Tag: vocal
Wendy Dawn Thompson (mezzo-soprano) and friends at St Andrew’s
Opera arias and songs: Handel, Strauss, Mahler, Brahms, Mozart and others
Emma Sayers (piano) plus Amelia Berry and Bianca Andrew (sopranos), Michael Gray (tenor), Matthew Landreth (baritone). Presented by the New Zealand Opera Society (Wellington Branch)
St Andrew’s on The Terrace, Saturday 12 December 2009
This was to have been a showcase for Wendy Dawn Thompson, with the support of two younger singers Amelia Berry and Matt Landreth. But because Wendy was ailing (she had to cancel a Messiah a few days before) it was decided to reduce her load by the inclusion of a couple of other singers. They were Bianca Andrew and Michael Gray.
It made a concert of greater variety even if we were deprived of more singing by the main star.
Wendy opened the evening with ‘Ombra mai fu’, Handel’s Largo (actually marked ‘Larghetto’) from Serse (Xerxes), handling the Persian King’s castrato role in a rich, almost fruity voice, for some tastes perhaps a little too heavy with vibrato; no doubt it was a symptom of her ailment. Her higher notes were warm and clear however. She followed it with ‘Behold, … O Thou that tellest’ from Messiah, which revealed a somewhat clearer performance. The rest of her offerings came in the second half of the concert: four Strauss lieder, all love songs of different characters. Gefunden, innocence and simplicity in a Goethe lyric in which a plant symbolizes the poet’s resolve to ensure his love’s survival by digging it up carefully and planting it in his garden. Nachtgang, mildly salacious, and Heimliche Aufforderung which approached R18, Wendy sang with nicely varied timbres and delicate dynamic control. Morgen was the best known song: Emma Sayers’s introduction, as delightfully coloured as throughout, announced a languid tempo with suggestive, expectant pauses with the subtle phrasing that all her performances displayed.
Amelia Berry sang two Mahler songs from his Rückertlieder. They showed some signs of unevenness of tone and occasional suspect intonation, but her voice is attractive and her dramatic talent (I last head her in the title role in the New Zealand School of Music’s production of Handel’s Semele mid-year) a clear asset. She sang ‘Ruhe sanft’ from Mozart’s Zaïde (which I also heard her sing at the Wellington Aria Competition in August). She brought to it a good feeling for its warm lyricism though the high notes taxed her somewhat. She made a good fist of Baïlero too. In both songs one competes with particularly beautiful recorded renderings, not least by Kiri Te Kanawa: they colour ones impressions though they shouldn’t.
Here, as throughout the programme I found my ear caught by the beautiful, piano playing of Emma Sayers, creating vivid, contrasting orchestral colours in different parts of the keyboard.
Amelia’s last song was ‘Chi il bel sogno di Doretta’ from La Rondine; it wasn’t clear to me what happened at the beginning as she twice broke off to start again after a couple of bars. Much of it lies high and her voice thinned on those notes; though, as with the Mozart and Canteloube pieces earlier, there was a real feeling for the idiom.
Bianca Andrew also sang in Semele, as Ino. She opened her bracket with Cherubino’s aria, ‘Non so piu’, from The Marriage of Figaro, giving full rein to her character’s unruly hormones, with open agitation in her voice. Pastoral calm followed with The Sally Gardens in Britten’s arrangement, two Brahms lieder – Liebestreu and ‘Wir wandelten’. She sang them with an easy charm, occasionally resting her arm on the piano lid, handling the phrasing comfortably; they suited her voice excellently. And though she sang the Habanera from Carmen musically, she didn’t quite capture its dangerous sexuality.
Michael Gray opened his selection with Tosti’s La serenata, confident and polished, though not especially Italianate in character. Britten’s Holy Sonnets of John Donne on the other hand were sung with a sure instinct for their idiom and the poetry; his performance might have erred in the sense of dramatic feeling and emphasis, but for me, who doesn’t warm particularly to this sort of Britten, his performance, with its clear articulation, became meaningful.
In the opera, Don Ottavio’s ‘Il mio tesoro’ seems to hold up the drama, but Gray made a great deal of it.
Matthew Landreth’s share of the evening opened with Lilburn’s cycle of six songs, Sings Harry. (incidentally, there are 12 poems in Glover’s sequence as published in the 1971 edition of Enter without knocking, counting as one the three parts of Songs – ‘These songs will not stand’; if you want to refresh your acquaintance with Glover, look at Gordon Ogilvie’s full-blooded entry in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography – accessible on the Internet).
Both the colour of his very natural baritone (never mind they were written for tenor) and his instinctive feel for the songs made their performance a delight. The skill of a poetry reader in ‘When I am old’, a deeply nostalgic ‘Once the days were clear’, and those quintessential Glover lines ‘For the tide comes and the tide goes and the wind blows’ he articulated as movingly as anyone I have heard.
Landreth made an effortless job of ‘O du mein holder Abendstern’ from Tannhäuser, with fine pianissimo control; but was not quite as comfortable in ‘Se vuol ballare’.
This concert didn’t draw the audience it deserved, both on account of Wendy Dawn, or of the four others, or the splendid pianist or the intrinsic delight of the happily haphazard programme.
Jared Holt sings Dichterliebe at St Andrew’s
Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No 2 and Dichterliebe, Op 48 (Schumann)
Jared Holt (baritone) and Nicole Chao (piano)
St Andrew’s on The Terrace, lunchtime, Wednesday18 November 2009
Jared Holt won the Mobil Song Quest in 2000, proceeded to the Royal College of Music in London and through the mid 2000s sang roles at Covent Garden, Glyndebourne and Opera Australia. In September/October he sang Papageno in Southern Opera’s The Magic Flute.
At Canterbury University he took a law degree and has now returned to pursue that as his principal livelihood, in Wellington. Happily, he still sings, in opera and in song recital.
The recital began with the pianist alone, playing Scriabin’s Second Piano Sonata, whose first movement is markedly Lisztian, of the more romantic of the Années de Pèlerinage; though It is flavoured by Scriabin’s melodic fingerprints and the rising augmented fourths and fifths that recur so affectingly in much of his music. Chao’s playing was filled with unaffected rubato, and she easily evoked visions of bare birches and snow-covered pines. Though sometimes compared with his contemporary Rachmaninov, how different, more openly emotional, is Scriabin’s music. The Presto second movement, influenced by another area of Liszt’s genius, was under less control both in dynamics and in clarity at speed; and the boomy acoustic didn’t help. Nevertheless, it was a performance that captured Scriabin’s spirit and his romantic character most satisfyingly.
Though comprising sixteen songs, Dichterliebe is not a long cycle; each song is quite concise, none of Heine’s poems is indulgent and nor does Schumann allow himself to expand the material by repeating lines or stanzas: there is no time for interest to flag,
Though primarily an opera singer, this concert showed a gift in the song repertoire which is supported by taste and finesse, and excellent German diction. However, though St Andrew’s has its virtues, it is given to amplifying bass orchestral sounds as well as distorting focus when voices are too pushed.
I wondered whether he was finding it difficult to judge the responsiveness of the acoustic or was sometimes over-reacting to the occasional emphatic passage from the piano, in his tendency to drive his voice too hard, but in truth, I found the piano’s role always sensitive and supportive, rising and falling in response to the emotion, for example in the striding, widely-spaced melody of ‘Aus alten Märchen winkt es’.
When he went beyond a mezzo-forte in his upper register, vocal focus suffered. That was evident right from the first song, and in ‘Die Rose, die Lillie,,,’, but in the middle register, things were easy and the real quality of his voice could be enjoyed. The calmer, more spoken quality employed in ‘Wenn ich in deine Augen…’, even high up, resulted in a beautifully expressed emotion.
There was never any doubting Holt’s command of his resources or his grasp of the poet’s or the composer’s meaning and intent. If only there was a regular song recital series, comparable to Wellington Chamber Music’s Sunday chamber music series, in which we could enjoy the singing of Wellington’s many excellent singers in the huge repertoire of classical song, live performance of which has become something foreign to many music lovers.
‘Opera for organ’: Wade Kernot in benefit for St Peter’s, Willis Street
Wade Kernot (bass) with Megan Corby, Andrew Glover and Rosel Labone; Kirsten Simpson (piano): Organ Restoration Fund benefit concert
St Peter’s Church, Willis Street, Monday 12 October 2009
The connection between St Peter’s church in Wellington and bass Wade Kernot from Auckland who was runner-up in this year’s Lexus Song Quest was rather obscure. It transpired that the link was June Read, a member of St Peter’s congregation and Wade’s aunt, with whom Wade had stayed during his time in Wellington and who had provided him with great support.
The empty space on the north side of the church’s sanctuary was the other link: the organ alcove which will soon be occupied again by a restored organ. The 1888 instrument had been subject to an arson attack in 2008, and the proceeds from this concert will help pay for its restoration.
Wade’s even greater triumph was to be the New Zealand nominee to compete in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition. He reached the semi-final stage, meaning he sang in both the opera and the song phases of the contest before impresarios, agents, critics, managers, vocal coaches from everywhere. (See note below)
Wade recruited three of his friends to share the singing, with pianist Kirsten Simpson.
The other three singers did him honour, for each of them exhibited a polish and artistry that was generally well beyond the student level.
Wade took the majority of the work. He began with ‘Sorge infausta’ from Handel’s Orlando, severe, authoritarian; however, in this Kernot’s voice was not particularly well treated by the acoustic, diffusing its power and focus. All his, and others’ singing seemed not to invoke such disfavour from the Anglican gods. For example Beethoven’s amusing, slightly risqué Der Kuss he captured very successfully. His other two arias in the first half were ‘Se vuol ballare’ (Kernot will sing the title role in New Zealand Opera’s production of The Marriage of Figaro next year) and Macduff’s ‘Come dal ciel precipita’ from Macbeth. He handled those sharply contrasted arias with impressive understanding.
In the second half he gave a fine, robust performance of Vaughan Williams’s The Vagabond; then ‘Hine e hine’, in Carl Doy’s rather insipid arrangement, and ‘Ole Man River’ – a splendid rendition.
Megan Corby’s two contributions were Schumann’s (not Schubert’s, as the programme had it) Widmung, and the aria ‘I want magic’ from Previn’s A Streetcar named Desire, in which her top opened out in authentic Broadway fashion.
Andrew Glover prepared me for his show-stopping appearance the next evening as Monsieur Triquot in Eugene Onegin (incidentally, one of the best performances of it that I’ve heard anywhere). He sang one of Rossini’s ‘Sins of Old Age’, filled with dashing wit and precise ornamentation. And there was vivid character in his voice in his performance of ‘Lonely House’ from one of Kurt Weill’s Broadway musicals, Street Scene.
Mezzo Rosel Labone, who has been accepted by Melbourne’s new School of Opera, sang one opera aria and one New Zealand song. Instead of the advertised aria from Les Huguenots (I assume, Urbain’s aria ‘Nobles seigneurs’), she sang Cherubino’s first act aria ‘Non so piu’ from The Marriage of Figaro. Her second offering was Anthony Ritchie’s setting of the Baxter poem entitled Song (‘My love came through the city…’).
But the real coup de théâtre was to follow. Wade sang as an encore, one of Inia Te Wiata’s favourites, Rangi Te Hikiroa’s version of the haka, ‘Ka Mate, Ka Mate’ (which you’ll find on the CD Just call me happy – the compilation of Te Wiata’s recorded songs, from Atoll/National Library).
Then, scarcely waiting for the applause to end, he began ‘Bess, you is my woman now’; and a woman’s voice resounded from the rear, singing Bess’s part. She came forward slowly – Aivale Cole (to whom he was runner-up in the Lexus Song Quest). The two continued the duet with an extraordinary rapport both vocally and in spirit: their voices sounded made for each other.
The delighted audience could hardly stop clapping.
Wade Kernot and Cardiff Singer of the World
Early this year it was announced that New Zealand had nominated a contestant for the 2009 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition: he was Wade Kernot from Auckland who was runner-up in the Lexus (former Mobil) Song Quest in April. A few years before, Kernot had won the Wellington Regional Aria Competition.
In June he capped his competition achievements by winning a place among the 25 semi-finalists in the Cardiff contest. Over 600 singers entered for the contest this year from 68 countries. It’s probably the most famous singing contest in the world.
The earlier stages of the competition are conducted by auditions in 44 locations round the world and 25 are then chosen to sing in Cardiff.
Wade’s career has been distinguished, gaining early stage experience with Auckland’s Opera Factory. He sang in the 2003 production of Boris Godunov for New Zealand Opera and in 2004 he became a Dame Malvina Major Foundation Emerging Artist with the company. In 2005 he won a place at the Australian Opera Studio in Perth.
In 2007 he went to Wiesbaden in Germany to sing in Stravinsky’s Pulcinella and returned to Christchurch for Zuniga in Carmen. In 2008 he was again with New Zealand Opera as DMM/PriceWaterhouseCoopers Young Artist.
In Wellington in 2008 he sang in The Seven Deadly Sins and The Lindberg Flight at the 2008 International Arts Festival, Colline in La Bohème; and for Southern Opera in Christchurch, Ferrando in Il Trovatore and the Speaker in The Magic Flute.
Lunchtimes in Wellington churches
1 Organist David Trott for lunch at Old St Paul’s
A recital of popular classics on the organ
Tuesday 15 September
Lunchtime concerts at Old St Paul’s and St Andrew’s on The Terrace have taken on certain characteristics. While St Andrew’s has tended towards the more serious repertoire, catering for those whose interest in classical music is reasonably wide, Old St Paul’s seems to aim, at least some of the time, at the popular end of he spectrum.
David Trott’s organ recital was a good example of the latter. There was no printed programme and he introduced each piece in a friendly, casual tone, laced with anecdotes that sometimes had less to do with the music than with his own musical life.
If his selection was not entirely familiar, it offered no challenges. Generally they were well suited to the light, attractive registrations available on the church’s organ; such as the piece by 18th century organist and pedagogue Michel Corrette that employed a glockenspiel-like stop, and popular Bach pieces – Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring (‘Jesu bleibet meine Freude’) from Cantata 147 (Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben) and the Air from the Third Orchestral Suite (‘On the G String’). These suited the instrument and its player admirably; but less successful was his little arrangement of the main theme in the last movement of Saint-Saëns’s Third Symphony which demands far more dramatic weight that could be found here.
Trott played a distinctly odd-ball arrangement that combined elements of the Water Music and the Royal Fireworks music; his treatment of Pachelbel’s Canon went overboard with changes of registration in almost every bar: perhaps it was intended as a spoof.
Checking first that there were no priests present who might take offence, Trott played Mendelssohn’s splendid War March of the Priests from his incidental music to Racine’s Athalie. It used to make a regular appearance on programmes like Dinner Music at 6pm on the old YC network of my youth; its dramatic harmonies sound so good at the organ and though, again, a grander organ would have made it more exciting, it came off, nostalgia giving it an extra burst.
2. New Zealand School of Music voice students at St Andrew’s on The Terrace
Wednesday 16 September
I missed the first four items in the St Andrew’s concert next day from the vocal students at the New Zealand School of Music: It meant that I didn’t hear either Laura Dawson and Sophie Kemp who did not sing again later. The rest exhibited admirable features.
Rachel Day has a voice that projects well, but her Richard Strauss song ‘Ich trage meine Minne’ needed greater refinement of tone and dynamic control, and those were the qualities that most of the singers still need to acquire.
She returned later to sing the Jewel Song from Faust, where she conveyed the giddy excitement, ‘hitting’ the notes but missing the interspersed lyrical touches.
Bridget Costello did well to sing the ‘Pie Jesu’ from Fauré’s Requiem, managing dynamic variety well though the piece demands more polished legato singing. She sang a song by John Ireland, Spring Song, with a more reined-in voice, some delicacy and carefully displayed emotion.
Bryony Williams tackled a long aria from The Creation: ‘On Mighty Pens’. It was a strong, convincing performance, showing her dramatic sense and a reasonably controlled top, but her voice wearied towards the end. She balanced that with the rather sentimental Elégie by Massenet (it’s from the incidental music, for cello and orchestra, to Leconte de Lisle’s play Les Erinnyes).
Bianca Andrew won marks for choosing an aria from Barber’s Vanessa (the opera that Kiri Te Kanawa made her mark in a few years ago) ‘Must Winter come so soon?’. She returned to sing the big coloratura aria ‘Non piu mesta’ from Rossini’s La Cenerentola, preceded by the recitative ‘Nacqui all’affano e al pianto’; she moved about sensibly, sang at a reasonable pace and so got all the notes; Emma Sayers’s lively pulse at the piano contributed delightfully.
Kieran Rayner sang three items, each with Emily Mair at the piano. First, Strauss’s ‘Ruhe meine Seele’, which impressed me, though I only caught the last of it; then Ashley Heenan’s arrangement of the sea shanty ‘Lowdown Lonesome Low’ (familiar to radio aficionados in Donald Munro’s performance). It’s a challenge to bring off such songs without embarrassing artifice and Rayner has the personality to do it convincingly, varying the tone and using dynamic variety with intelligence.
He was given the honour of bringing the little concert to an end with the aria he sang in the Wellington Aria contest in August, ‘O vin, dissipe la tristesse’ from Thomas’s Hamlet; not perhaps the therapy that a psychologist would recommend, but Rayner made an excellent case for it.
‘Hideous Love’ offered by Brio, opera ensemble
Excerpts from Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, and Verdi: Un ballo in maschera, Il Trovatore, Rigoletto
Brio: Janey MacKenzie, Jody Orgias, John Beaglehole, Roger Wilson; piano: Robyn Jaquiery
St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Wednesday 26 August 2009
The success of the somewhat heterogeneous range of voices comprising the vocal ensemble Brio lies in their energy and histrionic flair and the plain delight they four take in what they undertake. On this occasion Roger Wilson replaced the ensemble’s usual baritone Justin Pearce.
Acis and Galatea was given a semi-staged performance by New Zealand Opera a few years ago in the Opera House. It is a hybrid work, classed as a masque, a hybrid dramatic form that possibly has more in common with the French opéra-ballet, practised by Lully and Campra. First performed in 1718, it was Handel’s first dramatic venture in English; his only other dramatic piece in English, a true opera, not counting oratorios, was Semele.
Roger Wilson began with Polyphemus’s aria, ‘O ruddier than the cherry’ – one of those arias that one wishes was in Czech or something we didn’t understand. The odd case of a love song that seems more designed to dismay than to seduce. I was as struck by John Beaglehole’s tenor aria – as Acis – ‘Love sounds the alarm’, a vivid, penetrating performance.
Towards the end of the aria Janey MacKenzie, as Galatea, and Wilson joined in with a display of theatrical ferocity that truly shook the altar.
If the final quartet, now including Jody Orgias, didn’t offer the most beautiful blend, it was dramatic, diction was clear and it did what is most valuable – encouraged us all to rush to the library to borrow score or recordings.
The Italian version of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (why the reference to Berlioz’s 19th century version?) might not have exemplified hideous love, but Jody Orgias, as Orpheus, evoked a bereft figure and her unusual timbre did grief very well. The following duet, ‘Vieni, appaga il tuo consorte’ between Orgias and MacKenzie was the more credible, given the marked contrast in their voices. Beaglehole took over the role of Orfeus to sing ‘Che farò senza Euridice’ with feeling and minor intonation flaws.
The rest of the concert was Verdi’s. First, the night scene in Un ballo in maschera where Amelia consults Ulrica with Riccardo observing. Jody’s singing captured Ulrica splendidly, filled with foreboding, while Janey captured the timorous Amelia’s anxiety very well.
The next case of unlikely, if not hideous, love was that between the Conte di Luna and Leonora in Il Trovatore. Roger Wilson as the unhinged count, expecting to get Leonora on condition of freeing Manrico, again summoned fearful Verdian rage, while MacKenzie’s part gave her an opportunity for some impressive bravura singing.
The last excerpt was the great quartet from the last act of Rigoletto, where each character reveals starkly different emotions, and here they were delineated with remarkable vividness.
The group’s regular pianist, Robyn Jaquiery supported all the singing colourfully: the piano was raised to the middle level of the steps that rise to the sanctuary: an excellent improvement both in visibility and sound.
Wellington Regional Aria Contest: Dame Malvina Major Prize
Wellington Regional Aria Contest Final: Hutt Valley Performing Arts Competitions Society; Adjudicator: Angela Gorton. Finalists: Rose Blake, Kieran Rayner, Amelia Berry, Elitsa Kappatos, Olga Gryniewicz. Pianists: Catherine McKay and Emily Mair
St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Sunday 23 August 2009
In recent years what used to be the Aria Contest of the Hutt Valley Performing Arts Competitions Society has struggled to survive. For many years it was The Evening Post Aria, but after The Dominion and The Evening Post merged in 2002, the paper dispensed with that responsibility. It has now been taken under the wing of the Dame Malvina Major Foundation and the first prize is now a generous $4000.
That being so, it was surprising that there were only five entrants to the aria competition, compared with more than 20 in some earlier years. There was a clash with the aria contest in Dunedin and there were other apparently competing events that prevented many singers from other parts of the country from taking part this year.
The adjudicator was Angela Gorton. The accompanist Catherine Norton who gave the most sensitive support to all but one of the singers; Emily Mair accompanied Kieran Rayner.
All singers were between 20 and 22 years of age, and all but one of them had appeared in the New Zealand School of Music’s production of Semele.
The first contestant was Rose Blake who was the alternate Semele. She chose Marzelline’s aria from Fidelio, ‘O wär ich schon mit dir vereint’. It is usually hard to take the first position in such a contest and nervousness and probably inadequate warming up affected her voice which, though proving quite strong, was tight and her phrasing uneven. It was no surprise that her second aria, ‘I’ll take no less’, from Semele, found her in much better shape, more practised and confident in her gestures as a result of the stage experience.
Kieran Rayner, who had sung the role of Athamus in Semele, made a singular impression at once, singing the aria ‘Mein Sehnen, mein Wähne’ from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, letting the audience realize that there’s more to it that the familiar Marietta’s Lied. He showed a naturally attractive voice, with comfortable delivery, never under pressure. His second aria showed similar accomplishment, from a contrasting opera style, Ambroise Thomas ‘other’ opera, Hamlet: ‘O vin, dissipe la tristesse’ (not something that you’ll find in the Shakespeare version). He sang with flair, in good French, his rhythm, phrasing and dynamics all under fine discipline. I had no doubt that he would be hard to beat in this small field.
Amelia Berry was the Semele that I saw on the opening night but she refrained from making use of that experience. She sang the charming, lyrical aria ‘Ruhe sanft’ from Mozart’s unfinished opera Zaïde and later, ‘Una voce poco fa’ from The Barber of Seville. She failed to articulate the top notes in the Mozart; perhaps her choice had taken her out of her natural register, or perhaps it was simply nerves. So I was not surprised with a more comfortable performance of her Rossini, lying a little lower though with more bravura, which she carried off with agility and accuracy. In this it was easier to gauge the quality of her voice, and I thought she might win one of the prizes.
Elitsa Kappatos did not have a role in Semele. Though she chose pieces that are very familiar, pieces that make considerable demands, her performances were creditable. ‘O mio babbino caro’ was a little shrill, but her intonation was accurate and she made a nice personal impression. She gave herself every advantage in the Habanera from Carmen, with an appropriate costume, she refrained from excessive gestures, yet carried off the confident, strong-willed, mezzo role with a certain flair.
Olga Gryniewicz had made a vivid impression in Semele, as Iris, and she chose one of her main arias in the contest: ‘Endless pleasure’. It was a shade less striking here, removed from the theatrical setting, the line a little too staccato, and her voice monochrome. But she did well to tackle Norina’s fine, coloratura aria from Don Pasquale, ‘Quel guardo il cavaliere’. Her voice coped with its high, airy, innocent character, her Italian was good, and rhythmic sense – rubato – well cultivated. She draws attention as a spunky, characterful singer; but an underlying strain is audible, reflecting a voice production difficulty.
Nevertheless, I had thought she would get a mention among the prize winners.
Angela Gorton awarded the Dame Malvina Major Foundation prize and the prize for the singer displaying the most consistent standard, as well as the Jenny Wollerman award for the best song or aria in French to Amelia Berry. Kieran Rayner was given the Rokfire Cup for the most outstanding singer in the senior vocal class and the Robin Dumbell Cup for the singer with the most potential. In effect he was runner-up.
Finally, I must draw attention to the longstanding devotion to the aria contest’s survival by its almost single-handed manager, Betty Bennett, for the Hutt Valley Competitions Society. It is high time that others concerned with singing in Wellington took a share of the responsibility for the contest. Contests may not be favoured in certain quarters but they still represent, in a career that is based in public performance, an important way to gain attention in a frighteningly competitive scene.
Let us remember that Wellington’s own competitions society collapsed in the 1970s; since then the society in the Hutt Valley has filled the gap. It must not be allowed to stumble.
Soprano Nicola Holt and pianist Nicole Chao at St Andrew’s
Nicola Holt (soprano) and Nicole Chao (piano) Songs by Thomas Arne, Schumann (Frauenliebe und –leben, Op 42) and Schubert; Ballade No 4 in F minor (Chopin)
St Andrew’s on The Terrace. Midday, Wednesday 19 August 2009
I missed the first two songs in this lunchtime concert, but was told that the two songs by Thomas Arne, from Shakespeare (‘Where the bee sucks’ from The Tempest, and ‘When daisies pied’ from Love’s Labours Lost) were most delightfully sung.
But I was very happy to arrive just after the Schumann song cycle had started. Nicola Holt’s very musical and beautifully articulated singing created a wonderfully satisfying performance of the charming and varied Schumann cycle. Her voice has a purity and unaffected quality that captures the sadness as well as the ecstatic qualities of the songs. There was hope and a sunny anticipation in ‘Helft mir, ihr Schwestern’ that shifted movingly to anxiety in ‘Süsser Freund, du blickest’, deeply felt.
The piano kept drawing attention to its major role in the songs, reflecting with rare sensitivity their subtle mood changes.
So it was fitting that the recital gave solo space to the piano, with Nicole Chao’s playing Chopin’s fourth Ballade. There was a carefully hesitant start, as much as to say, ‘dare I tell you this tale where distress and ecstasy alternate?’ Her left hand explored the story’s many facets with confident rubato, sometimes of considerable boldness. Chao’s sense of high romanticism was rewarding, producing impassioned playing towards the climax, with an extended, dramatic pause before the coda, which did become slightly muddied.
Nicola Holt then returned to sing three favourite Schubert songs: Auf dem Wasser zu singen, ‘Du bist die Ruh’ and Seligkeit.
Beautifully as these were sung, they never recaptured the exquisite refinement and emotional adventure that she expressed in the Schumann song cycle.
It was a delight that a singer, occasionally, dares to include well-known songs in a recital of this kind. Programming concerts seems to have become too much a matter of proving one’s ability to tackle the unusual, to expand the audience’s musical experience for their own good.
This tendency could lead to those songs that the older generation has grown up with, when there was nothing shameful about performing well-known songs, becoming the unknown songs before long.
It’s good to reflect that music familiar to us is new to the younger members of the audience, and so a part of every concert should be devoted to such music.
NICOLA HOLT – Song Recital
(with Nicole Chao – piano)
An alternative review by Peter Mechen
Nicola Holt (nee Edgecombe) thoroughly delighted her St.Andrew’s lunchtime audience, delivering a most attractive programme with a singing voice as bright, open and engaging as her platform manner. I had most recently encountered her as the soprano soloist in the Orpheus Choir’s St John Passion performance, in which she sang with a similar openness and clarity, and was pleased to be given the chance to hear her perform in a more intimate and unencumbered acoustic. With pianist Nicole Chao proving a sensitive, responsive partner from the outset, the singer opened her programme with two songs by the English composer Thomas Arne, each a setting from Shakespeare, and capturing in each case the winsome out-of-doors effect that the words suggest. The second song, “Where Daisies pied” from the play “Love’s Labour’s Lost” was notable for some lovely bird-call sequences, whose effect was almost antiphonal in terms of differing colour and dynamics.
Schumann’s song-cycle “Frauenliebe und Leben” (A Woman’s Love and Life) is well-known for several reasons, among them the currently unfashionable sentiments of the poetry concerning women’s dependence on men in stereotyped relationships. Fortunately these politically correct strictures haven’t prevented performances of the work, whose heartfelt fusion in words and music of both ecstasy and tragedy within a human relationship for most people transcend any such societal polemic. This was a lovely performance – Nicola Holt’s voice nicely encompassed the soaring quality of the first song’s lyrical outpourings (Seit ich ihn gesehen), and emphasised the upward-thrusting strength of the following Er, der Herrlichste von allen, though she chose not to attempt the ornamentation at the concluding line of each of the principal theme’s verses, robbing the music of some of its wild ecstasy but compensating with her steadiness. Her word-painting in Ich kann nicht fussen gave an urgent, elfin and volatile flavour to the quickness of the girl’s feelings, the perfect counterweight to her reverential Du Ring an meinem Finger. Nicole Chao’s playing gave sensitively alert support in all but one or two of the more extrovert passages – for example, I thought the piano too reticent in places along with the singer’s ritualistic splendours and joyful energies in Helft mir, ihr Schwestern, though the song’s brief concluding processional postlude was nicely done. The beautiful Süsser Freund moved easefully from its tenderly floated opening line through the central section’s animations and back to its beginning with even more breath-catching rapture; and the contrasting exuberant, almost desperate happiness of An meinem Herzen, an meiner Brust made the shock of the final Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan all the more telling. Holt’s singing was here stoic and composed, internalising the tragedy of the beloved’s death, keeping emotion away from the visceral realms, and letting the piano round off the story with its recapitulation of the themes from the work’s opening song. I thought this an extremely fine performance from both artists.
Nicole Chao played Chopin’s Fourth Ballade as a kind of instrumental interlude, though in terms of musical substance and interpretation, the performance kept the musical juices well and truly flowing throughout. Her playing sensitively caught the “song on the water” aspect of the opening pages, though she exhibited surprising volatility (hardly in evidence during the Schumann song-cycle) in the development section, with perhaps too much pedal used at the climaxes on this occasion, the half-empty church acoustic muddying the music’s textures. From the main theme’s canonic treatment onwards, which was nicely shaped, Chao reined in the music more, with clearer control of the swirling figurations; and waited until the stormy coda before once again pulling our her biggest guns, the ending slightly splashy, but very exciting.
Nicola Holt returned for three Schubert lieder, a beautifully differentiated Auf dem Wasser zu singen with subtle intensifications and variations of mood throughout, a heartfelt, slightly effortful, but properly ardent Du Bist die Ruh, (so sublime but so fiendishly difficult!), and to finish, an engagingly joyous Seligkeit, capturing the music’s “schwung” with keen, brightly-focused high notes, and wonderful gaiety throughout.
All in all, a most rewarding , heartfelt and entertaining lunchtime offering from two very fine artists.
Aivale meets Leontyne ‘n Ella
Leontyne ‘n’ Ella: two legends, one voice
Aivale Cole (soprano) and David Wickens (piano)
Town Hall, Thursday 16 July 2009
Winning the Lexus Song Quest propelled Aivale Cole towards a career in England, and the money will help. But it takes a lot more and so this concert was a ‘benefit concert’ in all but name (see www.aivale.com).
Eight big opera arias in the first half (Leontyne Price), and ten (including an encore) jazz and Broadway items in the second (Ella Fitzgerald).
Aivale made her dramatic entrance with the two arias that clinched the Song Quest: Rintorna vincitor from Aida with every ounce of anguish at the hideous dilemma she is presented with at the opera’s start, and Es gibt ein Reich from Ariadne auf Naxos, where Ariadne not just pines for but demands death, her voice leaping huge, spine-tingling intervals with pin-point accuracy, commanding the entire hall with her ferocious emotion.
So it continued, with a self-pitying Vissi d’arte (Tosca), a violence, suppressed with white-knuckled rage in Elvira’s Mi Tradi from Don Giovanni, and the fierce loyalty that Fiordiligi swears in Come scoglio (Cosi fan tutte) like I’ve never heard before. And the opera section ended, not with the usual pretty Summertime from Porgy and Bass, but the despairing My man’s gone now.
The second half began as she walked up an aisle, for a triumphant performance of what is little more than a ditty: A Trisket a tasket (though an Ella one, to be sure). It became a hilarious party piece, with the help of pianist Wickham. She threw herself into Cole Porter’s Too Darn Hot, rauchiness nothing daunted; I loved her voluptuous low notes in the Arlen/Mercer Come rain or come shine; the comic flair, brilliantly understated, in To keep my love alive and her relishing the verbal wit of It’s delovely – another Porter classic.
Her pianist David Wickham accompanied with a rare sympathy, his notes planted exquisitely, a fraction before or after Aivale’s. But it was surprising to realize that the odd resonance in the piano was the result of the quite unnecessary amplification.
It was more acceptable in the second half which was the province of Ella Fitzgerald’s repertoire, where Aivale too used a microphone, though it actually constricted and nasalized her vocal quality. The unthinking use of amplification for popular music of all kinds always seems to me a sad succumbing to the uncultivated tastes of the young and the unlettered: Aivale put it aside for I had myself a true love, her last song, and it was fine.
A great audience – the hall three-quarters full – celebrated her rise and vociferously wished her success.
(this review was printed, little changed, in The Dominion Post)
New Zealand School of Music Classical Voice Students
Music by Rossini, Debussy, Finzi, Mozart, Harris, Head, Messiaen, Schumann, Menotti, Donizetti
Rachel Day, Rose Blake, Issac Stone, Sophie Kemp, Laura Dawson, Imogen Thirwall, Michael Gray, Olga Gryniewicz
Accompanist: Emma Sayers (piano)
St.Andrew’s on-the-Terrace, Wednesday, 20th May
Recitals such as these can amount to less than the sum of their parts if not organised and prepared for well; and the announcement at the concert’s beginning that several of the students had colds as a result of excessively wintry weather didn’t do anything to lift expectations of what was to follow to any great extent. However, what we should have taken into account was the enthusiasm and sheer determination of these young singers to make the most of what this concert offered them; and in fact the listening experience was packed with interest and intensity due to every bracket of songs being that particular vocalist’s chance to shine.
Rachel Day had the responsibility of beginning the recital with two songs by Rossini, from a set of three called “La regatta veneziana”, describing the scene at a Venetian gondola race, during which a girl excitedly encourages her lover, both before and during the event, to try his best to win. Her “salty tang” timbre admirably suited the songs, as did her engagingly focused “out-front” projection, putting across plenty of tumbling warmth and enthusiasm, and finding her high notes well. The two Debussy songs that followed were delivered with contrasting subtlety and atmosphere by Rose Blake, “Clair de lune” demonstrating a nice sense of the song’s shape, and “Fantoches” (Puppets) confidently and entertainingly suggesting storytelling abilities.
Isaac Stone was possibly one of the sufferers referred to at the concert’s beginning, as he seemed not to be able to project the lower tessitura of Gerald Finzi’s “Come Away, Death”, although the lighter, more lyrical episodes were nicely shaped, and the expressive points were well noted. “Who is Sylvia” exhibited a similar lyrical sensitivity. Sophie Kemp overcame some nervousness to sweetly deliver Barbarina’s “hankerchief” aria from Mozart’s “Figaro”, and relaxed somewhat into Ross Harris’s setting of Bub Bridger’s “The Swans”, confidently enunciating the meaning of her words.
Laura Dawson’s bracket of Michael Head’s songs was most impressive, her authoritative singing able to make her softer notes “tell” as significantly as her fuller declamations, and her interpretations of each song capturing a unique atmosphere with subtly-applied variation of emphasis and colour (supported by some superb playing from Emma Sayers). After “The Gondolier” came “Rain Storm”, whose opening notes were delicately-coloured and sensitively placed – the singer survived a slight voice-discolouring on the first of two high reaches towards the end, but beautifully managed the second one – altogether, these were a memorable pair of performances. Different, less imposing, but as authoritative in a more whimsical manner was Imogen Thirwall’s singing of Messiaen’s Trois Melodies, varying bright and subtle tones and using face and gesturings well to convey the quizzical sense of “Pourquoi?”, then relishing the wistfulness of the reflective “Le Sourire” (another beautiful accompaniment from Emma Sayers), and the drama and resignation of the final song “La Fiancée Perdue”.
Michael Gray’s ardent, thrusting performances of three of Schumann’s “Dichterliebe” songs were also a highlight of the concert, the first “Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen” bright and eager, urgent to the point of vocal tightness, but with the interpretative heart in the right place; then a delicately-delivered “Hör ich das Liedchen klingen” and a forthright “Ein Jüngling liebt eine Mädchen” with lovely “pinging” notes at the beginning. Finally, Olga Gryniewicz demonstrated her communicative and theatrical skills with two operatic exerpts, the first being “The Black Swan” from Menotti’s spooky “The Medium”, sung with elegant phrase-turnings and nicely-shaped notes, if a bit monochromatic in colour during the middle section, though with fine ardour and a confidently floated high note at the aria’s conclusion. Then, to finish, we were treated to Norina’s cavatina “Quel guardo il cavaliere” from Donizetti’s “Don Pasquale”, the opening lyrical and confident, the line drawn strongly, the ensuing coloratura nicely ‘sprung’, warming up as the music dances onwards, and enabling the singer to triumphantly negotiate without mishap the high work at the end – impressive enough!
Very, very great honour and ample plaudits to the participants on this occasion, for giving us a wonderful concert.