Tag: youth orchestra

Worlds of Music – Lilburn, Vaughan Williams and Mozart from the NZSM Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music presents:
MOUNTAINS AND MOZART

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS – Norfolk Rhapsody No.1
MOZART – Piano Concerto No.20 in D Minor K.466
LILBURN – Symphony No. 1

Xing Wang (piano)
Kenneth Young (conductor)
Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Thursday 1st October, 2015

So, what on earth has Mozart got to do with Douglas Lilburn? By a happy coincidence, the concerto (Mozart’s K.466) with which the brilliant soloist Xing Wang earlier this year won the NZSM Concerto Competition First Prize was again performed by her during this concert, to stunning effect. But alongside Lilburn? Mountains and Mozart?

Anybody who has read Lilburn’s beautifully-wrought treatise on being a composer here in New Zealand (first given as a talk at the 1946 Cambridge Summer Music School, and subsequently published as “A Search for Tradition” – Douglas Lilburn : Lilburn Residency Trust, 2011) will recall the sequence describing a journey made by the young composer on the night train northwards from Wellington, and his thoughts upon experiencing a clear, moonlit night’s view of the central North Island mountains on that journey and the vivid aromas of the surrounding bush country – particularly resonant are the words concluding his description……

At that moment, the world that Mozart lived in seemed about as remote as the moon, and in no way related to my experience.

It struck me, therefore, as a fitting kind of resonance from those words to have a concert which is part of the “Lilburn 100” centennial presentation we’ve been enjoying so much this year featuring his music cheek-by-jowl with none other than Mozart’s. And to add flavour to the situation, Lilburn’s work took the form of a symphony, constructed along the lines of principles known and used by Mozart in his own works of that genre. Rather than signalling a capitulation to any kind of un-New Zealand way of doing things, Lilburn’s treatment of and provision of content for symphonic form both acknowledged the precedents and instilled a genuine, home-grown flavour of newly-minted discovery to the sounds allied to the music’s structure.

Another, more direct connection to Lilburn and his music was provided by the presence of a work by Vaughan Williams at the concert’s beginning, the Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1. Readers who either attended the Wellington Chamber Orchestra’s concert of less than a fortnight ago, or read my subsequent review of the event, will recall that the Vaughan Williams Rhapsody and the Lilburn Symphony were played then as well (possibly creating a “shortest duration” record for the time between two public performances of any Lilburn Symphony by different artists!). Vaughan Williams was, of course, Lilburn’s composition teacher at London’s Royal College of Music.

So, by either chance or contrivance, the NZSM concert was flavoured with interlinks of various kinds between the items, themselves, of course, making a splendid programme per se. And what a beautiful job the players made, under Ken Young’s guidance, of the opening of the Norfolk Rhapsody!  I couldn’t help thinking, as the music unfolded via haunting strings and winds, how wide of the mark that oft-quoted jibe “the English cow-pat school” is in many cases, particularly in relation to Vaughan Willliams (one also thinks of Peter Warlock’s dismissive comment  “a cow looking over a gate” regarding the older composer’s work in general).

Here, the melancholic beauty of the opening, with the strings and winds stealing in from afar, and welcomed by harp, lower strings and clarinet, lost no time in building up the music’s intensities, richly-coloured by a beautifully-played viola solo. As the sounds of winds, brass and timpani dovetailed with the strings and Ken Young allowed the orchestral throttle some juice, the music galvanized our sensibilities, the strings taking on that “anguished” quality on also finds in the same composer’s Thomas Tallis Fantasia, with full-throated support coming from the brass and timpani at the music’s passionate extremes.

By contrast, the “sailor-dance” central section was great fun, having plenty of swagger and roistering intent, before the jog-trot rhythms are effectively squared off amid swirling string-tones intent upon returning us to the opening, the brass managing a beautifully-voiced farewell reminiscence of the “dance” as the mystery of the piece’s opening surged softly backwards – so finely-controlled, and with the sounds beautifully floated by all the players. No cow-pats, and no cud-chewing eye-ballings over wooden gates – instead, a treasurable evocation of different kinds of ecstasies, some of them lump-in-the-throat, thanks to the beauty and focus of the playing.

It’s possible to feel that Douglas Lilburn may have been a little hard on Mozart’s music in suggesting its essential remoteness from certain aspects of the New Zealand landscape, though it would be fair enough to consider that the latter’s D Minor Piano Concerto K.466 (the work next on the program in this concert) is more about the world of the opera “Don Giovanni” than anything else. However, I could imagine certain Adagio movements from other works like the Wind Serenade K.361 wouldn’t have gone amiss as an ambient backdrop to moonlit mountainous slopes amid native bush – and if grandeur was wanted, the opening of Symphony No.39 would do very nicely, there being plenty of majesty and upward thrust in that music (however, NOT in one of these so-called “authentic” hell-for-leather performances afflicted upon us during more recent times, I hasten to add!).

Still, the concert triumphantly achieved a coming-together of both composers’ worlds and time-eras, demonstrating that differences can happily co-exist and be savoured, when there’s a will. In fact Mozart’s K.466, together with the C Minor Concerto K.491, made the greatest impression on nineteenth-century sensibilities, which “connected” with the music’s dark urgency, stormy tones and volatile character, rather more than with some of the composer’s more rococo-like utterances. The works were, in fact, seen as a precursor of romanticism, and were both greatly admired by Beethoven.

At the piano was the 2015 NZSM Concerto Competition winner, Xing Wang, whose focused and totally committed performance seemed to me to wholly “own” the work. From where I was sitting (over to the right-hand side – I had no view of the soloist’s hands but was able to “read” the music in her face most enjoyably, as she played) the piano in this particular acoustic – a carpeted floor – seemed mellow-sounding almost to a fault, so that the soloist found it difficult to generate a truly assertive tone in places. Still, the exchanges with the orchestra had real tension and purpose, amid all those dark D Minor tones and syncopated rhythms! I thought the violins were occasionally inclined to “stretch” their phrasings a bit more than the other orchestral sections, but the effect amid Mozart’s tense, anxiety-ridden dovetailings simply added to the music’s danger, without ever letting chaos get the upper hand.

The first-movement cadenza, dynamic and Beethoven-like, allowed Xing Wang to bring out the instrument’s colouristic qualities, the concluding phrases excitingly matched by the orchestra’s attack at its re-entry, keeping the sombre mood. Pianist and conductor then kept the music moving during the opening exchanges of the slow movement, seeking to keep the tempo of a piece throughout, rather than romanticize the lyrical opening and over-dramatise the turbulent middle section. Only my critical conscience prevents me from commenting that I actually prefer the movement with greater contrast between the two “faces” of the music, however stylistically correct Xing Wang’s and Ken Young’s (and Mozart’s!) way with it all might have seemed to most listeners.

Most importantly, at this flowing tempi nothing dragged, and the strings’ phrasing of the melody had in places a most attractive lissome grace. Yes, some of the “surprise element” was lost, with the central section plunging in at the same basic pulse – but the winds did so well to keep their long-breathed lines steady throughout. I did feel the “return” to the opening couldn’t help sounding a little perfunctory at this speed – but there I go again! I think I missed being reminded of the ending of “Figaro” here, where the warmth of the opening’s return seems to engender a sense of reconciliation of characters in conflict, Mozart’s music tugging at one’s heartstrings as the slow movements of these concerti so often do.

At the finale’s beginning Xing Wang kept the music’s momentum steady rather than “breakneck” with her upward flourishes and rounding-off phrases, trusting in her ready ability to phrase and point the music to generate excitement. Ken Young and his players echoed her trajectories with beautifully-timed responses that caught a sense of things spontaneous erupting, the exchanges reflecting the enjoyment and exhilaration all around. After an assertive and exciting cadenza (which I didn’t know), the “coming out” into the radiance of the major key was a great moment, all sunshine and happiness after the journey’s shared travails.

Mozart having been given his dues, we thus came to the proper “mountains” part of the concert, Douglas Lilburn’s first-ever symphony, completed in 1949, and given its first performance by the National Orchestra under their conductor Michael Bowles in 1951. It was the first-ever performance of a symphony by a native-born New Zealand composer, and received a lot of attention of the “not bad for a New Zealand composer” variety, most commentators obviously cautious regarding their own abilities to make a judgement concerning a work by a fellow-New Zealander, though one notice discussed the work’s “shortcomings”, such as the “abstruse” and “discursive” principal themes. Critic Owen Jensen probably gave the work its fairest appraisal at the time, praising its “originality and vitality” regarding the themes, and their integration and working-out, while commenting that the symphony “contains nothing that is startlingly new”.

A remark rather more of the “seeing ourselves as others see us” variety came from British conductor Sir Charles Groves, who directed a performance with the National Orchestra on a visit here in 1988, and made the observation “Lilburn seems to me to have captured the natural genius of the landscape”. This attitude, which is where the mountains loom into significance, was largely borne out by Dr.Robert Hoskins of Massey University in an illustrated talk about the symphony given just before the concert’s second half began, and in which he made reference to “the nurturing forces of nature”, a statement in accord with what Lilburn himself called “the naive, generous country that gave one its joyous force.”

As I’ve mentioned before, this was the second performance of the work I’d heard within a fortnight, making amends for some long fallow periods of neglect. Lilburn’s Second Symphony has definitely found more favour with the critics, regarded as a less derivative, more home-grown manifesto of one creatively “standing upright here” and being counted – but the presence of this later, more monumental work ought not to deny us opportunities to enjoy the young composer’s exuberant energies in his earlier symphonic outing. After all there are plenty of similarly youthful works in the established repertoire which pay audible homage to older music without their effectiveness being compromised one jot.

Taking his immediate inspiration from Christchurch’s Port Hills, the composer immediately throws open the vistas at the beginning, everything taken in at a glance and straightaway acted upon by the music’s confident forward momentum – here, the opening trumpet call was clear and purposeful, the winds fresh and out-of-doors, and the strings athletic and vigorous, a mood celebrated by brass and timpani in no uncertain terms – a great opening from Young and his players! Their playing brought out both the majesty and the isolation of the scenarios, encouraging the lines’ occasional striking out on their own, evoking the skylarks’s songs, and demonstrating, in Lilburn’s own words, the “well-nigh bewitched” feeling of “that air so far up with that view before and that music above”.

Yes, there were energetic Coplandesque moments and Sibelian-like evocations of the processes enacted between air, land and water, but time and place nevertheless seemed securely set, here in this performance, the dying echoes at the end nicely-judged and resonantly-voiced. The second movement’s hymn-like ruminations steadily unfolded at a pace that allowed air and space but maintained the work’s overall momentum – conductor and players enabled the music’s amalgam of physical strength and ritualistic transcendence, unerringly building both outward and inner intensities towards a tutti of almost pantheistic splendour, before horns and violas quelled the strings’ anguish – how lovely, and elegiac an atmosphere was wrought at the end!

That wonderful unfurling of the textures at the finale’s beginning had its full effect, here, the composer seemingly drawing, however subconsciously, from Sibelius’s Tapiola in places, with dark, brooding string phrases and wood-sprites darting between the trees, though there always seemed more light and warmth than gloom in this particular wanderer’s heart. And though we also experienced great Oceanides-like swells from the strings, there were recognizably “Aotearoa” brass calls which drew us out from the darknesses, evoking thousand-ton building-blocks of majestic rock, the fanfares energizing the strings and similarly inviting our spirits to rejoice and dance – a great moment, reinforced by the lower strings’ climbing the heights to join with the other voices in the celebrations!

As it all unfurled at the finale’s beginning, so the music then suddenly called itself to order, and took stock of where it had come to, taking us along as well – those last pages of the work then built into a kind of consecration, a merging of spirit and surroundings, an expression of hope in our eventual achievement of oneness with our surroundings, and of a heritage that those “born in a marvellous year” will be able to claim as their own. In that sense, how appropriate it was for an orchestra of youthful players such as these to be able to give sonorous and assured tongue to this visionary message.

The Apprentice, La Mer, Ibert’s flute concerto and an enchanting francophone premiere from National Youth Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

NZSO National Youth Orchestra conducted by José Luis Gomez with solo flute, Bridget Douglas

Dukas: L’apprenti sorcier
Ibert: Flute concerto
Salina Fisher: Rainphase
Debussy: La mer

Michael Fowler Centre

Thursday 2 July 2015, 6:30 pm

The National Youth Orchestra has generally played a major symphony in the second part of its main annual outing (and this is its 56th year). They’ve included Mahler’s First and Seventh, Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and Fifth, Shostakovich’s Tenth, Rachmaninov’s Second, Brahms’s First and Second, as well as Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, Also sprach Zarathustra, many taxing concertos and other large and challenging works. Back in 2007, they played La Mer (I’ve only looked back a dozen years); and they played it again here.

This concert was conducted by José Luis Gomez, a young Venezuela-born, Sistema-inspired musician who has already made an impact in North and South America as well as in major European cities (Hamburg, Frankfurt, Liverpool, Stuttgart, Madrid…) in both opera and orchestral performance. Though he appears not yet to have worked in France, his programme was almost wholly devoted to French music (one can easily argue that a young composer like Selina Fisher, is essentially a disciple of the Debussyish, French tradition) which calls generally for a different and in some ways more difficult aesthetic approach to music.

New Zealand’s musical future is in good hands with the continued flourishing of this orchestra (and let’s not forget the youth orchestras in all the major cities of New Zealand), with major support from the Adam Foundation over seventeen years, as well as from the NZSO itself.

L’apprenti sorcier
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is not really a true representative of Dukas the composer. (I elaborate some thoughts about the contrasts between the classicists and the impressionists and the place of Dukas in the aesthetic quarrels of the period at the end of this review).

But Dukas was a skilled orchestrator and a gifted composer nevertheless.
It’s a brilliant composition, fully deserving its real popularity. The woodwinds’ opening was careful and wonderfully refined, and the strings, given their full orchestral complement (16, 14, 12, etc, -approximately) produced a warmly confident chorus, solo flute emerged with a big romantic vibrato and bassoons too came out of the shadows that usually envelop them.

Though there were occasional partings of the ways in ensemble, the conductor inspired enthusiasm and energy that overcame all; the brass was emphatically present in the chaotic climax as the apprentice loses control of the situation, to complete an exciting performance of this popular piece.

Ibert’s Flute Concerto
The orchestra was then thinned out to chamber size for the fastidious but animated flute concerto by Ibert, who was one of several French composers born around the 1890s who did not join Les Six (who have been celebrated this week as RNZ Concert’s ‘Composers of the Week’).

Though I suppose it would be nice for a soloist with the orchestra to be a current or recent player with them, the selection of NZSO principal flute Bridget Douglas, who moved through comparable paths in New Zealand, beginning in Dunedin, was inspired; at the time she might have been a member of the Youth Orchestra, she was probably studying on scholarships overseas. However both her demeanour and performance display an exuberant youthfulness.

Her acumen clearly elevated the orchestra’s performance in what is certainly one of the most familiar and successful flute concertos. The playing hardly touched the ground in the first movement, capturing what can only be described as the quintessential sound of French flute music, leading the orchestra in high risk-taking exploits (remember this is the composer of the vivacious Divertissement). In the sharply contrasted, sombre, legato Andante, the light seemed to have dimmed, exposing the orchestra’s, and the soloist’s, expressive talents as they explored Ibert’s command of a more thoughtful strain of 1930s French music, absorbing both the neo-classical and the satirical, flippant character that post-first world war music had acquired.

The start of the boisterous and memorable third movement proved a bit tough for the horns, but they were vindicated later. Its jazzy rhythms, decorated with the most hair-raising flute passages are interrupted twice with pensive episodes, allowing breathing space, and for unexpectedly lyrical playing from the flute, often in charming duet or trio with other wind instruments or the strings.

Salina Fisher’s commission
The tradition of commissioning a piece from a young composer has become established. This year the composer, has, as violinist, been an orchestra member since 2010 and was concertmaster in 2012/13; she is the orchestra’s Composer-in-residence this year and has won composition prizes at the New Zealand School of Music and the NZSO’s Young Composer’s Award in 2013 and 2014. Her music has been played by several overseas soloists and chamber ensembles.

The array of percussionists signalled a more than average interest in the strange and exotic sounds available these days from that department. As well as bowing on the edges of the xylophone, the most magical effects, sort of disembodied flute sound, came from Rachel Thomas bowing on crotales; and episodes of bouncing bows on strings and bows brushing tonelessly across stringed instruments, in large, synchronised, circular movements. It was as entertaining for the eyes as for the ears.

I was impressed by the composer’s notes that elaborated, not on the wearisome explanations like: ‘exploring of extended techniques that might enrich the experience of hearing the contrabassoon with its reeds removed, underwater’, but a description of the source of the sound – here rain falling – arising from actual events; for example, she writes: “the variation in sound and movement of raindrops depending on the material upon which they fall, and the texture created when these countless individual timbres and rhythms happen all at once”.

There were rather enchanting melodic fragments, rising and falling scales played softly on the two harps. But as well as these singular devices for the depiction of rain falling, there were blocks of brass in warm harmony, which in the end contributed to a remarkably attractive sonorous chorus in an exciting
crescendo.

La Mer
I was intrigued, considering the watery nature of the previous composition, at the choice of La Mer as the big, symphonic work on the programme. I’m assured that neither was programmed to complement the other: pure serendipity. Though not at all a symphony, it is of near symphonic length and has three movements (like the Paris and Prague symphonies of Mozart, if you care).

This too uses a big orchestra, three trumpets as well as two cornets, three bassoons and a contrabassoon, again the two harps and an array of percussion including glockenspiel, all used with purpose and sensitivity. At every hearing of this masterpiece I gain a little more clarity about its melodic and rhythmic content, how the fleeting, fugitive gestures and arabesques, relate and contribute to the bewildering tapestry. In the first movement, the orchestra captured the dim awareness of dawn with the woodwinds countering the threatening sounds of timpani and bass drum, and though there were momentary slips, the growing illumination that the performance created, the brightening glow of the horns midway in the movement, was marvellous.

The Jeux de vagues, sometimes referred to as a Scherzo, to me a misnomer, has the role of an at times playful, at times calm, symphonic middle movement; it brings the full light of day, not in an obvious, brash way, but through the fluency of flutes, always to be remarked, over bassoons and cor anglais, suggesting a friendly sea. The third part, Dialogue du vent et de la mer, opened with very enthusiastic timpani and brass, but the gorgeous, swaying tune and the vivid evocation of conflicting forces were magnificently rendered.

It’s not just that this music might mean/should mean something special to one who has lived all his life close to some of the biggest seas in the world; as one of the first really major works of the 20th century, it marks for me a more important and influential development than the intellectually driven inventions of Schoenberg and co was to do a few years later; and at least as significant as The Rite of Spring.

Naturally, much of the audience at such concerts comprises family and friends of the players, but they could not have so filled the MFC, showing that growing numbers of ordinary music lovers are realising that if the music is your primary interest, rather than a social event, as much delight and revelation is created in a Youth Orchestra performance of this calibre as with the NZSO itself.

 

Reflections on Dukas and Debussy:

Above, I touched on the place of Dukas, between César Franck and Debussy and the intermediate composers like Fauré and Chausson.

After the 1880’s, Debussy picked up the sense that composers like those and others had been hinting at in previous decades. Influenced by impressionist painting and symbolist poetry, he believed music was about nuances, colours and emotions, story-telling and scene painting; organically evolving melodic ideas and rhapsodic shapes.

Dukas was born into the era of Debussy (he was four years Debussy’s junior) but, while they were good friends, Dukas adhered to the model of César Franck and the more classical, Teutonic, tradition, and he was a passionate Wagnerian; while Debussy, very consciously a ‘French’ composer, had come to reject both Franck and Wagner. But their totally opposite views did not seem to affect the happy friendship between the two.

And although Debussy wanted no school of Debussyistes and didn’t much like Ravel who was his passionate admirer, Roger Nichols remarks in his New Grove article: “a list of 20th century composers influenced by Debussy is practically a list of 20th century composers, tout court”.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is not truly representative of Dukas the composer. True, it was written four years after Debussy’s Prélude à l’après midi d’un faune, about the same time as Nocturnes, but while
the finger-prints of a brilliant orchestrator can be heard, there is as much Strauss as Chausson in it, and a lively imagination is needed to ascribe much to Debussy.

The programme note relates a Messiaen anecdote that suggests The Apprentice was intended as mockery of the Strauss’s symphonic poems, particularly Till Eulenspiegel, that were sweeping Europe at the time, but it is hard to believe that Dukas would have expended all that effort creating such a masterly and highly sophisticated score merely as a put-down of Strauss. My reading of Dukas’s personality and nature don’t suggest that sort of behaviour; after all he remained a good friend of Debussy even though Dukas was a traditionalist, a Wagnerian, and thus not too distant from Strauss’s musical values.

A commentator writes, for example: “While Debussy was forging esoteric links with symbolist poetry, Dukas had the effrontery to compose a symphony in plain C major!” The symphony is a close relative of Franck’s Symphony in D minor; Dukas wrote it in the same year, 1897, as The Apprentice. As for Dukas’s great piano sonata in E minor, it sounds like a fine piano work that Franck never wrote (and as a passionné of the latter, I expect that to be read as great admiration).

Anyway, as one of the disappearing generation who actually saw (and heard), very young, an early screening of the Disney film, Fantasia, in which Stokowski conducted the music along with the marvellous animated version of the Goethe story, the music has been embedded in me for a long time.

In thinking about these things, I fished out my copy of Roger Nichols’ Debussy Remembered which trapped me for a while; there were not many pertinent bits of letters from Dukas relating to Debussy apart from evidence of great warmth and mutual respect and affection. But it’s the sort of book that engrosses you with all sorts of interesting people, events and ideas.

 

 

Wellington Youth Orchestra under Hamish McKeich with winning Brahms and Rachmaninov

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

Wellington Youth Orchestra conducted by Hamish McKeich

Brahms: Variations on the Theme by Joseph Haydn (St Anthony Variations), Op 56a
Rachmaninov: Symphony No 2 in E minor, Op 27

Cathedral of the Sacred Heart

Friday 29 May, 6:30 pm

One might as well begin by quoting the information about the provenance of the theme of the Brahms variations that is offered in Wikipedia:

“In 1870, Brahms’s friend Carl Ferdinand Pohl, the librarian of the Vienna Philharmonic Society, who was working on a Haydn biography at the time, showed Brahms a transcription he had made of a piece attributed to Haydn titled Divertimento No. 1. The second movement bore the heading “St. Anthony Chorale,” and it is this movement which, in its entirety, forms the theme on which the variations are based. Brahms’s statement of the theme varies in small but significant ways from the original, principally with regard to instrumentation. Some sources state the Divertimento was probably written by Ignaz Pleyel, but this has not been definitely established. A further question is whether the composer of the divertimento actually wrote the “St. Anthony Chorale” or simply quoted an older theme taken from an unknown source. To date, no other mention of a “St. Anthony Chorale” has been found.”

Whatever its origins, Brahms rightly spotted it as a splendid basis for a set of variations, first for two pianos, which he then orchestrated. It was virtually the first full-scale set of orchestral variations, separate from those that often formed the substance of a symphonic movement.

I have often commented on the challenge presented by the Basilica’s acoustic for orchestral performances, at once very clear, likely to expose the slightest blemish, and at the same time liable to amplify bass sounds – timpani and basses in a sometimes uncomfortable way. And while I’m at it, it will not be considered unduly harsh to observe that, naturally, a youth orchestra can never be expected to produce perfection: minor imperfections were a bit conspicuous here and there.

For example there was some imbalance between woodwind instruments which occasionally made middle parts louder than the melody line.

However, the orchestra, under the vivid and energizing direction of Hamish McKeich, captured the spirit and grandeur of the work, in all the colours that Brahms used to create a set variations that maintained steady interest; the studious exposition of the big tune, set the scene splendidly. Strings, even though violas were few in number, provided a good foundation in the first variation; woodwinds were attractive in Variation II, in fact, the piece as a whole provides a great deal of rewarding activity for the winds which met the challenges very well. (It’s fair to note of course, that some of the fine wind playing was due to a bit of support from professional players).

I enjoyed the accurate staccato liveliness of the fifth variation, and then the driving dance rhythms of the sixth. In the lovely Grazioso variation, horns and strings sounded particularly happy.

However, the Rachmaninov symphony was probably the main attraction, and indeed this was a performance that, even though I am used to being surprised at the opulence and energy of performances by young orchestras, thoroughly delighted me. Right from the ominous opening on low strings, thanks to the muscular support by the five double basses, and a pretty fair evocation of the gorgeous wind chords, the music gathered itself up with the sense of ever-expanding momentum, endless variety in the handling of the various themes. Both the build-up to and the descent from the big climax in the middle was an emotional winner. Though about 20 minutes long, the first movement just doesn’t ever need to end, and this was my feeling here.

The Scherzo always seems rather a descent from the endless enchantment of the first movement, but the energy of this dynamic performance rapidly took possession. Sure, there are delicate refinements in the piece that were not perfectly caught, but the spirit was sustained. The third movement lasts about 15 minutes, capturing the audience at once with something more akin to the first movement, the gorgeous string melody followed by long and beautifully played clarinet and bassoon (in a high register) solos – then duet. McKeich again created wonderful ecstatic episodes that seemed to prepare for the close, only to bring the music back for renewed experiences.

The last movement, again, offers yet more variety of emotional explorations, and they were beautifully paced, interspersed with exclamatory passages, strongly and accurately created, finally providing the audience with a succession of phantom perorations, as the Finale weaves its long path to the end.

I assume there was a reasonable amount of publicity for this concert as the cathedral was well filled. I heard about it through an email only a day before: I’m very glad I did.

 

School of Music Orchestra wins audience delight with demanding programme

Posted on by Rosemary Collier

Te Kōki New Zealand School of Music

Smetana: Vltava (‘The Moldau’, from Má Vlast)
Ginastera: Harp Concerto, Op.25
Lilburn: Diversions for String Orchestra
Shostakovich: The Golden Age Suite Op.22 (Introduction, adagio, polka, danse)
NZSM Orchestra conducted by Kenneth Young, with Jennifer Newth (harp)

St. Andrew’s on The Terrace

Tuesday, 19 May 2015, 7.30pm

Once again, the audience was treated to a very demanding programme brought off with skill and panache by the NZSM orchestra, with the help of quite a number of guest players.

It coupled the familiar with the unfamiliar.  The opening piece from Smetana’s Má Vlast was familiar, but seldom programmed recently, within my hearing.  It provided a good work-out for a student orchestra.  There was plenty of scope for the flutes at the opening, and soon for the other woodwinds.
A quieter second section featured strings, flute and harp, with subtle brass support, in a delicious representation of the flows of the great river Vltava.  The grand theme returns in the last section, in more excitable mode, with full brass and percussion.  This was a very creditable performance.

Ginastera’s harp concerto was completely new to me, and it was interesting to read the programme notes describing the history of its first performance.

Amazingly, Jennifer Newth, who has recently graduated with first class honours in music, played the complex solo part without the score.  The harp must surely be the most difficult instrument to be found in a symphony orchestra, yet this accomplished musician played with apparent ease the most demanding passages, using a range of techniques, described in her programme note as ‘pedal slides’  (which I observed – the sound continued to change even though no fingers were on the strings) ‘harmonics, whistling sounds, ‘falling hail’ glissandi and gushing chords.

Along with her virtuoso playing rising to the composer’s demands, there were considerable challenges, for the large percussion section, which were fully met, including plenty for xylophone to do.

In the first movement, a dreamy slow melody was particularly attractive, while in the second movement a modal melody performed on various instruments was notable.

The third movement’s extended harp solo demonstrated the huge range of the harp’s capabilities, and those of the performer, as described above; its final section began with an enormous glissando, something the harp can do so magnificently.  The percussion was in its element with complicated technical work; the xylophone was a good counterpart, with its wooden quality, to the ethereal nature of the harp sound.  There was little brass in this work – just two trumpets in the last movement only, but a celeste, along with frequent suspended cymbal vibrations, contributed to the exotic atmosphere.

This was a bravura performance, and the audience’s response was appropriately prolonged and enthusiastic.

Ginastera was a hard act to follow, but the early Lilburn work proved to be a pleasant interlude between the more intense and exciting works for full orchestra.  The writing for strings was delightful.  After a lively sparky opening, the second movement was contemplative, with nevertheless, as in the first, lots of pizzicato.  The third section was faster, with repeated quavers, while in the fourth some discords that became typical of Lilburn’s writing appeared, but there was little of his later very prevalent dotted
rhythmic figures.

The final movement featured leaping figures at various levels of pitch – then a sudden ending.  The Diversions proved to be a most enjoyable work, and was played with verve and splendidly rich tone.

The Shostakovich work provided both humorous content and sufficient technical requirements to live up to the effect created by the Ginastera work.  The programme note described the scenario of the ballet for which the music was written: a worthy tale of the superiority of the Communist ethos over that of Western nations, as worked out through the visit of a Soviet football team to a Western city.

Shostakovich’s satirical writing could be interpreted as ‘getting at’ the capitalist West – or deriding the very scenario and the ideology behind it.  It gave rise, in these four movements, to some hilarious musical expression.  Not that it was easy; it is hard to imagine a student orchestra even20 years ago tackling such demanding music as this.  It employed full orchestra (but no harp).  I find brass plus piccolo and percussion playing at forte or beyond far too loud in this venue: a very resonant acoustic in a no particularly large church.  Perhaps there is no alternative.  The orchestra has played in Sacred Heart Cathedral, which is only slightly larger and with an equally lively sound.

Please, Wellington City Council, get on with strengthening the Wellington Town Hall, or respond to former Councillor Rex Nicholls, who through his letter in Dominion Post, called for the hall to reopen.

After a rousing introduction, the highlight of the work, viz. the second movement was an extended slow piece that was most affecting, and contained much of interest, not least the appearance of bass clarinet and particularly the solos on soprano saxophone by Genevieve Davidson, and also solo violin from the orchestra’s leader, Laura Barton.  Later, there was gorgeous playing from solo clarinet and solo flute.

The third movement reverted to the jocular mood apparent in the first; the polka was good fun, with a wonderful tune for the xylophone and a sardonic popular song from the trombones.  The Danse finale revealed great precision of rhythm at considerable speed.  But it was so loud that the audience’s applause sounded quiet by contrast.

Nevertheless, all concerned should be thoroughly pleased with their efforts, as the audience was.

 

 

Wellington Youth Orchestra’s final, tumultuous concert for 2014

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Youth Orchestra presents:

BEETHOVEN – Symphony No.7
WAGNER – Overture “Die Meistersinger”
J.STRAUSS Jnr. – On the Beautiful Blue Danube

Wellington Youth Orchestra

Hamish McKeich (conductor)

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

Tuesday 21st October 2014

Richard Wagner described Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony as “the Apotheosis of the Dance”, referring to the dominance of rhythm over melody throughout much of the symphony’s duration. Yes, the tunes are there, but, apart from some lyrical sequences in the work’s introduction, and throughout the trio of the third-movement Scherzo, the melodies are constantly dancing, stamping or galloping about!

If ever a work by Beethoven demonstrated the composer’s own euphoric description of his art – “I am the Bacchus who presses out this wine which makes men spiritually drunk!” – it’s this uninhibited riot of a Symphony – though not as epic as the Third or Ninth Symphonies, nor as heaven-storming as the Fifth, the Seventh Symphony gives an elemental display of god-like exuberance that leaves its listeners exhilarated and its performers spent through giving their all.

It had an enthusiastic contemporary reception, even though most of the acclaim that followed the very first concert in 1813 went to the composer’s gimmicky “Wellington’s Victory”, with which it shared the program. But once the novelty of the “battle piece” had worn off, the symphony began to assert its well-nigh irresistible appeal, with the second, Allegretto movement in particular capturing its listeners’ imaginations – this movement was in fact played alone for a time more often than was the complete work.

Beethoven’s efforts did not, however, find favour with some commentators, whose sensibilities were obviously affronted by such unseemly demonstrations of raw energy! Friedrich Wieck, father of Clara (Schumann), was present at some of the rehearsals and observed that the composer of such music must have been in a “drunken state” when writing the work. And Beethoven’s great contemporary, Carl Maria von Weber, thought that parts of the first movement alone qualified the composer as “fit for the madhouse”. Even a decade later, a London critic wrote of the work, “Often as we have heard it performed, we cannot yet discover any design in it, neither can we trace any connection in its parts.”

Posterity has reversed these opinions, though a dissident echo was provided by the legendary conductor of more recent times, Sir Thomas Beecham (no great lover of Beethoven’s music, even though he recorded several of the symphonies) – after giving a typically riotous performance of the Seventh, Beecham drolly commented, “Well, what can you do with it? – it’s like a lot of yaks jumping about!”

Such criticisms and comments missed the point of the “excessive” nature of the work’s rhythmic character, one which Beethoven had touched on more generally with his “I am the Bacchus” comment, and which the work brought to a kind of apogée in terms of constant energy and momentum. And these qualities were at the heart of what Hamish McKeich and the Wellington Youth Orchestra players were able to achieve in their recent performance.

The players clearly felt the import of the symphony’s “introduction” here – no mere symphonic throat-clearing, or “getting the pitch of the hall”, but a statement of intent containing the seeds of what was to follow – thus the tensions were built up via the strings’ dovetailing of the scales, the lower echelons “digging in” with point and focus on each occasion, the winds and brass intensifying the harmonic ambiences, then nicely terracing the tensions, keeping us in a suspended state for what was to break forth. Something much more than Viennese “gemütlich” was obviously on the agenda.

The allegro was taken at an urgent clip – the flute led the way magnificently, well-supported by the strings, while the first big tutti was a riot of energy and colour, the brass a bit approximate in their note-pitching, but the impulses were right where they ought to have been. Early on, a feature of the playing (as it needed to be in this symphony) was the work of the orchestra’s timpanist, whose command of both propulsion and dynamics right throughout was, I thought, exemplary. But everybody hove to – the winds were sonorous, the brass exciting, even when fallible, and the strings kept the rhythms a-tingling.

The beginning of the development brought some anxious ensemble moments with those treacherous dotted rhythms, the winds further unnerving things by being temporarily awry with an entry. But they made amends by steadying the rhythm leading up to that wonderful, exhilarating reprise, together with the brass getting those shouted dotted interjections bang-on! By this time the interactive support between the sections was kicking in nicely, so much so that there was a wonderfully delighted squawk from a young child in the audience during one of the pauses before the coda!

What followed was like an encounter with the elements – the lower strings caught the “vortex” aspect of those incredible “churnings”, from which the rest of the orchestra, by a sheer act of will gradually pulled us upwards from and into the light – though the horns struggled a bit with their triumphant “whoopings” the rhythms had oceans of momentum, and caught the exhilaration at the movement’s end.

I thought the second movement arresting at the outset, the lower strings purposeful, the violins sharing theme and counter-theme, stoically supported by the winds, brass and timpani. The trio, too, was nicely focused, the theme by turns tender and expressive, with lovely clarinet work. A somewhat weedy start to the pp string fugato broke the spell momentarily – the strings seemed happier when playing with fuller tones. But apart from the surprise of the clarinets seeming not to enter with one of their phrases right at the end, the movement’s gravitas was strongly maintained.

Which was the last thing that sprang to mind with the explosive beginning of the scherzo! – instead, boisterous fun was the order of going, the music’s triplet rhythms a whirl, and the winds and strings managing their “giggles” at the end of each of the sections. By contrast the trio’s solemn lay rang out lyrically (winds) and then majestically (strings and brass), with the timpani again a tower of strength in conjunction with the latter.

I confess that I momentarily gaped at the hectic pace the conductor adopted following the finale’s two opening flourishes – this was a REAL allegro con brio and the young players certainly bent their backs to the task, whether exuberantly stamping the rhythms out or whirling through the figurations. Conductor and players kept the momentum going splendidly through the lighter passages, and made a great fist of things like the leaping string unison exchanges and the whooping brass calls – hair-raisingly exciting in places, as were the timpani’s splendidly focused and detailed energies.

And so it continued, through the powerful thrustings of the last big orchestral build-up before the coda, and into the furious vortex of scarily shifting, droning harmonies from winds and lower strings, leading up to what Sir Donald Tovey called the “Bacchic fury” of the work’s coda. Perhaps the winds might have lost their footing momentarily with their tricky angular entries and syncopated harmonic shifts amidst the maelstrom of sound and fury that the composer was building up, here – but somehow, it added to the effect of this elemental, inchoate material being imbued with energy and propulsion as to burst out with unparalleled power and splendour, everybody pulling together to bring off those final, whiplash chords in properly thrilling and conclusive fashion.

We needed an interval after that! – so, having enjoyed a breather, everybody was back for the second half’s intriguing mix of Wagner and Johann Strauss. FIrst up was Wagner’s Overture “Die Meistersinger”, an item I was looking forward to immensely, because I had played the cymbals in a performance during another life, many years ago!  Here, the brass rang out the first four notes gloriously, setting the scene for a carnival atmosphere of polyphonic largesse, the same players getting slightly ahead of the rest of the orchestra in one place in their eagerness to impress. Hamish McKeich favoured fairly brisk tempi, even through the transitions containing fragments of the opera’s more lyrical moments, which made for a breathless effect, as we were quickly plunged into the “entry-music” for the Mastersingers from Act Three, which, incidentally, went with proper pomp and ceremony.

I thought McKeich could have relaxed a little with the central section’s lyrical sequences – the playing wasn’t allowed to expand vocally, in the way that the tunes do in the opera itself, though perhaps the conductor wanted to keep the ensemble “tight”! However, the winds trotted in merrily during the “apprentices” section, managing a cheeky trill at the end of their sequence, as did the strings in places, the odd precarious-ensemble-moment smartly manoeuvered back into place within a few measures!

As for the famous “trio of themes” at the end – well it was a joy! The tuba sounded terrific, especially his concluding trill, while the brass gave warning of their “en masse” arrival in sonorous fashion, helped by the timpani the second time around. It all came across as properly festive, even if I felt the cymbal player was a little overawed by the occasion and didn’t “sound” his instruments as resplendently as they could have been.

After such rumbustiousness, the Johann Strauss piece was lovely! – it was really the waltz “On the Beautiful Blue Danube”, but played in a way as to imitate a loosely-strung set of waltzes – I suspected it was also to enable the players to turn their pages comfortably!  A gorgeously-played horn at the beginning presided over magical ambiences, passed adroitly by some moments of hesitant ensemble, and, gathering in a solo ‘cello, led us into the dance. To my delight the players made a great fist of the Viennese “lilt”, obviously well-schooled by their conductor, the ensemble sounding in places for all the world like a well-drilled Viennese dance-band! Another surprise for me was the repeat of the opening “waltz-sequence”, which I’d never heard done before. Right up to the nostalgic coda, with its trumpet solo and trilling flute, the players caught the idiom of the piece with great style, readily communicating to us their pleasure of performance.

But there was more! – in fact the final item set the seal on the afternoon’s music-making brilliantly, via a tremendously exciting performance of the “Waltz King’s” well-known “Thunder and Lightning Polka”. It was put across with such panache, such energy and exuberance, with the percussion having the proverbial field day! At one point in the work’s middle section I wanted (once again!) the cymbal player to bash his instruments more vigorously, but it must be said the player made up for his reticence in the closing measures of the work. I would have loved to have taken part in such a performance myself – what a blast it seemed to be for all concerned!

Very great credit to the inspirational Hamish McKeich, and to his hard-working, talented instrumentalists. To my mind conductor and players can look back on some singular achievements this year, their successes auguring well for seasons yet to come. On their showings throughout 2014 it’s my opinion that they’re becoming an orchestral force to be reckoned with, a stimulating and valuable contributor to the capital’s enviable array of orchestral concerts.

 

 

Soloists add distinction to NZSM Orchestra concert

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Te Kōkī NZ School of Music presents:
FROM GENEVA TO KNOXVILLE

BRAHMS – Tragic Overture
TCHAIKOVSKY – Violin Concerto in D
BARBER – Knoxville: Summer of 1915
BARTOK – Dance Suite

Xin (James) Jin (violin)
Amelia Berry (soprano)
New Zealand School of Music Orchestra
Kenneth Young (conductor)
Sacred Heart Cathedral, Hill St., Wellington

Thursday October 2nd, 2014

In the wake of a couple of crackingly good recent concerts given by the NZSM Orchestra and its intrepid conductor, Kenneth Young, I found myself eagerly looking forward to this particular evening’s presentation. The programme followed the orchestra’s policy of mixing the familiar (Brahms, Tchaikovsky) with the less-frequently performed (Barber, Bartok), the repertoire obviously designed to present the student musicians with a wide range of technical and stylistic challenges.

For a number of reasons, it seemed a nicely-balanced choice of items. The documented love-hate relationship between Brahms and Tchaikovsky as personalities gave the concert’s first half an extra frisson of contrasted expression. Then, the excitement and exhilaration of difference continued throughout the second half by a shift of focus twentieth-century-wards, with Barber and Bartok.

The prospect of hearing an exciting young soloist  Xin (James) Jin play a popular work like the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto would have drawn many people to the concert; and while Samuel Barber’s music (apart from his ubiquitous Adagio) wouldn’t have perhaps quickened pulses in the same way, the presence of ANOTHER soloist (soprano Amelia Berry) would, I’m sure, have been enticing – a singer or instrumentalist performing with an orchestra has a theatricality which is always of interest, in addition to whatever it is they’re performing.

Well, as it turned out, the concert was fabulous in parts – and interestingly enough the “soloist-and-orchestra” sequences stole the show! The concerto got one of the most exciting performances of the solo part I’ve ever heard from Xin Jin, while soprano Amelia Berry’s rendition of Barber’s achingly nostalgic setting of childhood memories “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” touched our hearts in a completely different way.

Neither performance was perfect in all respects – in the concerto, the orchestral support for the soloist was heartwarming in the lyrical passages, but didn’t really ignite in some of the more vigorous “brandy-on-the-breath” parts of the finale. In the Barber work the unfortunately overbearing acoustic of the venue meant that Amelia Berry’s words were often hard to decipher, the very “up-front” tones of the orchestral playing working against vocal clarity, gorgeous though her singing “sounded” throughout.

As for the two other works on the programme, the playing was in places spectacularly fiery, but again, thanks in part to the acoustic, had an uncomfortable “unrelieved” quality – I found the Bartok, in particular, hard going in places for this reason, the orchestral sound too confrontational for comfort, to my ears. A pity that both of this orchestra’s recent concert venues, the Cathedral and St.Andrew’s Church, are simply too “tight” – both acoustically and physically! – to accommodate orchestral performance easily,  and full-on works like the Bartok Dance Suite exacerbated the problem.

The experience reinforced my feelings of frustration and anxiety regarding the present non-availability of the Town Hall for orchestral concerts of this kind. These musicians’ efforts deserve far better than having merely makeshift venues in which to perform, in short, places in which they can be heard to their best advantage, instead of being compromised.

So it was that I found the performances hard to accurately judge in some aspects – for example I found the central section of the Brahms “Tragic” Overture too insistent-sounding, missing that sense of quiet, stricken numbness, an almost spectral tread of growing unease which swings like a pendulum between despair and dignity, and which provides a contrast with the outer parts of the work. I did think that Ken Young pushed it along dangerously quickly as well – the results were certainly tense and knife-edged, but any “inner” reflection of tragedy wasn’t brought out, and the music for me lost some expressive breadth as a result.

The acoustic wasn’t so much of a problem in the Tchaikovsky work, as the composer’s orchestral writing is relatively lean in any case, allowing his soloist’s tones to readily come through – although Young and the orchestra certainly took pains to facilitate this quality throughout most expertly. I thought the first two movements brilliantly successful, the excitement generated by all concerned towards the end of the first movement positively scalp-prickling, and deserving the spontaneous burst of applause at the movement’s end!

We got some beautiful solo playing in the slow movement from both the violinist and the accompanying wind players – but when it came to the last movement, I thought Xin Lin’s astonishingly expressive energies and spontaneous irruptions weren’t sufficiently matched by the orchestra, though I did appreciate Ed Allen’s horn-playing in the “Russian Dance” sections. Somehow the whiplash timing of the orchestral interjections didn’t come off with enough élan, and that cumulative tutti just before the soloist’s final entry unfortunately hung fire – it’s all rhythm and timing, the players needing to throw themselves at the notes and be damned to the consequences! Still, the response of the audience to it all (and particularly to the soloist) was rapturous at the end, and deservedly so.

The Barber work, “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” is something of a concert rarity, here – I know Leontyne Price’s recording, but had never before heard the work live. It’s a setting of passages from author James Agee’s novel “A Death in the Family”, depicting a small boy’s recollection of summer evenings at home with the family. Barber described his work as a “lyrical rhapsody” and dedicated the music to his own father, who was ill at the time the piece was being written. It was premiered in Boston in 1948 by the singer Eleanor Steber.

I caught some beautifully vocalized sequences from the soprano, almost all in the quieter passages – the opening descriptions of people sitting on their porches, rocking gently, the gentle depiction of the night as “one blue dew”, and the very wind-blown Elgarian orchestral passages  during which the singer describes the family spreading quilts and lying under the stars. We clearly heard the heart-rending “May God bless my people”, and, at the return of the lullaby the comforting “Sleep, soft, smiling, draws me to her”.

Throughout the rest I registered the music’s emotions but couldn’t hear what was being sung – Amelia Berry’s voice, sweet and bright as it was, simply couldn’t couldn’t free itself from the orchestral fabric whenever the dynamics increased. We needed those words! – they would have fitted onto a single program page, avoiding any kind of disruptive turn-over – or else they could have been projected onto a screen. It would have increased our enjoyment of the performance hugely, even though the general nostalgic mood of the piece was movingly caught and held by soloist, conductor and players.

Bartok it was, to finish, and it certainly made an impact! The orchestral playing in places was some of the best of the evening – just as well, because when projected outwards with any kind of force it was a pretty unrelenting sound-picture! The first piece had more of a droll aspect, dark, galumphing rhythms alternating with big, blowzy textures, reminiscent of the “drunken peasant” depictions in the same composer’s “Hungarian Sketches”. The infamous second movement, with its laser-beam brass glissandi, nearly lifted the cathedral’s roof, an onslaught relieved only temporarily by the harp in conjunction with strings and winds. I liked the “Hungarian hoe-down” aspect of the third movement, and appreciated the respite afforded our sensibilities by the “molto tranquillo” fourth movement, with its nicely-realised exotic, almost Iberian atmospheres.

But golly! – what a riot of a finale! As I’ve said, it was almost too much in places, though undeniably exciting, the rhythms, textures and colours changing without warning, the overall mood of the piece capricious and volatile. It left us a bit winded, I think, everything in the sound-picture a bit claustrophobic in effect, but still exhilarating, in between gasps! There was no doubting the commitment and skill of the players, spurred on by Ken Young’s boundless energies – perhaps it wasn’t the most elegant finish to a concert, but the sounds were those which stirred the blood most satisfyingly. In all, great stuff from the NZSM Orchestra!

Searing contribution from the WYO to “Recovering Forbidden Voices”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Youth Orchestra presents:
SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No.8 in C MInor Op.65
BEETHOVEN – Two Romances for Violin and Orchestra Opp. 40 and 50

Malavika Gopal (violin)
Hamish McKeich (conductor)
Wellington Youth Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington,

Monday, 25th August, 2014

This concert was associated with a series of performances, presentations and discussions entitled “Recovering Forbidden Voices” –  programmes organised by Te Kōkī New Zealand School of Music and the History and German Programmes of Victoria University of Wellington, and held over the previous few days (22nd-25th August) in the capital. The “Forbidden Voices” referred to music and composers who fell foul of the Nazis in Europe, resulting in many works, particularly by Jewish composers, being suppressed or banned over the period associated with the rise of Hitler to power in Germany.

The music of Shostakovich came under fire in his native Russia at the same time for different reasons – the composer had, during the 1930s, famously fallen foul of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin with his opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” but had rehabilitated himself somewhat as a “people’s artist” with his Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, the latter work celebrating the siege of Leningrad and the heroism of the Russian people. What the composer privately thought of the war, its effects upon his homeland and the events surrounding the conflict was more realistically delineated in his Eighth Symphony.

The work wasn’t received with any great acclaim, reviews being tinged with disappointment and bewilderment at the music’s bleak, pessimistic tone – “significantly tougher and more astringent that either the Fifth or Seventh…..unlikely to prove popular…” commented a colleague of the composer. These were prophetic words, as in 1948 the infamous “Zhdanov decree” issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party attacked the composer and his work, accusing him of “formalist perversions”. As a result, the Eighth Symphony wasn’t performed again until 1956.

The Russian view of the symphony that has endured was expressed a number of years later later by the great pianist and associate of the composer, Sviatoslav Richter, who called it “the decisive  work in Shostakovich’s output”. While perhaps not as popular in the West as the aforementioned Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, the C Minor work’s greatness and incredible  depth of tragic expression has come to be acknowledged everywhere.

While the symphony’s performance readily associated the occasion with the “Recovering Forbidden Voices” theme, the concert’s first half presented a dramatic and perhaps a welcome contrast in anticipation to Shostakovich’s conflict-torn work. This was supplied by both of Beethoven’s Romances for violin and orchestra, performed by soloist Malavika Gopal, currently a player with the NZSO, and back home in Wellington after a period of study and performing experience overseas (including a stint with the famed Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra).  However, before the concert proper began we were properly welcomed by three speakers, firstly Professor Donald Maurice representing the School of Music, and then by the Mayor of Wellington, Celia Wade-Brown, and the Government Minister for the Arts, Chris Finlayson, all of whom talked about the “Forbidden Music” venture.

Once the music got under way, Malavika Gopal’s quality as a violinist was instantly apparent, the opening solo of the first of Beethoven’s Romances as sweet-toned as one could wish for, and the contrasting middle section properly gutsier and grainier, as befitted the music. Naturally all the attention seemed to be on her, except that if Hamish McKeich and the orchestra’s accompaniments had faltered in any way we would surely have noticed!

I have a slight preference for the less ritualistic, more rhapsodic No.2 of the pair of Romances, and Malavika Gopal didn’t disappoint with this one either, if anything sounding even sweeter-toned in the music’s freer, more soaring lines.Though reluctant to pass judgement to any great extent on her musicianship after such brief encounters with her playing, I would nevertheless be anxious to hear her tackle some more extended solo repertoire, which her return to take up a place with the NZSO “firsts” will hopefully enable her to do here in Wellington.

An interval decently distanced the two very different listening experiences for us, after which it was “all posts manned (sic)” for the Shostakovich. Though feeling hopeful as regarding the capabilities of these young players (thanks in part to my hearing a wonderful recent performance by the School of Music Orchestra of Vaughan Williams’ difficult “Pastoral” Symphony) I did have reservations regarding their abilities in sustaining Shostakovich’s vast and bleak vistas of pessimism and deep sorrow, punctuated by frighteningly intense outbursts of fear and anger. And I wondered how on earth this group of young players was going to be able to generate sufficient tones to fill the spaces of the Michael Fowler Centre. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried.

Right from the beginning, the playing seemed galvanised by a kind of spirit akin to grim determination, Hamish McKeich getting the lower strings to dig furiously into the textures, and, together with the chilling entries of the winds and the brasses, catch the “edge” of the music. Each section of the orchestra seemed to “speak its name” and assert its character in full measure, the treble voices across the sound-spectrum by turns plaintive and shrill, the middle voices properly insistent, and the basses both brooding and massively weighty as required.

Though the upper strings occasionally had problems with their intonation when essaying those great contrapuntal passages, the players kept the intensities to the fore, keeping the argument strongly and inexorably ploughing forwards, the winds and brasses rising spectrally from growing disquiet mid-movement and brutalising both the themes and their interaction, with incredibly powerful onslaughts of sound, leaving the cor anglais and the clarinets to try and pick up the pieces. Despite the strings’ on-going struggle to hold those long mezzo-forte lines together, and the trumpet with its sudden declamatory phrase having a bad moment (probably after the player had delivered the passage  perfectly at rehearsal umpteen times!) the music’s purposeful strength was tenaciously held to the movement’s end.

What amazing, garish, full-on sonorities were hurled at us over the course of the two following scherzo-like movements! Such tremendous, playing-right-out work from the winds – and to such ghastly, ghoulish effect – in the first scherzo, Allegretto, piccolo, bassoon, clarinet, and then piccolo again, were all superb! Here, the strings occasionally had that nightmarish “wartime air-siren” aspect, which galvanised the brass and percussion into brutal sequences, harrowing ostinati torn by savage climaxes – however, Hamish McKeich took care to preserve the music’s shape with his players, maintaining a sense of ebb-and-flow, which held things in check, albeit temporarily, the contra-bassoon having a few droll soundings of its own, helping to ease the tensions.

All, it seemed, to little avail, as the savage, relentless viola ostinati which began the third movement allegro lashed out and flailed away at our sensibilities. My favourite part of the symphony (sensation-monger that I secretly am), I’ve always found the Russian recorded performances of this movement in particular streets ahead of those made in the West, with conductors like Kondrashin and Mravinsky requiring of their players such raw, unbridled attack and relentless, unequivocal savagery when addressing the music’s machine-like rhythms. I had been told by McKeich that he had studied the work with Valery Gergiev in Europe, and that he was fully aware of the special “Russian” performance characteristics, which for him informed the playing of that repertoire. In this movement, as with the rest of the symphony, his direction was as good as his word.

It actually sounded for much of the time as if a Russian orchestra was playing, so determined and up-front were the efforts of the players to give what their conductor was asking for – and for me it put some of the professionally-polished, but much-too-genteel efforts of some crack ensembles I’d heard on record in the shade. Full marks in particular to the trumpeter and side-drummer in the crude, ironic trio section – the strings couldn’t quite match the “bite” of the solo instruments here, but they made up for it when the opening returned. And the brass and percussion at the climax overwhelmed, as they ought to have done, the timpanist lashing out mercilessly, underlining the brutality of the composer’s nightmarish depiction.

So it was we were plunged into the great Passacaglia of the fourth movement, brass announcing the crack of doom and the string lines utterly despairing, the winds adding to the desolation with their helplessly-lost utterances, piccolo, bass clarinet and tongued flutes expressing the “fumbling in the despairing dark” referred to by one commentator – here it all sounded exactly like that, the impulses and gestures well-and-truly “gutted”.

Which is why the transition to the finale effected by the bassoon solo was such balm to the senses, even though the resolutions which followed remained properly haunted and bruised to the end. When questioned, the composer told a friend that the C Major transition to the concluding Allegretto had cost him “so much blood”, but that the end of the symphony was optimistic, despite the reiterate of moments of anxiety – though nothing further from the tub-thumping of the Fifth Symphony’s finale could be imagined than this work’s closing pages.

What these young musicians and their conductor gave us was a deeply-felt, incredibly-committed and stunningly-delivered emotional journey, thrills and spills all part of the human experience. It deserves to be remembered as a landmark performance by any standards, but certainly as a glowing achievement on the part of Hamish McKeich and the orchestra, and a cause for warm appreciation on the part of those fortunate enough to be present.

 

 

NZSO National Youth Orchestra 2014 tackles showpieces with a will

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra presents:
NZSO NATIONAL YOUTH ORCHESTRA 2014

Conductor: Alexander Shelley
Assistant Conductor: Gemma New
NYO Composer-In-Residence 2014: Sarah Ballard

RICHARD STRAUSS – Don Juan Op.20
SARAH BALLARD – Synergos (World Premiere)
RICHARD STRAUSS – Also Sprach Zarathustra Op.30

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, Friday 18th July

ASB Theatre, Auckland, Saturday 19th July

This year the NZSO National Youth Orchestra is fifty-five years young – it’s a Gilbertian kind of paradox that the orchestra seems, with each passing season, just as youthful, energetic, enthusiastic and capable as ever!  Here on Friday evening last week were some of New Zealand’s finest young musicians brought together in the time-honoured manner for a short rehearsal period, before shaping up for their first concert in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre. With two famously brilliant late-romantic orchestral showpieces on the programme plus a newly-conmmissioned work by the orchestra’s composer-in-residence Sarah Ballard, the concert was set to be something of a blockbuster.

Things couldn’t have gotten away to a more thrilling beginning with the opening of Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem Don Juan, the first of the two pieces commemorating the composer’s two-hundredth birthday this year. British conductor Alexander Shelley didn’t “spare the horses”, getting from the young players oceans of vigour, colour and red-blooded commitment in realising the music’s infectious excitement and sheer bravado – impressive stuff from a twenty-four year-old composer! Romantic feeling there was a-plenty as well, with several superb solos delivered from within the opulent orchestra textures, solo violin and winds covering themselves with glory.

I wasn’t altogether surprised by the playing’s brilliant and whole-hearted qualities, having attended a number of concerts from recent years given by the orchestra, and invariably being knocked sideways on these occasions by the sheer impact of the music-making’s elan and range of expression. The 2009 performance of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, for example, remains for me an unforgettable occasion, the performance as thrilling as I’d ever previously encountered of that work, either “live” or on disc, one most fittingly marking the orchestra’s fiftieth birthday.

But this concert seemed to me to present just as challenging a prospect in a different way – from a listener’s point of view these two Strauss works appear to demand just as much brilliance and energy as does any Mahler Symphony, or orchestral work by Bartok or Debussy, but along with an additional degree of tonal weight and depth that “goes with the territory”. More so than with the other composers mentioned, Strauss’s works are, perhaps along with Scriabin’s, the most sumptuously-orchestrated of his era, requiring players to generously pour forth their tonal resources, and frequently occasioning the command “all you have!” from conductors.

I wasn’t worried by a couple of momentary ensemble spills that accompanied the thrills throughout the concert – but I was concerned that these youthful players would be able to summon up enough breadth and depth of sound to put across the sheer physical impact of this music. It wasn’t so crucial during Don Juan, whose music has for much of the time a volatile, quicksilver urgency that relies on brilliance as much as, if not more than, weight. As I’ve said, these players, guided by Alexander Shelley, threw themselves into the fray and realized all the music’s glittering energy with great elan.

Among those who acquitted themselves splendidly were clarinettist David McGregor and oboist Thomas Hutchinson – the latter in particular made a beautiful thing of his famous solo in Don Juan depicting ‘the red-headed woman, Donna Elvira”, an embodiment of the “Ideal Feminine”, making the Don’s frenetic drive towards a kind of fulfillment seem even more precipitous and his decline and death more shocking – here properly and chillingly realized!

A different kettle of fish was Also Sprach Zarathustra (“Thus spake Zarathustra”), Strauss’s response in orchestral terms to the thoughts and philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche. A more epic, and longer-breathed work, its textures every now and then pointed to the orchestra’s relative lack of both size and tonal resource. Perhaps the long string-melody soon after the very beginning of the work most obviously illustrated this shortcoming – the first few measures were beautifully negotiated by the solo strings, but the relative smallness of the sound of the full section thereafter stressed a need for more tonal weight and vibrancy.

Happily, these few moments were outweighed by the impact of the playing of the more vigorous passages in the score. The famous opening came off splendidly – despite there being no pipe organ at hand  in the MFC (whomever it may concern, please note the “veiled” reference here to the need for restoring the Wellington Town Hall to circulation as quickly as possible!) Conductor Alexander Shelley kept things moving, allowing timpanist Sam Rich his wonderful moment of glory, while not pressing too hard on trumpeter Matthew Stein and the other brass players, who helped bring off a magnificent musical sunrise. Another heartening and joyous sequence was that of the Dance Song, solo violinist Jonathan Tanner leading the dance with easeful charm (some particularly lovely individual notes from his instrument!) and infectious gaiety.

So, the Strauss works can be said to justly represent another musical landmark in the orchestra’s distinguished history. But what of the concert’s new work, the “world premiere” of Synergos, written by the orchestra’s 2014 composer-in-residence, Sarah Ballard? The short response is that I and my various cohorts at the concert thought the work a brilliant display of descriptive orchestral writing, employing instrumental timbres and colourings to stunning effect. One friend (an experienced concert-goer) went so far as to admit to me that he was prepared to patiently “sit through” the work as a way of getting back to the “real” music afterwards – but to his surprise he enjoyed Sarah Ballard’s finely-crafted collection of orchestral “noises” much more than he thought he would.

This twelve-minute work achieved a great deal in a short time, being a kind of three-part exploration of instrumental timbres and tonal hues associated with each of two colours, red and gold, and of their eventual “synergos” or coming together. I thought the opening of the work extremely kinetic, and very “edgy” as regards the instrumental extremes of timbre and tone being employed. The opening sequences were arresting – scintillations of percussion, strings playing right at the “edge” of their tone, heavy brass growling, winds in a ferment, cackling like witches – a bedlam-like orchestral canvas! Being not particularly colour-oriented in my own thinking, I found myself inclined to characterize what I heard so far as being of a vibrant, active quality – by instinct seeking and forming a “behavioural” more than an “appearance” description.

By contrast I thought the second part of the work had a more open, broader-browed manner, the string-tones seeming to resonate or widen to reveal spacious aspects, the wind notes burning like stars in the ambient firmament, the harp-notes sprinkling showers of gently-scintillated warmth. The figurations sounded at ease with themselves, ready to cohere with whatever timbres or colours might be thus activated – the effect wasn’t unlike the ambience surrounding one of those huge, slowly-revolving reflector-spheres which collect and configure as much as reflect and scintillate.

So the opening scenario drew from the composer’s set of responses to red, or, as she called it “Alizarin”, while this latter sequence explored the contrasting effects of considering gold, or “Aurum”. My younger companion at the concert was delighted at being able to recognize the contrasting features of the two “colours” (she afterwards admitted to being attuned to colour in music, and was thus receptive to what Sarah Ballard’s work was exploring). What I found fascinating was what then followed – the amalgamation of the two parts, the synergos of the piece’s title.

Individual lines, figurations, punctuations and impulses began to push their way through, up and out of the textures, the breathy, toneless brasses awakening the winds, and finding their own voices, the two different ”waves” of occupancy eyeing, shouldering and pushing one another around a bit at first, displaying the prerequisite “attitude” as part of the synergistic process, before finding their places in the new order of things. I was left with a feeling of awe at the work’s conclusion, as if I’d been of some kind of journey which defined the nature of my own temporality in the face of the timelessness evoked by the tinkling glockenspiel at the piece’s end.

Very great credit to composer and conductor and musicians for a remarkable quarter-hour’s music, one which added to the overall enjoyment and fascination of 2014’s distinctive NZSO NYO occasion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rich opportunities for NZSM Orchestra’s youthful freshness, commitment, poetry and dynamism

Posted on by Frances Robinson

Dreams and Meditations: NZSM Orchestra, conductor Kenneth Young
Jane Curry, guitar; Martin Riseley, violin; David Groves, speaker

Mendelssohn: Incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Rodrigo: Fantasia para un Gentilhombre
Jack Body: Meditations on Michelangelo
Schubert: Symphony No 8, ‘Unfinished’

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Wellington

Tuesday 25 March, 7:30 pm

This interesting and varied programme opened with Mendelssohn’s incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Kenneth Young set a whacking pace for the Overture but the players rose confidently to the challenge with exemplary clarity in the demanding high speed pianissimo passagework, excellent intonation, and effective balance within the orchestral forces. The phrasing and dynamics of the more poetic sections were thoughtful and musical throughout, as were those of the Nocturne, which was especially enhanced by the beautiful horn solos of guest player David Moonan. Kenneth Young had the familiar closing Wedding March blast forth in an unrelieved band-style fortissimo, relying entirely on the quieter central section for dynamic relief, which was surprising given his musical approach to shaping the dynamics of the previous movements.

Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un Gentilhombre was written for the virtuoso Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia in 1954, and is based on material by the C17th Spanish composer Gaspar Sanz. It was an ideal choice for this programme as it offered a major solo role to Jane Curry, who heads the classical guitar programme at NZSM, and a work whose wonderful orchestration particularly highlights the skills of most wind and brass players.

The Villano opened with a thoughtfulness and musicianship that remained constant as Kenneth Young guided the group through the entire work. The interweaving fugal lines of the following Ricercar were beautifully enunciated by the soloist and developed in clear and balanced interplay with the orchestra.
The low pitched theme of the Espanoleta was also well projected and poetically shaped by Jane Curry, as were its variations by both guitar and wind soloists. The following Fanfare has delicious writing for winds and trumpet in particular, who all performed with exemplary clarity, intonation and phrasing. The Danza was fresh, vigorous and spirited, and led into the Canario finale, taken at a rather sedate pace given that it has been characterized as “a fiery wooing dance” with “rapid heel-and-toe stamps”.

I was impressed throughout this work by the orchestra’s clear bright passagework and solo lines, spot-on intonation and musicianship. But I was baffled by Jane Curry’s recurring lapses and mistakes, given her exemplary proficiency on every other occasion I have heard her play. This was particularly sad for the brilliant cadenza of the finale. I could only conclude that she was either very nervous, which seemed unlikely in view of her wide performing experience, or unwell. Nevertheless I was most grateful to hear this work live, as it tends to take a back seat to Rodrigo’s better known Concierto de Aranjuez.

Jack Body’s Meditations are a setting of seven extraordinary sonnets by Michelangelo which honour male beauty and love. In these deeply moving lines the great artist pours out the anguish of his struggle between the utter conviction of his experience and the damning dictats of church dogma. Before each movement the Italian verses were read out by David Groves with a wonderful clarity and passion that poised the listener for each of Body’s Meditations.

The string ensemble writing was often spare and dissonant, by turns agitated, anguished, haunting, or contemplative, according to the mood of the text. Yet there was never a rank aftertaste, rather only the expression of grief, despair, and a longing for resolution. The solo violin part, beautifully expressed by Martin Riseley, took a pivotal role in encapsulating these moods in a single voice, as it soared above the ensemble like a condemned Lark Ascending. The setting of the sixth sonnet, which “laments the ravages of age” (Body), was particularly intense, with powerful tutti unison lines fading into spare solo string melodies which set the scene for the final stanza. This pleads for blindness, numbness, and the gift of undisturbed sleep, and the power of David Groves’ closing words “parla basso” laid a deep hush over the space. Body’s work and its musical realization that evening would have left very few unmoved.

The choice of the Unfinished Symphony to close the programme turned thoughts again to the other end of the life span. Written by the youthful Schubert and presented here by the flower of New Zealand’s aspiring young musicians, it was a fresh and enjoyable reading, displaying a good range of dynamics and tone, plenty of passion and commitment in the big tuttis, and delicate playing in the gentler parts. The contrasts were effectively expressed by consistently good wind solo work and beautifully shaped melodies from the strings.

Kenneth Young seemed to bring out the best in this orchestra, and the choice of works for this programme gave every opportunity to highlight their skills and musicianship. I look forward to hearing more from them as the year unfolds.

 

Scintillating Te Papa concert by National Youth Orchestra

Posted on by Lindis Taylor

The NZSO National Youth Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Northey

Lilburn: Aotearoa Overture; Matthew Hindson: Homage to Metallica; Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op 35 (with Vesa-Matti Leppänen – violin)

Te Papa, second level concourse

Thursday 6 February, 11am

Ben Northey’s name should have been familiar to me as his website (www.benjaminnorthey.com) refers to up-coming concerts that include the NZSO in November: entitled In the Hall of the Mountain King, where he will conduct Mozart’s Paris Symphony; the Variations on a Rococo Theme by Tchaikovsky (with cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan) and two works by Grieg.

He has just conducted the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra and the next six months see him conducting the Melbourne, West Australian and Tasmanian symphony orchestras, both Opera Australia and Victorian Opera and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.

His presence in front of the National Youth Orchestra at this Waitangi Day concert, and the manner of his introductory remarks revealed a gift for communication; but his musical talents appeared at once, perhaps most tellingly with the first piece, Lilburn’s Aotearoa Overture, which offered persuasive evidence of a talent for scrupulous dynamic shading and a clear grasp of overall shape.

There was a fine hush over the opening bars played by elegantly rich strings and a delicacy and clarity in the following dance-like theme, lit by fine wind playing. Though by the end, I missed a feeling of Lilburn’s understated climax which exists in the score.

The next piece was something of a celebration of a fellow Australian musician, Matthew Hindson, as well as a calculated effort to get on side with young players who might not entirely have outgrown a passion for rock music. His Homage to Metallica (‘homage’ is an English word, pronounced with first syllable stressed, not ‘hommage’, the French, where syllables are pretty evenly stressed and the ‘h’ not sounded at all) does not refer directly to the old rock group or to its music, but its aim seems to be to take their sounds and shapes further, along lines that might be more familiar to classical music audiences; or not.

A glance at Hindson’s website reveals a radical turn of mind, and though he presents an amiable demeanour and speaks of the need for new music that will keep audiences engaged, his musical ideas seem framed by essentially non-traditional objects and notions, with eccentric titles (e.g. Rave-Elation, Boom Box, Headbanger, A Symphony of Modern Objects) that seem to speak of the iconoclast and rebel.
I was amused to contemplate the performance’s juxtaposition with the large sign marking the ‘Awesome Forces’ display of powerful and dramatic geological phenomena alongside us, from which the chattering sounds of highly engaged children (often recently with my own grand-children) were in constant accompaniment. Hindson would have smiled.

This piece is 20 years old and I am in no position to comment on its likely appeal to today’s rockers (if that’s still a current word). It demanded a large orchestra, with triple winds and a pretty fancy range of percussion including anvil, tam-tam, roto-toms, wood blocks as well as all the more common items, apart from the tuned instruments. It moved through several sections, some of it very loud and abrasive, employing sophisticated resources such as the rare Locrian mode and the juxtaposition of semitones and the once forbidden ‘tritone’ interval (in fact, an augmented fourth).

It opened with long-drawn-out percussion dominated call to arms but that was quickly replaced by a rather unexpected melodic passage on beautifully played solo viola. A gentle later phase gave voice to piccolos, snare drum and wood block. At two stages a distinct sound was introduced with NZSO concert master Vesa-Matti Lappänen playing an amplified eighth-size violin, surprisingly tiny. Much of its contribution was in heavily bowed ‘thrash’ style double-stopping that produced the sort of ugliness that was the product of the formerly popular distorted guitar articulation.

Though I doubt that a heavy metaller would have found the rhythms congenial or particularly danceable, a rhythmic presence was always there, felt more through the impact of rhythmic instruments than through rhythms themselves. A final phase brought the tiny violin back with spectacular virtuosity, Vesa-Matti’s fingers seeming sorely cramped to obtain semi-tone intervals on the minuscule finger-board.

While there were many young people in the audience, there were more of an older generation and the applause was generous but not ecstatic – it was largely, I felt, for the skills and energy of conductor and players.

Finally, the major work was Rimsky-Korsakov’s dazzling orchestral extravaganza, Scheherazade. Nothing could have been more appropriate for a young orchestra, offering scope for fine solo displays by almost every section, including an important harp part. The prominent, sinuous violin part depicting Scheherazade was played by Annabel Drummond, who carried the torch with considerable seductive flair.

The whole performance was a testament to the unfailing ability of highly talented young musicians, led by a vivid and lively conductor, to achieve standards of individual brilliance and the most disciplined, cohesive ensemble that surpass their dreams.

The National Youth Orchestra has in the past introduced New Zealand to some very interesting conductors with proven gifts in inspiring young musicians, some established, Benjamin Zander and Paul Daniel for example, some fast-rising like Yannick Nézet-Séguin. From this concert, it would seem very clear that in Benjamin Northey the orchestra has found a worthy successor to the best of them.