Tag: vocal

Demanding song recital reflects more ambition than accomplishment

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

‘The Story of the Birds in the Trees’
William McElwee (baritone) and Heather Easting (piano)

Fauré: Dans les ruines d’une abbaye, Op.2 no1; Les berceaux, Op.23 no.1; Clair de lune, Op.46,no.2
Howells: King David
Schumann: Dichterliebe Op.48

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday, 27 June 2018, 12.15pm

It is not often that I attend a lunchtime concert at St. Andrew’s and come away disappointed, but that was the case this time.  I am fond of Fauré’s songs and deeply devoted to Schumann’s Dichterliebe.  But this time I could not say I was enchanted by what I heard.

The first song went well.  The second, like a number later on, was perhaps a little low for William McElwee’s voice, in places; the low notes were not mellifluous.  French language was well- pronounced.  ‘Clair de lune’ is a delightful song.  But the singer’s tone was a little harsh at times, and there was a lack of subtlety.  I was reminded of what I heard an adjudicator of a singing competition say once: ‘Chew the words’.

Heather Easting’s piano accompaniments here, and throughout the recital, were splendid, with good variation of tone and dynamics suited the words.  A good feature of this concert was that applause came only at the end of each bracket.  Maybe there was an instruction to the audience about this before the singing began; I was a little late, and missed any pre-concert announcements.

Another excellent feature was that the translations of the songs were printed in the programme, and the names of the poets set by the composers were printed.  Too often they are not given credit.

It was not always easy to catch the words of the Howells song; being in English they were not printed in the programme.  Sometimes here, and again in some of the Schumann songs, the singer was a little under the note; not badly flat, but not right on pitch.  Tone and timbre needed to be varied more.

Perhaps Schumann’s Dichterliebe was too tough an assignment.  The first song speaks of love, desire and longing, but I did not hear these sentiments in the voice part – no excitement or surprised joy.  The second song is one of tears and sighs, but here it seemed to have the same tone and expression as the first one.

The third song is faster, and here some excitement crept in to express feelings.  There was  subtlety in the fourth, (‘When I look in your eyes…’).  The next song should have conveyed breathless anticipation and joy, but I could not hear those emotions.  The great ‘Ich grolle nicht’ is a powerful, dramatic song, about the lover not bearing a grudge although the object of his love appears to have turned against him.  The low notes were too low for the singer to be able to provide them with any expression.  I could not hear any tension or drama – it was too plain and unvarying, but improved by the end.  Another singers’ aphorism I have heard is ‘Do something with every note’.

Throughout, the German language was pronounced well.  The 11th song (‘A youth loved a maiden..’) was livelier, musically, but the voice lacked animation.  The following song (on a sunny summer morning…) needed a calm tone.  The piano accompaniment was exquisite, not least in the lovely postlude to the song.  The 13th  (‘I wept in my dream…’) revealed the  attractive high notes of the singer – they were pleasant and strong.

The 14th song (‘I see you every night in dreams’) had a beautiful piano accompaniment.  The penultimate song suited McElwee’s voice better and sounded fine.  The final song had more character to it and showed off again the singer’s good high notes.  The extended piano postlude was glorious and gentle.

This song cycle is one of the plums of the vocal repertoire, but the fruit here were unripe.  It is emotional and dramatic, and these characteristics needed to be revealed in the voice.

 

Harmony of the Spheres in tandem with life on earth – Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) from Baroque Voices and instrumentalists

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Loemis presents:
A Winter Solstice Offering in Medieval Song and Dance

Harmony of the Spheres
The music of Abbess Hildegard von Bingen

Baroque Voices, directed by Pepe Becker
Pepe Becker, Jane McKinlay, Virginia Warbrick, Milla Dickens, Andrea Cochrane, Alexandra Granville, Toby Gee
Instrumental Ensemble
Warren Warbrick (nga taonga puoro), Pepe Becker (shruti-box), Gregory Squire (medieval fiddle), Robert Oliver (rebec) Laurence Reece (drums, bells, shruti-box)

Hall of Memories, National War Memorial
Buckle St., Mt Cook, Wellington

Sunday 17th June 2018

More of a spiritual/aesthetic experience than merely a “concert” was Baroque Voices’ evocative and atmospheric presentation “Harmony of the Spheres”, triumphantly bringing together singers, instrumentalists and audience to share and delight in the joys of exploration, wonderment and celebration wrought by the music of the twelfth-century Abbess Hildegard of Bingen. No more ambient and timeless sounds than those of Hildegard’s music intermingled with both contemporaneous dance rhythms and the haunting strains of a taonga puoro instrument could have been conceived – and no better venue for such a venture in the capital could have been chosen than the Hall of Memories at the National War Memorial in Mt.Cook’s Buckle St., beneath the Carillon.

Added to this for we listeners was the sense of participation in a living form of ritual – we were encircled by the musicians, the seated instrumentalists in front, and the singers standing at the sides around the auditorium, the latter moving one position clockwise in between each of the sequences and chants, and in doing so enclosing us in a diaphanous web of vocal sounds, almost as if we were part of the choir itself. Of course the nature of such isolated voice-placements resulted in the unison lines acquiring for a number of reasons more of a soft-focused communal roundness throughout, instead of the ensemble’s usual sharply-etched homogeneity of sound. It seemed almost as if we were privy to worship carried out by an actual community of nuns and novices, as bent on connecting with the spiritually expressive content of the words they sang, as concerning themselves with a certain quality of sound.

I had previously heard Hildegard’s work performed in concert, occasionally by Baroque Voices themselves, though invariably in tandem with the work of other composers. Having her music presented with the kind of focus and historical context provided here couldn’t help but make a profound impression on anybody’s sensibilities, a feeling of tapping into some kind of transcendental creative force that simply couldn’t be denied or thwarted by earthly impediments – a notion which was afterwards reinforced by my reading Pepe Becker’s informative programme-notes, which included a brief biography of the composer, of the kind that makes one realise how puny one’s own achievements in life really are!

Included also in the printed programme (which I didn’t get to read until after the concert!) were translations of the original Latin texts of the Hymns, which were also written by Hildegard! What Pepe Becker calls her “expressive and rapturous” imagery in places predates that of the English metaphysical poets writing five hundred years later, in terms of physical and erotic imagery – the Antiphon “Hodie Aparuit”, for example, which speaks of the Virgin’s womb opening only for the Son of God – “from it gleams within the dawn the Virgin Mary’s flower”. The body for Hildegard is at once the holiest and most responsive of sanctuaries, as these words in praise of the third-century Saint Eucharius’s holiness show – “In your mouth Ecclesia (a female personification of the Church) savours the old and the new wine which is the potion of holiness”. There’s an exhilarating freedom about such use of imagery  – “from your womb, O dawn, has come the sun anew!” – which disarms with its wholeheartedness and candour.

Complementing the vocal performances were the efforts of the instrumentalists whose distinctive tones played their part in evoking the presentation’s duality of medieval ambience and timelessness. An extra dimension of place was wrought by taonga puoro player Warren Warbrick’s plaintive bird-like realisations on the pūtōrino, whose sounds began the presentation proper, then alternated utterances with the voice of Pepe Becker in “O Ignis Spiritus”, and the vocal ensemble in “O Euchari”. Both vocal and pūtōrino timbres drew from one another a common sense of something spiritual and extra-terrestrial, a girdle of sounds whose combination seemed to readily encompass the entirety of the globe.

Earthiness of a different order pervaded the contribution of the remaining instrumentalists, a quality readily conceded by the excellent violinist Gregory Squire, in his note about the presentation’s instruments-only contributions – he remarks that while song was a “constant” in the church, “dance was, more often than not, the preserve of the illiterate rabble”. As well as contributing these sequences the instrumentalists also provided discreet accompaniments to some of the singing, usually in the form of “drone-like” pedal notes from the string instruments, or occasional bell-chimes, with the aforementioned pūtōrino making its voice heard occasionally. There was also a kind of “squeeze-box” called a shruti-box whose delicate whisperings  nevertheless created telling ambiences.

But it was the dance music which made the most enduring impression, the players seemingly drawing from the earth itself the necessary energies and articulations that made this vigorous music “speak”. We heard quick music whose sequences were called Trotto (Latin – trottare – to trot) and Ghaetta (an Italian city’s name, and also Spanish for bagpipes), as well as a more extended sequence called “Lamento di Tristano”, a musical representation of the search for the Holy Grail, which contained various narrative references in the form of different tempi and moods for different parts of the piece. Both Robert Oliver (rebec) and Laurence Reese (drums, bells) hove to with a will in tandem with their violinist, generating as lively and visceral a response in the energetic sequences as, were, in contrast, their contributions to the slower pieces delicate and thoughtful.

Altogether we were transported by the sounds and their realisations to a time and place in keeping with a more natural order of things, our sensibilities delighting in the juxtapositioning of the sacred and profane, and marvelling at the ease and flow of co-existence between the two. It was part of the genius of Pepe Becker and her collaborators that such disparate elements as the creative genius of Hildegard of Bingen, popular medieval dance music and timelessly ambient sounds from Aotearoa were brought together with such memorable and resounding effect.

 

 

 

 

 

Lawrence Renes, NZSO and Simon O’Neill in superb Wagner songs and monumental Bruckner 4th

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Lawrence Renes; tenor: Simon O’Neill

Wagner: Wesendonck Lieder
Bruckner: Symphony No 4 in E flat

Michael Fowler Centre

Saturday 16 June, 7:30 pm

This subscription concert was advertised as ‘An Evening with Simon O’Neill’, obviously in the hope that the name of New Zealand’s internationally most distinguished singer would match that of the recently retired Kiri Te Kanawa. But it didn’t work as the auditorium was hardly half full. Nevertheless, O’Neill is indeed one of a small handful of leading tenors in the Wagner class. Sure, he doesn’t compete in the public mind with his contemporaries Roberto Alagna, Jonas Kaufmann, Juan Diego Florez, Josef Calleja, Rolando Villazon, because he has emerged as a superb Helden-tenor, the fach particularly associated with Wagner. But he has done much else, for example as Otello, Cavaradossi in Tosca in New Zealand, Papageno in The Magic Flute and symphonic tenor roles such as Mahler’s Eighth and Beethoven’s Ninth. Clearly, Wagner in Europe and North America now keeps him very busy; why on earth not here?

So I wondered whether the orchestra might better have programmed him in the real thing: in a couple of the great excerpts from the music dramas like Siegmund’s ecstatic, passion-driven episode in Walküre Act I, ‘Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond’, or the Prize song from Die Meistersinger, or ‘In fernem Land’ from Lohengrin.

One can’t help wondering why a certain Wagner passion that arose with the 1990 Festival production of Die Meistersinger, which had four pretty full houses in the Michael Fowler Centre, evaporated so soon; Auckland’s Flying Dutchman a couple of years later didn’t do well and that a wonderful, semi-staged, all-New Zealand-singer Parsifal twenty years later didn’t even get one full house.

So this concert might better have been ‘An Evening with Bruckner’, for that was both three times as long as the Wesendonck Lieder, and is a greater work.

Wesendonck Lieder
However, O’Neill’s performance of the little song cycle, even promotionally spiced with references to the possible love affair between poet Mathilde Wesendonck and the composer, beautifully sung as it was, hardly competed with the possible alternative of two or three excerpts from Wagner’s stage works.

O’Neill’s voice is much more than either a fine lyric tenor or a commending Helden-tenor; there is a remarkably warm, polished and simply beautiful quality that was immediately obvious from the first notes. His performances seemed to be fully sensitive to the meaning and the fervid emotional feel of the slender poems in the flavour of early 19th century German lyric poetry. All five songs are linked in mood and musical feeling, though it is the third, ‘Im Treibhaus’ with its clear relationship with the music in Tristan und Isolde that seems to make the strongest impression, and where O’Neill’s instinctive affinity with Wagner’s musical complexion was present.

Its generous setting allowed more time for the mood to unfold that in ‘Schmerzen’, the next song, which moved through its text more brusquely, sounding more Lohengrinish than Tristanean.

And in the last song, ‘Träume’ (the programme note lost the umlaut) which, like ‘Im Treibhaus’, was marked by Wagner “study for Tristan und Isolde”, O’Neill created an uneasy, unsettled mood in a song that can be somewhat more sanguine in the hands of some singers, at least in its central passages. I had the unusual experience of having expected the last song to evolve more and in differing ways; not for the first time, I felt that Wagner might have made a more extended – indeed elaborate, Tristanish meal of it.

Even though Wagner only orchestrated this last song, they feel incomplete without orchestra. Felix Mottl orchestrated the others. There’s a 1976 orchestration by Hans Werner Henze which employs lighter textures, and observing fewer players in some parts of the orchestra, I had wondered whether that was used. But the orchestra tells me that Renes had simply reduced the string numbers.  For an account of the various orchestral arrangements over recent years look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesendonck_Lieder.

Bruckner 4th
Much as it was a pleasure to hear such a fine and idiomatic performance of these songs, the main fare was undoubtedly the Bruckner symphony. It did surprise and disappoint me that so few of my fellow citizens felt it important to hear this very approachable Bruckner symphony in live performance, especially, I assume, the second version which is quite a bit shorter than the first of 1874.  Perhaps a better known conductor might have made a difference, but I felt from the very beginning that in Lawrence Renes, here, was a man with a splendid grasp of the music’s demands. The biographical note made no reference to his major orchestral performances (a lot of opera however – odd when he’s here for an orchestral concert).

Not all symphonies create such an immediate feeling of expectancy, like the start of a much looked-forward-to trip. But that, to my delight, was the impression from the secretive opening horn solo; that restraint seemed to be prolonged since much of the first few minutes are in the hands of solo or duetting instruments over quiet tremolo strings. The atmosphere Renes created in the superficially repetitive first movement had miraculous characteristics of suspense, expectancy and calm, constructed on that rare, octave-wide motif that never out-lived its hypnotic power.

If the first movement was, as Bruckner instructed, ‘Bewegt, nicht zu schnell’, for 20 minutes, the true slow movement, though marked ‘Andante, quasi allegretto’, felt as if the rest of one’s life might fruitfully be absorbed by this rapturous music, and its 15 minutes or so seemed to be over far too soon. Renes’s approach was scrupulous, handling every detail as if his listeners were already in a state of trance or rapture. Here the weight rested with strings: violas and cellos, along with often quite exposed solo woodwinds, which seemed to carry its essence, even when the whole orchestra eventually became engaged, then subsided as they played the little dotted motif over and over.  I could understand the hesitant clapping at the movement’s end: I would guess it was from those who actually knew and loved it so well that this beautiful performance and its hallowed ending had moved them so profoundly.

So after more than half an hour of generally painstaking, meditative music, the Scherzo can seem as if Bruckner was simply responding to audience expectation of a brisk, even jolly, movement. But he gets it out of the way in about 10 minutes, including the charming little Ländler-like Trio section, led by clarinets and strings. It seemed, as always, a bit unexpected when the superbly polished trumpets and trombones of the orchestra which launched the Scherzo, return to punctuate its predominant string and woodwind filigree.

But the Scherzo has prepared the audience for a Finale of the traditional sort, in the kind of sonata form that is the usual first movement architecture. Yet the work’s limpid charm never abandons it, and the orchestra shifted from blazing brass-led fanfares to the most delicate passages where solo flute or horn for example flutters over shimmering strings with basses delivering a commanding beat.

Renes worked with the orchestra about seven years ago I gather, though I have no memory of having heard him conduct. He is an acolyte of music director Edo de Waart; I hope his return, very soon, can be arranged. Along with the chance to hear Simon O’Neill singing in his home territory, this was a superb concert.

 

Spectacular centenary concert for Leonard Bernstein from the NZSO

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Brett Mitchell with Morgan James – vocalist
Bernstein at 100

Three Dance Episodes from On the Town and two songs
Peter Pan: ‘Dream with me’,
On the Waterfront: symphonic suite
Candide Overture and ‘It must be so’, and ‘Glitter and be gay’
West Side Story: The Balcony Scene (‘Tonight’) and Symphonic Dances

Michael Fowler Centre

Friday 11 May 2018, 6:30 pm

Faced with an auditorium less than half full for a concert to celebrate a hundred years of one of the most famous (I carefully refrain from using ‘greatest’) composers and conductors of the 20th century, raised interesting thoughts. One was that I had expected about this sized audience; that, before I’d seen the NZSO offer of big ticket discounts.

I’ve no doubt that everyone interested in classical music and broadly defined popular music recognises the name Bernstein, and would agree that he was a famous and important figure. Name his best known music! Well, of course West Side Story, and, mmm… and some might add Candide, the two Broadway musicals and the ballet Fancy Free, and a few would have heard Chichester Psalms (Orpheus Choir about a year ago), or Mass, and there are three symphonies, aren’t there??? Who’s heard them? And the attentive might recall Orchestra Wellington playing a couple of pieces in 2013 (the Serenade after Plato’s Symposium and Fancy Free), and a brave concert performance in 2012 of Candide from Orchestra Wellington and the Orpheus Choir.

But he doesn’t conform easily to the usual characterisation of a classical composer. Where are the piano sonatas, the other operas, the chamber or choral music? And for that matter, why aren’t his Broadway musicals or his orchestral music, other than what was on this evening’s programme, familiar?

The Symphonic Dances from West Side Story hasn’t been absent from the Wellington concert halls. The NZSO under Miguel Harth-Bedoya played them in October 2012.

On the Town
The pieces from the Broadway musical On the Town of 1944 (a search in the Middle C archive shows the dance episodes were performed by the then ‘Vector Wellington Orchestra’ in July 2009) comprised the three dance episodes and two songs. They opened the concert and brought soprano Morgan James to the stage to sing ‘I can cook too’ and ‘Some other Time’. American conductor Brett Mitchell who I’d heard in a lively, Broadway-style interview on Upbeat at midday, entered and immediately launched into a startling performance of Dance of the Great Lover, the first of the three dances from On the Town which rather astonished me for the super-raunchy, trumpet-attacks from nowhere, then throaty trombones, cutting clarinets (two guest clarinets, David McGregor and John Robinson, in the lead positions I noticed). There was nothing symphonically genteel about it and Mitchell exclaimed at its end, “the NZSO can swing!” I have sometimes dismissed remarks from conductors tackling this genre of American music, that the orchestra has a great feeling for its brazen energy, the rhythms and attack, as if the entire band had served its musical apprenticeship on Broadway. Here such praise seemed totally justified.

Then Morgan James arrived, in the first of four different costumes, each capturing the spirit of the songs she sang. She sang two from On the Town: ‘I can cook too’ and ’Some Other Time’. Of course, she was amplified (I doubt that the 1944 performances were? – miked voices on Broadway only became common in the 1950s. She is a Juilliard graduate and had of course learned how to enrich and project her voice properly. Though she has clearly learned how to use the microphone to advantage, why not let us hear the excellent, unmanipulated voice? Why all the pains to reproduce what Bernstein actually wrote in his score for the orchestra but falsify the voice?).

James’s vocal colours and command of dynamic variety were indeed spectacular and the combination of authentic orchestral sound and a voice that has roots deep in the worlds of Broadway, jazz, most areas of popular music, as well as the traditions and techniques of classical music, was both arresting and flashy. The contrast between her two songs was vivid: the self-confident attack of the Broadway ‘belting’ style of her first song, and her ‘Some Other Time’ that expressed a casual acceptance of the impermanence of a fleeting, shallow romance. And her tour de force, ‘Glitter and be gay’ from Candide, was her parting number; though it was touchingly followed by her encore: ‘There’s a place for us’ from West Side Story.

Likewise, the orchestra created entirely different moods with the other two dances from On the Town: muted trumpets, more prominent oboes and cor anglais, alto saxophone and a great variety of highly polished percussion.

On the Waterfront
The much-played symphonic suite from On the Waterfront employed most of the same characteristics as On the Town with occasional striking solos – from principal horn, from timpani, from tom toms, vibraphone and xylophone, and frequent opulent chorale-like passages from trombones and tuba. Again, there were all the hallmarks of a fine classical composer, a brilliant orchestrator, and above all an orchestra and conductor with all the swing and swagger of popular Broadway.

The overture to Candide has become one of Bernstein’s best known pieces, a compounding of Offenbach and the Chabrier of L’étoile, not to mention Broadway itself. And rather unlike the low-powered performance of Berlioz’s Carnaval romain overture the next evening, the utterly quintessential comedy overture.

Between ‘It must be so’ from Candide and ‘Tonight’ from West Side Story Morgan James spoke interestingly about her musical values, and ended with an almost disembodied top last note.

West Side Story
The Symphonic Dances from West Side Story is a more standard concert work that captures the vitality, violence, anger and occasional calm lyricism (‘Somewhere’ and the Finale) of the score and the orchestra’s playing exhibited all those characteristics with tremendous energy and unflagging precision. Finger-clicking, a shrill whistle… Nowhere more vividly than in the riotous ‘Mambo’ where the only missing element was the dancers.  And then the calm after the long, grieving flute solo brought the suite to a lovely conclusion.

The clamorous applause belied the impression of a small audience.

Gaudete at St Mary of the Angels with Baroque Voices and Palliser Viols

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Baroque Voices and Palliser viols present:
Gaudete

Music by Anon, Tompkins, Byrd, Gibbons, Hume and Ross Harris

Baroque Voices (directed by Pepe Becker)
Pepe Becker, Rowena Simpson (sopranos), Milla Dickens, Alex Granville (altos) Richard Taylor, Phillip Collins (tenors), Isaac Stone, David Morriss (basses)

Palliser Viols (directed by Robert Oliver)
Lisa Beech, Sophia Acheson (treble viols), Jane Brown, Andrea Oliver (tenor viols), Imogen Granwal, Robert Oliver (bass viols)

St Mary of the Angels Church, Boulcott St.,Wellington

Wednesday 20th December, 2017

This was a beautifully devised and presented programme, appropriately given the name “Gaudete” as a kind of seasonal evocation, an enjoining spirit of joyfulness, as well as a reflection of the sentiments proclaimed by both words and music throughout the evening, such as with an eponymously-named work written especially for these musicians by New Zealand composer Ross Harris.

The term “verse anthem” is the English equivalent of the German “cantata” and the French “grande motet”, the form being originally for voices and viols or organ. In an entertaining and illuminatory note accompanying the concert’s programme, Palliser Viols director Robert Oliver elaborated on the development and popularity of the form, and its use by the greatest composers in England of the day, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and Thomas Tomkins.

We also learned about Oliver’s regard for the solo viol music of Tobias Hume, which the former had played and loved ever since he bought his first bass viol 50 years ago. Here, Hume’s work, though actually written for two instruments, demonstrated to us both a composer’s and a virtuoso performer’s skills. Hume’s advocacy of the viol even occasioned a brief war of words with fellow-composer John Dowland (who favoured the lute) over the respective merits of their chosen instruments, Dowland going so far as to having his views published!

Merely the act of entering and sitting within the breathtakingly beautiful interior of St Mary of the Angels at a time of day when the stained glass windows were still activated by the light served to give rise to feelings of well-being both spiritual and secular. We were thus disposed mightily towards the prospect of hearing “sweete musick” by the time the instrumentalists and singers appeared.

They came bringing tidings of great joy from various sources, the first a setting by William Byrd of verses by one Francis Kindlemarsh, “From Virgins wombe this day did spring”. Beautiful though this opening setting was I though the vocal line too low for Pepe Becker’s normally radiant voice, and thought that an alto’s tones would have better suited the melody’s range in each of the verses – the setting “came alive” in the sections enjoining us to “Rejoice, rejoice”, the ensemble’s voices inviting the words to exult and dance, which the viols also did of their own accord in an introduction to the second verse.

The accompanying Pavan and Galliard for six instruments gave the Consort a turn to demonstrate its skills, the sounds in this acoustic taking on a “bloom” which liberated any hitherto confined spirits and allowed them air and space, the gently-insinuating rhythms having both a solemnity and a carefree aspect which held us in thrall. After this, the Galliard enlivened our enchantment with its evocations of dance and gaiety and high spirits.

Following the relative restraint of Byrd’s “From Virgins wombe”, we were somewhat galvanized by the weight of tone from the whole ensemble at the beginning of Thomas Tomkins’ “Rejoice, rejoice and singe”, the voices sounding like a great throng in comparative terms. Each verse featured invigorating exchanges between individual voices, soprano and tenor in “For Happy weare the tidings”, and the line being tossed from singer to singer in “Blessed is the fuite”, the piece finishing after the men and women alternated between “For beholde, from henceforth” and “blessed, blessed virgin Marie”, before concluding on a tremulously sweet chord, to angelic effect.

Just as captivating was, I thought, Tomkins’ Fantasia for six instruments, the Consort of viols beginning with a modern-sounding phrase whose tonality seemed to shift uncannily, before a series of chromatic descents focused the strangeness of the terrain even further. I loved the sensation of simultaneous movement and stasis in the music, the energies gradually unlocked and pulsating, a sequence which led to a gorgeous overlapping figure building up and intensifying the textures towards the end – music of blood-flowing emotion!

Orlando Gibbons’ “Behold I bring you glad tidings” reiterated excited, hopeful voices at the phrase “glad tidings”, the joy occasionally leavened by seriousness at “A Saviour which is Christ the Lord” and purposeful repetition at “Unto us a Son is giv’n”. Then all was uplifted at “Glory be to God on High” with a great ascent, given rich weight at its base by the men’s tones – everything nicely controlled. Lovely playing by the Consort, both resonant and clearly-focused at one and the same time in this acoustic, brought us the Fantasia which followed, the music cleverly “fantastic” with lines both ascending and descending at once in places, and followed by beautifully “charged” withdrawals of tone into modal-like realms of the kind loved by Vaughan Williams.

In the wake of these iconic-like pieces came Ross Harris’s “Gaudete”, the fruit of the composer’s desire to write something for this actual concert, after having written separate piece for each ensemble previously. A tumult of voices and instruments at the beginning conveyed the excitement of the news of the Saviour’s birth, the cries of “Gaudete, Christus est natus” reiterating at intervals during the piece, providing some contrast with the relatively sombre “road journey” of the verses, at “Tempus adest gratia” (The time of grace has come), and later, “Ezekielis porta Claus petransitur” (The closed gate of Ezekiel has been passed through). I was given the whole time the sense of a journey from darkness to light, from ignorance to enlightenment, from fear to hope, the music’s trajectories conveying a kind of direction and purpose punctuated by revelations expressed with utter joy. I thought the work heartwarming and the performance exhilarating!

After the interval came one of those treasurable “Pepe Becker” moments, with music which admirably suited her voice – this was the anonymously-written 17th Century Christmas song “Sweet was the song”, an angelic soprano voice accompanied by a single viol, the sounds again given a certain bloom by the acoustic to memorable effect. Just as remarkable was the enchantment of four viols accompanying the song’s second verse, voice and instruments conveying an overall sense, in the sound’s pure quality, of something eternal.

Following these celestial outpourings the instrumental consort music of Tobias Hume brought us back to terra firma, but delightfully so – here, instead, were earthy, characterful tones, in places attractively nasal, while elsewhere the timbres were sweet and ingratiating. These were two duets whose titles – “Sweet Music” and “Musick and Mirth” – suggested contrasting pieces were in store, the first vocal in character, and the second dance-like. The performances’ rhythmic control and subtle variation of pulse was a joy, the trajectories breathing easefully at all times, while the accenting meant that one never knew what next to expect – razor-sharp tones were followed by full, rich vocal lines, the music moving easily and excitingly through eventful contrasts. The “Musick and Mirth” section had a gigue-like character at the beginning, one which seemed to “morph’ into something rather more four-square and even more ruminative, before suddenly accelerating! – the players splendidly put across the music’s exploratory quirkiness to wonderful effect.

The anonymous, carol-like “Born is the Babe”, was the perfect foil for the instrumental pieces which surrounded it, bright, melodic and meditative, with its final line “who cured our care by suff’ring on the cross”. Then, as with Tobias Hume’s piece, William Byrd’s Fantasia for six instruments was filled with imaginative touches, beginning wistfully as if day-dreaming, before gathering more and more tonal weight with the lines overlapping, with lots of “echo-phrases” for our delectation. Rhythms began to throw out accents, enlivening the textures, and leading us towards a joyful dance variation, before rushing to an exhilarating conclusion.

For us in the audience it all felt and sounded fun to perform, as did the same composer’s “This day Christ was born” with its “lively rhythms”, and its magnificent peroration, gloriously put across by the musicians, the voices reaching upwards with “Glory to God on High” and the concluding Alleluiahs. As a kind of “Christmas bonus” the group treated us to a repeat performance of Ross Harris’s “Gaudete”, even more resplendently given this time round – the Monteverdi-like energies of the opening declamations, the almost Sibelius-like rhythmic trajectories of the repeated instrumental figures accompanying “Tempus adest gratia”, denoting the irresistible forces of change and enlightenment, as “the closed gate of Ezekiel” was left behind, and the soaring vocal lines riding the waves of expectation, leading to a final, confident and joyful “Gaudete”.

It all left we in the audience feeling joyful and expectant, and with a sense of wonderment and thankfulness at music’s power of transformation, as well as gratitude to those who performed it all so splendiferously! – omnes laudate!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A flavoursome taste of the “Baroque” at the St.Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert Series

Posted on by Peter Mechen

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace Lunchtime Concert Series presents:
A Concert of Eighteenth-Century Chamber Music

Music by Georg Phillipp Telemann,
Johann David Heinichen, and Johann Sebastian Bach

Rowena Simpson (soprano)
Leni Mäckle (bassoon)
Calvin Scott (oboe)
Jonathan Berkahn (keyboards)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, 13th December, 2017

These four performers, a singer and three instrumentalists, provided for this concert a goodly range of musical expression inhabiting that style we loosely know as “baroque”. The programme was framed by works from two of the “giants” of the era, Georg Phillipp Teleman and Johann Sebastian Bach, and also contained a sonata for oboe and bassoon by someone whose name was unknown to me, Johann David Heinichen (1683-1729) , a composer whose relative present-day obscurity belies the fame he once enjoyed as “one of the three important “H”s of German music”, the others being , in the writer Johann Matheson’s opinion, Handel and Hasse.

We began with Telemann’s music, an aria from a cantata written for the first Sunday of the New Year “Schmeckt und sheet unsers Gottes Freundlichkeit” (Taste and see the friendliness of our God). I wish I had known this work before hearing it performed, as I’m sure I would have relished all the more the performance given by soprano Rowena Simpson and the ensemble – alas that one’s “baroque cantata-listening” rarely has the opportunity to extend beyond the stellar creative achievements of “you-know-who”, as there are obviously treasures such as this awaiting a resurgence of appreciation – ironic that Telemann’s music, so popular in its day, is now having to undergo a kind of process of rediscovery via performances such as these.

The church’s acoustic served the music well, ample enough but still bright and focused, a bias towards treble tones enhancing the music’s clarity. As with German baroque vocal music, the voice is really another instrumental line, here sung characterfully and with the twists and turns of the figurations given plenty of vigour, even in the most demanding, breath-testing of places (no alcohol involved!), and by the agile and articulate phrasings of the instrumentalists.

Even more curious as regards the ebb and flow of fame is the case of one Johann David Heinichen, as mentioned above, something of a celebrity as a composer and theorist in his day, and obviously worthy of reinstatement as regards reputation and his music. We heard a Sonata for oboe and bassoon whose four movements provided both entertainment and thoughtfulness in contrasting ways. First, an opening Grave reminiscent in places of Purcell brought forth liquid lines from Calvin Scott’s oboe, supported by confident, well-rounded bassoon figurations. This was followed by an Allegro that sounded rather more like a “concert of equals”, the melodic figures and runs shared and alternated, and the players beautifully reflecting each instrument’s timbral character in their phrasings – Leni Mäckle’s bassoon readily demonstrating, for example, its own unique expressive world as feelingly as its more ostensibly “romantic” partner.

The Larghetto which followed had a gentle, Siciliano-like rhythm, the oboe taking the melody with plenty of light-and-shade in the phrasings and the bassoon flexible and expressive in its accompanying figures. Finally, the concluding Allegro was a sprightly, oboe-led dance, with some tricky bass repetitions and runs for the bassoon – a true and rewarding partnership indeed!

Rowena Simpson then performed a soprano aria from JS Bach’s Cantata BWV 21 “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis” Bach himself was extremely partial to this Cantata, reintroducing it in revised versions on at least two occasions when applying for different cantorial posts. Bach’s conception is on a grand scale, taking as its subject the Gospel for the Third Sunday after Trinity, which contains the Parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:1-10). The soprano aria “Seufer, Thranen, Kummer, Not” (Sighs, tears, troubles and distress) uses a counterpointing oboe, and cello and keyboard (piano) obbligato, all of which here worked beautifully, the sorrowful oboe line working poignantly with the voice. The singer’s bright, engaging tones put the lines across to us with plenty of anguished feeling and focus, the slightly raw intonation of a couple of her notes enhancing the piece’s basic angst.

Jonathan Berkahn introduced the next item, a keyboard solo with the title “Pastorale in F”, which he played on the church’s chamber organ. He talked a little about the development of the “Pastorale” form, which was developed from the custom of the shepherds in areas around Italian cities and towns who came into the churches at Christmas time to play their musical instruments for the people worshipping before the Christmas cribs and mangers, in homage to the new-born Christ Child.

The piping style (or “Piffero”) in the first two movements imitated a drone bass and a bagpipe melody. (From this term comes “Pifa”, found in Baroque Christmas music such as Handel’s “Messiah” – and in a recent NZSO performance by conductor Brett Weymark, making splendid sense of the title by using a pair of oboes in that work’s “Pastoral Symphony”, despite Handel scoring the piece for strings alone!)

Jonathan Berkahn’s performance brought out lovely, gentle rocking rhythms at the outset, everything luminously-textured and beautifully “layered”, making an enchanting effect on the small organ. A bright-toned allegro second movement conveyed plenty of festive bustle, which contrasted with the third movement’s melancholy and solemn processional-like trajectories. Finally, we enjoyed a bright and cheerful outdoor dance, beautifully in effect and gorgeously registered, the repeat bringing heftier, even more celebratory tones, everything controlled with great aplomb.

To conclude the concert we were given an aria from the fourth part of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio “Flösst mein Heiland” (Does your name, My Saviour instill the tiniest seed….) – a splendid effect, the music steady and processional, with echo-effects at the ends of phrases, some of which were provided by Jonathan Berkahn on a recorder, in between his contributions at the piano. With singing that gracefully and easily filled out the spaces and worked hand-in-glove with the oboe and the ‘cello, besides the enjoyment to be had from the evocative echo effects, the piece made a suitably well-rounded impression. It brought the concert’s strands together in what I thought a satisfying and rewarding way.

After we had finished applauding the musicians for their efforts, a “surprise” presentation was made to the St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace concert organizer, Marjan van Waardenberg, on behalf of both audiences and performers over the years, intended as a tribute to her tireless work in facilitating such a varied and high-quality series of concerts at lunchtime for the delight of Wellington’s music-lovers during the previous decade.

The warm response of the audience to this tribute demonstrated the value and esteem these concerts have come to hold in the concert-going life of the capital.

Monteverdi again – at last! – The Fifth Book of Madrigals, from Baroque Voices

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Baroque Voices presents:
“The Full Monte “ (Concert 5)

MONTEVERDI – “Il Quinto Libro de Madrigali” (The Fifth Book of Madrigals)

Baroque Voices:
Pepe Becker (director), Nicola Holt (sopranos)
Milla Dickens, Toby Gee (altos)
Peter Dyne, Patrick Pond (tenors)
David Morriss (bass)

Robert Oliver (bass viol)
Douglas Mews (harpsichord)

Newtown Community Centre Theatre,
Newtown, Wellington

Sunday, 3rd December, 2017

Continuing with a concert series which began in 2011, Baroque Voices, led by the intrepid and perennially fresh-voiced Pepe Becker, performed for us on this occasion all but the final madrigal in Monteverdi’s “Quinto Libro” (Book Five), the last-named requiring a greater number of singers than the rest of the collection. The group has, sometimes, in these concerts, re-ordered the chronology of the works (Book Four, for example, was interspersed with accompanied madrigals from Book Seven), so as to give listeners a fuller idea of the range and variety of the composer’s invention. It could therefore be that the omitted madrigal from Book Five will suddenly “pop up” in another, fuller-voiced context in the series.

At the point of producing his Book Five of these madrigals, Monteverdi was putting revolutionary ideas into practice of a kind that earned him criticism from his contemporaries, not only as regards musical style but also content (for example, his madrigal “Cruda Amarilli”, featured on today’s programme, was condemned for its “crudities” and “licence” by a fellow-composer). He was certainly throwing down the gauntlet in front of traditional notions of propriety in vocal music by declaring that the words and their meanings had primacy, and the music took its cues from these – ‘the words the mistress of the harmony and not the servant”.

Our proximity to the singers, plus the venue’s lively and immediate acoustic, enabled us to relish all the more these characteristics some of Monteverdi’s peers found so questionable. In fact the marriage of texts and tones wrought by the Voices gave considerable pleasure to the ear throughout the concert, aided, of course, by access to the actual words via a splendidly-annotated and informative programme booklet. We could thus appreciate all the more the group’s explorations of shade upon shade of expression in places like the opening madrigal’s lament “amaramente insegni”(love’s bitterness) and towards the end of the piece, the resigned“I mi moro tacendo” (I shall die in silence”), the intensities obviously “too close for comfort” for certain of the composer’s fellows.

Amazingly, the last of the “Full Monte” presentations by Baroque voices took place no less than four years ago, giving the present concert something of a “prodigal child” aspect, an entity wandering in some kind of wilderness before finally returning home. Over such a period of time things obviously change and people come and go, to the point here where the group’s leader, Pepe Becker, was the only “voice” common to both occasions. Happily, the group’s overall standards of ensemble, intonation and stylistic awareness seemed as well-suited to the repertoire as ever – and I thought in fact, there was a freshness about the approach which suggested some kind of renewal of energies and purpose regarding the project as a whole.

As with the other concerts in this series, the musical riches were too many and varied to document in detail, requiring more of a thesis than a review to do so. I‘ve thus contented myself with relishing the effect of the whole and pinpointing a few particular moments which have stayed in the memory for reasons of impact and resonance. I should at this stage mention the sterling support given the singers by the continuo players, Robert Oliver (bass viol) and Douglas Mews (harpsichord), their playing exquisitely underlining the felicities of the singers’ realisations throughout.

Leading from the front, Pepe Becker’s voice seemed to me in particularly fine fettle, as pure, focused and flexible of tone as ever, able to “float” her lines with as much freedom as I previously remembered. She was well-partnered by fellow-soprano Nicola Holt, their combination producing ecstatic moments throughout the concert – for instance, some amazingly stratospheric singing from the sopranos at the opening of No. 5, “Dorinda, ah, diro….”, the rest finely-chiselled evocations of despair from all voices leading towards bitter resignation at “Sarai con la mia morte” (You shall be mine as I die).

These beautifully-gradated and –realised expressions of acceptance within grief linked the work to the following madrigal, “Ecco piegando” (Here am I…”), though startling with its plea to the lover to “wound this heart that was so cruel to you” (“ferisci questo cor che ti fu crudo”). Already, there was plenty of drama and depth of feeling generated by the opening of the third madrigal“Era l’anima mia” with its sombre depictions from the men’s voices of a soul on the point of farewelling life! And what theatricality at the point when the women’s voices brought “a fairer and more graceful soul” to bear on the scenario, the light illuminating the textures and leading towards that extraordinary extended treatment of the madrigal’s last line “Se mori, ohime, non mori tu, mor’ io? “ (If you die, it is, alas, not you who dies, but I).

Further resisting the temptation to construct a self-indulgent compendium of further on-going delights, I’ll instead concentrate on the performance of the final trio of madrigals, each of which highlighted particular singers’ qualities as well as presenting the group in a true and favourable sense. No.16, “Amor se giusto sei” (Love, if you are just) is a plea to Love itself to be “just”, in making the poet’s beloved properly appreciative of his feelings for her, rather than contemptuous and scornful. It was a chance for both tenor and bass to figure with significant solo passages, each taking his turn to floridly and impassionedly voice his sorrow and frustration at his beloved’s indifference to his protestations. Here, surely were the seeds of the new “operatic” manner about to take music by storm given some of their first expressions in these works; and each of the singers here relished the opportunity to “emote” in an engaging and theatrical manner.

The following “T’amo mia vita” (I love you, my life!) featured the men replying to the soprano’s opening statement, caressing the idea of “in questa sola si soave parola” (this single, gentle word”, expressing emotion with the utmost delight, and, later  declaring “prendila tosto Amore” (seize love quickly). The ensemble skillfully caught the music’s ebb and flow between impulsive energy and rapturous languidity, conveying to us a sensual enjoyment of the lines wholly characteristic of the composer’s output.

Concluding the concert was the last but one Madrigal from the Fifth Book, “E cosi a poco a poco” (And thus, little by little”), the ensemble detailed and demonstrative at the beginning with the two sopranos especially vibrant, preparing the way for the men’s declamatory “Che spegne antico incendio” (Whoever quenches an ancient fire”), the subsequent exchanges and interactions more declamatory and conversational than melodic, the operatic spirit again spreading its wings ready to take flight. A repetition of “Che spegne antico incendio” featured the whole group, and built most satisfyingly to a resounding conclusion.

Though audience numbers were disappointingly few, the concert’s glorious sounds resounded with as much splendour as if we had been in St Mark’s in Venice. One hopes that Pepe Becker and her Voices will get sufficient support to continue their journey, helping to bring this music and its composer to a rightful place in the endlessly detailed musical tapestry of music for the ages. How wonderful to have in Wellington musicians, singers and instrumentalists, of the calibre to be able to do this incredible music justice!

 

 

 

 

 

A polished and scrupulously studied recital by male vocal quartet, Aurora IV

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Aurora IV: singing Renaissance to 20th century music
Toby Gee (alto counter-tenor), Richard Taylor (tenor), Julian Chu-Tan (tenor, Simon Christie (bass)

Music by Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson, Byrd, Jean Mouton, Richard Lloyd, Lasso, Ludovico da Viadano, Poulenc, Tallis, Andrew Smith

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 22 November 2017, 12:15 pm

I’m fairly sure that this was my first hearing of Aurora IV, a male vocal quartet whose repertoire stretches from the 16th to the 21st century, though I have long been familiar with Simon Christie’s voice and recall hearing Richard Taylor in other groups, particularly The Tudor Consort.

One of the characteristics of the recital was the choice of words and music from widely separate eras. Thus the opening piece was a two-year-old setting of a hymn by 13th century Icelandic poet Kolbeinn Tumason. The programme took the trouble of spelling the Icelandic names using authentic letters, using the voiced ‘þ’ and unvoiced ‘ð’ which in English, of course, are left undistinguished by ‘th’.*

The modern setting of Kolbeinn Tumason’s Heyr himna smiður by Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson made strong references to early Renaissance music, which these musically literate singers captured very convincingly; it provided, for me, a chance to be highly impressed by the effective blending and dynamic uniformity of their voices, without in the least avoiding illuminating particular voices where called for.

The first, ‘Kyrie eleison’, of three parts of Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices followed. Here bass Simon Christie as well as male alto Toby Gee, emerged prominently, though the two tenors were obviously important in filling the rich polyphony. Neither ‘Gloria’ nor ‘Credo’ were performed here, and the ‘Sanctus’ and ‘Benedictus’ followed later: the former an interesting contrapuntal piece in which, again, the quality of each voice was conspicuous.

Tenor Richard Taylor seemed to take the lead at the start of the calmer, devotional ‘Benedictus’. The recital ended with the quartet singing the ‘Agnus Dei’, full of pain; till then I had not been particularly aware of second tenor, Julian Chu-Tan, as I was on the right while he faced left. But here I became more aware of him, slightly less robust that Taylor, but perhaps even more finely attuned to the character of the quartet as a whole which presented such a finely nuanced and spiritually persuasive presentation that it’s quite unreasonable to attempt to characterise individual voices.

To resume the order of the programme: Jean Mouton, one of the leading French composers of the 15th-16th centuries, his ‘Quis dabit oculis nostris’; in spite of my hesitation above, here were prominent and moving offerings by Taylor and Gee, in this beautiful lament on the death of his patron Anna of Brittany in 1514. It captured a uniquely idiomatic French style with integrity.

Then a modern English setting of a lyric by 13th century theologian Thomas Aquinas, ‘Adoro te devote’. The composer is Richard Lloyd, composed, as with the Icelandic piece, in 2013, and similarly embracing an authentic Renaissance sound, though with a melodic and harmonic character that rather gives away it more recent origin.

The variety of spellings of Lassus’s name (Orlande de Lassus, Roland de Lassus, Orlando di Lasso, Orlandus Lassus and many others) arises partly from his peripatetic earlier life, born in the Netherlands – in Hainaut, now in Belgium – travelled and worked in France and Italy, but eventually settled in Munich; contemporary of Palestina, Tallis, Byrd….

His ‘Matona, mia caro’ lends itself to a variety of approaches, sometimes by women, sometimes by mixed voices, and by large choirs; these singers adopted a lively, crisp rendition that stressed its exuberance and light-heartedness, even music to dance to. I’ve heard it sung in very differently ways, sometimes like a religious motet; Aurora IV carried the folk, onomatopoeic character ‘don don don…’ excellently.

Ludovico da Viadano who composed ‘Exultate iusti in Domino’, the words from Psalm 33, might be a relatively obscure composer, but his motet seems to be widely popular judging by the number of performances to be found on YouTube. It’s spirited, almost dancing in its energy, starting and ending in triple time, while the main central part is in solid common time. Here was another delightful late Renaissance song that should be popular with young choirs.

Poulenc seemed an abnormal phenomenon in the midst of Renaissance or pseudo-Renaissance song. Two of his ‘Four Prayers’ (Quatre petites prières de Saint François d’Assise) served to sharpen musical receptivity, though presenting a spirit that seemed ambivalent, outside the mainstream. Toby Gee introduced them. They were composed at Poulenc’s Loire Valley refuge, Noizay, in 1948. ‘Tout puisant’ (‘All Powerful’), the second of them, in somewhat ardent, laudatory spirit, was in a distinctively 20th century idiom, faintly coloured by an earlier style, vaguely Renaissance     not easily definable     . The third Prayer is Seigneur, je vous en prie (‘Lord, I implore you’); it presented itself with more sobriety, in a minor key, with a striking passage from Richard Taylor towards the end.

One had been waiting for Tallis in this company. ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments’ fulfilled the Tallis need, with its restraint, its sombre, exquisite tone, seeming to suggest that Tallis had found a balance between the religious conflicts of the age (it was published in 1560, just after Elizabeth had come to the throne, meaning an abrupt shift from the ruthless Catholicism of Mary).  A beautiful performance of a beautiful motet.

Another recent Biblical setting by Norwegian composer Andrew Smith (born in Liverpool, moved to Norway in his teens) picked up on a pattern common in the recital. I didn’t record remarks about the version sung here, which was based on an anonymous 13th century English motet, of words from Isaiah. Presumably, the striking, spare harmonies, infusing the recent arrangement, reflected the original setting (or was it wholly recomposed, in a sympathetic style?).

And it ended with the Byrd’s Agnus Dei which I touched on above, concluding an intelligent, seriously well-studied and polished recital of four-part polyphony.

 

* I was familiar with these Icelandic letters since they were used for the same sounds in Anglo-Saxon, which was a compulsory element in university English language and literature studies in my day. A paper in Icelandic, including readings in the sagas, some originating in the 9th century, but recorded from the 13th century, was an optional paper at master’s level. Further trivia: the Sagas, e.g the Saga of the Volsungs, and the Poetic Edda, were important sources for Wagner in the Ring cycle.

Entertaining concert, mixing symphony with jazz and a witty film score from Wellington Chamber Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Chamber Orchestra conducted by Justin Pearce

Mozart: Symphony No 25 in G minor, K 183
Mussorgsky: Songs from The Nursery ( with soloists; Janey MacKenzie and Luka Venter
Jazz standards: Chatanooga Choo-choo and Nature Boy, sung by Cole Hampton
Prokofiev: Lieutenant Kije Suite

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Sunday 24 September, 2:30 pm

One might have considered this an unorthodox programme, starting with a well-known Mozart symphony, ending with Prokofiev’s delightful Lieutenent Kije Suite and in between, songs by Mussorgsky and two jazz standards.

The Mozart symphony is known as the ‘Little G minor’ Symphony to distinguish it from the big one, No 40. But it became easier to distinguish after its arresting opening was used as the introduction to the fictitious, misleading film on Mozart and Salieri, Amadeus (based on Shaffer’s play). It’s unusual in being scored for four horns, as well as the usual strings and pairs of oboes and bassoons. The four horns proved something of a burden, as I had to assume, charitably, that there’d been inadequate time to rehearse. I even came to think that it might have been better to strip the horns back to two or to replace them with clarinets, or other instruments. However, some of the problem could well have been the unforgiving St Andrew’s acoustics.

Their fanfare-type opening was not a happy affair, and the accompanying strings were asked to play with excessive force, no doubt to balance the horns. Most of the later passages for horns were somewhat more restrained, but still problematic. Those elements apart, subsequent playing by strings and woodwinds was very nice and in all other respects the orchestra handled the score with considerable finesse; the subsequent movements, especially the Andante second movement, were very well played, with a charming, placid feeling.

Chattanooga Choo Choo
A set of songs followed, all arranged by conductor Justin Pearce: Chattanooga Choo Choo, made famous by the Glen Miller Band during the Second World War. Then five of Mussorgsky’s songs from The Nursery and finally a song new to me, Nature Boy which has a rather curious provenance.

The railway theme remains significant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a half million population city on the Georgia border. In keeping with the fame that the city derives from the song, there’s the fine Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum and a well preserved Terminal Station, now a hotel, though like most of the United States, there are no trains either in the city or intercity connections – how miserable for the visitor – even worse than New Zealand!

A big band was assembled for the occasion, the winds somewhat reflecting Glen Miller, though with only one saxophone. But we had strings, as well as trumpets, trombones, the four horns (now happy enough), plus a tuba. The amplified singer, Cole Hampton, was somewhat outclassed by the band, though I doubt whether it would have helped simply to turn up the volume. So the words, charming to any train buff, narrated a young man’s journey from Philadelphia through Baltimore and (North) Carolina, to meet his life’s partner at Chattanooga (at which one of the city’s several terminals?), were rather lost.  Pressed all my buttons: I enjoyed it.

The Mussorgsky of Boris Godunov doesn’t at once prompt thoughts of nursery songs, but these are a delightful, beguiling set that evokes childhood, demonstrating the composer’s multi-facetted genius. They were shared between soprano Janey MacKenzie and tenor Luka Venter; at once they created an intimate, slightly droll atmosphere, viewed through the eyes and ears of particular children. For some of the songs the orchestra proved rather too weighty though it might have been justified in the encounter with the beetle. Both singers involved themselves happily in the little tales.

The last song, again from the jazz world, was unfamiliar to me. Nature Boy was composed by one George McGrew who adopted the name eden ahbez, all lower case, e e cummings-style. Nat King Cole made it famous in 1948. I felt that, again, the orchestration was out of keeping with the subtle and atmospheric character of the song and my impression was rather supported when I read, in the usual source of information, that the arranger for Nat King Cole’s recording for Capital Records used flute and strings. In the context of jazz or pop music of the time it was unusual and an interesting discovery, for me.

Lieutenant Kije
To perform Prokofiev’s delightful Lieutenant Kije suite (drawn from the music for the eponymous 1934 Soviet film) was great idea. I doubt that I’ve heard it performed live before. My first hearing was as background music to a 1958 film, The Horse’s Mouth, based on the Joyce Cary novel, directed by Ronald Neame and featuring Alec Guinness. I’d have seen it shortly after its release and it immediately grabbed me of course, both on account of that characteristic British post-war, comedy film era, as well as its subject – a zany story of an eccentric artist; and the music.

I can’t help reproducing a quote from a website that I found, seeking to check my memory.

It’s by Ian Christie, Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College: “… [The Horse’s Mouth] sparkles with conviction and eccentricity—at least that’s how it struck this avid young provincial filmgoer, who had never been inside a pub, let alone heard any of Prokofiev’s music, in 1959. It stayed in my memory, but only later did I come to realize why the qualities that distinguish it are the very reasons that the film remains neglected by British film historians.” And later in the essay he describes the film : “…as part of an English tradition of revolt against cozy middle-class philistinism.”

Lieutenant Kije has, of course, also been used in many later films, but one’s first experience is usually the most memorable. By the way, its spelling doesn’t comply with normal transliteration from the Russian, Киже which would be ‘Kizhe’ – sounding as in ‘measure’; The ‘j’ is the letter used in French transliteration of the sound, as it had been first published in France.

The performance was surprisingly polished and re-created the character of the delicious music much more successfully than I’d thought likely from an essentially amateur orchestra. Right from the start, with a solo trumpet (Neil Dodgson I suppose) sounding from behind the scenes, I was aware of something special. The very particular orchestration was captured, and I have to express delight at the horn playing: it was as if the music’s eccentricity had inspired skills and a singular affinity. Double basses held the limelight for a few bars; the tenor sax struck the right tone and there were nifty remarks from the xylophone. Most striking of course is the sleigh ride – Troika – a term sadly, forever blackened by the harshness of the intransigent trio of torturers working their financial austerity, from the IMF, ECB and EU Commission of recent years. But the real thing transcends that unfortunate borrowing.

The performance was a small triumph for the orchestra and conductor, and a delight for the audience.

 

NZSM voice students in admirable and highly varied recital at St Andrew’s

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

NZSM Classical voice students
Emma Cronshaw Hunt, Nino Raphael, Eleanor McGechie, Garth Norman, Pasquale Orchard, Joe Haddow
Piano accompanist: Mark Dorrell

Songs and arias by Debussy, Fauré, Bellini, Schumann, Franchi, Dring, Mozart, Britten, Berlioz, Rachmaninov, Loewe, Lloyd Webber

St Andrew’s on The Terrace

Wednesday 20 September, 12:15 pm

We are at that time of the year, when music students are welcomed at St Andrew’s to given them some public exposure in connection with their end-of-year assessments. Here we heard six students at varying stages of their studies. Most of them had been seen in the past year or so in the school’s and other opera productions, particularly in the recent Cunning Little Vixen which had such a large cast of curious, minor characters.

Emma Cronshaw Hunt opened the recital with songs by Debussy and Fauré; her voice is attractive and seems produced with ease, though the ease tended towards some gentle scoops that detracted slightly, but they were certainly within acceptable bounds. In some quarters scoops, or portamenti, are anathema, but the technique has its place, when used tastefully. Her two songs were Debussy’s ‘Aimons-nous et dormons’ (modesty constrains a translation) and ‘Adieu’, which she sang in comfortable French, alive to the songs’ mood and meaning. In Fauré’s ‘Adieu’ there was a touch of sadness.

Nino Raphael sang one of Bellini’s gorgeous arias, ‘Vi ravviso’, from La sonnambula. He’d recently honed his opera skills as the Priest and the Badger in the Vixen. And last year he sang Leporello in Eternity Opera’s Don Giovanni. While I’d enjoyed those performances, here I detected slightly shakey intonation here and there. He followed with four short songs from Schumann’s Dichterliebe; though he caught much of the pithy characterisation and emotion, they were not, understandably,  invested with quite the intimacy and depth of feeling that the songs of the wonderful Dichterliebe cycle delineate. But that calls for considerable maturity.

Eleanor McGechie sang three songs in English: the first by New Zealand composer Dorothea Franchi – Treefall and then two by mid-century English composer Madeleine Dring whom I’d come across only last year in a St Andrew’s lunchtime concert. All three were approachable, written with a clear aim to entertain an audience, and McGechie knew how to present them in a lively and colourful way.

Garth Norman sang Figaro’s ‘Se vuol ballare’ in which he gained in confidence as it went, and then Britten’s ‘Seascape’ from From this Island. Britten can be given to accompaniments that are excessively detailed and harmonically clever and here was a case, where Mark Dorrell’s piano overwhelmed rather. But this was an attractive rendition nevertheless.

Pasquale Orchard has caught my ear several times, as Susanna in Eternity Opera’s Figaro recently, and most strikingly as the Vixen in the school of music’s Janáček production in July. ‘Le spectre de la rose’ from Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été, is a gorgeous song and I’d been very predisposed to enjoy it: I did for the most part, but Orchard’s voice in inclined to lose dynamic control towards the top and it interfered slightly with the dominant ‘spectral’ spirit of the music. However she navigated its sense and tone with great sensitivity. Her second song was early Rachmaninov: ‘O never sing to me again’ from Op 4. It was a little too loud at the start, and I wasn’t sure for some time what language she was singing it in, until certain distinctive syllables identified it as Russian. I sense that I’d have perceived that at once if the intensity of her voice had been modified a little.

Joe Haddow sang another Rachmaninov song: ‘When yesterday we met’, from Romances Op 26. His words were very distinct and even though my Russian is a bit rusty, the emotions were clear enough, and sensitively expressed. His control of tone and dynamics right across the range, are excellent.

I’m not very familiar with Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot. Haddow sang ‘If ever I would leave you’ which surprised me by starting in French (it’s from Lancelot, and showed how rusty my knowledge of the Arthurian legends is, too), but continues in another language and a familiar tune. Haddow performed it in authentic style.

Haddow stayed there and Pasquale Orchard then joined him to sing a duet: another ‘musical’ number, this one a French story but in English: ‘All I ask of you’ from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera. The two engaging young voices were vividly contrasted, but in a convincing manner.

The concert was an interesting way to get a different impression of promising young singers who have been more familiar recently in staged situations.