Our Next Concert

The Christopher Marshall Concert
Thursday 22 July - Lixin Zhang

Lixin Zhang (piano)

Chopin - Ballade No. 1 in G minor, op. 23
Chopin - Sonata no. 3 in B minor, op. 58
Mozart - Piano Sonata No. 10 in C major, K. 330
Chopin - Nocturne in C minor op. 48 no. 1
Liszt - Vallee d'Obermann

Tickets




​Lixin Zhang is 19 and is currently studying with Michael Endres and Neville Baird. Starting this fall, Lixin will be studying at the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles in the studio of Fabio Bidini. Lixin was first recognised nationally at the age of eleven for his musical achievements. Since then, he has gone on to win top prizes at each of New Zealand’s major national piano competitions including the National Young Performer Award, Wallace National Piano Competition and the National Concerto Competition. Lixin has also given performances in Asia and Europe. Rattle Records released Lixin’s first CD in 2018, which promptly shot to first place in Radio NZ’s Classical Charts. For this concert, Lixin has selected some of his favourite works written by the romantic composer Frederic Chopin.

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Christopher's Classics 6 May 2021
Te Koki Trio 
Martin Riseley (Violin), Inbal Megiddo (Cello), Jian Liu (Piano)
Reviewed by Tony Ryan 

When we listen to music, we tend to find ourselves responding to and evaluating the performers rather than passing judgement on the music itself, especially when that music is by well-established and long respected composers. However, with Bartók’s Violin Sonata No. 1, passing judgement on the music was certainly a preoccupation among tonight’s audience. Comments which reached my ears after the performance included:
 
     “Well, that was tough going wasn’t it”
     “I won’t be lining up for the Bartók again any time soon”
     “At the start, I really wondered what was going on”
     “It seemed to be full of primal screams”.
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For a work that’s already 100 years old, I wonder if it’s time to call it quits, even if some of the world’s foremost violinists staunchly support this sonata’s value and effectiveness. And tonight’s programme notes admit that this sonata is one of the composer’s most challenging pieces – technically for the players and expressively for the audience. Even among Bartók’s most austere middle-period works, this sonata is unsurpassed in its disparate components and disorienting harmonies. 

The programme notes also tell the touching story of Bartók’s tearful response to Menuhin’s performance, telling him that “usually composers are not played with such understanding until well after their death”. But such an idea is a twentieth century myth that belies the huge understanding and appreciation awarded to most of the great, and many of the not-so-great, composers of the past in their own lifetimes. Bartók himself was also the recipient of considerable appreciation and admiration in his own lifetime, especially for his later concertos and orchestral works.

Anyway, without further weighing the pros and cons of the music itself, there’s no doubt about the commitment and mastery of tonight’s performers. Martin Riseley and Jian Liu clearly have the full measure of the technical and musical demands of this work and, if Riseley’s more energetic and physically demonstrative playing contrasted with Liu’s seemingly easy and fluidly natural virtuosity, that only served to emphasise the very different nature of the composer’s violin and piano writing, where neither of the two parts ever shared a dialogue of agreement. Each of the instruments seemed to respond in quite separate improvisatory ways to one another, even if both players worked together with notable unity of ensemble.

After the Bartók, the opening minutes of Kodály’s Duo for Cello and Violin came almost as “light relief” (another audience-member utterance) until it, too, delved into deep personal struggles with identity and autonomy. Anyone who’s visited Budapest, a city divided by the Danube and with a history of foreign domination and colonisation, will understand just how important artistic assertions of cultural identity are. Such endeavours to establish an artistic individuality are manifested in both Bartók’s and Kodály’s (and, earlier, even Liszt’s) lifelong search for and use of Hungarian folksong in their works. From time-to-time there are fleeting hints, in Kodály’s Duo, of more familiar pieces such as Háry János or the Peacock Variations but, like his compatriot, Kodály’s piece is a far more deeply personal and anguished response to yet another consequence of wartime on his country.

In this work, Martin Riseley was partnered by cellist Inbal Megiddo and, again their commitment and projection of its expressive content music was one of total belief and understanding, even if, like the Bartók, it required a degree of determined resolve from the listeners.

It was at the start of the Kodály Duo that I immediately became aware of the very open-hearted and lively tone quality of Inbal Megiddo’s Fiorini cello – vibrant and assertive, and rich and dark without any notable warmth. Megiddo exploited these qualities to the full, both here and in the Brahms Trio in B Major which followed. The timbre of her instrument was so distinctive that, to me, it sounded very little different even in the several muted passages in the music; a factor which prevented it from blending easily with Martin Riseley’s more focused and centred tonal palette. 

After the challenges of the first part of the programme, the opening, luxurious romanticism of Brahms’ masterpiece came as a welcome palate-cleanser. The glorious opening melody of the first movement was as uplifting as anyone could wish for in the accomplished hands of these three musicians. And their unified response to the whole work brought sun-filled and optimistic relief from the intensity and anguish of the first part of the programme.
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That’s not to say the music was less deeply felt or the playing less committed, but the visionary and affecting expression of Brahms’ over-arching structural logic and imaginative harmonic and melodic writing sent us out into a cold night with a gratifying and heart-warming aftertaste.

Christopher's Classics 29 April 2021
Serenity Thurlow (viola) & Diedre Irons (piano)
Reviewed by Tony Ryan 

I wonder if others in tonight’s audience found this programme of three profoundly serious major works for viola and piano unusually demanding?

I’m not deeply knowledgeable about vola repertoire, but I wonder if Brahms’ two songs for mezzo-soprano, viola and piano might have made an appealing companion to the same composer’s F minor Sonata; or maybe the viola version of Schubert’s wonderful Arpeggione Sonata could have lightened the mood a little.

The most familiar piece on tonight’s programme was certainly Brahms’ great Sonata Op. 120 No. 1, so different in its expression in Brahms’ own viola version compared to its original clarinet conception. I’ve always found this sonata’s first movement a little difficult to assimilate, but Serenity Thurlow’s beautiful tone quality, along with some finely shaped phrasing, brought its expressive substance fully to life. And this was the hallmark of Thurlow’s playing throughout the evening. Together with pianist, Diedre Irons, the music-making had a tangible sense of partnership and rapport that demonstrated spontaneity, thoughtfulness and vitality at every turn. 

In recent years we have become used to musicians talking to us about their personal connection with the music that they are playing, but tonight Serenity Thurlow, playing her entire programme from memory, let the music speak for itself, injecting everything she had to say into the performances themselves.

The final two movements of the Brahms sonata brought an awareness of a certain degree of restraint on the violist’s part which was fully matched by Diedre Irons. In the past I have enjoyed Irons’ ability to play with inspired abandon, depending on the musicians with whom she is working, but here she supported and matched all the subtlety and expressive restraint of her partner; the mark of a truly sensitive and responsive artist.

That partnership was evident right from the start of the concert in Hindemith’s youthful and approachable Sonata. Even as a twenty-four-year-old, Hindemith avoids any sense of heart-on-sleeve emotionalism in this work. As I’ve often found with this composer’s later masterpieces, his music reveals deeper and more enduring expressive character with repeated hearings. In this performance I enjoyed passing moments of melodic and harmonic invention in all three interconnected parts of the work, and I look forward to discovering more of its secrets now that I’ve saved it to my ‘favourites’ on Tidal (my current music streaming service).
Since tonight’s programme was announced for the 2021 season of Christopher’s Classics, I’ve listened to Shostakovich’s Sonata for Viola and Piano several times over the last few months, but for me it has proved to be one of those works that doesn’t make its full impact until I’m able to experience a live performance. Shostakovich has long been one of my most favourite composers, but despite many years of regular concert-going, this is one work which has never previously crossed my path in a live performance. In the event, the earlier sections of this piece remain rather elusive, but, in the second and third movements, there emerged a clear and familiar sense of Shostakovich’s highly original and personal style. 

Like several of Shostakovich’s last works, especially his Symphony No. 15, the Viola Sonata quotes from other pieces by both Shostakovich himself and other composers. Without reading tonight’s printed programme, I thought I heard references to the second movement of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. Later, the programme revealed that it was the Moonlight Sonata but, actually, the dotted rhythmic motif that Shostakovich used is the same in both. The programme also mentions quotes from the composer’s own opera, The Gamblers, and there are sections that also reminded me strongly of the final movement of his Piano Trio No. 2, written thirty years earlier.

It was in this final piece that Serenity Thurlow and Diedre Irons truly managed to bring a rather austere and esoteric creation to life. The commitment to and belief in this music, as well as the other works on the programme, was never in doubt. Once again, Christopher’s Classics has broadened our experience with imaginative programming and artists of the very highest calibre.

Roger Hickin Artworks 

A selection of Christopher and Jilly Marshall's artwork by the artist Roger Hickin will be presented for sale. This is a great opportunity to purchase artwork from a prominent New Zealand artist.
An essay on Roger Hickin by Sally Blundell may be found ​​here.

The catalogue of artworks for sale is here.
If you wish to purchase works from this exhibition please contact;
Christopher Marshall 
Email: cc.ohoka@gmail.com

Christopher’s Classics 2021 – Series XXVI
Reviewer Tony Ryan looks forward to the innovative programming of the 2021 season.
If Beethoven was the thematic thread in the 2020 season of Christopher’s Classics which celebrated both the series’ twenty-fifth year and the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, the 2021 season’s line-up celebrates diversity and innovation . . . and with not a single work by Beethoven in sight!

THE CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL CONCERT FOR STARS OF THE FUTURE is an additional feature of the 2021 season in tribute to the series’ founder and his long-time support of New Zealand musicians. The inaugural concert in July will promote the already well-known talents of Lixin Zhang in an all-Chopin programme. As well as this, the 2021 season also expands the series to seven subscription concerts.

SIX WORKS BY NEW ZEALAND COMPOSERS are sprinkled through the upcoming series along with a work by Gao Ping whose past work in Christchurch makes him almost a local. Two works by Gareth Farr and one by Peter Liley are included in the Trio Élan’s programme which opens the new season in April. The inclusion of saxophone is a notable feature of this trio – not an instrument that’s often encountered in chamber music concerts – in an innovative programme that also contains music by Debussy and Piazzolla alongside a work by American saxophonist Russ Peterson. Other New Zealand composers in the new season include Alex Taylor, Dorothea Franchi and a young local composer whose identity and work are yet to be announced.
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FRENCH MUSIC features in several programmes, including a reprise of one of the highlights of the 2020 season. Ravel’s Trio will be encored by a different group in 2021 when the Argyle Trio play it in their September concert as part of an all-French programme. French works are also a strong component in the programme of another trio, Les Voisins, in August. In this ensemble, Simon Martyn-Ellis (theorbo and guitars) joins two familiar Christopher’s Classics musicians, Justine Cormack (violin) and James Bush (cello), in a programme that includes more Ravel, works from the French Baroque, a New Zealand ‘reimagining’ of that era, and some “Hot Club de France” with four of Django Reinhardt’s best-known pieces. But top of my list for must-see French music is Les Bon Vivants’ inclusion of Ravel’s gorgeous Introduction and Allegro for Harp, Flute, Clarinet and String Quartet which ends this twenty-sixth season in October.

TWO WORKS BY THAT MASTER OF CHAMBER MUSIC, JOHANNES BRAHMS are included in two of the earlier concerts. In April Serenity Thurlow and Diedre Irons will play one of his very last compositions, the Sonata for Viola and Piano No. 1 in a programme that also includes Hindemith’s 1919 Sonata for Viola and Piano and Shostakovich’s very last work, his darkly austere Sonata for Viola and Piano. The other Brahms work is his Trio Op. 8 played by the Te Koki Trio in May, along with works by Kodaly and Bartok. Although new to Christopher’s Classics, the Te Koki Trio is led by a musician who is very familiar to Christchurch audiences as concertmaster of the Christchurch Symphony, violinist Martin Riseley. 

THE NEW ZEALAND STRING QUARTET returns in September 2021 – they are always welcome and regular visitors to the Christopher’s Classics series – with music by Purcell, Britten and Gao Ping, and a work that I look forward to hearing live in concert more than anything: Smetana’s colourful and original String Quartet No. 2.
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With such a varied and innovative line-up of music and performers, the 2021 Season of Christopher’s Classics is certainly destined to make up for some of the difficulties of the last few months.

Acknowledgements:
  We thank The Rata Foundation, The Elizabeth Ball Charitable Trust,
Gloria Streat, Antonio Strings, Chamber Music New Zealand and private donors, ​whose patronage and sponsorship grants make these concerts possible.

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