “Requiems” from two-hundred-plus voices, the music unfolded with living, breathing surety, our sensibilities all a-tingle at being in the same space as those voices, and almost made to feel each intake of the singers’  breath. Michael Fulcher’s control of the voices’ tonal ebb and flow was masterly, the men’s stentorian “Te decet hymnus” startling by comparison with the ambiently-floated “luceat eis”, and the choir’s variation of dynamics ever leading the ear onwards, and giving us a taste of things to come.

At the Kyrie it was the soloists’ turn, each a distinctive and characterful voice, feeing their way into the performance’s particular terrain – tenor Richard Greager heroic and Italianate, the vibrato pronounced at forceful moments, but the singing stylish as always, followed by bass Rodney Macann’s imposing and expansively-phrased utterances (his conductor flashing him the first of a few “hurry-along” glances which added interest to the evening). Then there were the women, both soprano Bryony Williams and mezzo-soprano Margaret Medlyn investing their tones and phrases with theatrical intensity,  the four singers working hand-in-glove to blend their tones and achieve a balance between devotional and dramatic focus. Mention must be made of the choir’s beautiful final “Christe eleision”, Michael Fulcher securing precise and secure attack on those ethereal notes.

When the “Dies Irae” started  I wrestled with the idea of jumping the audience parapet and rushing to the unattended bass drum to deliver a few much-needed thwacks and rolls to join in with the mayhem, as I could see that timpanist Brent Stewart wasn’t going to budge from his timpani throughout. I was told afterwards that the drum was never going to be part of the scheme, and that it was put on the stage merely by rote by the organizers. Oh, it was tantalizing! – but a pity, too, because the brass ensemble punched their whiplash chords and baleful cries out with great gusto, giving the chorus plenty of ambient terror in which to hurl their frightened cries of “Dies irae, dies illa” – all we needed to complete the picture was that abyss opening up beneath, via a few cavernous rolls at the bottom of the textures, something the timpani simply didn’t have a deep enough voice for.

Still, the brass played their hearts out at the “Tuba mirum”, the offstage trumpet surviving a shaky moment to join in with the mounting awe and terror in great style. Rodney Macann’s wonderfully rhetorical delivery of “Mors stupebit” needed a bigger, blacker noise in support that the timps could give, as well, and Michael Fulcher, playing the piano at this point, and moving things along, caught his timpanist on the hop for the latter’s first entry – though Brent Stewart soon caught up. Margaret Medlyn’s “Liber scriptus” sounded as though written for her – she gave it terrific thrust at “Unde mundus judicetur”, though for some reason there was no brass just before “Judex ergo cum sedebit”, and Medlyn also had to skip a beat to accommodate her pianist at one point – a true case of “Nil inultum remanebit” indeed.

The choir was again superb with their ensuing “Dies Irae” reprise, Fulcher adroitly juggling his pianist’s and conductor’s role at this point, before the “Quid sum miser”, with soprano, mezzo and tenor blending their tones again beautifully and Bryony Williams impressing with a shining soprano ascent towards the end, nicely assured. I wanted more sheer noise from everybody (sensationalist that I am) at the beginning of “Rex tremendae” on the opening word “Rex”, though the choir’s “Salva Me’s” at the end were terrific, achieving real supplicatory grandeur! And Margaret Medlyn’s blending with Bryony Williams throughout the lovely, tender “Quarens me” and into the dramatic interchanges of “Ante diem rationis” satisfied on all counts.

I’m uncomfortably aware, at this point in the review, that to go on indulging in “writing up” my great pleasure in all aspects of the performance would produce something whose volume would be akin to ballast for an ocean-going liner! Suffice to say that the soloists continued throughout as they began, Richard Greager soothing our sensibilities in places throughout “Qui Marian absolvisti” (though he had only just enough breath for his final “Statuens in parte dextra”), and Rodney Macann properly apocalyptic in his  “Confutatis maledictis”, his phrasing again rhetorical and measured in places (he chose a lower option instead of his final ascent with “Gere curium mei finis”). In the final “Lacrymosa” Margaret Medlyn again hit the emotional spot with a searing “Huic ergo parce Deus”, before counterpointing Rodney Macann’s reprise of the melody. Choir and soloists combined to great effect, Bryony Williams soaring aloft, her supplications piercing the heart. A beautiful blending of the individual voices at “Pie Jesu, Domine” followed, then some dark-and-light exchanges between mens and women’s voices in the choir eventually came together for a heartfelt “Amen”.

The soloists had further opportunities throughout the “Offertorium”, blending beautifully and making the most of individual moments (Richard Greager unexpectedly more forthright than prayerful at “Hostias”, and Rodney Macann phrasing a little too fulsomely in places, prompting further “encouragement” by Michael Fulcher, but still making something memorable of his “Quam Olim Abrahae” utterances). Bryony Williams negotiated her treacherous but celestial evocation of St.Michael nicely, floating her notes securely downwards from on high. Throughout, the ensemble handled Verdi’s amalgam of prayerfulness and dramatic impulse with aplomb, with Fulchers’s direction vital and focused, and keeping things on the move.

Then it was the chorus’s turn with the “Sanctus” to shine, the brass splendidly festive at the beginning, the voices exuberant in reply. At Fulcher’s steady tempo the lines danced and glowed throughout, the voices having plenty of tonal variation at “Pleni sun coeli”, and wonderful attack at the bell-like “Hosannas” at the end. And the instrumentalists were spot-on with their outlandish, syncopated ascents leading to the final joyous cries to finish – a riot of energy, colour and exuberance.

No greater contrast to it all was there than that of the “Agnus Dei” – firstly, soprano and mezzo in “octave-unison”, accents and timbres well-matched, the choir intense, but warm and supplicatory in response; then a minor-key version from the same soloists, beautifully accompanied by the organ, with the soranos an octave higher in response this time – a lovely sound!  How other-worldly by comparison the “Lux aeterna” sounds! – Margaret Medlyn sounding a trifle unsteady with one of her entries, but still conveying a sense of celestial light shining forth to confront the darkness of Rodney Macann’s grim-voiced “Requiem aeternam” – the ensembled trio (with tenor Richard Greager) again mellifluously blended throughout (I missed the composer’s creepy downward chromatic wind lines at “Cum sanctis tuis”, but the singing provided ample compensation).

And so to the dramatic “Libera me”. Verdi’s original contribution to a planned requiem to honor Rossini, a project that didn’t “make it” during the composer’s lifetime (in fact, not until 1988, when a belated performance was mounted in Stuttgart). The “Libera me” is as dramatic in its own way as the “Dies Irae” part of the work, though featuring only the soprano from the quartet of soloists, along with the chorus and orchestra. It’s a wonderful showcase for both soloist and chorus, and both here were well up to the composer’s demands, supported by dexterous piano playing and closely-worked direction from Michael Fulcher. From the beginning Bryony Williams fully engaged with the music, urgent and searing at “Dum veneris judicare speculum per ignem” – though the piano didn’t match the wonderfully ghoulish bassoon tones of the original at this point, the fear and horror in Williams’ voice was palpable enough, contrasting with the choir’s previously hushed, awe-struck “Libera me, Dominum”.

The return of the “Dies Irae” blazed anew, with powerful work from chorus and brass, then some wonderfully sepulchral exchanges between the men’s voices, baleful trombones and ghostly organ tones paved the way for Bryony Williams’ haunting reprise, with the choir in attendance, of the work’s opening “Requiem” music, concluding with the soloist’s cruelly-exposed octave ascent, here triumphantly realized. But what volatility this music has! – over a “Devil’s Interval” tremolando (difficult to achieve on a piano) the soprano reiterates the fearful opening text “Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna” and awakens the fugue, which has always sounded to my ears the work’s most exacting and fearsome challenge for the chorus.

Michael Fulcher kept it “steady as she goes”, enabling the voices to negotiate even the densest figurations, as well as integrate the soloist’s adding to the textures at several points (Bryony Williams crying mercy for all humanity, here), but also building the excitement of the surging ascents of the women’s voices, before the men take their turn to initiate the forward thrust, with “Veneris, judicare, speculum….” leading up to the brass-and-timpani-supported cataclysmic climax that lacked only the bass drum for its impact to raise the roof of the Citadel. It remained for soprano and chorus to reiterate the words “Libera me”, and allow the silences that followed to proclaim the end.

For a performance such as we had just heard to come from less than two full days of workshop and rehearsal seemed near to miraculous. Very great credit to conductor Michael Fulcher and assistant director Rosemary Russell, for inspiring singers and instrumentalists to give what I imagine would have been their best endeavours, something of great value for performers and listeners alike. For everybody involved with or connected to the Choral Federation in any way, it all would have been a wonderful twenty-fifth birthday present at the end of what must have felt like an exhilarating couple of days!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NZSO and Pietari Inkinen all at sea

Posted on by Peter Mechen

SIBELIUS – The Oceanides / BRITTEN – Four Sea Interludes from “Peter Grimes”

CHAUSSON – Poème de l’amour et de la mer / DEBUSSY – La Mer

Sasha Cooke (mezzo-soprano)

Pietari Inkinen (conductor)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Friday 20th April 2012

Having rather too cleverly used the expression “all at sea”  in this review’s heading, I needs must hasten to add that the words weren’t meant in a pejorative sense – but rather as a compliment to conductor and orchestra regarding their powers of evocation!

Compiling a complete list of musical works inspired by the sea would, I think, result in several closely-worked pages being filled. Of the pieces for orchestra, Pietari Inkinen and the NZSO surely gave us four of the greatest, with the help of mezzo Sasha Cook, who followed her heartfelt performance of Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer of a week ago with a mellifluous rendering of Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer. 

I thought three of the pieces received splendidly characterful performances, the one disappointment for me being the opening item on the program, Sibelius’s The Oceanides. As a friend said to me during the interval, it wasn’t very Mediterranean – we missed the glint of sunlight on the water and the play of light on the waves, a scenario which would have rendered the “big wave” when it came, an even more impressive demonstration of nature’s power. Here, it instead seemed all very Baltic, and somewhat more subaqueous than Sibelius might have intended – a point of view, but one that played down the Homeric inspiration commented on by the composer: – “It (the Oceanides) derives from the mythology of Homer and not from the Kalevala.”

I wondered whether the good ole’ MFC acoustic played its part in swallowing up some of the music’s airiness – in particular the winds seemed scarcely to speak throughout to my ears in the place where I was sitting, though I suspect it was more the conductor’s “through a glass darkly” way with the music. The passage for glockenspiel, harp and clarinet containing the hitherto “embedded” string theme hardly at all registered, and there were similar places whose evocations of air and light (ironically the program note spoke of the music’s “bright warmth”) were made subservient to the string-dominated soundscapes depicting the ebb and flow of watery expanses. Perhaps in venues like the Auckland Town Hall, the winds will get more of a chance to establish a better sense of the play of sun and wind upon the waves.

Having in previous articles commented upon Pietari Inkinen’s seeming reluctance to explore and bring out the “darker” sides of Sibelius’s music, I now may justly be accused of inconsistency at complaining when he does so! Still, Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from “Peter Grimes” responded marvellously to the same kind of trenchant treatment, though here I thought all sections of the orchestra were encouraged to “speak” and convey their distinctive colours and accents. The playing of the opening Dawn allowed us to sense the vast and lonely beauty of the sea itself, as well as conveying its darker, more threatening power. This was in complete contrast to the gaiety and human bustle of Sunday Morning with its insistent backdrop of church bells – how wonderfully “precarious” those syncopated cross-rhythms of strings and winds always sound, played here as well as any other performance I’ve heard!

More sharply-etched contrasts came with Moonlight, here dark and dour, unresonant and unromantic and filled with foreboding, followed immediately by the physical assault of Storm with Inkinen really encouraging his players to rattle, roar and rend the air with tumultuous sounds. It was all very exciting, with particularly wonderful brass-playing (the tuba roaring like a kraken from the baleful deep), the performance capturing the “frightened shadows” aspect at the end, with properly spectral strings and winds, before the final free-falling orchestral tumult resounded into the silences.

After the interval, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke added her lovely voice to some gorgeously-wrought orchestral textures throughout the opening pages of Chausson’s seductive Poème de l’amour et de la mer. One of a number of stunningly beautiful works for female voice and orchestra written at about this time (such as Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, Elgar’s Sea Pictures and Ravel’s Scheherazade), Chausson’s “endless melody” style of writing enabled the singer to demonstrate her finely-tuned dramatic instincts, in the first part, The Flower of the Waters (La Fleur des eaux) now hushed and expectant at “O ciel qui de sees jeux dois porter la couleur”, now radiant-toned (at “Faites-moi voir ma bien aimee”, and then later at “Et du ciel extrovert pleuvaient sur nous des roses”), the music evoking roses raining from the sky.

Here, and throughout both interlude and the second vocal episode, The Death of Love (La Mort de l’Amour) conductor and players supported and matched their soloist’s outpourings with a range of tones, by turns refulgent, flowing, spectral and halting. How the music darkens at the words “Le vent roulait des feuille mortes”! – with Chausson’s debt to Wagner, and in particular “Parsifal” evident in those sombre harmonic progressions for orchestra alone, and underpinning the despair of the words “Comme des fronts de morts”.

As for the most quintessential sea-piece of them all, Debussy’s La Mer, Inkinen and the orchestra brought out plenty of crisp detail and strongly-contoured lines – this was no impressionist wallow, but a beautifully-judged delineation of detail whose impulses activated a bigger picture with a widely-flung spectrum of variation. While here I didn’t feel quite as consistently the elemental undercurrents that made Inkinen’s reading of The Firebird of the previous week such a powerful listening experience, Debussy’s seascapes were allowed sufficient power in places to “tell”, again with instruments like the timpani encouraged to sound out (a couple of pistol-shot thwacks in the finale from Laurence Reese certainly added to the excitement!), and the lower strings and brass bringing appropriate weight and darkness to some of that same movement’s climaxes. While we’re on this movement, full marks to the trumpet-player (whom I couldn’t see properly – was it Michael Kirgan?) whose brief but cruelly-exposed solo shone out truly amid the darkness.

In all, an exciting, and richly-varied concert, each of these last two orchestral outings making a refreshing change from the usual “overture-concerto-symphony” format, with, for me, equally satisfying results. Maybe there’s hope for things such as Janacek’s Taras Bulba and Elgar’s In The South yet!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two varied lunchtime concerts at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

1.  Mozart: Sonata for violin and piano in G major K.301
Fauré: Sonata for violin and piano in A major Op.13
Rupa Maitra (violin) and Kris Zuelicke (piano)

2.  Operatic arias, and lieder
Vocal Students of the New Zealand School of Music, accompanied by Mark Dorrell

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Tuesday, 3 April 2012

Wednesday, 4 April 2012, 12.15pm

Perhaps it was an excess of riches, or simply that people are ‘programmed’ to attend a lunchtime concert at St. Andrew’s on a Wednesday, but not on another day.  Whatever the reason, the Tuesday concert was not well attended compared with that on Wednesday.

Mozart’s sonata begins in a sunny mood, with a jolly melody (which always makes me think of the Scottish song “Maxwelton braes”, otherwise known as “Annie Laurie”), alternately presented by piano and violin.  The second movement (there are only two) was also allegro, but quite different in metre and character.  The G minor middle section gave a pleasing contrast, with some passionate moments.

These two extremely competent musicians had it well under their fingers.  However, I found the violin tone sometimes a little harsh; the acoustic was partly responsible for this.  There was a brief lack of synchronisation in the closing moments, at the repeat of the opening section.

The second work, with which I was not familiar, was a more difficult and demanding one, besides being much longer.  The composer communicates many musical ideas, with an exuberant allegro first movement containing a great deal of variety.  I found the piano over-pedalled for my taste.  There were soaring phrases, especially for the violin, but intonation was not always spot on, and again I found the tone not always mellow.

The andante second movement was solemn, with some lovely moments, especially in the middle section.  The third movement, allegro vivo, was faster than the final one (allegro quasi presto).  It was jaunty in mood, on both instruments, with frequent pizzicato on the violin.  The slightly slower final movement featured beautiful smooth melodic lines, while the piano part was full of notes.  The ending was very busy for the violin, with chords on the piano.

Throughout, the piece was played in a musical and sensitive manner.

Wednesday’s concert involved a lot more people: seven singers, plus the imperturbable Mark Dorrell accompanying all of them.  Most of these singers I had not heard before, and wonder if they are first and second-year students; the programme did not tell us.

Nearly all the singers sang two arias, or an aria and a lied, separately in the programme, but here I will group each singer’s items together.

Robert Gray had the unenviable task of opening the programme.  His ‘O del mio dolce ardor’ from Gluck’s opera Paride ad Elena revealed his pleasing voice, and he conveyed the mood of this most attractive aria well.  However, his tone in top notes was not well supported, and intonation was suspect on lower notes.  He did not seem confident.

How differently he presented the Count’s aria from Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro!  The opening was strong, and the singer more confident now.  His Italian was enunciated very well, and the characterisation convincing  While Mozart’s forte passages for the orchestra, or piano in this case, do not coincide with the voice too often, nevertheless I found Dorrell’s piano a little loud for the singer in places, though wonderfully rhythmic and Mozartean.

Daniel Dew is a young tenor, who sang first ‘Every valley shall be exalted’, from Handel’s Messiah.  As the programme note said, the aria is full of word painting, and Dew’s clear voice and words made this amply obvious.  Runs were executed well, and there was good control on the high notes; elsewhere, the tone and expression were just a bit raw around the edges.  His second piece, ‘Wohin?’ from Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin was engagingly sung, but more tonal control was needed on the low notes.  Dew’s German was very good, and well enunciated.

Rossini’s famous aria, the ‘Willow Song’ from Otello was the choice of Rebekah Giesbers, a soprano.  She has a clear, pure voice with attractive tone.  The runs were not sufficiently agile, however, and there was insufficient variation in the performance.

Two lieder (‘Ständchen’ and ‘Lievesbotschaft’ from Schubert’s Schwanengesang) were chosen by Fredi Jones.  He has a light but very pleasant tenor voice.  At times I found the accompaniment a little too loud for his voice.  He evinced great breath control, and the mood of the second song particularly came over well.  Later in the programme he sang in very good French: ‘En fermant les yeux’ from Massenet’s Manon.  It was delightful singing, with expressive phrasing, but he could do with a little facial expression to help convey the story.

The latter characteristic was a strong one for Esther Leefe, soprano, who performed first ‘Batti batti’ from Don Giovanni by Mozart.  Her silvery voice was mostly accurate; the facial expression needed to be backed up with more vocal expression here.  Her second item was the lovely Samuel Barber song ‘Sure on this shining night’.  The sound was good, but I did not find that she really conveyed the song convincingly.

Angelique MacDonald did not sing the programmed Alban Berg song, but Mozart’s beautiful aria for Pamina, in The Magic Flute: ‘Ah, ich fühl’s’.  This was a very touching rendition, with plenty of dynamic variation.  The tone was a little harsh on the higher notes sometimes, when singing loudly.

In her second aria, a metallic tone seemed present in the middle range, while the top was secure and sweet, and the lower notes were fine.  This was in her very dramatic performance of ‘Regnava nel silenzio’ from Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti.  There were plenty of gestures and facial expression as well as a good range of dynamics in the voice; this aria suited her agile voice.  It was an accomplished performance.

Another soprano, Awhina Waimotu, followed, with a song by Respighi: Tempo assia lontani’.  This gave the impression of being quite difficult, for both singer and accompanist.  Despite a few insecurities for the singer, this was an impressive performance: a lovely expressive voice with warm tone, beautiful vowels, and a strong upper register.

This impression was confirmed in her second song, the enchanting Chanson triste of Henri Duparc.  After a slightly hesitant start, she gave a fine performance.  The French language was good, but the song needed slightly more subtle phrasing – however, that can come.  I have to confess to being very familiar with an old recording by Gérard Souzay, in which he lingers before the high note to give it extra emphasis, and varies the dynamics more than Waimotu did.  Otherwise, this was a splendid performance of this exquisite song.

Mark Dorrell deserved warm thanks for the huge amount of very accomplished playing he did.

 

 

Soprano, clarinet and piano in lovely Lieder recital

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Schumann: Liederkreis, Op.39;
Schubert: The Shepherd on the Rock, Op.129

Rhona Fraser (soprano), Richard Mapp (piano), Hayden Sinclair (clarinet)

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 12.15pm

This was a wonderful opportunity – there are so few lieder recitals these days.  Yes, we hear students from the New Zealand School of Music from time to time, but they don’t sing entire song cycles or extended works such as the Schubert one we heard in this concert.

Schumann wrote two song cycles entitled ‘Liederkreis’ (which simply means song cycle); this second one sets poems by Eichendorff.

Rhona Fraser does not have a huge voice, but it is clear, and her pronunciation and enunciation of the words was excellent.  I thought Richard Mapp was a little too loud at the beginning of the recital, but this soon ceased to be the case.

It was interesting to hear the singer in this repertoire; previously I have heard her only in opera, i.e. the operas she has promoted and sung in, in her beautiful garden at Days Bay.

The opening Schumann song ‘In a Foreign Land’ was quiet and contemplative.  The programme gave the translations of all the words, which was excellent, but it was a pity not to have also a few notes about the works performed, e.g. the poets’ names (the words Schubert used were by more than one poet), dates of composition and so on.

The third song ‘A Forest Dialogue’ was one of a number of songs more frequently heard than others.  This has mainly been on the radio, but also from visiting singers.  It was also one of the most musically descriptive (which probably accounts for its greater popularity), as the words describe the words and actions of the enchantress Lorelei.  As I have seen myself ‘…from its towering rock My castle looks deep and silent down into the Rhine.’  Rhona Fraser characterised all this amply, in her changes of tone.

The fourth song, ‘Silence’, featured a wonderful accompaniment describing the words about stillness, and then about the singer wishing to be a bird flying across the sea.

‘Moonlit night’, the fourth song, was another well-known one, and the following ‘A beautiful foreign land’ again demonstrated Fraser’s ability to evoke the mood beautifully, and make the words very clear.

The seventh song, ‘In the castle’ called on the lower register, revealing rich low notes in Rhona Fraser’s voice; again, the mood was capture and conveyed well, as a wedding procession and party were described.

‘Sadness’, the ninth song, typified the mood of all the songs –romantic longing, with frequent forests occurring, as we;; as foreign lands, nightingales, and sorrow.  This was another that I have heard more often, as was the twelfth and final song, ‘Spring night’.  Finally, we seemed to leave the dominant sad, romantic, almost cynical theme of the poems with their message that happiness is brief and illusory.  This song ended the cycle on a hopeful note.  Idiomatic playing from Richard Mapp assisted throughout to give the music meaning and beauty.

The extended song by Schubert, with its beautiful clarinet obbligato, I have not heard live for decades.  The playing of Hayden Sinclair was glorious.  The singer exhibited a fine, rich sound in the third verse, where the mood becomes dark and hopeless; the tension here was built very well. (The piece is not formally divided into verses, but there are clarinet solos between the various sections of words).

In the latter part of the piece, the singer’s breathing was sometimes noisy.  Here also, a few notes were not quite on the spot, or were slurred from too quickly in the more florid passages.  Vocally, the Schubert was not as satisfactory as was the Schumann cycle, but top notes were very secure.  It was great to hear this music; the clarinet and piano were both splendid, and the singer mostly so.