Concerts

Kenneth Young describes his Dance as “a celebration of love and life”. It was glorious and exuberant, and it reminded me of the character dances seen in classical ballet, which took me to a memory of Sir Jon Trimmer on stage in one of the character parts he danced later in his career. Trimmer, who had died only two days earlier, was a neighbour and much-loved member of our community and it was lovely to have a memory of him sparked in that way.

From the joy of dance to Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, the mood remained high. If ecstasy comes from bringing together a huge number of musicians, a thoroughly mixed assortment of harmony, rhythm, tempo, volume, and orchestration in a way that pushed boundaries in 1908 and sounded as if it is still on the edge more than 100 years later, then this was it. Learning Scriabin was synaesthetic made sense of the music. If sound was colour for me, I imagine I would also want to celebrate that with noise and complexity.

Principal flautist Bridget Douglas, elevated behind the orchestra, under a single spotlight, played Debussy’s modern interpretation of an ancient Greek story, Syrinx. Douglas is an amazing musician and audience favourite. We were captivated. Conductor Gemma New had earlier asked us not to applaud but to allow the mood to carry into Sibelius’ Luonnotar. The strings set off at urgent pace before soprano Madeleine Pierard started to sing her narrative of the Finnish creation story. A demanding piece by all accounts but absolutely no trouble for Pierard. Her voice is stunning, and she made apparently light work of the difficult leaps and incredible range.

The evening finished as it had started, with a stage full of musicians expertly led by an expressive and expansive conductor. Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2 gave New the opportunity to have the last dance.

Marc Taddei, in his pre-concert talk, called this concert a variety show. Despite his programming being less coherent than usual and almost too full, the concert contained wonderful works and great performances.

The night belonged to John Psathas, now at the end of four years as Orchestra Wellington’s Composer-in-Residence. The performance of his Pharaoh Concerto for Solo Timpani and Orchestra was a fitting celebration. The work is fierce, pregnant with impending menace, a comment on our troubled world and “human gods who live above the law”, to quote Psathas. Soloist Tomomi Nozaki from Japan was stunningly virtuosic, wielding her mallets across five timpani constantly, a whirl of movement and rhythm that was amazing both to hear and see.

Briar Prastiti, a singer-songwriter whom Psathas mentors, arranged her song White, Red, Black for voice and orchestra. The orchestration was lush and arresting and Prastiti’s voice strong and attractive. Full appreciation of the work was hampered, alas, by the words not being able to be heard distinctly; a question of singer/orchestra balance, I think.

The orchestra opened the concert with a satisfying performance of Anton Webern’s Passacaglia. They made the most of the lush and sensual full-orchestra sections and the beautifully transparent sections where small numbers of players played quasi-chamber music. 

The Orpheus Choir and Orchestra Wellington, in another great partnership, presented Mozart’s early work Thamos, King of Egypt. Written as incidental music to a play, it is little known because of the play’s convoluted and incoherent plot. The orchestral interludes were wonderfully Mozartian in operatic mode. The choruses were delivered with a fine range of dynamics and precise singing.

And opening the concert, the annual appearance of the Arohanui Strings, young (some very young) Wellington musicians, charmed the audience. They played Manta by Gemma Peacocke, which wonderfully evoked the movement of manta rays. The cellists caught my eye: the young ones confidently matching the professionals, bow stroke by bow stroke.  

The six-piece band started and a dapper Tim Finn sauntered onto the stage, seemingly tripping over a power cord and causing complete silence and darkness for a few seconds. “Whoops, that was My Mistake!” he said to laughter before launching into the song. Next I See Red, with the near-capacity crowd clapping already, featured a frantic piano solo by keyboardist Niall Anderson.

Stuff And Nonsense featured gorgeous vocals by Finn’s daughter Elliot, and beautiful flute by Carlo Barbaro. Poor Boy followed, and Finn seemed delighted that earlier that day, his driver told him he “played Poor Boy 24/7 back in the day”.

Finn wrote Nobody Takes Me Seriously thinking about the 22 jobs he had in his early twenties. “Split Enz was formed, really, by boring jobs and daydreaming.” For I Hope I Never, he switched to grand piano, his wavering voice on the high notes perhaps due to the emotion of this beautiful song.

Ghost Girl featured Tony Buchen’s warm bass guitar tones, while Six Months In A Leaky Boat had a piccolo solo by Buchen! The crowd rocked in their chairs to Anderson’s funky synth playing in Dirty Creature, which Finn wrote during a dark time in his life.

Fraction Too Much Friction featured the reggae-tinged drumming of Carlos Adura followed by the powerful Made My Day, with the band a tight cohesive unit. Next, Persuasion, with a tasty guitar solo by Brett Adams. Finn said he added lyrics to Richard Thompson’s beautiful guitar melody – basically writing the song together (long distance) by fax! 

Chocolate Cake featured a surprising harmonica solo by Buchen and impressive synchronised dancing from the entire band, with Adura standing up and dancing while playing the drums! A slow intro of It’s Only Natural segued into a rousing version, followed by the set’s final singalong Weather With You.

The first encore, Charlie, had a sultry sax solo from Barbaro. The crowd danced rapturously to Hard Act To Follow and gave Staring At The Embers a standing ovation. It was obvious how much everyone enjoyed seeing a national musical icon, together with a very talented band, playing classic songs in what is surely Wellington’s best music venue.

Although I couldn’t properly define it, my head and heart knew we had been listening to American classical music. While their names are very familiar, my knowledge of Leonard Bernstein’s compositions extends to West Side Story and Aaron Copland’s to Fanfare for the Common Man.

Both were leading composers of mid-20^th century America. Copland was particularly influenced by folk traditions and Bernstein by jazz, and they came after a more experimental style. This made the introductory piece by New Zealander Eve de Castro-Robinson, Len Dances, quite the right fit. A sonic interpretation of Len Lye’s famous kinetic sculptures, the bells and whistles and inventive instrumentation readily evoked both visual and performing artforms for the listener.

Another clever use of one artform to tell us about another, Bernstein’s Symphony No. 2 The Age of Anxiety was filled with the sense of the W. H. Auden poem, The Age of Anxiety, which inspired it. Pianist Joyce Yang’s phenomenal technique, Bernstein’s skill in composition, and Guerrero’s orchestral direction came together perfectly. Written neither as a concerto for piano and orchestra nor a symphony in the more orthodox European style, The Age of Anxiety was so beautifully played by Yang, the anxiety and tension were palpable and breathtaking.

Aaron Copland’s Symphony No. 3 is his best known and a big piece of work in every sense. Written at the end of World War II, Copland traverses the mood of the time, gentle contemplation matched with joy and bright celebration. Magnificent contrasts of tone and volume were played with gusto by brass and percussion in particular, while piercingly high notes from violins and piccolo sliced through the gentler sections. Fragments of the theme from his Fanfare for the Common Man are glimpsed throughout until it appears as the main theme in the fourth movement and a glorious finale greatly enjoyed by orchestra and audience alike.

In my concert experience this year, I can’t imagine that anything will eclipse this performance of Bartók’s opera, Bluebeard’s Castle.

The work calls for a large orchestra stacked with percussion, brass, woodwind, and fewer strings than one might have expected, and two singers, a dramatic soprano and a dramatic baritone. The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra was on fire throughout the performance with immaculate, precise but emotional and intense playing. Lester Lynch from the United States was Bluebeard and Susan Bullock from England was his wife, Judith. Both had glorious, unforced, effortless voices. Unlike much romantic and dramatic opera, their parts were not florid or ornamented. The rhythms were speech-like and their diction was excellent. Bartók’s orchestration is extremely well matched to what is happening on the stage and to the ebb and flow of the feelings of the characters. The conductor did a superb job of uniting the performance.

While the music performed was as composed, the tale was not. The original interpretation of a fable is a ghastly tale of a woman in love with a man about whom horrible rumours abound. Nevertheless, she demands that he releases to her the secrets of his life. Her entry into his castle ends with her discovering his three dead wives, whom she joins.

This production, however, is an astonishing and powerful reinterpretation of the story, recast by the UK-based Theatre of Sound to centre on a loving couple whose lives disintegrate when Judith is affected by dementia. Surprisingly, the original libretto fits the new scenario convincingly. The audience sees and feels the memories, the love and tenderness, the frustration, loneliness, fear, and anguish the couple experiences. The acting was strong, sensitive, and subtle and the effect compelling and harrowing.

Altogether this was an outstandingly rewarding performance, musically, dramatically, and emotionally.

Three varied and striking 20^th century works, early compositions by young Englishmen, featured in this concert. As conductor Marc Taddei pointed out, they were a riposte to the recent, wonderful all-German concert.

A prophecy forecasting his death was delivered to Belshazzar, the king of Babylon, after blaspheming against the God of Israel. The narrative of William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast was unfolded by Orchestra Wellington, a 28-strong Wellington Brass Band, the Orpheus Choir, and baritone soloist Benson Wilson. It was a dramatic, fast-moving, and very loud tale that kept the audience rapt. The stars, I thought, were the choir. Whether singing over the top of large instrumental resources, or unaccompanied, they negotiated tricky harmonies and a range of dynamics with assurance and sensitivity. The well-prepared brass band added colour and depth. Wilson’s voice is smooth and rich but a bit lacking in drama, perhaps, for the part.

The grief of a passionate pacifist in the face of WWII is the essential quality of Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto. The solo part is fiendishly difficult in speed, dynamics, and fingering and bowing techniques. This is an austerely beautiful work. Both orchestra and soloist Amalia Hall delivered technically, musically, and emotionally.

Thomas Adès’ first orchestral work …but all shall be well is a curious work exploring meandering musical lines within a somewhat fuzzy and subtle soundscape without significant climaxes. It is just as well that it opened the programme, or it might have been overwhelmed by the power of the other works.

Briar Prastiti, a young woman of mixed Kiwi and Greek heritage, was commissioned to write a work for Orchestra Wellington. Ákri is an exciting debut orchestral work that conveys the dilemmas of being on the edge (ákri) of two cultures. It is all of sweet, moody, bold, delicate, soaring, and dramatic. Congratulations to Orchestra Wellington for their initiative, and for another compelling performance.

Da-da-da-dum. Da-da-da-dum. This famous start to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is often played portentously, seen as “fate knocking at the door.” In this performance it was over in a flash, signalling that this was to be a very high-energy version of the symphony. The rhythm of the motif is continually integrated throughout the first movement. It underlies or breaks into quieter passages of lyrical music which seem to wish to console the listener, only to be taken over by another strong and urgent climax.

In more subtle form, the motif continues through the other movements. The second and third movements are more lyrical but still punctuated by dramatic sections using the full resources of the orchestra. I feel like I hold my breath through these movements. Though quieter than the first, for me they have a suspense about them which is only resolved with the exuberant sense of triumph of the last movement.

At the same time as he was writing the Fifth Symphony, Beethoven was writing the Coriolan Overture. It also is a dramatic work with typical big contrasts of pace and power. It tells of Coriolanus, the Roman general who planned to punish his own people and sack Rome. His mother beseeches him to give away his terrible plans. The music beautifully contrasts his heroic and ruthless character with her gentle maternal entreaties. The work ends with his suicide.

Commissioned for Beethoven’s 250^th anniversary, subito con forza by Korean Unsuk Chin completed the programme. Its opening copies the Coriolan Overture’s and then reflects an aspect of Beethoven which Unsuk Chin particularly likes: “the enormous contrasts from volcanic eruptions to extreme sensitivity”. The words beautifully sum up the concert.

I’d think that Maestro André de Ridder is a wonderfully dynamic and demanding conductor to work under. The ever-good NZSO was in especially excellent form.

While not generally a fan of jazz, I thoroughly enjoyed the jazz idioms of this concert. From the enthusiastic applause throughout, I’d say the whole audience absolutely loved it.

The concert evidenced an attempt by American composers over many years to achieve some integration of the spontaneity and soundscapes of traditional American jazz and blues music with classical forms. The concert opened with Bryce Dessner’s 2020 work Mari, followed by George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and Wynton Marsalis’ Blues Symphony (2009).

Mari (Mari being the Basque forest goddess) was notable for its textures and sonic washes punctuated by small bites of more distinct sound, the whole evoking a forest, peaceful but teeming with buzzing, budding life. Rhapsody in Blue starts with a stunning glissando on the clarinet, which is then joined by trombone, horns, strings, and saxophone before the piano makes its entry. These beginnings are magical and the magic never stops. The music is, by turns, teasing, marching, thundering, lyrical, luscious, and spunky. It is irresistible. The piano soloist was Australian Simon Tedeschi, romantic, nonchalant, and virtuosic to suit the moment.

The Blues Symphony is something else again. It is huge: seven movements, an hour long, and alive every minute. It traverses several aspects of American music – jazz, blues, rag, and Latin dance. Horns, trumpets with wah-wah mutes, bassoons, saxophones, clarinets, and a variety of percussion, including hand clapping, provided much of the colour and drama. The strings were less dominant than in most classical compositions, but the double basses were in the thick of it and looked like they were having a ball.

André de Ridder was vigorous, emphatic, and expressive in his conducting, and a joy to watch as he danced his way through the programme. He could be well pleased with the orchestra’s performance.

The opening notes of Tōru Takemitsu’s Rain Tree ringing delicately through the blue light bathing the stage set the scene for a beautiful and evocative programme. The tuned bells, each allowed to resonate in response to each other, signalled the moment rain began to fall. The bells gradually gave way to marimba, xylophone, and vibraphone, sometimes solo, otherwise in combination, suggesting the different patterns and sounds of rainfall on leaves, or creating ripples in a pond, or a more intense shower hitting the ground. Under changing lighting effects, the three percussionists had the stage to themselves yet filled the auditorium with highly picturesque sound.

Continuing the visual element of the concert, conductor André de Ridder described John Luther Adams’ Become Ocean as “an art sound installation with an orchestra”. de Ridder explained the orchestra was organised, more strictly than is usual, into three distinct sonic groups. Firstly, the strings, augmented with four harps, piano and celeste, then woodwind, and lastly the brass, the density of the sound they would produce being essential for the composer’s intentions.

While the work itself is highly structured, the impression on the listener was much closer to the experience promised in the title. The layers of music surrounded us with waves growing and breaking, a strong undertow and incredibly deep water, ripples on the surface, light moving across the distant view, conflicting energy where currents run in different directions, the rise of the waves before they break, and the rolling, barely restrained energy of a deep ocean swell.

They say we all associate with one of the elements. I think those of us who are water people were truly at home in this piece. It was an immersive and all-consuming experience. The mathematical precision of the composition perhaps evidence of the theory that all things in nature, including the sea, have an order we can describe in art.

Compelling programming, three superb soloists, a committed orchestra, and a dedicated conductor made this an outstanding concert.

A quasi-piano concerto in Richard Strauss’ Burleske, a quasi-symphony in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, and a work so outrageous in 1912 that people hissed its debut, Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, made up the programme. Jian Liu was the soloist in Burleske, while Oliver Sewell and Hadleigh Adams were the tenor and baritone soloists respectively in Mahler’s song cycle.

Burleske was written by Strauss at the age of 20. It is an exuberant, one-movement work, hugely challenging for the soloist. Throughout there was a bit of a dialogue between the piano and, of all things, the timpani. Several times, the work seemed to reach an extravagant finale, only to have the timpani intervene and set the piano off again. The timpani had the last word, as it had the first. Liu’s restrained and modest presentation belied the magic of his hands and fingers. Liu presented a solo encore which was as delicate and introspective as Burleske was sparkling and virtuosic.

Schoenberg’s short pieces sparkled in a different way. It feels nervous, unsettled, and unexpected, with instrumentation choices creating varied textures and timbre, complex soundscapes, and different moods. Tuneful it is not, and the effects are most often fleeting and splintered. Orchestra Wellington got into it with gusto, and it was certainly no hissing matter.

Das Lied von der Erde is a supremely emotional work, addressing Mahler’s concerns with nature and mortality. This work also demands much of its soloists. Sewell was sometimes drowned by the fullness of the orchestra, but the quality of his voice and interpretation was never in doubt. Adams brought great emotionality to his performance, and in the final movement, Der Abschied (The Farewell), his performance was intense and very moving.

Members of the NZSO National Youth Orchestra (NYO) meet each other once a year for a full week of rehearsals before they perform together. It sounds a little like cramming before a test, but the skills and musicianship demonstrated by these remarkable young people were the product of much more than a term’s worth of work.

The NYO had what must have been the absolute pleasure of working with a conductor whose sheer delight in the experience was evident to all of us in his energy and empathy. Giancarlo Guerrero’s directing style seems perfect for young musicians in particular. It is dynamic, energetic, dramatic, and empathetic all at once.

This was a demanding programme. In the convergence of oceans by Nathaniel Otley (2023 NYO composer-in-residence), the orchestra was immediately and literally in deep water. At times more an acoustic experience than conventional musical composition, the use of found percussion instruments added particular interest. This piece would have presented new challenges for some of the young musicians, but they were very comfortable with their debut.

Aaron Copland was the American composer in the show. We heard his Billy the Kid: Suite and it was every bit as evocative as the title suggests. The orchestra did an excellent job bringing to life Guerrero’s version of a young man’s action-filled life.

The finale, Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma) is a crowd pleaser, well known and difficult to make special. However, Guerrero’s interpretation and direction to the NYO produced an uplifting and exciting performance. It really felt like something new, which is no mean feat when you consider it was written by an Englishman over 100 years ago.

The 80 or so musicians who journeyed with us from the deep ocean to the open prairie and then to the English countryside proved their versatility and talent. The future of orchestral music is safe in their hands.

In both his pre-concert talk and within the concert, conductor Marc Taddei spoke of the arts gaining strength through collaboration across artforms.

Arjuna Oakes, a young singer-songwriter and his mentor, John Psathas, collaborated in the composition and performance of Safe Way to Fall, a short song for voice, piano, and orchestra. It was a deeply personal song. Oakes’ expressive performance and lovely voice, miked as befitted the genre, was well received by the audience which, unsurprisingly, included more young people than usual.

The performance of Béla Bartók’s ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin, was a collaboration involving both the Orpheus Choir and BalletCollective Aotearoa. While Taddei could have performed a concert version, he chose to include dancers and present the complete work. The dancing told a horrific story of sexual exploitation and violence extremely well. Alas, for me, the music became mere backdrop to the visual dance. Bartók described the music as “hellish” and “pandemonium”, but even so, I could not pay it much attention.

Also performed was Psathas’ saxophone concerto, Zahara, placing another story of brutality and endurance in the desert. The soloist, Valentine Michaud, won the hearts of the audience before she played a note, with a beautiful, billowing, desert-hot red-pink-orange gown. Using tenor and soprano saxophones, Michaud produced an astonishing range of colour: throaty, drone-like, screeching, quiet, full, and rich. The work evoked a still, hot, empty desert – a desert of mirages, dust devils, and danger – and men trudging through this unmerciful environment. 

It was a night for horrific stories. The concert began with Salome: Dance of the Seven Veils by Richard Strauss. Such exotic and seductive music produced by the string section and by the harp, flute, and clarinet! And such drama and import provided by brass and percussion sections! This was a very satisfying performance of a powerful work.