“The Splendour of Venice”
Christopher’s Classics – NZ Barok with James Bush (baroque cello)
The Piano, Christchurch – 16 October 2018
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
“Authentic, classy and spirited performances of Italian Baroque repertoire”
It’s not often in New Zealand, and certainly not in Christchurch, that we get an opportunity to hear a genuine baroque orchestra that uses authentic period instruments and playing styles. So, with huge gratitude to Christopher Marshall and his sponsors, this concert from NZ Barok was exceptionally welcome and The Piano was packed to bursting point.
These days it’s rare that recordings of baroque music are made with anything other than period instruments and specialist performers – to the extent that modern instruments and older recordings now just sound wrong.
The most obvious revelations (some aural, some visual) that last night’s audience was presented with, included the use of recorders rather than transverse flutes, cellos supported between players’ knees rather than by an end pin that extends to the floor, noticeably different coloured and sounding gut strings, distinctively shaped baroque bows, players standing rather than sitting (although a few modern ensembles also now do this) and an almost complete absence of vibrato. Interestingly, however, cellist James Bush employed much more vibrato than the other players in both his solo and ensemble playing.
It could be argued that even the gender balance of NZ Barok has a certain authenticity (just two men among fourteen women) given that Vivaldi wrote much of his music for the all-female ensembles of Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà.
NZ Barok also used an early baroque tuning temperament that proved especially noticeable in the thinly-textured Adagio of a Sonata by Giovanni Legrenzi . . . if that’s what it was! There was some discrepancy between the printed programme and what was actually played in the first half of the concert. And, with composers such as Legrenzi and Platti, both entirely new to me, there was no familiar reference point for this listener to identify some of this music. Even Vivaldi’s Cello Concerto (RV 424) sounded unlike the style of that composer’s more familiar music, although the Ripieno for Strings (RV 156), earlier in the programme, displayed all the hallmarks of Vivaldi’s distinctive and engaging sound world with its descending sequences and fizzingly animated string writing.
James Bush proved an engaging and stylish soloist in concertos by Vivaldi and Platti, communicating a tangible sense of baroque elegance rather than the showier extravagance that some players bring to this repertoire; although I have to own to a liking for such flamboyant display when it helps to bring the music to life. Bush brought similarly stylish polish to his playing as a member of the ensemble in the other works on the programme, always conveying a sense of vitality and involvement. The visual ‘lift’ that he invested in even the simplest accompaniment figures transferred to an audible buoyancy in the overall effect of the music and, if his animation slightly outshone that his colleagues, there was never any lack of energy and commitment from the whole ensemble.
Having said that, and although the sense of charismatic exuberance that opened the Monteverdi Toccata which began this concert was particularly thrilling, there was a slight feeling of taste and restraint in NZ Barok’s performances. The contrasts in dynamics and precision of articulation were always there, but not in the overtly cut-and-thrust way that I’ve become used to in period instrument performances of such repertoire. I know that recordings can often bring a sense of immediacy that isn’t always possible in live performances, but that immediacy has been very present in other live performances that I’ve experienced by such groups as a baroque orchestra in Venice and, more recently, from the wonderful Italian-based Il Pomo d’Oro on tour in Singapore.
Even so, this concert was a unique chance to hear some of the riches from lesser-known corners of the baroque repertoire in authentic, classy and spirited performances, and I certainly look forward to any future opportunities to hear NZ Barok.
Christopher’s Classics – NZ Barok with James Bush (baroque cello)
The Piano, Christchurch – 16 October 2018
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
“Authentic, classy and spirited performances of Italian Baroque repertoire”
It’s not often in New Zealand, and certainly not in Christchurch, that we get an opportunity to hear a genuine baroque orchestra that uses authentic period instruments and playing styles. So, with huge gratitude to Christopher Marshall and his sponsors, this concert from NZ Barok was exceptionally welcome and The Piano was packed to bursting point.
These days it’s rare that recordings of baroque music are made with anything other than period instruments and specialist performers – to the extent that modern instruments and older recordings now just sound wrong.
The most obvious revelations (some aural, some visual) that last night’s audience was presented with, included the use of recorders rather than transverse flutes, cellos supported between players’ knees rather than by an end pin that extends to the floor, noticeably different coloured and sounding gut strings, distinctively shaped baroque bows, players standing rather than sitting (although a few modern ensembles also now do this) and an almost complete absence of vibrato. Interestingly, however, cellist James Bush employed much more vibrato than the other players in both his solo and ensemble playing.
It could be argued that even the gender balance of NZ Barok has a certain authenticity (just two men among fourteen women) given that Vivaldi wrote much of his music for the all-female ensembles of Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà.
NZ Barok also used an early baroque tuning temperament that proved especially noticeable in the thinly-textured Adagio of a Sonata by Giovanni Legrenzi . . . if that’s what it was! There was some discrepancy between the printed programme and what was actually played in the first half of the concert. And, with composers such as Legrenzi and Platti, both entirely new to me, there was no familiar reference point for this listener to identify some of this music. Even Vivaldi’s Cello Concerto (RV 424) sounded unlike the style of that composer’s more familiar music, although the Ripieno for Strings (RV 156), earlier in the programme, displayed all the hallmarks of Vivaldi’s distinctive and engaging sound world with its descending sequences and fizzingly animated string writing.
James Bush proved an engaging and stylish soloist in concertos by Vivaldi and Platti, communicating a tangible sense of baroque elegance rather than the showier extravagance that some players bring to this repertoire; although I have to own to a liking for such flamboyant display when it helps to bring the music to life. Bush brought similarly stylish polish to his playing as a member of the ensemble in the other works on the programme, always conveying a sense of vitality and involvement. The visual ‘lift’ that he invested in even the simplest accompaniment figures transferred to an audible buoyancy in the overall effect of the music and, if his animation slightly outshone that his colleagues, there was never any lack of energy and commitment from the whole ensemble.
Having said that, and although the sense of charismatic exuberance that opened the Monteverdi Toccata which began this concert was particularly thrilling, there was a slight feeling of taste and restraint in NZ Barok’s performances. The contrasts in dynamics and precision of articulation were always there, but not in the overtly cut-and-thrust way that I’ve become used to in period instrument performances of such repertoire. I know that recordings can often bring a sense of immediacy that isn’t always possible in live performances, but that immediacy has been very present in other live performances that I’ve experienced by such groups as a baroque orchestra in Venice and, more recently, from the wonderful Italian-based Il Pomo d’Oro on tour in Singapore.
Even so, this concert was a unique chance to hear some of the riches from lesser-known corners of the baroque repertoire in authentic, classy and spirited performances, and I certainly look forward to any future opportunities to hear NZ Barok.
Christopher’s Classics – Richard Mapp (Piano)
The Piano, Christchurch – 13 September 2018
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
Last Night, on The Piano’s excellent Steinway, Richard Mapp gave us a very individual and thought-provoking recital as part of the Christopher’s Classics series. It wasn’t so much the repertoire, which included a couple of short pieces by Kenneth Young and Olivier Messiaen among more standard fare by Bach, Schubert, Chopin and Brahms, but more about Mapp’s very individual keyboard manner.
Right from the first work of the evening, Bach’s C-sharp Minor prelude and Fugue (Book 1), there was a certain improvisatory quality to the playing that was quite striking. While Richard Mapp’s physical and facial expression was almost bland, his fingers seemed to explore nuances of the music as if finding its delights for the first time, or even seeming to make them up as he played. Here a slight tenuto as if to savour a special discovery, there a momentary highlighting of an inner voice in the texture. I couldn’t help wondering if every detail was the same on every night of the pianist’s tour, but last night a heightened degree of spontaneity and sense of wonder were very present indeed.
Then followed the fifth piece from Kenneth Young’s 2002 Five Pieces for Piano, which proved an enjoyable and engaging piece reminding me how much I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve heard by this Christchurch-born composer; surely undervalued as one of New Zealand’s most consistently impressive composers. Here the movement chosen by the pianist was full of inventive harmonic ideas and a central ‘furioso’ full of vitality and fascinating textures.
Then to Schubert’s sublime Three Piano Pieces (D.946) and that same sense of improvisation in Mapp’s playing struck me even more. The last time I heard these pieces live was almost exactly seven years ago when Michael Houston gave us a much more strictly ‘classical’ performance, a few months after the earthquakes, in a tent in Hagley Park. But Richard Mapp’s almost wayward treatment of the first theme of the first piece made me listen freshly to a much-loved work. That first theme had such an ebb and flow (not quite what I’d call rubato) to the phrasing that it almost sounded nonchalant. And then, the transition to the second subject prepared the most magical emergence of that theme and made it sound more heart-rendingly expressive than I’ve ever heard. And, while I’d made a special effort to get the ideal seat to watch the pianist’s profile and finger-work, here I just closed my eyes and let the music carry me away. The second of these pieces (my favourite) was even more expressive, to the extent that the pianist’s visual restraint belied a performance of exquisite poetry.
I can’t help making a comparison at this point with Vladimir Horowitz; not that I’m making (or not making) any sort of quality judgement in saying that Richard Mapp’s playing reminded me of the outwardly underplayed and inwardly intensely passionate style of the great Russian-American. And, if Horowitz’s Carnegie Hall audiences unfailingly raised the roof in their approbation, we, in Christchurch, were just as appreciative of Richard Mapp’s playing in our own, less overt, response. But the way Horowitz would toss off the most finger-crippling complexities with seeming ease and nonchalance, and also a sense of improvisation (as indeed there sometimes was), was very evident in last night’s performances. Not that any of the works on this programme featured in Horowitz recitals; most of the composers, yes, but these particular works, not at all as far as I know.
The second part of Mapp’s recital duplicated the structure of the first. Two shorter individual works, followed by a longer collection of pieces by one of the master composers of the piano repertoire. Chopin’s Nocturne in C Minor continued the same improvisatory trends as the earlier part of the recital, with the additional advantage of hearing a single Chopin miniature masterpiece in isolation. Sometimes, in a collection of Nocturnes, or even other Chopin works, these gems can lose their individuality, but here every nuance of Chopin’s inspiration was exposed fully in a performance that seemed to search for any, as yet, hidden details.
Messiaen’s Première Communion de la Vierge from Vingts Regards de l’Enfant Jesus has become a central part of twentieth century piano repertoire, but I am not at all familiar with this composer’s piano music. It was all new to me except for Messiaen’s very identifiable and characteristic harmonies, familiar from his orchestral and other music. But the sonorities that both he and the player drew from the piano were startling in their originality, and the opulent beauty of the movement (No. 11 of the twenty) made me determined to explore this repertoire further.
To end the recital, Mapp chose Brahms’ Seven Fantasies, Op. 116. If, perhaps, less familiar than some of the other piano pieces (Op. 117-119) from Brahms’ final years, the first two in the group, especially, certainly hit the mark with both Brahms and the pianist seeming to take delight in finding new and exquisite moments of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic beauty.
The enthusiastic response from the audience brought an encore of Chopin’s technically undemanding Waltz in A-flat. Technically undemanding it may be, but Mapp used it to take his exploratory approach to such extremes that it was almost like hearing the composer himself creating the piece. The con anima marking of the second theme was almost ignored in order to highlight the subtleties of the harmonic invention. And the final statement of the main theme ended with such an emphasis of the D-flat harmony clash against the D-natural in the melody that I’ve found myself playing through the piece this morning, trying to recapture the new surprises that Richard Mapp revealed before he left the stage.
The pianist’s lively and personal programme notes also reflected his inquiring approach and made interesting reading.
The Piano, Christchurch – 13 September 2018
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
Last Night, on The Piano’s excellent Steinway, Richard Mapp gave us a very individual and thought-provoking recital as part of the Christopher’s Classics series. It wasn’t so much the repertoire, which included a couple of short pieces by Kenneth Young and Olivier Messiaen among more standard fare by Bach, Schubert, Chopin and Brahms, but more about Mapp’s very individual keyboard manner.
Right from the first work of the evening, Bach’s C-sharp Minor prelude and Fugue (Book 1), there was a certain improvisatory quality to the playing that was quite striking. While Richard Mapp’s physical and facial expression was almost bland, his fingers seemed to explore nuances of the music as if finding its delights for the first time, or even seeming to make them up as he played. Here a slight tenuto as if to savour a special discovery, there a momentary highlighting of an inner voice in the texture. I couldn’t help wondering if every detail was the same on every night of the pianist’s tour, but last night a heightened degree of spontaneity and sense of wonder were very present indeed.
Then followed the fifth piece from Kenneth Young’s 2002 Five Pieces for Piano, which proved an enjoyable and engaging piece reminding me how much I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve heard by this Christchurch-born composer; surely undervalued as one of New Zealand’s most consistently impressive composers. Here the movement chosen by the pianist was full of inventive harmonic ideas and a central ‘furioso’ full of vitality and fascinating textures.
Then to Schubert’s sublime Three Piano Pieces (D.946) and that same sense of improvisation in Mapp’s playing struck me even more. The last time I heard these pieces live was almost exactly seven years ago when Michael Houston gave us a much more strictly ‘classical’ performance, a few months after the earthquakes, in a tent in Hagley Park. But Richard Mapp’s almost wayward treatment of the first theme of the first piece made me listen freshly to a much-loved work. That first theme had such an ebb and flow (not quite what I’d call rubato) to the phrasing that it almost sounded nonchalant. And then, the transition to the second subject prepared the most magical emergence of that theme and made it sound more heart-rendingly expressive than I’ve ever heard. And, while I’d made a special effort to get the ideal seat to watch the pianist’s profile and finger-work, here I just closed my eyes and let the music carry me away. The second of these pieces (my favourite) was even more expressive, to the extent that the pianist’s visual restraint belied a performance of exquisite poetry.
I can’t help making a comparison at this point with Vladimir Horowitz; not that I’m making (or not making) any sort of quality judgement in saying that Richard Mapp’s playing reminded me of the outwardly underplayed and inwardly intensely passionate style of the great Russian-American. And, if Horowitz’s Carnegie Hall audiences unfailingly raised the roof in their approbation, we, in Christchurch, were just as appreciative of Richard Mapp’s playing in our own, less overt, response. But the way Horowitz would toss off the most finger-crippling complexities with seeming ease and nonchalance, and also a sense of improvisation (as indeed there sometimes was), was very evident in last night’s performances. Not that any of the works on this programme featured in Horowitz recitals; most of the composers, yes, but these particular works, not at all as far as I know.
The second part of Mapp’s recital duplicated the structure of the first. Two shorter individual works, followed by a longer collection of pieces by one of the master composers of the piano repertoire. Chopin’s Nocturne in C Minor continued the same improvisatory trends as the earlier part of the recital, with the additional advantage of hearing a single Chopin miniature masterpiece in isolation. Sometimes, in a collection of Nocturnes, or even other Chopin works, these gems can lose their individuality, but here every nuance of Chopin’s inspiration was exposed fully in a performance that seemed to search for any, as yet, hidden details.
Messiaen’s Première Communion de la Vierge from Vingts Regards de l’Enfant Jesus has become a central part of twentieth century piano repertoire, but I am not at all familiar with this composer’s piano music. It was all new to me except for Messiaen’s very identifiable and characteristic harmonies, familiar from his orchestral and other music. But the sonorities that both he and the player drew from the piano were startling in their originality, and the opulent beauty of the movement (No. 11 of the twenty) made me determined to explore this repertoire further.
To end the recital, Mapp chose Brahms’ Seven Fantasies, Op. 116. If, perhaps, less familiar than some of the other piano pieces (Op. 117-119) from Brahms’ final years, the first two in the group, especially, certainly hit the mark with both Brahms and the pianist seeming to take delight in finding new and exquisite moments of melodic, harmonic and rhythmic beauty.
The enthusiastic response from the audience brought an encore of Chopin’s technically undemanding Waltz in A-flat. Technically undemanding it may be, but Mapp used it to take his exploratory approach to such extremes that it was almost like hearing the composer himself creating the piece. The con anima marking of the second theme was almost ignored in order to highlight the subtleties of the harmonic invention. And the final statement of the main theme ended with such an emphasis of the D-flat harmony clash against the D-natural in the melody that I’ve found myself playing through the piece this morning, trying to recapture the new surprises that Richard Mapp revealed before he left the stage.
The pianist’s lively and personal programme notes also reflected his inquiring approach and made interesting reading.
Christopher’s Classics – The New Zealand String Quartet with Serenity Thurlow
The Piano, Christchurch – 23 August 2018
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
How often over the last twenty-or-so months have I sat in this still new Christchurch venue and been moved, inspired, surprised, overwhelmed, awed, or generally carried away by music and music-making of varying degrees of charisma and communication by composers and players who really have something special to say? There are memories of some very special moments indeed and, if this New Zealand String Quartet concert may not end up being among the best, there was, even so, much to admire and to provoke thought.
In Beethoven’s F Minor Quartet, the NZSQ’s impressive unity of ensemble also managed to allow an expressive freedom and flexibility of phrasing, especially in the first movement. And the group’s animated commitment to the contrasts of texture and articulation in Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2 made a persuasive case for the piece’s adventurous daring. That same belief in difficult (from a listener’s point of view) music was also evident in the performance of Webern’s Six Bagatelles. And, finally, Mozart’s String Quintet in C Major, where the quartet was joined by violist Serenity Thurlow, brought comforting and untroubled relief from the extreme demands of what preceded it.
But somehow this programme wasn’t as convincing as one might have expected. Although first violinist Helene Pohl introduced the Beethoven quartet, stressing its extreme contrasts of dynamics, tempo, mood, etc., I felt that these contrasts were not made present enough in the performance. From the outset, a certain homogenous blending of texture struck me in comparison to the character and individuality that Beethoven has built into each of the four textural strands. The first and third movements certainly demonstrated playing of energy and vitality, but I sensed a certain generalisation in the expression, almost as if the players have reached a point of over-familiarity with a work that’s been in their repertoire for many years and in which they can no longer find anything new. Or perhaps it’s my fault and that the over-familiarity is something which causes my own need for an exaggerated projection of Beethoven’s expressive invention. Whatever the case, I can’t help comparing this interpretation with that of another recent Beethoven performance (of an earlier quartet) that I attended where the work came to life in a much more compelling way.
Although I’m not prepared to place any blame for my problems with Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2 on the NZSQ’s performance, I confess to finding it a rather impenetrable piece. As much as I love and respond to so much of Bartók’s other music, I still have problems with some of his quartets. Admittedly, this composer’s six string quartets are generally considered almost as central to the quartet repertoire as Beethoven’s, but they are far from an easy listen. Some years ago I even bought a score of this second quartet in order to help my understanding of its mysteries, but I still have much work to do before its secrets are revealed. Possibly other members of last night’s audience have reached a more advanced level of understanding of the work, but the interval and post-concert conversations certainly centred on the work’s difficulties for the listener. The NZSQ’s performance was striking for its commitment and mastery of the work’s idiom but, again, I can’t help recalling a performance of the same composer’s Fourth String Quartet just a couple of weeks ago at the Aspen Festival where its originality, audacity and expressive impact were simply astonishing. The Fourth is a very different work to the Second, but, even so, in Aspen I was grateful for a performance that helped me cross a barrier; I just need a similar revelation in some of Bartók’s other quartets.
Then, as if to ensure that we didn’t sink back into any sort of complacency, the next work on the programme was Anton Webern’s Six Bagatelles for String Quartet. Have these six one-page miniatures acquired a sort of quirky novelty value rather than an ability to move us or to stimulate our intellects? Certainly their experimental nature has never faded despite their more-that-one-hundred-year life so far. The range of articulation and technical effects required is extreme – far more than is found in works of much longer duration. A glance at the score reveals more ink devoted to instructions than to the notes themselves. But, despite the saturation of such markings in the score and of the intense compression of the composer’s invention, the NZSQ played these pieces with real flair and with all the seeming ease of a Mozart minuet.
And a work by Mozart was the final piece on the programme. His C Major Quintet is one of his finest chamber works with a first movement bigger in scale than any other instrumental piece that he wrote. I have already mentioned that this work allowed us to return to our comfort zones after the challenges of Bartók and Webern but, for me, the performance was just a bit too comfortable, seeming a little relaxed and merely pleasant after the works it followed, despite the players’ unfailing vitality. However enjoyable this performance was, and enjoy it we did, maybe it would have been better at the start of the evening where Mozart’s own brand of originality and progressiveness would have had more impact before the more extreme demands of what was to come.
Overall then, a challenging programme and, although the playing was technically and consistently masterful, it didn’t quite project the fullest expression of the composers’ creativity. Christchurch viola player Serenity Thurlow proved a superb addition to the NZSQ’s personnel in the quintet in a concert that maintained the impressive quality of the Christopher’s Classics series.
Mention of this series reminds me that the concert also included an on-stage acknowledgement of Christopher Marshall’s contribution to chamber music in Christchurch as well as his support for musicians throughout New Zealand and beyond, and for which he was the well-deserved recipient of this year’s Chamber Music NZ Marie Vandewart Memorial Award.
The Piano, Christchurch – 23 August 2018
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
How often over the last twenty-or-so months have I sat in this still new Christchurch venue and been moved, inspired, surprised, overwhelmed, awed, or generally carried away by music and music-making of varying degrees of charisma and communication by composers and players who really have something special to say? There are memories of some very special moments indeed and, if this New Zealand String Quartet concert may not end up being among the best, there was, even so, much to admire and to provoke thought.
In Beethoven’s F Minor Quartet, the NZSQ’s impressive unity of ensemble also managed to allow an expressive freedom and flexibility of phrasing, especially in the first movement. And the group’s animated commitment to the contrasts of texture and articulation in Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2 made a persuasive case for the piece’s adventurous daring. That same belief in difficult (from a listener’s point of view) music was also evident in the performance of Webern’s Six Bagatelles. And, finally, Mozart’s String Quintet in C Major, where the quartet was joined by violist Serenity Thurlow, brought comforting and untroubled relief from the extreme demands of what preceded it.
But somehow this programme wasn’t as convincing as one might have expected. Although first violinist Helene Pohl introduced the Beethoven quartet, stressing its extreme contrasts of dynamics, tempo, mood, etc., I felt that these contrasts were not made present enough in the performance. From the outset, a certain homogenous blending of texture struck me in comparison to the character and individuality that Beethoven has built into each of the four textural strands. The first and third movements certainly demonstrated playing of energy and vitality, but I sensed a certain generalisation in the expression, almost as if the players have reached a point of over-familiarity with a work that’s been in their repertoire for many years and in which they can no longer find anything new. Or perhaps it’s my fault and that the over-familiarity is something which causes my own need for an exaggerated projection of Beethoven’s expressive invention. Whatever the case, I can’t help comparing this interpretation with that of another recent Beethoven performance (of an earlier quartet) that I attended where the work came to life in a much more compelling way.
Although I’m not prepared to place any blame for my problems with Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2 on the NZSQ’s performance, I confess to finding it a rather impenetrable piece. As much as I love and respond to so much of Bartók’s other music, I still have problems with some of his quartets. Admittedly, this composer’s six string quartets are generally considered almost as central to the quartet repertoire as Beethoven’s, but they are far from an easy listen. Some years ago I even bought a score of this second quartet in order to help my understanding of its mysteries, but I still have much work to do before its secrets are revealed. Possibly other members of last night’s audience have reached a more advanced level of understanding of the work, but the interval and post-concert conversations certainly centred on the work’s difficulties for the listener. The NZSQ’s performance was striking for its commitment and mastery of the work’s idiom but, again, I can’t help recalling a performance of the same composer’s Fourth String Quartet just a couple of weeks ago at the Aspen Festival where its originality, audacity and expressive impact were simply astonishing. The Fourth is a very different work to the Second, but, even so, in Aspen I was grateful for a performance that helped me cross a barrier; I just need a similar revelation in some of Bartók’s other quartets.
Then, as if to ensure that we didn’t sink back into any sort of complacency, the next work on the programme was Anton Webern’s Six Bagatelles for String Quartet. Have these six one-page miniatures acquired a sort of quirky novelty value rather than an ability to move us or to stimulate our intellects? Certainly their experimental nature has never faded despite their more-that-one-hundred-year life so far. The range of articulation and technical effects required is extreme – far more than is found in works of much longer duration. A glance at the score reveals more ink devoted to instructions than to the notes themselves. But, despite the saturation of such markings in the score and of the intense compression of the composer’s invention, the NZSQ played these pieces with real flair and with all the seeming ease of a Mozart minuet.
And a work by Mozart was the final piece on the programme. His C Major Quintet is one of his finest chamber works with a first movement bigger in scale than any other instrumental piece that he wrote. I have already mentioned that this work allowed us to return to our comfort zones after the challenges of Bartók and Webern but, for me, the performance was just a bit too comfortable, seeming a little relaxed and merely pleasant after the works it followed, despite the players’ unfailing vitality. However enjoyable this performance was, and enjoy it we did, maybe it would have been better at the start of the evening where Mozart’s own brand of originality and progressiveness would have had more impact before the more extreme demands of what was to come.
Overall then, a challenging programme and, although the playing was technically and consistently masterful, it didn’t quite project the fullest expression of the composers’ creativity. Christchurch viola player Serenity Thurlow proved a superb addition to the NZSQ’s personnel in the quintet in a concert that maintained the impressive quality of the Christopher’s Classics series.
Mention of this series reminds me that the concert also included an on-stage acknowledgement of Christopher Marshall’s contribution to chamber music in Christchurch as well as his support for musicians throughout New Zealand and beyond, and for which he was the well-deserved recipient of this year’s Chamber Music NZ Marie Vandewart Memorial Award.
Christopher’s Classics – The Behn Quartet at The Piano, Christchurch – 1 May 2018
Here is a link to Tony Ryan's glowing review of Christopher's Classics concert featuring the Behn Quartet
Here is a link to Tony Ryan's glowing review of Christopher's Classics concert featuring the Behn Quartet
Christopher’s Classics – The Villani Piano Quartet at The Piano, Christchurch – 19 April 2018
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
Although the Piano Quartet repertoire is not as seemingly unlimited as that for string quartet or even piano trio combinations, the Villani Piano Quartet compiled a superbly balanced programme for last night’s concert. This is the third Piano Quartet ensemble featured in the Christopher’s Classics series within twelve months and all three have proved to be well worth the ticket price. Each group has also included a Brahms Quartet, and the Villanis played the same G minor work that we heard last May from Diedre Irons and NZSO string players.
This latest concert began with Beethoven’s Piano Quartet in E flat Op. 16, originally written for piano and winds when the composer was twenty-six. The wind parts were adapted (and added to) for strings a year or two later and, although the work was published in the same year as Beethoven’s first group of String Quartets, it hasn’t quite got all of the innovative originality of those works. The Villani Piano Quartet’s performance communicated the piece’s engaging and attractive qualities, but I couldn’t help feeling that everything was a bit too carefully controlled. The Rondo finale in particular, for all its lively and appealing melodic, rhythmic and textural content, wanted more abandon and spontaneity.
Even so, there’s no denying the Villanis’ accomplished technical and musical excellence. Balance among the four players was ideally judged with every strand of the texture played and projected with finesse. Flavio Villani’s lightness of touch in the piano part certainly enabled the string textures to be easily heard and all three of the other players worked together with superbly considered similarity of style. Vibrato was relatively restrained and unity of phrasing was clearly evident. It’s just that I couldn’t help wishing for them to “let go” a bit, especially in that third movement.
The two movements of the Peteris Vasks quartet that followed displayed similar restraint. This fascinating work was introduced by the ensemble’s cellist, Sarah Spence. There seems to be an increasing, and very welcome, tendency for performers to engage with their audiences, and Spence’s informative and very personal perspective was perfectly judged in a way that enhanced the listening experience for a piece that few, if any, in the audience will have been familiar with. The Villanis’ performance, just three days after this Latvian composer’s seventy-second birthday, was captivating. Their clear belief in the quality of the music was communicated effectively so that, along with the spoken introductory comments, the audience responded to this 2001 composition with genuine interest and warmth. Although these two movements (of the work’s six) are tonally based, Vasks’ use of diverse articulation and textures, as well as some stridently discordant effects, keep the music absorbing and unpredictable for its full duration. From eerie glissandi and sul ponticello effects to liltingly rhythmic and melodic juxtapositions, the players projected expressive mastery throughout. But, once again, the dramatic flourish that ended the second movement was held in check as if the players wanted to ensure that there was no chance of any technical blemish.
In general, fine and consistent as this quartet’s playing was throughout the concert, I missed an element of risk-taking. This was particularly evident in the great Brahms G Minor Quartet where, in comparison to last year’s performance of the same work by the Irons-Leppänen-Joyce-Joyce quartet, the music-making was praiseworthy rather than compelling. Unfortunately, that earlier performance was exceptional to the extent that I can’t even listen to famous recordings without missing the charisma and thrill that I experienced then. Comparisons are odious, I know, but when the same work appears in the same venue and same series within such a short time, it’s almost inevitable.
The Villanis gave us an excellent, well-rehearsed, often exciting interpretation of Brahms’ masterpiece, with notably virtuoso playing and, again, Sarah Spence’s introduction was personal and helpful, but the performance itself just didn’t quite reach my elevated (perhaps unfairly so) expectations. Technically and musically, the playing was hard to fault. Textural contrasts were beautifully judged and the panache of the final movement had my foot tapping, even if its gypsy abandon seemed slightly too reserved.
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
Although the Piano Quartet repertoire is not as seemingly unlimited as that for string quartet or even piano trio combinations, the Villani Piano Quartet compiled a superbly balanced programme for last night’s concert. This is the third Piano Quartet ensemble featured in the Christopher’s Classics series within twelve months and all three have proved to be well worth the ticket price. Each group has also included a Brahms Quartet, and the Villanis played the same G minor work that we heard last May from Diedre Irons and NZSO string players.
This latest concert began with Beethoven’s Piano Quartet in E flat Op. 16, originally written for piano and winds when the composer was twenty-six. The wind parts were adapted (and added to) for strings a year or two later and, although the work was published in the same year as Beethoven’s first group of String Quartets, it hasn’t quite got all of the innovative originality of those works. The Villani Piano Quartet’s performance communicated the piece’s engaging and attractive qualities, but I couldn’t help feeling that everything was a bit too carefully controlled. The Rondo finale in particular, for all its lively and appealing melodic, rhythmic and textural content, wanted more abandon and spontaneity.
Even so, there’s no denying the Villanis’ accomplished technical and musical excellence. Balance among the four players was ideally judged with every strand of the texture played and projected with finesse. Flavio Villani’s lightness of touch in the piano part certainly enabled the string textures to be easily heard and all three of the other players worked together with superbly considered similarity of style. Vibrato was relatively restrained and unity of phrasing was clearly evident. It’s just that I couldn’t help wishing for them to “let go” a bit, especially in that third movement.
The two movements of the Peteris Vasks quartet that followed displayed similar restraint. This fascinating work was introduced by the ensemble’s cellist, Sarah Spence. There seems to be an increasing, and very welcome, tendency for performers to engage with their audiences, and Spence’s informative and very personal perspective was perfectly judged in a way that enhanced the listening experience for a piece that few, if any, in the audience will have been familiar with. The Villanis’ performance, just three days after this Latvian composer’s seventy-second birthday, was captivating. Their clear belief in the quality of the music was communicated effectively so that, along with the spoken introductory comments, the audience responded to this 2001 composition with genuine interest and warmth. Although these two movements (of the work’s six) are tonally based, Vasks’ use of diverse articulation and textures, as well as some stridently discordant effects, keep the music absorbing and unpredictable for its full duration. From eerie glissandi and sul ponticello effects to liltingly rhythmic and melodic juxtapositions, the players projected expressive mastery throughout. But, once again, the dramatic flourish that ended the second movement was held in check as if the players wanted to ensure that there was no chance of any technical blemish.
In general, fine and consistent as this quartet’s playing was throughout the concert, I missed an element of risk-taking. This was particularly evident in the great Brahms G Minor Quartet where, in comparison to last year’s performance of the same work by the Irons-Leppänen-Joyce-Joyce quartet, the music-making was praiseworthy rather than compelling. Unfortunately, that earlier performance was exceptional to the extent that I can’t even listen to famous recordings without missing the charisma and thrill that I experienced then. Comparisons are odious, I know, but when the same work appears in the same venue and same series within such a short time, it’s almost inevitable.
The Villanis gave us an excellent, well-rehearsed, often exciting interpretation of Brahms’ masterpiece, with notably virtuoso playing and, again, Sarah Spence’s introduction was personal and helpful, but the performance itself just didn’t quite reach my elevated (perhaps unfairly so) expectations. Technically and musically, the playing was hard to fault. Textural contrasts were beautifully judged and the panache of the final movement had my foot tapping, even if its gypsy abandon seemed slightly too reserved.
Christopher’s Classics – Natalia Lomeiko & Kirsten Robertson at The Piano, Christchurch – 28 February 2018
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
Click HERE to listen to RNZ Concert's review and interview with Natalia
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
Click HERE to listen to RNZ Concert's review and interview with Natalia
Christopher’s Classics
Piano Four-hands
Tony Chen Lin & Jun Bouterey-Ishido
The Piano, Christchurch – 2 November 2017
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
The standing ovation at the end of this recital was affirmation of some very special music-making and certainly, for me, one of my top two highlights from an intensive year of concert, opera and recital-going. As it happens, my other musical high point from 2017 was also a concert in the Christopher’s Classics series; that one featuring Diedre Irons and string principals from the NZSO.
Each of these concerts included a major, if less well-known, work by Schubert. The Piano Quartet from Irons and co proved an exciting and captivating encounter because of a truly exceptional and virtuosic performance and, while Tony Chen Lin and Jun Bouterey-Ishido delivered similar excitement and virtuosity in other parts of their piano duet programme, their interpretation of Schubert’s Grand Duo Sonata was the one minor disappointment of the evening. It may not be one of Schubert’s finest pieces, but, played with less romantic indulgence than we heard last night, it can survive its more-than-forty-minute duration more effectively. Lovingly played as this sonata was, perhaps Schubert’s greatest piano duet masterpiece, the F Minor Fantasie, would have better suited these two musicians and would certainly have shortened what seemed like an overly long first half of the programme.
But that one negative aside, everything else was extraordinarily compelling. Each half of the programme began with pieces by the Hungarian composer György Kurtág. Here, his four-hand Jatekok (Games) miniatures were interspersed with his arrangements of Bach. The Jatekok pieces are full of humour, which was all the more effective for Chen Lin and Bouterey-Ishido’s deliberately overly intense presentation. In the opening Flowers piece, each player challenged the other to more excessive and expressive delivery of single notes, and as each encroached on the other’s half of the keyboard, a sense of feigned friendship disguising intense enmity, with Lang Lang-like emotive flourishes, had the audience laughing openly. This piece, like the others, can be approached in different ways and I’ve seen it done by a male-female duo where ‘he’ uses the need to access ‘her’ part of the piano as an excuse to put his arm around her. Each of these pieces was followed by one of Kurtág’s Bach transcriptions, and the sense of inner joy in the playing was simply breathtaking.
A second group of three pairings of Kurtág’s Jatekok and Bach pieces began the second half and, if “joy” was the dominant feeling of the first group, this second set conveyed a deeply poignant sense of wonder. The final Bach transcription, the Sonatina from the Actus Tragicus cantata, was exceptionally moving in a performance of restrained and beautifully phrased concentration.
But it was the Stravinsky and Ravel works at the end of the programme that evoked awe from the audience, with playing of truly exceptional control, virtuosity and expressive insight. Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is now a familiar and often performed orchestral showpiece, but if I feared missing its orchestral colours and spectacular effects, I need not have worried. This cracking duo brought every bar to colourful life with playing of astonishing assurance and variety. The performance made me hear details of textural complexity and melodic lyricism that usually take a back seat to exotic timbres and kaleidoscopic drama. I had anticipated a monochrome version of a work that depends on its orchestral garb, but it was more like hearing a new work with its own striking originality and merit.
If I seem to be overreaching the superlatives in describing the Stravinsky performance, Tony Chen Lin and Jun Bouterey-Ishido played Ravel’s La Valse with such consummate technical and expressive mastery that words fail, leaving me to stand and cheer along with the rest of the large audience as the best response. Both pianists danced their way through this glittering and swirling masterpiece as if in a hypnotic trance akin to that of the sacrificial maiden at the end of The Rite of Spring. Delicacy of touch alternated with dazzling power as the piece spiralled towards its dizzying climax. It was almost as exhausting to watch as it must have been to play!
Maybe a bit of information about some of the music, especially the Kurtág, could have been included in the programme in preference to nearly a whole page about one of the players, but, hey, with a concert of this quality and individuality, I feel churlish complaining about anything.
Piano Four-hands
Tony Chen Lin & Jun Bouterey-Ishido
The Piano, Christchurch – 2 November 2017
Reviewed by Tony Ryan
The standing ovation at the end of this recital was affirmation of some very special music-making and certainly, for me, one of my top two highlights from an intensive year of concert, opera and recital-going. As it happens, my other musical high point from 2017 was also a concert in the Christopher’s Classics series; that one featuring Diedre Irons and string principals from the NZSO.
Each of these concerts included a major, if less well-known, work by Schubert. The Piano Quartet from Irons and co proved an exciting and captivating encounter because of a truly exceptional and virtuosic performance and, while Tony Chen Lin and Jun Bouterey-Ishido delivered similar excitement and virtuosity in other parts of their piano duet programme, their interpretation of Schubert’s Grand Duo Sonata was the one minor disappointment of the evening. It may not be one of Schubert’s finest pieces, but, played with less romantic indulgence than we heard last night, it can survive its more-than-forty-minute duration more effectively. Lovingly played as this sonata was, perhaps Schubert’s greatest piano duet masterpiece, the F Minor Fantasie, would have better suited these two musicians and would certainly have shortened what seemed like an overly long first half of the programme.
But that one negative aside, everything else was extraordinarily compelling. Each half of the programme began with pieces by the Hungarian composer György Kurtág. Here, his four-hand Jatekok (Games) miniatures were interspersed with his arrangements of Bach. The Jatekok pieces are full of humour, which was all the more effective for Chen Lin and Bouterey-Ishido’s deliberately overly intense presentation. In the opening Flowers piece, each player challenged the other to more excessive and expressive delivery of single notes, and as each encroached on the other’s half of the keyboard, a sense of feigned friendship disguising intense enmity, with Lang Lang-like emotive flourishes, had the audience laughing openly. This piece, like the others, can be approached in different ways and I’ve seen it done by a male-female duo where ‘he’ uses the need to access ‘her’ part of the piano as an excuse to put his arm around her. Each of these pieces was followed by one of Kurtág’s Bach transcriptions, and the sense of inner joy in the playing was simply breathtaking.
A second group of three pairings of Kurtág’s Jatekok and Bach pieces began the second half and, if “joy” was the dominant feeling of the first group, this second set conveyed a deeply poignant sense of wonder. The final Bach transcription, the Sonatina from the Actus Tragicus cantata, was exceptionally moving in a performance of restrained and beautifully phrased concentration.
But it was the Stravinsky and Ravel works at the end of the programme that evoked awe from the audience, with playing of truly exceptional control, virtuosity and expressive insight. Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is now a familiar and often performed orchestral showpiece, but if I feared missing its orchestral colours and spectacular effects, I need not have worried. This cracking duo brought every bar to colourful life with playing of astonishing assurance and variety. The performance made me hear details of textural complexity and melodic lyricism that usually take a back seat to exotic timbres and kaleidoscopic drama. I had anticipated a monochrome version of a work that depends on its orchestral garb, but it was more like hearing a new work with its own striking originality and merit.
If I seem to be overreaching the superlatives in describing the Stravinsky performance, Tony Chen Lin and Jun Bouterey-Ishido played Ravel’s La Valse with such consummate technical and expressive mastery that words fail, leaving me to stand and cheer along with the rest of the large audience as the best response. Both pianists danced their way through this glittering and swirling masterpiece as if in a hypnotic trance akin to that of the sacrificial maiden at the end of The Rite of Spring. Delicacy of touch alternated with dazzling power as the piece spiralled towards its dizzying climax. It was almost as exhausting to watch as it must have been to play!
Maybe a bit of information about some of the music, especially the Kurtág, could have been included in the programme in preference to nearly a whole page about one of the players, but, hey, with a concert of this quality and individuality, I feel churlish complaining about anything.
Concert Review: TONY RYAN
Christopher's Classics: Diedre Irons & NZSO Principals
The Piano, May 23.
This concert was very special indeed. The combination of Diedre Irons with three NZSO string principals (Vesa-Matti Leppänen, Julia Joyce and Andrew Joyce) was a match made in heaven. The spontaneous standing ovation at the end of the concert showed genuine appreciation of truly exceptional performances.
Diedre Irons has suggested that the fiendishly difficult piano part in Schubert's Adagio and Rondo Concertante is the reason for its infrequent performances. But actually, although the piece has all Schubert's stylistic hallmarks, it contains not a single really memorable idea. But what a performance! I found myself chuckling at the almost humorous audacity of the writing, which all four musicians brought out fully, holding nothing back. Diedre Irons was certainly the star of this show with robust and energetic playing that remained a feature of her contribution throughout.
If Mahler's Quartet in A Minor is usually dismissed as juvenilia, Tuesday night's performance made the strongest possible case for it. This was a hugely enjoyable interpretation with superb ensemble-work, making the most of every tonal and dynamic contrast. It was preceded by an equally convincing performance of Schnittke's take on the fragment of a Scherzo that Mahler also intended for his quartet. Whatever Schnittke's intention, the movement sounds like frustration, perhaps even distress, at the lack of development in Mahler's tantalisingly skeletal fragment. He seems to be wrestling, like Mime trying to forge Sigmund's sword, with shards of ideas that won't fit together, until he allows Mahler's original fragment to stand provokingly alone. Following this with Mahler's fully completed movement seemed the perfect programming solution. Simply brilliant.
But the performance of the Brahms' Piano Quartet in G Minor in the second-half of this concert was on an even higher level. Unity of style, ensemble, virtuosity, technique and musicianship made this performance extraordinarily charismatic and inspiring. I have never heard the first movement played with such expressive impact and variety. And the tonal quality of all four instruments was consistently gorgeous throughout the work. The performance was full of delights: Diedre Irons' magical lightness of touch in the coda of the Intermezzo was simply breathtaking; the start of the Animato of the third movement was a moment of truly heart-stopping frisson, and the awe-inspiring and faultless virtuosity, along with tonal variety from all four musicians in the final Rondo, brought an emotional clout that had not previously struck me in this movement.
So, a night of extraordinary music-making that I know will live long in my memory.
Christopher's Classics: Diedre Irons & NZSO Principals
The Piano, May 23.
This concert was very special indeed. The combination of Diedre Irons with three NZSO string principals (Vesa-Matti Leppänen, Julia Joyce and Andrew Joyce) was a match made in heaven. The spontaneous standing ovation at the end of the concert showed genuine appreciation of truly exceptional performances.
Diedre Irons has suggested that the fiendishly difficult piano part in Schubert's Adagio and Rondo Concertante is the reason for its infrequent performances. But actually, although the piece has all Schubert's stylistic hallmarks, it contains not a single really memorable idea. But what a performance! I found myself chuckling at the almost humorous audacity of the writing, which all four musicians brought out fully, holding nothing back. Diedre Irons was certainly the star of this show with robust and energetic playing that remained a feature of her contribution throughout.
If Mahler's Quartet in A Minor is usually dismissed as juvenilia, Tuesday night's performance made the strongest possible case for it. This was a hugely enjoyable interpretation with superb ensemble-work, making the most of every tonal and dynamic contrast. It was preceded by an equally convincing performance of Schnittke's take on the fragment of a Scherzo that Mahler also intended for his quartet. Whatever Schnittke's intention, the movement sounds like frustration, perhaps even distress, at the lack of development in Mahler's tantalisingly skeletal fragment. He seems to be wrestling, like Mime trying to forge Sigmund's sword, with shards of ideas that won't fit together, until he allows Mahler's original fragment to stand provokingly alone. Following this with Mahler's fully completed movement seemed the perfect programming solution. Simply brilliant.
But the performance of the Brahms' Piano Quartet in G Minor in the second-half of this concert was on an even higher level. Unity of style, ensemble, virtuosity, technique and musicianship made this performance extraordinarily charismatic and inspiring. I have never heard the first movement played with such expressive impact and variety. And the tonal quality of all four instruments was consistently gorgeous throughout the work. The performance was full of delights: Diedre Irons' magical lightness of touch in the coda of the Intermezzo was simply breathtaking; the start of the Animato of the third movement was a moment of truly heart-stopping frisson, and the awe-inspiring and faultless virtuosity, along with tonal variety from all four musicians in the final Rondo, brought an emotional clout that had not previously struck me in this movement.
So, a night of extraordinary music-making that I know will live long in my memory.
REVIEW: Tony Ryan
Christopher’s Classics Series XXII – 2017; at The Piano, Christchurch
7.30pm, Wed 29 March 2017
Mark Menzies (violin, piano, viola, composer), Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick (cello) and Julie Feves (bassoon)
J S Bach – Sonata for Violin, Cello and Bassoon in G Major
Saint-Saens – Bassoon Sonata
Nina C Young – Meditation for Violin and Cello
Elliott Carter – Cello Sonata (1948)
Alec Wilder – 2nd Bassoon Sonata
Mark Menzies – Scherzo ‘sermon’ for viola, cello and bassoon
This was the second of seven chamber music concerts in the Christopher’s Classics Series for 2017. Amazingly, Christopher’s Classics is now in its 22nd year, so I think Christopher Marshall deserves praise and congratulations for his remarkable entrepreneurship. In Christchurch, we often feel that we miss out on programmes that are toured to North Island centres, but which don’t make it here. So, I’m specially looking forward to some of the, later offerings in this year’s series.
The series is currently presented in Christchurch’s new concert venue, The Piano. Having been out of the country for several years, this was just the second time that I’ve attended a performance in this hall, and acoustically it seemed ideal for this particular programme. Visually, I find some aspects of the concert hall a bit unattractive, especially the bare and blemished concrete wall behind the stage. But the design, with its audience capacity of over 320, otherwise seems ideal for concerts of the type we saw last night.
This concert was a relentlessly challenging programme in the context of chamber music concerts, or any sort of mainstream classical concert series. Although the six works on the programme featured names like Bach and Saint-Saëns, even these proved a challenge in some ways.
The Bach piece opened the concert and set the tone for an entire evening of the new and unfamiliar. Firstly, it was listed in the programme as Sonata for Cello, Bassoon and Piano in G Major. I was intrigued to find out what this could be. Well it turned out to be played by cello, bassoon and violin (rather than piano), but even Mark Menzies’ spoken introduction didn’t clarify its provenance. He seemed to be saying that the sonata existed in three different versions by Bach himself, but then went on to talk about Bach’s trio sonatas for organ and how their three distinct and independent musical strands could be played by any three suitable instruments. Well, there was no BWV number to help with its identification, but what we heard was played with discipline and stunning vitality by the three musicians. However, it somehow lacked the emotional clout that Bach’s Trio Sonatas can also deliver. The performance was also dominated by the two string instruments with the bassoon providing a sort of accompanying continuo, rather than being an equal partner in the contrapuntal texture. But it was an enjoyable performance and enabled us to get to know the superb quality of the three players. And Bach’s music can so often sound modern when his seemingly free-ranging contrapuntal parts meet in surprising harmonic shifts. This is the third time I’ve encountered Mark Menzies in concert in the last few weeks, so he’s certainly gaining some profile since his return to Christchurch from the USA. The other musicians are both Americans who have worked with Mark Menzies in the past and who both have busy careers both in the US and abroad, especially in the field of New Music.
A Bassoon Sonata by Saint-Saëns was next on the programme (it dates from 1921, just a few months before the composer’s death, but it’s very much in Saint-Saëns’ familiar Romantic style). So, although it’s hardly new, it was new to me and, I imagine, almost everyone else in last night’s audience. Saint-Saëns wrote a lot of first-rate music, but probably less than a quarter of his works could be described as masterpieces. And I’d have to say that this Bassoon Sonata, for all its appeal, is not one of them. I took the trouble to make myself familiar with both score and recordings of this sonata in the days before the concert, and while familiarity often reveals hidden qualities in unfamiliar music, this was not the case here. The performance was full of vitality and variety from Julie Feves, although she tends to be a rather “intimate” player, without the same degree of stage personality that the other two players demonstrated. It was interesting that Mark Menzies was now the pianist in this work and, although a glance at Saint-Saëns’ score makes it clear that this is a Bassoon Sonata with piano accompaniment, Menzies played as if he was an equal partner in a duo, not at all like the performances I listened to before the concert. I say “equal partner”, but at times his personality and projection almost dominated in places. Even so, it was an engaging performance and it’s refreshing to encounter music that we’re unlikely to have many opportunities to hear live in concert very often.
After that everything on the programme was very new and challenging indeed. The final piece in the first part of the programme was by a young, emerging American composer, Nina C Young. This was her Meditation for Violin and Cello, written as recently as 2013. I took the trouble to listen to this work on the composer’s website in the days before the concert, and I can’t say I was gripped. Six minutes of unrelenting, nerve-grating angst did not seem like something I wanted to hear too often. However, seeing it made all the difference. It’s variety of effects and instrumental techniques became more evident, and it seemed almost like a commentary on the nature of string instrument performance. In fact, if I was forced to choose one work as the highlight of the concert, this would probably be it.
The second half of the concert began with Elliott Carter’s Cello Sonata. It dates from 1948, so, at nearly seventy years since it was written, I don’t really think we can call it new anymore. When I first got to know Tchaikovsky’s last two symphonies they were less than seventy years old, but they’d already gone from bold new works, through accepted masterpieces, and then to unfashionably populist pieces. They’re now firmly back in the great masterpiece category, but Elliott Carter’s Cello Sonata still remains in the bold and new group. Not only that, but it’s still a huge challenge for audiences. It’s been recorded several times and last night’s performance from Erika Duke-Patrick and Mark Menzies was full of commitment and a clear belief in the music, and that certainly helps audience engagement. Once again, I’d worked on becoming more familiar with this piece before the concert and I also own recordings of several other Elliot Carter compositions, but its challenges don’t diminish with familiarity. The Cello Sonata is generally considered to be the beginning of Elliott Carter’s mature period (which actually lasted right up to his death in 2012. In fact he completed his last work just three months before his death which was just a few weeks short of his 104th birthday). And like much of Elliott Carter’s music, this work is full of hints of very appealing ideas that disappear before they are allowed to develop into anything extended. There were so many times during this very accomplished performance of the Cello Sonata that I longed for an idea to grow into something more satisfying. And this sonata, unlike the Saint-Saëns really is a duo for two equal partners. In the first movement, it’s almost as if the piano and cello are two different personalities who never see eye-to-eye, with the piano playing strict four-square ideas against the cello’s free-ranging and passionate expression. The other movements contained more integrated dialogue, but there was still that element of each instrument having its own character. Both players demonstrated complete empathy with the work and with the composer’s distinctive style, but I still find Elliott Carter’s style unsatisfying and, at the same time, tantalising.
The players then tried to lighten the mood with a work by Alec Wilder, who wrote popular songs as well as serious “classical” works. He arranged several well-known songs for Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, among others. Sinatra also recorded a couple of Wilder’s original songs. But a singer is a much more expressive soloist than a bassoon, and while the 3rd and 4th movements of the sonata could well have been great cabaret songs, they needed a singer and a text to really bring them to life. Once again, Julie Feves played with style and expressive commitment, but her almost subdued stage manner wasn’t what we’d get from Sinatra or Judy Garland.
And, finally, Mark Menzies took up the viola for a performance of one of his own compositions specially written for himself and the other two musicians. This was one of his New Zealand bird pieces (we’d recently heard him play another one as a guest performer at the National Concerto Competition). His spoken introduction prepared our listening focus for the descriptive and aural effects that he used to depict the bird, in this case the kereru or wood pigeon. The piece showed that while string instruments are infinitely capable of all sorts of extra-musical effects and sounds, the bassoon is completely limited to playing notes. The string effects were certainly entertaining and the piece had a humorous aspect, but on a first hearing, the minimal material that formed the basis of the piece was repeated just a little too often, so I’m not sure that I’d look forward to a performance of all 22 or 23 of his bird compositions.
So, a concert of all very unfamiliar music, which is not something we’re very used to in the twenty-first century. Perhaps the problem is that the twentieth century coincided with the development of recordings and radio broadcasts, so that repeated listening to works from the past became our habit, much against the intention or expectation of the composers, and so new music has become less easy to assimilate. I could certainly name a few pieces from recent decades that I would consider masterpieces, but they are certainly less prolific since the deaths, in the 1970s, of such towering artists as Shostakovich, Britten and Stravinsky. Even so, the discovery of the new is certainly rewarding and it would seem that the presence of Mark Menzies in Christchurch will increase our diet of such music considerably. Another interesting observation is the way that a review of such a concert as this focuses as much on the success of the music as it does on the performance. With the standard classics, we tend to take the quality of the composition itself for granted, although I was interested to hear Peter Hoar, in his review of the NZSO on Monday, saying that he couldn’t identify with the big overblown orchestral works of Richard Strauss. I liked that; we shouldn’t take anything for granted.
Christopher’s Classics Series XXII – 2017; at The Piano, Christchurch
7.30pm, Wed 29 March 2017
Mark Menzies (violin, piano, viola, composer), Erika Duke-Kirkpatrick (cello) and Julie Feves (bassoon)
J S Bach – Sonata for Violin, Cello and Bassoon in G Major
Saint-Saens – Bassoon Sonata
Nina C Young – Meditation for Violin and Cello
Elliott Carter – Cello Sonata (1948)
Alec Wilder – 2nd Bassoon Sonata
Mark Menzies – Scherzo ‘sermon’ for viola, cello and bassoon
This was the second of seven chamber music concerts in the Christopher’s Classics Series for 2017. Amazingly, Christopher’s Classics is now in its 22nd year, so I think Christopher Marshall deserves praise and congratulations for his remarkable entrepreneurship. In Christchurch, we often feel that we miss out on programmes that are toured to North Island centres, but which don’t make it here. So, I’m specially looking forward to some of the, later offerings in this year’s series.
The series is currently presented in Christchurch’s new concert venue, The Piano. Having been out of the country for several years, this was just the second time that I’ve attended a performance in this hall, and acoustically it seemed ideal for this particular programme. Visually, I find some aspects of the concert hall a bit unattractive, especially the bare and blemished concrete wall behind the stage. But the design, with its audience capacity of over 320, otherwise seems ideal for concerts of the type we saw last night.
This concert was a relentlessly challenging programme in the context of chamber music concerts, or any sort of mainstream classical concert series. Although the six works on the programme featured names like Bach and Saint-Saëns, even these proved a challenge in some ways.
The Bach piece opened the concert and set the tone for an entire evening of the new and unfamiliar. Firstly, it was listed in the programme as Sonata for Cello, Bassoon and Piano in G Major. I was intrigued to find out what this could be. Well it turned out to be played by cello, bassoon and violin (rather than piano), but even Mark Menzies’ spoken introduction didn’t clarify its provenance. He seemed to be saying that the sonata existed in three different versions by Bach himself, but then went on to talk about Bach’s trio sonatas for organ and how their three distinct and independent musical strands could be played by any three suitable instruments. Well, there was no BWV number to help with its identification, but what we heard was played with discipline and stunning vitality by the three musicians. However, it somehow lacked the emotional clout that Bach’s Trio Sonatas can also deliver. The performance was also dominated by the two string instruments with the bassoon providing a sort of accompanying continuo, rather than being an equal partner in the contrapuntal texture. But it was an enjoyable performance and enabled us to get to know the superb quality of the three players. And Bach’s music can so often sound modern when his seemingly free-ranging contrapuntal parts meet in surprising harmonic shifts. This is the third time I’ve encountered Mark Menzies in concert in the last few weeks, so he’s certainly gaining some profile since his return to Christchurch from the USA. The other musicians are both Americans who have worked with Mark Menzies in the past and who both have busy careers both in the US and abroad, especially in the field of New Music.
A Bassoon Sonata by Saint-Saëns was next on the programme (it dates from 1921, just a few months before the composer’s death, but it’s very much in Saint-Saëns’ familiar Romantic style). So, although it’s hardly new, it was new to me and, I imagine, almost everyone else in last night’s audience. Saint-Saëns wrote a lot of first-rate music, but probably less than a quarter of his works could be described as masterpieces. And I’d have to say that this Bassoon Sonata, for all its appeal, is not one of them. I took the trouble to make myself familiar with both score and recordings of this sonata in the days before the concert, and while familiarity often reveals hidden qualities in unfamiliar music, this was not the case here. The performance was full of vitality and variety from Julie Feves, although she tends to be a rather “intimate” player, without the same degree of stage personality that the other two players demonstrated. It was interesting that Mark Menzies was now the pianist in this work and, although a glance at Saint-Saëns’ score makes it clear that this is a Bassoon Sonata with piano accompaniment, Menzies played as if he was an equal partner in a duo, not at all like the performances I listened to before the concert. I say “equal partner”, but at times his personality and projection almost dominated in places. Even so, it was an engaging performance and it’s refreshing to encounter music that we’re unlikely to have many opportunities to hear live in concert very often.
After that everything on the programme was very new and challenging indeed. The final piece in the first part of the programme was by a young, emerging American composer, Nina C Young. This was her Meditation for Violin and Cello, written as recently as 2013. I took the trouble to listen to this work on the composer’s website in the days before the concert, and I can’t say I was gripped. Six minutes of unrelenting, nerve-grating angst did not seem like something I wanted to hear too often. However, seeing it made all the difference. It’s variety of effects and instrumental techniques became more evident, and it seemed almost like a commentary on the nature of string instrument performance. In fact, if I was forced to choose one work as the highlight of the concert, this would probably be it.
The second half of the concert began with Elliott Carter’s Cello Sonata. It dates from 1948, so, at nearly seventy years since it was written, I don’t really think we can call it new anymore. When I first got to know Tchaikovsky’s last two symphonies they were less than seventy years old, but they’d already gone from bold new works, through accepted masterpieces, and then to unfashionably populist pieces. They’re now firmly back in the great masterpiece category, but Elliott Carter’s Cello Sonata still remains in the bold and new group. Not only that, but it’s still a huge challenge for audiences. It’s been recorded several times and last night’s performance from Erika Duke-Patrick and Mark Menzies was full of commitment and a clear belief in the music, and that certainly helps audience engagement. Once again, I’d worked on becoming more familiar with this piece before the concert and I also own recordings of several other Elliot Carter compositions, but its challenges don’t diminish with familiarity. The Cello Sonata is generally considered to be the beginning of Elliott Carter’s mature period (which actually lasted right up to his death in 2012. In fact he completed his last work just three months before his death which was just a few weeks short of his 104th birthday). And like much of Elliott Carter’s music, this work is full of hints of very appealing ideas that disappear before they are allowed to develop into anything extended. There were so many times during this very accomplished performance of the Cello Sonata that I longed for an idea to grow into something more satisfying. And this sonata, unlike the Saint-Saëns really is a duo for two equal partners. In the first movement, it’s almost as if the piano and cello are two different personalities who never see eye-to-eye, with the piano playing strict four-square ideas against the cello’s free-ranging and passionate expression. The other movements contained more integrated dialogue, but there was still that element of each instrument having its own character. Both players demonstrated complete empathy with the work and with the composer’s distinctive style, but I still find Elliott Carter’s style unsatisfying and, at the same time, tantalising.
The players then tried to lighten the mood with a work by Alec Wilder, who wrote popular songs as well as serious “classical” works. He arranged several well-known songs for Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, among others. Sinatra also recorded a couple of Wilder’s original songs. But a singer is a much more expressive soloist than a bassoon, and while the 3rd and 4th movements of the sonata could well have been great cabaret songs, they needed a singer and a text to really bring them to life. Once again, Julie Feves played with style and expressive commitment, but her almost subdued stage manner wasn’t what we’d get from Sinatra or Judy Garland.
And, finally, Mark Menzies took up the viola for a performance of one of his own compositions specially written for himself and the other two musicians. This was one of his New Zealand bird pieces (we’d recently heard him play another one as a guest performer at the National Concerto Competition). His spoken introduction prepared our listening focus for the descriptive and aural effects that he used to depict the bird, in this case the kereru or wood pigeon. The piece showed that while string instruments are infinitely capable of all sorts of extra-musical effects and sounds, the bassoon is completely limited to playing notes. The string effects were certainly entertaining and the piece had a humorous aspect, but on a first hearing, the minimal material that formed the basis of the piece was repeated just a little too often, so I’m not sure that I’d look forward to a performance of all 22 or 23 of his bird compositions.
So, a concert of all very unfamiliar music, which is not something we’re very used to in the twenty-first century. Perhaps the problem is that the twentieth century coincided with the development of recordings and radio broadcasts, so that repeated listening to works from the past became our habit, much against the intention or expectation of the composers, and so new music has become less easy to assimilate. I could certainly name a few pieces from recent decades that I would consider masterpieces, but they are certainly less prolific since the deaths, in the 1970s, of such towering artists as Shostakovich, Britten and Stravinsky. Even so, the discovery of the new is certainly rewarding and it would seem that the presence of Mark Menzies in Christchurch will increase our diet of such music considerably. Another interesting observation is the way that a review of such a concert as this focuses as much on the success of the music as it does on the performance. With the standard classics, we tend to take the quality of the composition itself for granted, although I was interested to hear Peter Hoar, in his review of the NZSO on Monday, saying that he couldn’t identify with the big overblown orchestral works of Richard Strauss. I liked that; we shouldn’t take anything for granted.
Christopher’s Classics – Wilma and Friends at The Piano, Christchurch – 26 September 2017
Wilma Smith (Violin), Caroline Henbest (Viola), Alexandra Partridge (Cello), Andrew Leathwick (Piano)
A welcome opportunity to hear William Walton’s early Piano Quartet opened last night’s programme. This quartet is full of the youthful vitally that characterises Walton’s most famous work, Façade, written just a few years later. There’s little trace of the hallmarks found in the composer’s greatest music, although, from time-to-time there almost seemed to be hints of his Henry V score, particularly that masterful little song Touch Her Soft Lips and Part.
The programme note mentioned the influence of Bartok and Stravinsky but, although suggestions of Petrushka’s ‘Russian Dance’ were clearly evident in the final movement, the most obvious influences that I heard were Debussy and Ravel in all three of the other movements.
However, the performance certainly made the best possible case for this rarely-played work. The youthful confidence in the writing was matched by playing of commitment and vitality, but also delicacy when required. The Andante tranquillo third movement was superbly sensitive without any loss of tone quality or expressive finesse. As in the Brahms quartet, later in the programme, solos emerged gloriously from the textures, and some wonderfully lyrical cello lines still linger evocatively in the memory.
Although Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor is derived from an early work, it’s full of the freshness and wisdom of Brahms’ maturity. Wilma Smith and Friends delivered music-making of polished ensemble and idiomatic style. There was no lack of demonstrative expression when the music demanded it and, if the final Allegro movement seemed to run out of punch before it reached the end, the heart-tugging melodic and harmonic passages of the Andante that preceded it were exquisitely played.
The other work on the programme was a new work by the ensemble’s pianist Andrew Leathwick. His three-movement Piano Quartet No. 1 made no apology for its romanticism, and the audience never had to try hard to access its expressive objective; it delivered this with strong ideas and effective structure. And it showed understanding of the capabilities of the instruments and the players for whom it was written, with enough variety to sustain its fifteen-minute duration. It’s certainly a work I’d like to hear again.
So, another stimulating concert in the Christopher’s Classics series. I look forward to the next one with considerable anticipation.
Presented in association with Chamber Music New Zealand.
Review by Tony Ryan
Wilma Smith (Violin), Caroline Henbest (Viola), Alexandra Partridge (Cello), Andrew Leathwick (Piano)
A welcome opportunity to hear William Walton’s early Piano Quartet opened last night’s programme. This quartet is full of the youthful vitally that characterises Walton’s most famous work, Façade, written just a few years later. There’s little trace of the hallmarks found in the composer’s greatest music, although, from time-to-time there almost seemed to be hints of his Henry V score, particularly that masterful little song Touch Her Soft Lips and Part.
The programme note mentioned the influence of Bartok and Stravinsky but, although suggestions of Petrushka’s ‘Russian Dance’ were clearly evident in the final movement, the most obvious influences that I heard were Debussy and Ravel in all three of the other movements.
However, the performance certainly made the best possible case for this rarely-played work. The youthful confidence in the writing was matched by playing of commitment and vitality, but also delicacy when required. The Andante tranquillo third movement was superbly sensitive without any loss of tone quality or expressive finesse. As in the Brahms quartet, later in the programme, solos emerged gloriously from the textures, and some wonderfully lyrical cello lines still linger evocatively in the memory.
Although Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor is derived from an early work, it’s full of the freshness and wisdom of Brahms’ maturity. Wilma Smith and Friends delivered music-making of polished ensemble and idiomatic style. There was no lack of demonstrative expression when the music demanded it and, if the final Allegro movement seemed to run out of punch before it reached the end, the heart-tugging melodic and harmonic passages of the Andante that preceded it were exquisitely played.
The other work on the programme was a new work by the ensemble’s pianist Andrew Leathwick. His three-movement Piano Quartet No. 1 made no apology for its romanticism, and the audience never had to try hard to access its expressive objective; it delivered this with strong ideas and effective structure. And it showed understanding of the capabilities of the instruments and the players for whom it was written, with enough variety to sustain its fifteen-minute duration. It’s certainly a work I’d like to hear again.
So, another stimulating concert in the Christopher’s Classics series. I look forward to the next one with considerable anticipation.
Presented in association with Chamber Music New Zealand.
Review by Tony Ryan
Press Release for Wilma and Friends