Ozan Biner-McGrath at St.Andrew’s – a piano recital of music to delight in and savour

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MUZIO CLEMENTI (1752-1832) – Piano Sonata in B Minor Op.40 No.2
SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873-1943) Prelude in B Minor  Op.32 No.10
Etude-Tableau in F-sharp Minor  Op.39 No.3
CESAR FRANCK  (1822-1890) Prelude, Choral et Fugue FWV 21

Ozan Biner-McGrath (piano)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday 29th July 2026

The St. Andrew’s Lunchtime Concert series in Wellington has consistently delighted us this year with a number of extraordinarily exciting concerts, both performance- and repertory-wise – and this week the series came up with yet another absolute winner! This was a piano recital presented for us by a young pianist from Dunedin, Ozan Biner-McGrath, who’s currently a year-13 student at the city’s Logan Park High School while undertaking piano studies, both with his father, Tom McGrath, and  Professor Terence Dennis at the University of Otago, with whom he’s taking a piano performance paper.

He’s already achieved a number of milestones as a young musician – in 2025 he received First Prize at the Dunedin Concerto Competition,as well as being selected as an NZSO Emerging Artist the same year, having been a semifinalist the previous year in the National Piano Competition and a finalist in the Lewis Eady National Junior Piano Competition in 2023. Earlier this year he participated in and was a semi-finalist in the Lev Vlassenko  Piano Competition in Brisbane. Other biographical details I’ve gleaned are his veneration for two particularly outstanding piano virtuosi, Martha Argerich, and Grigory Solokov, and a love for chamber music as well as solo playing. He also takes part as a percussionist in performances by the Dunedin Youth Orchestra.

What particularly attracted me to Ozan’s recital here was the repertoire he chose, in particular a Piano Sonata by the unjustly-neglected composer Muzio Clementi, who wrote over one hundred such sonatas, and was a virtuoso whose reputation as a performer vied for a short time with that of Mozart. A famous piano-playing confrontation between the two in the presence of the Emperor Joseph II was considered a “draw” though each side’s supporters claimed their favourite’s triumph!

Mozart was, of course, almost congenitally ungenerous to any would-be competitors and their achievements – Beethoven, on the other hand, was quoted as being a great admirer of Clementi’s music!  – in fact when listening to a work like the latter’s B Minor Sonata Op. 40 No. 2 (which Ozan  Biner-McGrath played today), I couldn’t help but join so many of the dots with Beethoven’s  rather more  well-known  “Pathetique” Sonata, with its similar slow introduction to the work. The great Vladimir Horowitz was a noted exponent of Clementi, and more recently, the American pianist Lamar Crowson made two LPs containing a number of the sonatas – however these works remain rarities in piano recitals, so I was grateful for Ozan’s advocacy (and his absolutely splendid playing!).

Right from the beginning, the solemn Molto adagio e sostenuto opening of the B Minor Sonata was beautifully “voiced” , filled with inflexion and communicative impulse – every phrase was given by the pianist a “living value”, it seemed, with Beethoven’s similarly “striving” quality and gift for eloquence a seemingly obvious act of homage to the older composer, the music’s  poise and suggestive spaciousness similarly followed by a fiery allegro. In places I found myself thinking even of the great Sviatoslav Richter’s ability to harness waves of energy and build them unerringly into cataclysmic gesturings at the music’s conclusion – wow!

The second movement Largo, Mesto e patetico brought a questioning opening ambience, as if the player was musing on certain ideas or conundrums, returning them at the end into the whimsicality from which they emerged – all very remarkably transparent a creative process! The Allegro gave rise to dark, urgent passages alternating with more fanciful sequences, the pianist adroitly giving the structure an appealing air of spontaneous unpredictability – and there was a marvellously-wrought “developmental” section that made use of an initial descending figure then given ascending chromatic treatment – simply mesmerising! The return of the opening revisits the “riddle” of the work’s introduction before a presto Coda whirled us away on a barrage of triplets – what a splendidly-wrought roller-coaster ride!

Biner-McGrath’s next offering was the magnificent B Minor Prelude Op.32 No.10 by Sergei Rachmaninov, inspired by Arnold Bocklin’s painting “The Return” (Rachmaninov’s close friend, fellow-pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch left an affecting account of his “discovery” via the composer himself, of this particular Prelude’s “meaning”). This was a remarkable performance by Biner-McGrath, one whose focus and sense of  timing seemed to embody a vivid representation of the artist’s subject in the painting – the return home of a soldier,  plagued by doubts as to what he might encounter and by the unpredictability of how he might react to whatever circumstance he finds. Biner-McGrath built the tensions unerringly throughout the “dark night of the soul” experienced by the prodigal regarding his struggle, and gave appropriate tragic voice to the “major-to-minor” phrase which brought the work to a close.

After this came the spectacularly virtuosic Ètude-Tableau Op.39 No. 3 in F-sharp minor –  a veritable torrent of pianistic pursuance on Biner-McGrath’s part, which, however, didn’t for me seem to have quite enough light-and-shade or specific characterisation (it was the one item I couldn’t quite “connect” with, as much as I appreciated the technical achievement of the player realising the notes!).  Coming after the B Minor Prelude especially, it was more sound and fury than anything else, and gave something of an impression in places of a work still in progress as an interpretation, (maybe the preceding Prelude’s “completeness” in performance needed some time for me to escape the spell and jump into the Etude’s very different world – for whatever reason I remained on the “outside” of the music, and have striven since then to think exactly why……

No such problems accompanied the concert’s final item, Cesar Franck’s Prelude Chorale et Fugue, a work written in 1884, long  after the composer had left his piano virtuoso years behind him, but still reflecting his formidable keyboard skills. He completed the Prelude and Fugue before adding the Chorale, paying homage in the first instance to Bach, and, perhaps as a kind of afterthought, wanting to express something of his own religious mysticism in the manner of another of the composer’s heroes, Franz Liszxt, who had befriended the young Franck and encouraged his career at various times, both as a pianist and as an organist.

The work’s opening in Biner-McGrath’s hands was filled with Romantic feeling, a sense of constant yearning for life’s meaning, the flowing, exploratory opening expressing the tensions associated such feelings, both in the restlessness of the harmonic explorations and the freely-recited declamatory passages, repeating  the opening agitated figures and their answering recitations – the pianist freely immersed himself in the music’s explorations, maintaining a “questing” aspect through variants of the agitated passagework which took us further into what seemed a kind of “charged” state of being, leading to agitated passages which fell away as quickly as they had risen.

Biner-McGrath then took us in to the world of the Chorale, calmly and purposefully evolving a “structured” kind of sound one would associate with some sort of ritual, a more “inward” kind of experience – this was further illuminated by a melody played by the left hand repeatedly passing over the right, as if some inward spirit was guiding the hands towards expressing something unearthly, the pianist adroitly bringing out the varying intensities of each of this theme’s appearances as the music progressed, becoming almost orchestral in effect in places, as if unseen voices were joining in the resonances of this noble melody.

Gradually the voices died away, and the pianist took up a very Lisztian repeated three-note descending theme which could have come from that composer’s Third Annees de Pelerinage (published as a set of pieces in 1883, a year before Franck wrote this present work) – sombre in mood at first, it gradually developed in presence and power up and down the keyboard, until the same three-note theme was announced as the beginning of the fugue! – its outwardly contained, slightly capricious aspect was beautifully controlled at first by Biner-McGrath, exploring the motif’s manifold possibilities both declamatory and poetic, until briefly subsiding and re-emerging as a more agitated figure resembling the left-over-right hand-crossing of the Chorale, all so enthrallingly exciting and cataclysmic!

With the turmoil dramatically broken off, a repeated-note figure then seemed to almost “summons” the celestial-sounding return of the chorale theme, one whose growing radiance then majestically shares the sound stage with the fugal theme in a ritual-like rapprochement of sorts, a transformation into what one indubitably feels like a kind of ecstatic resolution of previous troubles and conflicts into eventual triumph! Of course, it was the kind of music and performance that sent us all babbling out into the streets afterwards – extraordinary! Ozan Biner-McGrath will certainly be a musician to watch for in the near future, and a name to conjure with!

 

 

 

NSZO’S Let There Be Light illuminates Saariaho, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Shan Liu (piano) with Jaime Martín and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra – photo, New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

KALJA SAARIAHO (1952-2023) – Lumiere et Pesanteur
SERGE PROKOFIEV (1891-1953 – Piano Concerto No. 3 In C Major Op.26
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893 – Symphony No. 4 in F Minor Op.36

Shan Liu (piano)
Jaime Martín (conductor)
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington (Te Whanganui-a-Tara)
Friday, 24th July 2026

Review by Peter Mechen (Middle C / Seen and Heard International)

This concert by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra was given the title “Let There Be Light”, a quotation from Genesis 1:3 in the Bible, depicting the creation of light upon the earth and its division from darkness – a theme which took different manifestations in the three works given in this evening’s concert by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and its guest conductor Jaime Martín, along with a major contribution in one of the items from the remarkable sixteen year-old New Zealand pianist Shan Liu, here making his mainstage debut with the orchestra.

Beginning the concert was a piece by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. Lumière et Pesanteur  (Light and Gravity) – the composer’s own notes regarding this work referred to it as a ”gift” from her to fellow Finnish composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen to honour his advocacy as an interpreter of an earlier work by Saariaho, the oratorio La Passion de Simone, which was inspired by the works of 20th Century philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943). The music of Lumière et Pesanteur  was reworked by the composer from part of that same oratorio, the “Eighth Station”, described by one commentator as the piece’s “most orchestral and least-defined“ section.

Saariaho’s work here  began with the merest murmur of a percussion twinkle from celeste and strings, an evocation of space into which joined a lone trumpeter, sounding a fantastical line with the utmost freedom – this gave way to various wind instruments whose floating tones spontaneously interacted, forming delightfully speculative colouristic and textural ambiences, with brasses playing ever so softly! Over the top of these iridescences piped a piccolo, a foil for the occasional subterranean growlings welling up from beneath, but countered by the continued effusions of wind tone supported by the harp and the softest and most mysterious of brass sonorities.

One could have supposed some kind of narrative at work – my feeling, being new to this music,  was a fairytale-like scenario, one in what seemed in a constant state of sublime and seamless coalescence.  It felt for me as if existence itself here was portrayed in the act of emitting hugely all-embracing sighs of pleasure from the various instrumental groups, occasionally led or spearheaded by specific lines.

Throughout, these tones seemed poly-harmonic, giving us hardly any consciousness of specific keys or modes – instead, opening our imaginations to scenarios of sonorities, textures and timbres engaged in some kind of cosmic interaction, and at which we were spectators mesmerised by the phenomenon’s inception, its growing to various stages of fruition and its equally enigmatic departure! – one in which the sounds didn’t cease as such but seemed to play on at the end beyond what we could actually hear……

After this came the Prokofiev Concerto, a different kind of journey, with its volatility and “take-it-as-it-comes” attitudes towards darkness and light, bestowing insights upon both players and listeners via an experience akin to something of a roller-coaster ride! Such a process seemed all the more Herculean a scenario here through the work in question being undertaken in our presence by such a youthful soloist! Of course Shan Liu had by this time demonstrated his exceptional qualities as a pianist on both the home and international pianistic arenas, even though he was here tackling repertoire that one would think was the preserve of the super-virtuosi (I had, for instance, seen none other than Martha Argerich play this concerto – so I was hedging my bets as to how this young man would in my mind fare against that memory!)…..

Anyway, what a concerto! The opening Andante featured  firstly a clarinet, and a second soon joining in, with the strings then sounding that characteristic sweet-and-sour quality of Prokofiev’s in the opening melody – then in came the strings again with the Allegro – such terrific energy and momentum announcing the pianist’s first entry – could Shan Liu do it? My goodness, could he what! – straightaway, such sparkling, clear and brilliantly fluent fingerwork – and then he really opened up the pianistic throttle for the toccata-like exchanges with swirling winds and slashing strings and tremendous orchestral support in general!  And so it went on – the military-like dotted march rhythms shared between the piano and mischievous instrumental detailing brought out humour aplenty – the march rhythms turned to scampering ones, with each upward-thrusting  gesture eliciting cataclysmic cries from the orchestra, the last of which featured  a return of the opening theme as a full-throated kind of “hymn-tune” – Shan Liu took up the cantabile mood, interacting with the waves of orchestral sound and producing a kind of ethereal, almost mystical sea-change in the music, until the return of the urgent allegro rhythms which recommenced the argument.  And so it went on, through various succeeding episodes too numerous to describe, except to say that the last sortie set the seal on the movement, with the pianist’s running two handed unisons gathering up the orchestral forces in the tremendous and excitingly irresistible propulsions that took the music to a triumphal final chord – at which point the Michael Fowler audience simply exploded with delight and pent-up exhilaration, deservedly giving the musicians their due!

The slow movement was all wistfulness and charm at the outset, the soloist completely at one with conductor and orchestra in the music’s bitter-sweet lyricism, until a sudden outburst brought a wild dance, which the cellos and basses helped along, giving plenty of “hoof to the swing” – as they also did with the succeeding triplet rhythms. By contrast a sequence of pure magic then meandered into and over the sound-vistas, everybody in a kind of drifting dream -a moment of fantastic, other-worldly music-making!  And how spontaneously the rhythmic impulses seemed to come to life again, with dancing impulses sprouting from all about the orchestra – those amazingly jaunty passages then fused their energies with the return of the wistful melody that began the movement – what seemed like opposites enjoying a perfect partnership!

The winds had done a superb job of introducing most of this work’s themes thus far – and the finale was no exception, with the bassoon setting a wry, insouciant opening tone for the movement’s beginning, the piano joining in the fun with big-boned dance measures and playful competition with the orchestra via several glissandi-like skirling phrases added to the “quick-march” exchanges.  There was so much to enjoy, with the winds (again) initiating a plaintive, bitter-sweet melody,  the piano nonchalantly replying with a “walking” theme, taken up by the winds, and a full-blooded return to the bitter-sweet theme on the strings – this was both voiced and embellished until the theme here got the gloriously “full Rachmaninov” treatment from soloist and orchestra (though I’m certain that neither composer would thank me for THAT heartfelt observation!). Those ubiquitous winds then bumptiously reintroduced the opening theme – by now sounding positively turbo-charged! – and with soloist, conductor and players working up to full stretch in alternating the music’s heightened momentums, the concerto by the end had simply overwhelmed us with its power and brilliance!

We couldn’t let Shan Liu go for a while after this! – not until conductor Jaime Martín visibly INSISTED the young pianist play an encore! – most appropriately we were given Schumann’s Traumerei from Kinderszenen, an appropriate antidote to the concerto performance’s intoxication in its simplicity and naturalness of utterance – even though it inhibited not a whit of animated discussion throughout the interval regarding what we’d heard!

Surprisingly, and as it turned out, delightfully, conductor Jaime Martín made a gracious and entertaining “guest’s speech” for us at the second half’s beginning, firstly praising Shan Liu’s remarkable performance, and then properly introducing himself, by way of amusingly recounting his first interactions upon his arrival with various New Zealanders who, upon learning that he was Spanish, acceded, to his utter amazement, fulsome congratulations upon him in relation to the recent Football World Cup Spanish victory!  –  “..almost as if” he said “I myself had played in the final!”. He then talked about his own impressions of the Tchaikovsky Symphony he and the orchestra were about to play,  actually getting the players to sound a few of the work’s themes and motifs by way of highlighting them for us – all this was done in a perfectly straightforward and unpatronising way – a further amusing moment was when the conductor mentioned the word “fate” in his description of the symphony’s main recurring motif, and paused for dramatic effect – in the silence one of the cellists dropped their bow on the floor!

All such byplays done with, Martín began the symphony, getting truly spine-tingling brass-playing and dramatic whiplash-chordings from the full orchestra in the work’s introduction. The strings expressively and plaintively took up their own “first subject”, handing over to the winds and helping to further build up the tensions which became a kind of “pitched battle’ between the “fate” theme and the orchestra’s lamentations! It was a properly dramatic and sonorous journey throughout, the eloquent orchestral detailing in every section by turns confronting (the “fate” music and its insistent accompanying theme) and consoling (the folksy second subject theme and its major-key variant) right to the tumultuous conclusion of the first movement.)

Martín had asked his strings beforehand to play the accompaniments alone to the long oboe solo that distinguishes the second movement, encouraging his audience to “register” the simplicity and loneliness of these pizzicato passages, adding to the beauty of oboist Robert Orr’s actual performance – listening to this movement I was freshly taken aback by the qppeql of Tchaikovsky’s orchestrations, especially the many interactions between strings and winds so gorgeously and heartfeltly realised in this performance. Likewise in the famous pizzicato-led third movement the impact of the instrumental contrasts between strings, winds and brass were positively flavoursome (Johanna Gruskin’s piccolo in particular picturing a superbly loquacious “beastie”!).

Martín then introduced the finale almost as attacca (not marked in the score), conveying the music’s tremendous urgency, the playing marked by fierce exchanges and great brilliance – similarly, the conductor brought the contrasting “Birch tree” melody in almost in tempo. maintaining the music’s delicacy but enhancing the excitement! Later in the movement this melody led with increasing intensity to the final, tumultuous statement of the “fate” motif, momentarily halting the music’s headlong flow, but leading to a quiet reiteration of the festive-like music which represented the composer’s words “If you cannot discover the reasons for happiness in yourself, look to others…” The orchestral frenzy unleashed for us at the conclusion of this movement tonight embodied that fatalism with the utmost euphoria and excitement. Since then, my memory has been wandering back to my first encounter with this work via the legendary Hungarian conductor Antal Dorati, whom I saw give what seemed like a cataclysmic-sounding performance with the then NZBC Symphony Orchestra here in Wellington in 1973 – his shade would, I think, have relished tonight’s equally memorable presentation.

 

 

 

Music of celebration and of mourning, from the Aroha String Quartet International Music Academy

Posted on by Peter Mechen

AROHA STRING QUARTET – International Music Academy Tutors Concert

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA (1921-1992) – Tango Ballet (1956) – arrangement for string quartet by Jose Bragato
RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949) – Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings (1945)
– arrangement for 7 solo strings by Rudolf Leopold (1996)

Members of the Aroha String Quartet International Music Academy Tutors –
Haihong Liu, Donald Armstrong (violins) / Eli Vincent, Konstanze Artmann (violas)
Robert Ibell, David Chickering (‘cellos) / Oleksandr Gunchenko (double-bass)

St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington – Lunchtime Concert
Wednesday, 15th July, 2026

The Aroha String Quartet’s International Music Academy meets every year in Wellington for six days of intensive music-making, involving workshops, coaching and rehearsals, an event organised and run by the Quartet members themselves and the Academy Administrator Cathie McCallum. This year close to forty non-professional string players from around New Zealand and Australia were brought together for workshops, coaching and rehearsals, which result in various concerts involving the players and the guest tutors, and featuring works for both chamber and orchestral forces.

One of these concerts, featuring firstly the Aroha Quartet players themselves, and then in partnership with several of the Academy’s tutor-musicians brought a large lunchtime-concert audience to St.Andrews’ for what promised to be a special event – we were given repertoire out of the usual “run” of things for a string quartet – a “Tango Ballet” by the Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla (written originally for his own ensemble, the  “Octeto Buenos Aires” in 1955 – a string quartet version of this work was made by Jose Bragato, the composer’s regular “collaborator”), and then followed by a work from Richard Strauss written in 1945, originally for seven players but then recast as the “Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings” version we normally hear (this performance was of a 1996 reconstruction of the “original” by Rudolf Leopold).

Consequently, it was very much a concert of two halves, beginning with the Piazzolla work which delighted on all fronts from the outset –  Piazzolla’s “Tango Ballet” sought to “expand” the traditional associations of the dance into various adaptations of mood and situation, using a narrative not dissimilar in technique to George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris”, namely, a series of impressions of city life (in Piazzolla’s music’s case, Buenos Aires, of course!).  The work’s introduction features the solo violin vertically effervescing with energy, the accompanying strings at first taciturn in response, but then rolling into a swinging rhythm, the impulses sufficiently and enticingly “held back” by way of suggesting greater excitements to come…..the following “The Street” gets the rhythms walking with ever-growing excitement, the upper strings dancing over the cello’s ever-jaunty strides and eventually rushing up and down in a ferment of exhilaration, which then unexpectedly quivers to a halt, as if transfixed by a sight, a feeling, a happening – what could it be?…

The score bears the title “Encounter”, suggesting a meeting, bringing bewilderment, perhaps bashfulness, or beguilement, an awkwardly romantic moment (Eli Vincent’s viola here contributes a wonderfully-played and smokily suggestive moment of discombobulation towards the end) – when suddenly the music breaks into the mood with “Cabaret” , with the rhythms bouncing all around and about, the energies having an almost animalistic “impulse without thought”, but which then drain disconcertingly to a near-silence. It’s the work’s most profound moment, and one which the composer’s favoured instrument, the bandoneon is almost certainly suggested in this movement’s introspectiveness, as befits its title of “Solitude”. The music drifts downwards, the lower strings’ despairing tones icily accompanied by violin tremolandi, the latter then taking up a heart-wrenching melody, very harmonically “free’ and played with heartfelt focus by Haihong Liu.

And so, life goes on, as the music returns to the mood of the opening, heralding the concluding “galop” with lots of fanfare-like gesturings, and bringing the work to a close with a few flavoursome “tough” harmonies leaping off the bowstrings and into the excited resonances of the conclusion.

One couldn’t have asked for a more contrasted ambience than from the work by Richard Strauss which followed – this was a piece given here by seven string players which the composer had first sketched out in response to a commission from the famous Swiss conductor Paul Sacher in 1944. The conductor had wanted a work for string orchestra, so the sketch was amplified to a work for 23 solo strings, and given the name “Metamorphosen” by the composer, inspired by the writings of Johann Wolfgand von Goethe whose ideas had expressed, over a century beforehand a metamorphosis of living things through constant transformation and renewal.

By this time the ageing German composer had become sickened by the war’s gradual destruction of so many hallowed locations throughout Germany and Austria which he had held sacred as representative of Germany’s art and culture. He was to write in his diary, after finishing “Metamorphosen” in May 1945,  “The most terrible period of human history is at an end, the twelve-year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany’s 2,000 years of cultural evolution met its doom” . Though the despair Strauss felt at the loss of so many cherished symbols of his country’s art and culture was palpable, his choice of a title for the piece seemed, however subconsciously (and at that time remotely), a gesture akin to planting a Goethe-like seed of renewal in the face of such destruction.

In fact Strauss’s fellow-composer Gustav Mahler had similarly expressed in his own music many years before something of the same dark despair in the concluding pages of the latter’s Sixth Symphony – and, of course, both composers were to emerge from their separate “dark nights of the soul” and go on to compose subsequent works of searing beauty, Mahler with his “Das Lied von der Erde” and his Ninth Symphony, and Strauss with his equally glorious “Four Last Songs”.

The themes Strauss crafted for “Metamorphosen” are partly his own and partly those of his idol Beethoven, directly evoking memories of the latter’s “Funeral March” from the “Eroica” Symphony. In this performance of the composer’s original septet version (reconstructed by Rudolf Leopold in 1996) the themes inevitably stand out more clearly than in the full, 23-instrument version, though the ambiences are inevitably different, and in some ways more intense for listeners, who are perhaps encouraged to “move more closely” to a smaller group, rather than settle back and revel in the lusher, fuller sound of the bigger ensemble.

I had not heard this “chamber version” before, and, not unexpectedly, found it revelatory, in as much as that “moving closer” sensation brought upon by greater intimacy with the sounds, enabled the music to “strike home” even  more tellingly (ironic though it might seem when one thinks of the sonic impact of a large group of strings!), Of course there have been many great recorded performances of the work in its “full strings” version – and I also recall a superb performance from as distant a time as 2010 from the NZSO strings with Pietari Inkinen here in Wellington, all but the ‘cellos standing, and everybody playing their hearts out!

With the Aroha Quartet players and three others whose names are indelibly associated with the NZSO, Donald Armstrong (violin), David Chickering (‘cello) and Oleksandr Gunchenko (double bass), there was no question regarding the brilliance, fluency and commitment of the playing of these musicians in this work, which was thrilling! What I came to realise, shortly after the work began, was the extent to which this music quickly overflowed its expressive parameters as I listened, transcending its composer’s original intention of commemorating the destruction of a culture at a specific time and in a specific place, and prompting – no, in fact, URGING me to bring to mind the world’s present-day happenings of destruction and desecration of whole peoples and their cultures by forces whose originators and proponents one might well accuse in turn of “bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture” and as our own era’s “greatest criminals”! Strauss himself might have been obsessed with his own personalised despairings via this work, but his brilliant stroke of introducing motifs from the music of one of the world’s most oft-acknowledged sympathisers towards and spokespersons for mankind in general, here completely and utterly transcended any boundaries of time, place and circumstance relating to the original 1945 work.

Certain concerts take it upon themselves to be enshrined in the memory, especially those whose performances are enabled by the players to speak with an eloquence that transcends the ordinary –  sometimes even to the point where the music-making reminds us, however uncomfortably, that we live in a world in which “Humankind cannot bear very much reality”…….this concert took me into the sobering, on-going  realities of those words and the resultant sufferings of people, then and now, and everywhere…..

 

Elouan Quartet and Bridget Douglas – stellar performance and partnership

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music  2026 presents:

ELOUAN QUARTET with BRIDGET DOUGLAS (flute)

AMY BEACH _Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet
SALINA FISHER – Mata-Au (2021)
ARTHUR FOOTE –  A Night Piece for Flute and String Quartet (1918)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – String Quartet in B-flat major Op. 18 No. 6
ALBERTO GINASTERA – Impresiones de la Puna for Flute and Strings (1934)

Elouan Quartet: Jessica Oddie (leader), Anna Van Der Zee (violin), Alexander MacFarlane (viola), Ken Ichinose (‘cello)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 12th July, 2026

I’d not heard the Elouan String Quartet play together before (and they were formed in 2024, so goodness knows where I had been!) However, I was familiar with three of the quartet members in different performing contexts, violinists Jessica Oddie, and Anna van der Zee, and ‘cellist Ken Ichinose, all of whom I’d thought were exceptional in what I’d heard them play. And though the name of the violist, Alexander MacFarlane, was new to me, his presence in such august company couldn’t, I reasoned, help but be self-recommending even before I heard a note of his playing! Furthermore, the concert was graced by the presence of Bridget Douglas, principal flutist with the NZSO, and a much-loved favourite of Wellington audiences. Adding to the mix was a programme whose composer-names were in most cases more familiar to me that was their actual music, so on various counts I felt the concert promised to be something of a treat.

Of course, the “something old/something new” kind of presentation invariably works well with audiences, though the “something old” can by dint of sheer force of personality make just as much of an impact upon audience sensibilities in a well-wrought performance as a newly-encountered work. Having said that I’m aware that the music of this afternoon’s first composer hasn’t exactly been entirely neglected of late in the city’s concert and recital programmes. American-born Amy Cheney Beach achieved fame both as a performer and a composer during her lifetime (1867-1944) – she was the first American woman to have a full-scale symphony (her 1896 “Gaelic” Symphony)  performed (by the Boston Symphony Orchesra) and published – and she was also the soloist at the 1900 premiere of her own Piano Concerto, with the same orchestra. Altogether she composed more than 300 works, including chamber music, choral works, songs both with orchestra and piano, and solo piano pieces.

After her death Beach’s music suffered a decline for several decades, but interest in her creative achievements has gradually renewed, as has recognition of her pioneering efforts on behalf of both American music and women composers. A comment by one of her contemporaries after the first performance of her “Gaelic” Symphony suggested the ambivalence women composers had and would continue for a while to face on the part of the “establishment”, with fellow American composer George Chadwick congratulating Beach on her efforts, by way of  welcoming her (the only woman) into membership of the New England composer-group, known as the “Boston Six”, proclaiming her as  “one of the boys”.

Wellington has recently head this same “Gaelic” Symphony given by our City Orchestra – see review at https://middle-c.org/2026/06/a-world-encircling-winter-solstice-concert-compendium-from-the-wellington-city-orchestra/ : and another memorable concert in the region took place at Waikanae in 2023, featuring the New Zealand String Quartet of that time, playing Beach’s 1907 Piano Quintet, and joined by pianist Diedre Irons giving what seemed like an “in the manner born” performance of the piano part – here’s another review at https://middle-c.org/2023/10/the-new-zealand-string-quartet-discusses-emperors-dictators-and-husbands-at-waikanae/

Another chamber piece by Amy Beach was featured in today’s concert, “Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet”  a work from 1916 and one of three presented today featuring a partnership between solo flute and string quartet. Here, the music demonstrated Amy Beach’s desire to reflect a kind of  “American” quality in her music, something very much an “issue” in Beach’s lifetime, and which led to discussion and argument which at times became acrimonious. This was the question regarding exactly what was “American” in music – was it from native American Indian sources, Afro-American cultures or from “the great majority” of American peoples who were neither American Indian nor Afro-American, but had vastly different cultural heritages brought from various other parts of the world?  The discussion had originally been sparked by none other than Antonin Dvorak, at that time resident in the United States during his directorship of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Dvorak famously stated that proper “American” music should embrace the diversities of the country’s multicultural elements, such as with what the composer called “indigenous” folk tunes, and sought to present a kind of “demonstration” of this influence in his well-known  “New World” Symphony.

Of course, this review has nothing like the space needed to convey the various arguments and counter-arguments in full, but they brought to the fore issues of class, race and ethnicity in ways that still resonate today – see further commentaries in the following article – https://classical-scene.com/2025/05/24/a-tale-of-two-cities/  Amy Beach was theoretically on the side of the “great majority” influences, the various heritages brought to the United States by the new settlers – in her own compositions she chose to highlight her own Anglo-Celtic folk-tunes, and particularly in her “Gaelic” Symphony. It’s ironic that the principal theme of this work, derived from one of Beach’s own songs, is one with the title “An Indian Lullaby”, though the melody is entirely Beach’s own.

The strings alone began the work, the theme, wistful and melancholy, the lines having an almost silken contrapuntal aspect with their intermingling, before allowing the flute to enter with elaborations that decoratively “clothe” the original theme, the players again observing the minor-to-major key change towards the end which the theme had incorporated. The next variation has an insoucient tripping trajectory into which the strings invite the flute to join, having tested the contrapuntal waters and found them agreeable – though the ensuing waltz promised a darker, more sinister kind of experience, chromatic harmonic shifts adding to the music’s effable, ineffable mystery, and making a gorgeously seductive sound under  these players’ fingers…..the fourth variation seems like a shadowy kind of entr’acte, as mysterious in its culmination as its entrance. Then followed a gorgeously passionate outpouring of tones from the ‘cello introducing the fifth variation, taken over by the flute, long-breathed and languorous, before the theme was generously shared by the instruments in turn, a true confluence of ensembled sound-personalities!. A gloriously rhapsodic flute solo later, the ‘cello began an impish fugue, which proceeded with ingenious distractions, such as a classic watchmaker’s “winding down” to the fugue’s strains  – a quick, scampering reprise of the same by the cellist and violist brought everybody back to a rerise of the work’s opening, and whose final notes I can still imagine somewhere continuing to echo….

Salina Fisher’s String Trio Mata-Au followed (the name of the Clutha River in Te Reo. meaning “to meet again”). I can’t do better than quote the composer’s own note in the programme, describing just what I heard….”The water dances and swirls as it connects places and people – It flows and gushes with forward momentum and anticipation…” I heard what I imagined to be a bubbling spring-like infusion of liquid energy, with strongly-projected harmonic colours, often in “seconds” intervals, and volatile in rhythmic character, the instruments taking single-line “turns” before moving inexorably into transcendent realms, the sounds lifted upwards, with the solo cello having the last word. I wish Douglas Lilburn could have heard this work, as it seemed to me to explore those rhythmic realms, both spontaneously gestural and longer-term trajectorial that he spoke about composers here “finding” as a genuine “language” of our own……

A near-contemporary of Amy Beach (and a fellow-member of the aforementioned “Boston Six”) was Arthur Foote (1853-1937) born in Salem, Massachusetts. He had a couple of “firsts” to add distinction to his career as a composer, teacher and organist – he was the first prominent American-born composer to be entirely trained in the U.S. and the first to receive an American university’s Masters degree in music. In his day he was a well-known figure in music circles – like Amy Beach he had orchestral works premiered by the Boston Symphony, in his case suites, serenades and a cello concerto, There was also chamber music, choral works and numerous piano pieces, with one critic characterising  Foote’s output as belonging to “the cult of restrained in art”, and citing his “A Night Piece for Flute and String Quartet” as representative of a creative culture running parallel to more “unrestrained” expressions of creativity.

This piece attained popularity in a later version for flute and string orchestra, but here we heard the original and more introspective chamber version. Beginning wistfully and romantically, the music is often likened to Faure’s – nothing is excessive, with passionate moments for the solo flute in constant balance with more subdued passages, in the manner of a rhapsodic fantasy-piece. All of the instruments were here allowed to speak with characteristic voices, and “realise” the composer’s beautifully-crafted evocations.

“Anchoring” this enterprising concert was a presentation by the Elouan players of the last of Beethoven’s Op.18 Quartets, No, 6 in B-flat Major, my favourite from the set. Beginning with an irresistibly “bouncy” Allegro con brio, the players packed the trajectories with momentums that picked us up by our ears and took us places, replete with phrasings which questioned as well as answered, and relied as much on contrast as flowing discourse. The development section was an absorbing, slightly “off the path” series of ear-catching modulations whose exchanges delighted us with their “made up on the spot” character, with dialogues that never faltered, and at the end, double-duetted their way to a recapitulation that chose a “same but different” homeward path, as sharp-etched here in places as it was convivial. The slow movement, part heartfelt song-like, part-processional at the beginning, took us through a series of exquisitely-voiced major/minor key sequences which kept us guessing in places as to what the music would do next!

As for the whirlwind Scherzo, we were deliciously bewitched, and bothered, if not entirely bewildered by the composer’s utter delight in syncopation (“an explosion of rhythmic eccentricity” was how one commentator described it)  and which the players  threw off without seemingly turning a hair, all to our pleasurable delight! Not only this but the Trio was despatched in similarly split-second fashion, the whole giving us surgings of near-breathless exhilaration. Came the famously “ghostly” introduction to the  finale, with its Haydnesque opening bars and its gradual agglomerations of “La Malinconia”, here darkly, ambiently and (as the composer wished) delicately coloured by the players as the music seemed to take us still further into those seemingly malignant, almost Shakespearean realms – before Beethoven suddenly whipped off the mask of dread and brought to the fore a charming 3/8 Allegretto (quasi Allegro!) dance!  We were in due course returned, suddenly, to the opening, which again inclined towards darker regions, but alternated between this and the dance, and afterwards returned to a slower, more dreamy statement of the dance theme, before Jessica Oddie’s violin led the “up-and-at’-em” charge of a few barnstorming bars towards the finish! What a journey!

We then reconnected with Bridget Douglas for the concert’s final item, Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera’s  Impresiones de la Puna for Flute and Strings (1934). Reckoned to be Latin America’s foremost composer after the death of Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos in 1959,  Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) began his composing career as a nationalist, using folk and popular elements in his music. One of his earliest compositions was “Impressions of the Puna” (the name refers to the bleak rocky wasteland high in the northern Andes, the heart of the old Inca empire). In three movements, the first, Quena, refers to the cane flute, an instrument developed by Inca civilisation and used for solo improvisation and song accompaniments – here, the performance brought out the music’s “solitary player” aspect, a melancholy song with harmonic support from the strings. Hardly less melancholy, though with livelier trajectories, was the second piece, Canción (song), not surprisingly referring to lost love, the music comparatively restrained and lyrical at first, before gathering momentum towards the end with a steady, dotted string-rhythm. The third and final Danza refreshed our sensibilities with something different – strongly pulsating pizzicato rhythms accompanying a flute-and-violin dialogue, interrupted by recitative-like utterances from flute and strings before returning to the dance, and concluding with concerted flourishes from all the instruments together. A minor work, perhaps, but great fun to play and to listen to, and allowing us the pleasure of returning to our homes afterwards with smiles and warm hearts.

Deliciously unfamiliar/eminently listenable music from little-known French composer Michel Corrette

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MICHEL CORRETTE (1707-1795) France
LES DELICES DE LA SOLITUDE – Sonatas Op. 20 Nos.1-6

Michelle Kesler –  ‘Cello I Sonatas 2, 4 & 6  / Cello II
Miranda Wilson – ‘Cello I Sonatas 1, 3 & 5  / Cello II

MSR Classics MS 1832

Recorded November 2024 in the Recital Hall at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA

“In the spirit of friendship between ‘cellists, we hope listeners will enjoy this lively conversation between instruments” writes ‘cellist Miranda Wilson in her notes accompanying a delightful recording that has come my way, of music by a composer whose name I did not know, one Michel Corrette, born in Rouen, France in 1707. In this case, it’s amusing to associate the ready camaraderie between the two musicians featured on this recording with a work whose six sonatas have the collective subtitle  Les délices de la solitude (The Delights of Solitude) – however, although it would seem that Corrette’s set of six sonatas were originally for solo ‘cello plus basso continuo, they’re here assigned to two ‘cellos, whose demonstrably equal share of the lines makes for great satisfaction, as much obviously in performing as in our listening!

Cellists Michelle Kesler and Miranda Wilson are the players on this recording, made in November 2024 at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah – at the time both were Professors of ‘Cello at their respective teaching places, Kesler at the aforementioned Brigham Young University, and Wilson in the neighbouring state of Idaho at the eponymously-named State University in Moscow, Idaho. We’re given detailed guidance as to which player is “Cello I” in each of the sonatas, Kesler conveniently taking the “lead” in Sonatas 2, 4, and 6, and Wilson in the other three. The presentation nicely completes the collaborative nature of the whole by presenting the works in numerical order.

My first listening impression (Sonata No. 1 in F Major) was of a slightly more spacious acoustic for the two instruments that I thought I was going to fully enjoy, but, as with any concert or recording one encounters, one’s ears can take a little while to, in Michael Flanders’ immortal words on his and Donald Swann’s “At the Drop of A Hat” live recording, “get the pitch of the hall” – and by the first movement’s end the sounds had found and “inhabited” their places for me with music which had by this time amiably teased, cajoled and enlivened my spirits!

Miranda Wilson entertainingly draws attention to Corrette’s music corresponding with the rise of the ‘cello as a solo instrument at the expense of the viola da gamba in popularity at this time, one taken advantage of by, firstly, the publication of these sonatas at around 1739, and the composer’s 1741 treatise Theoretical and Practical Method for Learning the ‘Cello to Perfection in a Short Time. Something of the ferment of the controversy is excitingly suggested by a pamphlet circulated in 1740 by a French lawyer and amateur viola da gamba player Hubert Le Blanc, one which bore the contentious title Defence of the Bass Viol against the Enterprises of the Violin and the Pretensions of the ‘Cello! – wot larks! Le Blanc’s somewhat intemperate rationale regarding his instrument’s superiority has since seen its consignment to the realm of the specialist, by no means obliterated, but put in its place by history!

Here, we are invited to indulge in the composer’s obvious enthusiasm for the then still new-fangled instrument (Corrette’s aforementioned treatise was the first French publication of “a theoretical and practical method” for aspiring cellists) – and the sonatas as recorded here feature a kind of “coming together” of solitudinous delights, with each ‘cellist by turns blending their instruments’ solo lines with their partners’ roles as contrapuntal voices, the modes somewhat antithetical in these pairings but, in situ, delightful.

Sonata No. 1 straightaway dances into a Fuga, marked Allegro, the counterpoints unselfconsciously switching from first to second voice in non-hierarchical exchange, its composer obviously allowing his originally-wrought basso continuo a satisfyingly comparable response to the soloist here, and also in the Affetuoso Aria that followed – and the Allegro finale makes for as “companionable” a solitude as could be imagined!

The D Minor Sonata No. 2 begins with a more driving Allegro, with lots of “fizz” to some of the exchanges, and the ensuing Affetuoso, with its contrasting Arias I and II underlining a poignant operatic-like interaction, not unexpectedly calling for some resolution – a CPE Bach-like Allegro staccato did the trick, those brusque, attention-grabbing initial notes making for a splendid “what’s all this, then!” kind of denoument!

I loved the easy, loping stride of the C Major No 3’s Allemande – a kind of relaxed “bustle” of an Allegro, and then with both this and the equally bucolic concluding Fuga da capella third movement enclosing an unexpectedly concentrated middle-movement Sarabande. More concentrated intensities came with both players’ deep-diving into the following E-flat Major Fourth Sonata’s opening Adagio, one that conveyed a more-than-usual sense of solitude on the music’s part. This dramatically tipped over and into a Corrente, an exhilarating running-sequence leaving one breathless but energised enough to take on board the music’s almost hymn-like Aria which followed – little did we realise we were being primed for a “call-to-arms” with the succeeding “Brut de chasse” here rousing and enthralling our sensibilities with sounds and sensations of an army on the march!

Further excitement came with the galvanic Presto Prelude to the Fifth Sonata in G Major, in which one imagined our two cellists enjoying an “Anything you can do” exchange, with hair and resin flying! The following Allemande, though more leisurely an Allegro took us on a reasonably aerobic stroll, a mood which was at once echoed and calmed by a graceful Sarabande – here, a winsome and exploratory partnership that brought peace to one’s soul. As well for such respite, with the sharply-etched Presto finale that followed mischievously breaking the mood, snapping playfully at dancers’ heels.

Glorious and celebratory were the Handelian flourishes which opened the final sonata of the set, the 6th in a joyous D Major. Here, strangely, it seems the MSR Classics booklet prints the incorrect names and tempi for the movements – the opening Preludio has a grand, ritualistic character which should be Allegro Moderato, not Presto. And this suits the solemn, ceremonial gait of the second movement Aria, not Allemande – Allegro as listed here. Finally, the players skip merrily into a concluding Gigue (not in the least bit like a Sarabande!). It all made for a bit pf a puzzle on a first listen, but one well worth solving, and which Michel Corrette himself might possibly have regarded with amusement rather than annoyance  – after all, among his prodigious output were no less than twenty-five “Concerti Comiques”, pieces for vocal and instrumental ensembles which were often “fun” settings of popular tunes and well-known opera themes, and written largely to be used as “entractes” during performances of comic theatre.

This was revelatory stuff for me – listening to the disc right through was like being taken on some kind of “tour” of a specific time and place in European musical history – though he lived in the same era as his fellow countrymen Rameau, Leclair, Boismortier and Mondonville, and at the same time as Handel, CPE Bach, Gluck and Pergolesi,  Corrette’s music survives comparison with these more famous figures due to its craftsmanship and its composer’s penchant for capturing elements of different styles and blending them in singular ways. The voices of his influences are in places unmistakable but he manages to make the results of their synthesis his own. The only comment I wanted to make of a questioning nature concerned repeats in the various movements, so many of which seemed to finish before I wanted them to! –  and moments such as those made me wonder what the scores of these works indicated were the options for the players who perform this music. I would be interested to find out more regarding this subject. For the rest, to the composer and performers, simply “Bravo! C’est magnifique!”

Music that unfurls the Colours of Karori’s splendid Futuna Chapel

Posted on by Peter Mechen

 

“Something old, something new…”  – the Elementi Trio at Futuna Chapel, July 2026Monica Verburg, Nicholas Hancox and Pepe Becker

ELEMENTI TRIO –
Monica Verburg – flute, alto flute
Nicholas Hancox – viola
Pepe Becker – soprano, thumb piano (mbira)

Futuna Chapel, Karori, Wellington
Sunday, 5th July 2026

Sitting in Futuna Chapel, in Karori, on a recent Sunday afternoon, listening to a concert of music given by a trio of extremely talented performers (flutist, violist and soprano vocalist), I found myself thinking at various stages of the concert about the sheer beauty of the sounds being brought forth by these musicians. I’m sure that, given the singular beauty of the venue’s overall atmosphere, ambience and amalgam of design and colour, I was allowing those qualities to infuse the music’s impact beyond the realms of a simple auditory response and into a kind of totality of experience that transcended “normal” listening. Be that as it may, the effect of these different factors conspired to produce a level of enjoyment of this concert’s music-making that has stayed with me right up to this moment.

Interestingly, the very first item of the concert seemed to me as much a “test run” by the performers, almost a “getting the pitch of the hall” kind of run-through with an audience present for the musicians to be able to sound out things like the balances between the instruments and the voice, and the degree to which the sounds “come back” from the peopled ambient spaces. I did find this first item (Thomas Morley’s madrigal “Arise, get up, my dear” a trifle chaotic in its full-blooded amalgam of sounds – and yet the music is actually about incidental chaos, being Morley’s musical description of the hustle and bustle of a new bride’s wedding day. More spacious and wide-ranging was Pepe Becker’s singing of Hildegarde of Bingen’s “O Euchari” which followed, the singer enabling her voice to “ring down the ages” from Hildegard’s time, with Nicholas Hancox’s viola steadily recreating the age-old drone accompaniment. A third item completed an opening “triumvirate” of the concert’s range and scope, featuring a home-grown work, Pepe Becker’s own setting of a sixteenth-century poem “T’amo mia vita” (I love you, my life) by Giovanni Battista Guarini, originally written for three voices and mbira “thumb piano” but here recast by Becker for soprano, viola and mbira – the latter is an African instrument and was played here by Becker herself, its sound creating a kind of timeless, tonally transcendent “voice”. The words of the poem have a universality which here seemed to fit the composer’s revised setting as much as it must have her all-vocal original!

We heard three more of Pepe Becker’s by turns playful, declamatory and darkly visionary pieces placed separately throughout the concert, the delightful “Two Tui” a work for flute premiered by Bridget Douglas in 2010, and essayed here most viscerally by Monica Verburg, the music based on two separate calls associated with different places in Wellington, and brought together as a kind of dialogue, with a petulant dismissive squawk of one bird at the other’s expense at the end! Becker’s more expansive, almost ritualistic piece, “Scorpio II – From the far point of the Rising Sun” featured her soprano voice enacting a kind of ritual exchange with the solo flute. Long, sonorous lines alternating with stately roulade-like flourishes before the dialogues become intricate and earnest (though no words were provided – I presumed the singer’s phrases were in Latin), the lines occasionally mirroring one another before concluding the piece with some brief mirror-image shared phrasings. Most suggestive for me was her darkly resonant tribute to Sagittarius, a setting of William Blake’s “The Tyger” a work Becker dedicated to her father, along with her “many Sagittarius friends” – something of a “Do not go gentle into that good night” work of darkness and angst, the sombre tone set by Nicholas Hancox’s opening viola chord, though the trio fetched up more incisive and trenchant tones for the poem’s “fearful symmetries” (it was a work composed for this concert, in fact!).

Bringing her own creative talents to this cornucopian assemblage was flutist Monica Verburg, who contributed no less than two recently-completed pieces for premiering at this concert, the first one a heartwarming and environmentally topical work titled “To the Hills” (Ki ngā puke), being inspired by a recent campaign of conservation of Otago’s Dunstan Mountains. Verburg drew our attention to the piece’s influences, a certain “Celtic flavour” in accord with early European settlement of this area, and which the trio of musicians made much of in performance throughout the piece’s three sections, The other recent work of Verburg’s was  “In the Slipstream” a delight for the ear in its interplay between two instruments, flute and viola (the flutist often swapping between flute and alto flute in her performances, which variation, to my shame, I seem to have neglected to draw any attention to in my notes – mea culpa!) Here, the two instrumental  lines  imitated, shadowed and mimicked one another constantly, with (I thought) occasionally bluesy inflections spicing the sounds ever so slightly, as the music, by turns teased and blended its two strands before drifting into a pensive ending.

Monica Verburg was as well responsible in full or in part for four other items, two of them original works and two arrangements, the first original work “Turn Your Eyes”, originally composed in 2024 for soprano and alto recorder, and then rewritten for soprano, flute and viola – the words were based on the text from Proverbs 4:25 “Let your eyes look straight ahead….” Though the combination of tones made it impossible for me to decipher any of the actual text, the sounds in tandem, though brief, were themselves glorious! We then heard a song “Ocean Breeze” (aha! – in my notes is a mention of the ALTO flute!) – here, Pepe Becker’s soprano and Monica Verburg’s instrument were wistful companions at the song’s opening, one whose melody readily caught the ear in balladic fashion! The two arrangements made by Verburg were for larger-scale forces as one might have expected in her grand setting of Giovanni Gabrieli’s “Jubilate Deo” with its splendidly ceremonial trappings, not to mention the fulsomeness of the text – “Shout joyfully to God, all of the earth!” – what attention-grabbing gesturings (suggesting, of course, antiphonal voices) and declamatory utterances, complete with brief, wistful occasional minor-key harmonic turns, just for variety! Great stuff!

Before I mention in conclusion the concert’s final item (Verburg’s second “arrangement”) I need to recap with still more “gems” which came up in passing  – one was non-vocal, Jack Body’s “Aeolian Harp”, here most evocatively realised by Nicholas Hancox’s viola, capturing the piece’s extraordinary and irresistible frisson of intensities gleaned from nature’s random impulses. Then there were three medieval “pop” numbers from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the earliest of which was Guillaume de Machaut’s “Douce Dame Jolie”  (Sweet. Lovely lady)  – performed here with the viola as the drone instrument and the flute as a companion for the voice – what an uncanny sense of time and place, here, with music making its way to us centuries later! Of the two other later works, one (“Quel fronte signorille” (That noble brow) by Guillaume Dufay) had a similar “courtly love” sentiment no less resonant and focused than de Machaut’s, while the other (a motet “Quam pulchra es” by John Dunstable) was by contrast an unashamedly erotic setting of words from the Biblical “Song of Songs”, its performance here suggesting a parallel musical “enchantment by beauty”.

By the time we reached the programme’s final item everything seemed suffused with a spirit of complete capitulation towards the music and its making, one suitably enhanced by Monica Verburg’s inspired arrangement of this concluding music. Flute and viola began the “thistledown on the wind” introduction, the former extempore and the latter holding a firm foundation line. The scene having been set, the voice then entered with the famous melody “Hine e Hine”, one written famously by Princess Te Rangi Pai (the stage-name of Fanny Rose Poata – b.1868 d.1916), composed in or around 1907. It felt like a kind of “homecoming”, one returning to something deeper than the present, and with enveloping tendrils of belonging, easier to “feel” than to explain. But in tandem with the glories of the venue in which we had enjoyed these sounds it “rounded off” for me (and for others I spoke to at the time) a most agreeable afternoon’s music-listening!

Papaioea Piano Trio offers exotic out-of-town flavourings for St.Andrew’s lunchtime fare

Posted on by Peter Mechen

The Papaioea Trio – Elizabeth Patchett (violin), Guy Donaldson (piano), Robert Ibell (‘cello)

FRANZ JOSEF HAYDN – Piano Trio No.45 in E-flat Major Hob.XV;29
PYOTR  TCHAIKOVSKY (arr. Alexander Goedicke) Six pieces from “The Seasons” Op.37a
ELENA KATZ-CHERNIN – Calliope Dreaming (2009)

The Papaioea Trio
Elizabeth Patchett (violin), Robert Ibell (‘cello), Guy Donaldson (piano)

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday Ist July 2026

For those Wellingtonians and others who may not know, the name Papaioea refers to a particular location in the city of Palmerston North – in fact I grew up there being told that it was a Maori name for the city’s once-beautiful but now sadly-besmirched Square, situated right in the centre of things. Translated, the name was popularly rendered as  “How beautiful it is”, and I was given to understand at first that it was the name for a clearing in the original bush which had covered the area. Later, my understanding of the situation’s history had evolved to relocating the name Papaioea as a description of a lagoon-like lake in the Hokowhitu area of the city, a long way from the actual Square, and that same name bringing with it colourful and even sightly macabre associations with warlike activities of the local Rangitane people. Whatever the actuality of the case – and who can resist a good story?! – the name itself obviously resounded sufficiently in its own right to be considered an appropriate title for a trio of Palmerston North-associated musicians, who have thereupon proudly called themselves “The Papaioea Trio”.

Hearing that this ensemble was Wellington-bound I eagerly took myself to St Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace on the appointed day for what promised to be yet another from a series of remarkable lunchtime concerts whose quality has reaped musical riches and fostered agreeable companionship for countless people. And given that the venue is regularly used by local music groups for their own prestigious concert series (often involving fully professional musicians), there’s obviously no diminution in the quality of the sonics enjoyed by these lunchtime performers.

Of the three musicians who made up the Trio, I’d most frequently heard ‘cellist Robert Ibell as a member variously of the NZSO and of the Aroha String Quartet. While I had encountered Guy Donaldson as a collaborative pianist on several occasions I’d had as much experience of him as a conductor while I played for a few precious and enjoyable  seasons some years ago in the Manawatu Sinfonia. And, as well, I can recall hearing violinist Elizabeth Patchett on a number of occasions as a member of the vibrant Nevine String Quartet. Buoyed by such previous encounters I was greatly looking forward to the group’s coming together, and to the delights of the proposed programme.

While Haydn was perhaps an obvious choice in this repertoire I’d long since been converted to the inexhaustible pleasures given by the composer’s inventiveness in this music, every moment warmly relished by the Trio in this performance – though commentators tend to emphasise the dominance of the piano in these works, there was plenty of stimulating interaction in evidence today, as witness the violin and ‘cello counterpoints to the piano’s lines, often in Svengali-like hide-and-seek guises colouring the mood in the first movement’s development. After this one couldn’t help feeling the recapitulation had an almost Beechamesque amalgam of “regret and safisfaction” evident in the playing, with those determinedly characterful variants in the themes – but the subsequent Beethoven-like plunge into “other realms” leading to the coda was especially evocative and delightful.

The Andante opened for us a different harmonic world, almost Schumannesque in its whimsy – again the players deftly fashioned whole orbits out of simple gesturings, sudden dynamic contrasts, marvellously deep pedal points  and, after a couple of “expect the unexpected” modulations, fresh-as-daisies returnings to the sunshine, with the trajectories of the finale’s entry whirling our spirits aloft, with stimulating touches of trenchant phrasing vying with delicacies of impish delight! A minor-key development sequence again pre-echoed Haydn’s pupil Beethoven with great gusto, all three instruments  bending their backs to the task as the music vaulted all around and over the vistas, the composer seemingly enjoying the improvisatory-like helter-skelter before returning us to recognisable harmonic territories via a coda whose exhilarating upward rush lifted our spirits skyward at the end.

Having enjoyed various of Tchaikovsky’s pieces for solo piano, written for each separate month of the year, I was intrigued to learn of the existence of a version of the work arranged for Piano Trio by a later Russian composer, Alexander Goedicke (born, incidentally AFTER Tchaikovsky had written his original solo pieces!) – I found myself wondering while listening to these beautiful arrangements why it was that Tchaikovsky hadn’t used the Piano Trio format himself for this absolutely charming music as presented here – I soon discovered that the composer actually had a strong early dislike for the trio combination, telling his patroness, Nadezhda Von Meck, that it had “no tonal blend” as the instruments were “incompatible”; and yet when his friend Nikolai Rubinstein died the following year in 1881 his tribute to his late friend was a spectacularly-wrought Piano Trio! (As well, of course, he had already tried his hand at the combination with the celebrated “piano trio” section of his Second Piano Concerto, written the year before! – curiouser and curiouser!)

Still. all of this seemed beside the point at the time of listening – the Papaioea Trio presented six of Goedicke’s arrangements, publishing for our edification a translation of the poetic epigraphs that had accompanied the original solo piano versions. The opening April Snowdrop was a bitter-sweet waltz earnestly expressing a longing for the spring, while the June Barcarolle, a well-known melody, brought out the string players’ different characteristics, with Elizabeth Pachett’s violin’s phrasings precise and contained, compared with Robert Ibell’s ‘cello’s, more flowing and expansive gestures, and with pianist Guy Donaldson the fulcrum around which the different personalities interacted, making for ear-catching results! The October Autumn song was a more melancholy affair, violin and ‘cello by turns quietly expressive and eloquent, while the pianist made every note resonate with purpose in a beautiful solo reprise, echoed by the strings in both imitation and descant, and in a way which compelled us to await every turn of phrase with warm expectation.

The November Troika, a favourite recital item of pianist Sergei Rachmaninov’s, gave us the piece’s heart-warming melody at the start, at first simply, then flowing more expansively and descriptively, followed by a central section brimful with mischief and gaiety, and combining song and dance as the fun and laughter faded into the distance. The December Christmas sequence was a suave waltz, more Viennese drawing-room than Russian, though with moments of longing, almost aching rubato in between the Tempo I dance sequences. For the final February Carnival, all the festive stops were pulled out for the opening with not a moment’s gaiety wasted! – a rather more quixotic middle section could have depicted some kind of party game, one which spilled back over and into the return of the opening music – at the end, after a brief moment of reflection, of inwardness, the Carnival itself delivered the final “Come on!” gesture.  I remember wondering at that point how I would feel about going back to the solo piano version for a listen after such an enjoyable ensembled musical experience!

The programme’s final item was new to me ,and probably to most other people in the hall – its composer, Elena Katz-Chernin  was Uzbekistan-born (1957) and Moscow-educated, but, when still a teenager emigrated to Australia, continuing her musical studies at the Sydney Conservatorium. After her graduation, she moved to Germany for further study before returning to Australia in 1994, since then pursuing an active and successful composing career.  Her 2009 piece presented today, Calliope Dreaming, was written as part of a D2H (dedicated to Haydn) festival marking the latter’s death bicentenary – she was one of eighteen composers worldwide commissioned to write a work for the festival, and which was accordingly premiered that same year in Eisenstadt, Austria, by the Haydn Esterhazy Trio.

The concert’s informative programme notes told us some of the story – Katz-Chernin was inspired by a biographical detail concerning Haydn’s own reported wish that the slow movement of his own Symphony No. 44 (“Trauer”) be played at his funeral, though she was compelled by the symphony’s overall beauty to draw from other parts of the work as well when composing her own tribute. And, in a kind of Haydnesque way, she conceived the idea of giving the piece more of an “upbeat” than a mournful flavour, by writing the music as if it were to be played by a Calliope, a keyboard instrument constructed to activate the sounds of steam whistles! (truly, how more Haydnesque could you get?) – the fact that Calliope was also one of the Nine Muses in Greek mythology, whose credentials included  being “the Muse of epic poetry and eloquence, and the mother of Orpheus” to boot seemed naturally to somewhat mitigate the “circus” aspect of the actual instrument and give the “Haydn connection” irrefutable status.

After we in situ listeners-to-be had digested these delightfully incontrovertible vagaries of detail (admittedly with a few added afterthoughts!), the Trio plunged into “Calliope Dreaming”, Katz-Chernin’s wondrous caprice-fantasy upon themes by a composer given himself to such occasional flights of fancy! – the “dreaming” aspect of the title was given ample notice by what the composer called “calmer moments” amid the more “edgy rhythmic material”, though, as  Katz-Chernin herself acknowledged, the end result of her own fantasisings seemed “more in line with the finale of the symphony”. Which was fair enough, as it was HER piece, really, and not actually Haydn’s!

The end result was invigorating, the sleeve note suggesting for listeners an experience similar to that of “a rapidly-moving steam train”, with moments of calm, but also with singing lines in places soaring over the motoric rhythms. I confess that, as an out-and-out train-buff, the “ride” was for me something of an escapist joy! – though of course every listener would have had their own story to tell, after the “exhilarating downhill ride” of the concluding sequence of “Calliope Dreaming” had brought us all home!

Perhaps a local composer – from anywhere along the way! – might enlist the services of these engaging musicians to be the flagbearers of a work celebrating our own present “Capital Connection” rail-link between Papaioea  (Palmerston North) and  Pōneke (Wellington). It would be by way of strengthening and properly institutionalising what has been a somewhat haphazard recent history of a much-loved and -needed connection for people – one  showing the way between the two cities!  Having already set “Calliope Dreaming” in motion, the Papaioea Trio has demonstrated it can truly go places!

 

 

Virtuosi – Orchestra Wellington’s celebration of the capital’s individual and interactive instrumental brilliance

Posted on by Peter Mechen

VIRTUOSI – Orchestra Wellington

ELGAR – Introduction and Allegro for String Quartet and String Orchestra Op.47
ELGAR – Concerto for ‘Cello and Orchestra in E Minor Op.85
BARTÓK – Concerto for Orchestra Sz116

New Zealand String Quartet : Peter Clark, Martin Riseley (guest player), violins;
Gillian Ansell, viola; Martin Smith, ‘cello
Inbal Megiddo, ‘cello
Orchestra Wellington
Marc Taddei, conductor

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington

Saturday, 27th June 2026

This concert was replete with memories of formative music-listening experiences which have sung and danced throughout my musical life for almost fifty years – so the reader must forgive what seems like a self-indulgent bias regarding these works, and especially in the wake of such committed, heart-warming performances!

Originally a borrowed word from the Italian virtuoso (referring to both “virtue” and “skill”) the term “virtuosi” has “taken flight” in common usage, and is regularly used to denote skill and proficiency of the highest order in practically any human activity, and not just the performing arts. Here, it’s less fulsomely and more appositely applied to both individual and group distinction in musical performance, happily and resoundingly borne out by tonight’s stellar presentations.

One could go further and suggest that the term applied as readily to the creative and technical skills of each of the two “similar-but-different” composers whose music featured in tonight’s concert – on the face of things the “Englishness” of Edward Elgar (1857-1934) and the Hungarian “folkishness” of Béla Bartók (1881-1945) would seem to have little in common, even if their lifetimes partly coincided. Unlike his younger native contemporaries Holst and Vaughan Williams, Elgar showed little interest in ethnomusicology, whereas Bartók eagerly immersed himself in the folk-music of his native soil, both in his studies of comparative musical folklore in Hungary and his fusion of these elements with his own personal style of expression. Both composers were “countrymen” in their inclinations towards the “great outdoors” but it would seem the Malvern Hills near Worcester, beloved of Elgar, were probably somewhat removed in spirit from the isolated Carpathian Mountains of Hungary which Bartók explored, finding his most “authentic” Magyar folk music amongst those isolated communities.

Where Elgar and Bartók meet, I feel, is in the uniqueness and strength of each composer’s distinctive musical “character” – most of Elgar’s work has that instantly recognisable combination of nobility and introspectiveness which looks simultaneously outwards and inwards, in the manner of an artist at once confident and insecure, forthright and nostalgic, expressing a dichotomy that would reach its peak in the composer’s  ‘Cello Concerto played this evening. By contrast, Bartók’s music is characterised by asymmetrical themes and rhythms, modal scales, drones, and energetic folk-dance trajectories – as with Elgar, there are opposites at work, the “classical” structures expressed by “folk” music, the tonalities that contain dissonances, and the polarities of emotion which frequent the musical journey.

Coincidentally,  both Elgar pieces in tonight’s programme, though far-removed from one another in time,  began with similarly vigorous and trenchant opening  minor-key chords. First up was the composer’s earlier “Introduction and Allegro for String Quartet and String Orchestra”, its opening straightaway proclaiming an almost Baroque-like splendour and severity of utterance, one that meant business right from the outset! How appropriate, then, that kicking off the evening’s “virtuosi” scenario in this music were members of the New Zealand String Quartet, taking the concertante role of the music’s solo quartet of strings. This ensemble has steadfastly continued  its activities with various guest players, following the departure early in 2025 of two of its long-time members – happily, one of the vacancies has been filled by recently-appointed  ‘cellist Martin Smith, while the second violinist role for this concert featured a distinguished guest, Martin Riseley, a member of the celebrated Te Koki Trio. Violinist Peter Clark did the honours as leader this evening, while, happily, the mainstay of the ensemble, violist Gillian Ansell continued as the rock-like fulcrum around which the group’s comings and goings have been deftly managed over the past two years.

Both the quartet and the accompanying Orchestra Wellington strings under conductor Marc Taddei brought off the  resonantly muscular opening of the work with great elan, leading into tantalising interchanges, baroque style, between solo strings and the ripieno (larger ensemble), with pre-echoes of the themes given ear-catching contrasts of emphasis and colour. Then came the famous “Welsh tune” (the composer reported as hearing this sung by a distant voice while on holiday in Wales) played here firstly by Gillian Ansell’s viola – so tenderly and heart-stoppingly – before being given the full-blooded ensemble treatment.

This sense of wonderment continued right up to the beginning of the Allegro (at Fig.7 in my Novello score), with a quietly-stated, flowing version of the theme first heard hinted at by the solo quartet just after the opening flourish – here, begun as simply and as straightforwardly as the first few steps of a momentous journey. This took us most excitingly to the work’s resplendent major-key all-together central statement of the opening theme, marked with Elgar’s favourite “Nobilmente” direction, and given plenty of ceremonial swagger, and vigorous energy.

After a tremulous reappearance of the “Welsh tune”  Marc Taddei took the players into what Elgar famously described as “a devil of a fugue”, one whose initial composure seemed to suddenly take fright halfway through its course and “spook” its own trajectories – fantastic playing, here, from the band, with hair, gut and resin given no quarter!  The eventual recapitulation of the Allegro led this time to a full-throated version of the “Welsh tune”, with solo strings and ripieno tossing parts of the reprised themes back and forth, before the coda bound up all the players in a compulsive concerted dash towards a resounding final pizzicato chord – great excitement!

The 1919 ‘Cello Concerto which followed inhabited a different world, the older Elgar having to lay bare his feelings regarding the ravages of the Great War (1914-18), while at the same time tormented with growing self-doubts as a composer as his music was gradually and increasingly regarded by critics as “old-fashioned”. As a consequence, the concerto took a long time to establish itself in the repertoire, especially after a disastrous premiere helped put paid to any of Elgar’s own hopes for the work as giving an impression of being “good and alive”. It turned out to be the last major work he created – a direct and honest statement of feelings regarding his place in a world forever changed, both in a public and private sense.

‘Cellist Inbal Megiddo had the measure of the work’s sombre mood right from the outset, her tones and phrasings circumspectly coloured, enough to convey the emotion without excess throughout the movement, though the orchestral tones in the first tutti were lovely, as was the soloist’s rhapsodic response. She allowed herself  greater warmth in the major key exchanges that followed, and rose to match the intensities of the orchestra’s subsequent climax, though falling away as quickly back into introspection for the pizzicato chords that heralded her accompanied recitative – here her ‘cello even cajoled the orchestra in places before initiating the scampering scherzo with its wry “catch me if you can” exchanges exhibiting a droll kind of mischief. With her all the way was Marc Taddei’s suitably reactive echoing of the solo instruments’s quixotic moods in the myriad orchestral detailings, earnest and intense in the opening movement and playful in the second (the slightly untidy final chord at the latter’s conclusion of little consequence….)

The third movement seemed at first almost reverential – here, from Megiddo and her fellow-participants, it was a superbly-controlled outpouring of nostalgic beauty, capturing both the music’s audible rapture and its central stillness – so much so, that I was surprised by the performers’ “bookending” this exquisite movement rather than letting its open-ended conclusion drift into ineffable space at the end and “give rise” to the finale as a matter of course – there’s no “attacca” instruction in the score, but we could have done without all the “next movement” rustling and re-adjusting (my only misgiving regarding the performance!)

The finale’s “swing” soon restored all through-lines, real or imagined, with this performance’s rumbustious girth, playful “hide-and-seek” routines and wry interchanges between the soloist and the groups putting  me in mind in places of the composer’s “Falstaff” to a never-before extent – particularly so in the almost tavern-like scene of inebriated jollity when the soloist joins the orchestral cellos for a mock-serious choral-like unison sequence, brief, but good-humoured! All the more heart-rending, then, was the “drifting -away” of this mood, as the composer emulated his Shakespearean alter ego, lamenting the passing of the “good times” with upward-thrusting phrases that descended, weeping unashamedly, on both ‘cello and strings….

A brief episode re-evoked a distant memory of the Adagio’s loveliness, before the soloist seized the mettle and, after the work’s heartbreak accepted the inevitable with a stirring and courageous gesture of grim acceptance! A sterling performance!

A different world awaited us after the interval, with Bela Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, written by the composer in 1943 in the United States at the invitation of the renowned conductor of the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitsky. Bartok was seriously ill by this time, and in exile from his homeland due to the Nazi threat throughout Europe, so the commission came as a much needed boost to his waning creative energies – he was able to write several other works  as well as the Concerto (its title referring to the “concerto grosso” aspect of the music, similar to Elgar’s work, but much larger in scale and across the whole orchestral spectrum.)

My introduction to this work was through Hungarian conductor Antal Dorati, who was actually a pupil of Bartók’s in Budapest, and who recorded the Concerto several times, besides coming to New Zealand in 1973 and conducting the work with the NZSO in Wellington (for me an unforgettable concert experience!). Still, in line with my memory of Orchestra Wellington’s outstanding Shostakovich series from last year I was eager to hear what Marc Taddei would inspire his players to achieve with Bartók’s masterpiece – and I wasn’t disappointed. Again, as with the Elgar works of the first half, the most compelling quality of the music-making was the bringing out of the character of the work’s sound-world right from the beginning – the mysterious opening proclaimed kinship to the composer’s characteristic “night” pieces, the lower strings enunciating a series of fourths in response to which the upper strings and winds sounded similarly atmospheric undulating figures. Throughout the first movement these leaping fourths and their immediate inversions played an important thematic role, both in exciting fugal sequences for strings and stirring brass passages, as did gentler moments like the oboe’s lullabic mid-movement figure which echoed throughout the more lyrical sections. Everything was given the space it needed to proclaim its significance to the moment as well as to the whole.

The Concerto’s two Allegretto movements are the best-known to audiences and most readily remembered. Both were spectacularly presented here, the second being the famous Giuoco delle coppie (Game of Couples) with its sequence of folk-oriented melodies for pairs of instruments, each playing in finely-wrought parallel with its partner at different intervals; and the fourth a somewhat notorious Intermezzo interotto, whose fame rests on Bartok’s “lampooning” of a theme of Dmitri Shostakovich’s in his wartime “Leningrad” Symphony, a simple marching tune drawing forth cackling trills from woodwinds and vulgar sliding raspberries from the brass (on this occasion, from the trombones, easily the most gloriously blatant and visceral spoofings I’ve ever heard in concert or on record!), before being sent packing, with little more than a whimper!

The work’s two remaining movements were no less spell-binding – and I was simply and truly blown away by the orchestral response Taddei got from his players in the central palindromic Elegia, right from the ”night-music” ambiences of the opening (in which we seemed lifted up through the darkness and into extra-terrestrial regions), and through a coruscating series of searing cries from a string section playing well above its weight  and reinforced by full-blooded wind-descents  and biting brass chords with timpani – incredibly intense string-playing along with extraordinary timbral ambiences (and with lovely work from the violas at one point). But the intensities summoned up by the string-playing here in particular brought back to me something of what Dorati got from his NZSO players all those years ago – as then, with an extraordinary amalgam of incisiveness and eloquence!

After all of this, the finale represented something of a release, with plenty of ebullience from all the players, Taddei creating a veritable ferment of excitement  from all sections, the winds also enjoying their fugato-like passage before introducing a new theme which went like wildfire through the rest of the orchestra – such an infectious mood of exhilaration with the brass and timpani capping it off splendidly! The tongue-in-cheek string fugato got a querulous response from the winds, who took the argument into subaqueous regions, until what sounded like an orchestral dishwasher on rinse-cycle was suddenly thrown open and everything and everybody tumbled out, picked themselves up and skedaddled towards something of a well-deserved grandstand finish – a younger audience would have perhaps leapt to its feet after such a comprehensive orchestral display, but the ovation was still suitably warm-hearted and appreciative. I had a feeling that, in the midst of all the excitement Marc Taddei might have forgotten to acknowledge his horn section at the end – or perhaps its members simply missed their cue! Whatever the case, all the musicians were heroes – and my previous cheek-by-jowl memories of hearing this work performed will now have to be updated in the most positive and enduring way!

A world-encircling winter solstice concert compendium – from the Wellington City Orchestra

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington City Orchestra with Virginie Pacheco, Sam Zhu and Ewan Clark

CLAIRE COWAN* ( Aotearoa New Zealand) – Legend of the Trojan Bird (2008)
EDWARD GREGSON (England) – Concerto for Tuba (1978)
AMY BEACH (United States) – Symphony in E Minor “Gaelic” (1896)

Sam Zhu (tuba)
Virginie Pacheco* (assistant conductor)
Ewan Clark (conductor)
Wellington City Orchestra

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, 21st June 2026

Winter Solstice day in Wellington! and with it a venturesome programme of music from the Wellington City Orchestra! True, there was little or no ostensible relationship as regards the pieces’ content to the Solstice date and its marking of the venue’s furthermost separation from the sun – but as the concert featured three pieces new to the orchestra’s schedules, the musical territories we were taken to today seemed to have an appropriate sense of something out of the ordinary. This was further underlined by the cosmopolitean nature of the works and their origins, almost as if the music-making was putting a kind of Shakespearean girdle about the earth, beginning very properly with homegrown sounds and straightaway circumventing the globe before returning to our south seas via the Americas!

I thought it all fell excitingly in line with the general adventurousness of the orchestra’s recent repertoire, in terms of the programme’s relative unfamiliarity, and its attendant technical and interpretative challenges. Each WCO concert over the last couple of seasons has sparked interest in what has seemed to me like an encouraging rejuvenation of Wellington’s concert-going scene – with an increased proportion of both new and less familiar works in concerts a stimulating feature

This concert was no exception, with a trio of works notable for its diversity as such, besides representing different eras of musical history, and a variety of genres, in this case a miniature version of an orchestral tone-poem (Claire Cowan’s 2008 ”Legend of the Trojan Bird”), a 1978 concerto for tuba and orchestra (from Englishman Edward Gregson) and a fully-fledged romantic symphony (1896) by the American composer Amy Cheney Beach. I’ve not been able to find any other instance of this latter work being performed in this country, which possibly gives the occasion the additional distinction of being an Aotearoa New Zealand premiere – though I would have thought the organisers would have made mentioned of such a circumstance had it been the case.

As with previous recent concerts, one of the items was assigned to the orchestra’s Assistant Conductor, Virginie Pacheco, in this case Claire Cowan’s concise and evocative work “Legend of the Trojan Bird”, one dating from Cowan’s student years, during which she wrote the piece for the Auckland Youth Orchestra in 2008. Though not printed in the programme, a poem, presumably written by the composer, outlines the music’s trajectories, the music in effect elaborating what the poem’s words describe – the coming of the bird to “the ancient city” bringing a “moving shadow” of darkness along with the visitor’s  “dangerous beauty”. The music by turns depicted both the bird’s obvious mechanical attributes  – “wooden wings flapping, squeaking, lurching and shuddering”  along with more transformative modes, resulting in trajectories of soaring flight. Here, the rhythmic mechanical aspects become more vertiginous as the sounds “swoop, hover, soar”, before achieving, in its song a lovely “conversation with the neighbourhood of stars”- after which it disappeared as mysteriously as it had arrived. In every sense the scoring was magically ambient and ear-catching, holding one’s attention right to the mystical “stellar conversation” at the piece’s end. Conductor and orchestra achieved, I thought, miracles of evocation throughout every moment of the piece – a wondrous experience.

A different, more down-to-earth encounter was enacted by the performers in the next item, bringing both tuba soloist Sam Zhu and conductor Ewan Clark to the platform.  This was English composer Edward Gregson’s 1978 concerto for tuba, a piece obviously indebted to the latter’s historic compatriot Ralph Vaughan Williams with his similarly-wrought work for the instrument – Gregson at one point in the first movement unashamedly quotes the earlier work in an appropriate act of tongue-in-cheek homage, bringing a smile to the faces of those “in the know”, though there were many more felicities to be enjoyed, such as the wondrously cavernous notes Sam Zhu coaxed out of the ambient depths slumbering within his instrument!

A second movement demonstrated in places the expressive range of the instrument, its lyrical, and, in places, somewhat anguished tones far removed from the humour and rumbustions of the opening, partnered by some haunting wind playing sequences, and featuring a great percussion-capped climax at one point before the music drew up its folds of sound and returned to its dark silences. We were given a “return to life” by the finale, with marching pizzicato at the outset accompanying some jolly “tuba-triplets” and which then morphed into a festive dance! Sam Zhu’s instrument then gave us an almost lullabic moment with some pendulous winds as well as a briefly-philosophical like cadenza, before being marched off triumphantly at the end by the band as if “spoils from a day’s successful tuba-watching” – a great success!

So to the concert’s much-awaited second half and a symphony by the remarkable Amy Beach,a work which, at the time caused quite a stir with its first performance in Boston in1896, as it was the first symphony composed by an American woman to be performed by a major orchestra. Beach  had begun her musical career primarily as a pianist, and had already appeared as a soloist with the Boston Symphony when just seventeen years of age. However her marriage shortly afterwards resulted in her giving up her performing career for a number of years and concentrating upon composition. Largely self-taught, she drew her inspiration from both the “classics” and from the music that was still new in the 1880s, Brahms, Wagner. Liszt and Dvorak. Her compositions beside the Symphony included a Piano Concerto, a Mass and many chamber works and songs, which, after a period of neglect, are finding their way back into recent concert schedules everywhere.

Beach was a member of a group of composers from New England whose goal was to develop a uniquely “American” style of composition through combining traditional classical structures and forms with indigenous melodies and rhythms (such as Afro-American spirituals and folk melodies (Antonin Dvorak, who lived and worked for a period in New York was a passionate advocate of this principle in his composition teaching at the American National Music Conservatory).  Beach’s contemporaries included George Whitfield Chadwick,  Horatio Parker, John Knowles Paine, Arthur Foote and Edward MacDowell  – despite the esteem she was held in, she still had to overcome prevailing attitudes towards her “women composer” status, even when positively expressed – it was Chadwick who, when congratulating Beach on the success of her Symphony, described his “thrill of pride” that such a fine work had been produced by someone whom he considered had become “one of the boys”! However, Beach was determined also to advance women’s composition activities, helping to establish a Society of American Women Composers in 1925 and supporting the compositional careers of several who became known and admired, among them Margaret Ruthven Lang, and  Mabel W. Daniels, as well as the French-born Cecile Chaminade.

Beach’s Symphony in E-flat was given the name “Gaelic” because of her use of the technique of using “music of the people” for thematic and rhythmic inspiration as advocated by Dvorak, though with a significant difference – her “indigenous” affinities were with the folk-song and-dance material brought to America by her English, Scottish and Irish forbears, and the predominately ”irish” origins of the songs and dances quoted in the Symphony resulted in the work’s subtitle. She quoted the idea of the folk-themes expressing “the laments of a primitive people – their hopes and their dreams”.

Written between 1894 and 1896 this was Beach’s only Symphony, and fully expresses her determination to capture the flavour of the “music of the people” she knew best – the “Allegro con fuoco” opening of the work immediately expresses a rich, dark chromatic Romanticism, reminiscent of some of Liszt’s and Wagner’s music, mysterious swirlings punctuated by great calls and declamatory gestures. Solo winds then quoted from both Beach’s own music, a song “Dark is the Night” and from a Gaelic dance-tune, with solo clarinet, oboe, flute and horn splendidly doing the thematic honours, their traditional exposition, development and recapitulation roles coming to the fore throughout the movement, and with remarkably assured support from strings, brass and percussion in various sequences.

The second movement charmingly began “Alla Siciliana” before transforming itself into an Allegro vivace – lovely work at the outset from the solo horn, followed by the oboe quoting a beguiling Irish tune “The little field of barley” (along with other winds), after which the strings magically ushered in dancing, scampering and rumbusting textures to captivating effect! – a sudden  luftpause then brought horn, clarinet and flute as harbingers of a gorgeous cor anglais rendition of the “Little field” melody, to which the strings and brass addeed their voices, and the various winds “paired up” with fragments of the melody, until the scampering strings returned to round off the movement’s fairytale enchantment!!

The brasses announced the opening of the third movement’s “Lento”, which the winds carried on, before the solo violin presented a kind of recitative, joined by the solo cello – we then got an evocative  melody called “Cushlamachree” led by the ‘cello and joined by the oboe, and strings. This led to an epic, almost “Smetana/Ma Vlast-like” section featuring a series of “great views” from the whole orchestra, the solo horn leading the way in a series of wind and brass solos cycled about the orchestra! soundscape, with beautiful solos aplenty! The solo violin adroitly introduced a major-key melody – presumably one called “Which way did she go?” –  which built up to an almost angst-flavoured climax, before restating the first melody, Beach here displaying her compositional mastery with variants of the themes in major and minor, and with the interchanges brought to a particularly piquant conclusion.

I had found the symphony’s finale something of a protracted puzzle on first hearing a recording, but this performance held the structure together steadfastly and seemed to make everything work, right from its vigorous and declamatory “ready! – set!” introduction, indicating the onset of an adventurous journey – after this vigorous opening came a lyrical counter-subject in a major key, not unlike that in the finale of Sergei Rachmaninov’s E Minor Symphony, written a decade or so later. A strange, moodily restless passage followed, which took some time to build back the energies of the opening, the players keeping their heads and fiercely concentrating upon the music’s “search for redemption” which came with the horns sounding the alarm and rousing the brass and the rest of the orchestra to readiness! With that, and the major-key second subject’s return, the skies suddenly cleared, and the music raced to its close as jubilantly and decisively as might have been expected.

I thought, at the end of the work, that Ewan Clark and the WCO players had completed something of a major achievement, here   – such an enthusiastic and spankingly capable performance! We were left to all babble our way homewards at the joy of such a discovery, and of experiencing a whole afternoon’s feisty and absorbing listening!

At Last!  NZ Opera’s 2021 “take” on Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro makes it to Wellington

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand Opera presents Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro”

Sophie Sparrow as Susanna and James Clayton as Figaro – Photo: Stephen A’Court

Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart / Librettist: Lorenzo da Ponte
Based on Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais’ 1778 play “Le Nozze di Figaro”

Cast: Figaro – James Clayton
Susanna – Sophie Sparrow
Count Almaviva – Julien Van Mellaerts
Countess Almaviva – Felicity Tomkins
Cherubino – Cecilia Zhang
Marcellina – Kristin Darragh
Bartolo – Andrew Collis
Don Basilio / Don Curzio – Andrew Grenon
Barbarina – Sarah Mileham
Antonio – Joel Amosa
Bridesmaids – Barbara Graham, Charlotte Secker

Freemason Foundation New Zealand Opera Chorus
Orchestra Wellington
Conductor – James Judd

Chorusmaster Laureate – Michael Vinten
Principal Repetiteur and Continuo – David Kelly
Chorus Repetiteur – Bruce Greenfield
Director – Lindy Hume
Assistant Director – Eleanor Bishop
Set and Costume Design – Tracy Grant Lord
Lighting Designer – Matthew Marshall
Choreographer – Taiaroa Royal

St James Theatre, Wellington
Wednesday 17th June 2026

This was an opera audience that bubbled with pleasurable satisfaction long after the bringing down of the curtain at Wellington’s St.James Theatre on Wednesday evening earlier this week. NZ Opera’s eagerly-awaited (and at that time glowingly-received) 2021 production of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” was meant to come on to Wellington following its season in Auckland that year – however, Covid intervened, forcing a last-minute Level 2 lockdown directive which put paid to Figaro’s performances in the capital ( Christchurch, which got three subsequent performances, was luckier than Wellington on that occasion).

Now, it was at last Wellington’s turn to enjoy director Lindy Hume’s and designer Tracy Grant Lord’s  much-acclaimed “take” of Mozart’s classic work, with the intervening years up to 2026 having inevitably “honed” 2021’s presentation, most obviously in terms of having a different cast bringing its own singular talents to the revival and recreating in the ever-grateful St James’ scenario a uniqueness of its own! I wasn’t able to see the 2021 “live-streamed” final Christchurch performance which NZ Opera had thoughtfully provided for its thwarted Wellington patrons, so (like many of the audience would have done) was able to come entirely freshly and all the more eagerly to this production!

I’d previously enjoyed a number of NZ Opera presentations directed by Lindy Hume, beginning with a stunningly visceral, almost “too-close-for-comfort” presentation of “Rigoletto”, as far back as 2012; and most recently – rather closer to the ethos of this evening’s subject – a “Cosi fan tutte” in 2023 which unsparingly brought out the ambiguities of human relationships between the leading characters with disconcertingly unease! So I was looking forward immensely to what insights Hume (and her inspirational designer for “Cosi”, Tracy Grant Lord) would uncover for us with this work – one that still resounds in my own memory as a precious “formative opera experience” from as long ago as 1971!

From the outset I was enchanted by the set and its all-encompassing “lit from within” qualities, the constant fluidity and variegation of both parameters and illumination taking us through as much a “journey of the imagination” as a series of spaces wrought with the work’s constant flux of both wilful interaction and judicious concealment in mind. Hume described the spaces created by readily moveable walls and doorways as suggestive of on-going change, as the opera’s action (a single day) unfolds its course from early morning until late at night and the characters move from scenario to scenario, firstly inside and later, outside the house, and in the garden. Tracy Grant Lord’s set and costume designs and Matthew Marshall’s lighting together simply enfolded us in a kind of timelessness about it all, recognisably as much a scenario from 200 years ago as in a large and modern country house, leaving us in the audience to “flesh out” whatever era from that time we could imagine through our own reactions.

What came across as forcefully here as in the 2023 “Cosi” production was the depiction of emotional disruption to societal order which both Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte took pains to depict and examine – and while in both cases a semblance of that “order” was restored to the lives of the characters, much deeper undercurrents had been irreversibly plumbed by all the parties. And as Lindy Hume points out in her insightful notes in the programme, the women were the ones who instigated the changes in “Figaro”, presenting in no uncertain terms a new vision of a society being “remade”. Perhaps if Mozart had lived for longer, might he and da Ponte might have further pursued an operatic version of the original author Beaumarchais’s third play “La Mère coupable” (The Guilty Mother)? We will never know…..

Here in 2026 we were given everything envisaged by composer and librettist – there was comedy, intrigue, anger and pathos in this presentation, with all of the characters at one stage or another revealing or disporting strong and varied émotions, subject in places to rapid change, and instigating a kind of volatility associated with societal disturbance and disruption, either of authority or of deep feeling. Whether in a kind of soliloquy, or accompanied by interaction, these different expressions were wholeheartedly conveyed, in recitative or in set pieces, solo or concerted, with every character suitably “enlarging” her or his personality in the process.

Julien Van Mellaerts as the Count  – Photo: Stephen A’Court


Felicity Tomkins as the Countess – Photo: Stephen A’Court

In that sense, the work was a perfect “ensemble” piece, whose dramatic coherence rested upon upon teamwork, with timing and balance adroitly kept on the rails by conductor James Judd, with every portrayal, including the lesser characters, prospering in partnership with others.  As Figaro, James Clayton’s robust baritone, and Sophie Sparrow’s ever-mellifluous soprano as Susanna brilliantly encompassed their pairing’s ebb-and-flow dynamics besides keeping on the boil their various parallel relationships with co-conspirators and adversaries – everything had an inventiveness and volatility which kept the audience guessing as to “how”, regardless of knowing “what”. Figaro’s and Susanna’s upper-class equivalents, the lascivious Count Almaviva (Julien Van Mellaerts)  and his long-suffering Countess (Felicity Tomkins) were dynamic adversaries/eager collaborators in terms of their own relationship, Van Mellaerts with his quick, flexible baritone the perfect foil here for Tomkins’ sympathetic and warmly-appealing soprano.

Kristin Darragh (Marcellina), Andrew Collis – front (Bartolo), and Andrew Grenon (Don Basilio/Don Curzio) – photo:  Stephen A’Court

Into this quartet of conflict came the vengeful pairing of Marcellina and Bartolo, each with an axe to grind regarding the luckless Figaro – Kristin Darragh was a gorgeous, fulsomely acquisitive Marcellina, here in tandem with the initially less dynamic Bartolo of Andrew Collis, whose decidedly oldish portrayal did, however, manage to gather some momentum during his “La vendetta” aria – and together the pair’s subsequent Act Three rediscovery of their own parentage of Figaro himself got the biggest laugh of the evening – in a production already replete with humour, a great moment!


Sophie Sparrow (Susanna) and Cecilia Zhang (Cherubino) – photo: Stephen A’Court

Diverting opposites were mezzo-soprano Cecilia Zhang’s quicksilverish, testosterone-ridden pageboy Cherubino, her voice and presence replete with pubescent urgings (in one instance graphically suggestive via an item of the countess’s clothing!), and Andrew Grenon’s delightfully first-up artless Don Basilio, whose drollery effectively (if only temporarily) masked his character’s true oily nature, bent on mischief and mayhem at whomever he’d been primed to target. Grenon here did an adroit double-act as Don Curzio, the Judge summonsed by Marcellina to formalise the intended marriage between her and Figaro. There was also Sarah Mileham’s Barbarina (a servant-girl) played innocently and sweetly in her defence of Cherubino against the Count, and adroitly-voiced in her “notepin” aria, alongside two effective cameos from bass-baritone Joel Amosa as the slightly drunken and suitably affronted gardner, Antonio.

The chorus’s brief but deftly-timed festive entrances overlaid the Count’s scheming with suitably rustic-sounding innocence and charm, besides providing an atmospheric backdrop of « daily task » activity just outside and around most of each acting area – an inspired production touch! All of this was buoyantly propelled by James Judd’s variegated direction of some superb orchestral playing by the Orchestra Wellington players – from the stirring strains of Cherubino’s “off to the battle” military pomp and vigour, through the gaiety of the rustic celebrations to the tenderness of the music for the Countess’s heart-rending moments of amatory sorrow, and, at the end, relishing and delivering wholeheartedly the opera’s rejuvenating message of hope for the human condition in the best universal sense via Mozart’s glorious music.

 

 

 

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