Tales of the New Zealand String Quartet 2026

Posted on by Peter Mechen

New Zealand String Quartet presents
“STORYTELLERS”  – the 2026 Season

Part One: ORIGINS

MIKA CORNELIUS – Universal Veil
FRANZ SCHUBERT – String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat Major D.87
GARETH FARR – String Quartet No. 2 “Mondo Rondo”
MISSY MAZZOLI – Death Valley Junction
BENJAMIN BRITTEN – String Quartet No. 1 in D Major, Op.25

New Zealand String Quartet
Peter  Clark, Manu Berkeljon, violins
Gillian Ansell, viola
Lavinia Rae, ‘cello

Prefab Hall, Jessie St, Mt Cook, Wellington
Wednesday 6th May, 2026

Concerts never cease to amaze! – even when the music is familiar, performers can illuminate what one thought was familiar territory and revitalise one’s responses with freshly-wrought approaches and energies. But there’s nothing like hearing live performances of unfamiliar or completely “new” music to one’s own ears, which was my experience at the New Zealand String Quartet’s first “Storytellers” Concert of 2026.  It was one that would have given a heart-warming dollop of interest and pleasure to a wide range of concert-going people in Wellington, pushing out the boundaries and widening the vistas normally associated with chamber music and string-quartet-playing to revelatory degrees while still remaining recognisably familiar and viable as an art-form.

I thought it was a pity that Auckland-born and Melbourne-based composer Mika Cornelius could not be with us tonight, here in Wellington, for their work which opened the Quartet’s season of concerts -this was a journey we were taken upon through an absorbing, almost William-Blake-like world of delineation involving the osmotic growth of fungi! – in a phrase, a single mushroom! The exercise of re-enactment of this singular “force-of-nature” process had itself a fascinating kind of multi-media identity in terms of expression and conveyance – beginning with our receptivities as an audience having been appropriately engaged and stimulated by the actual words of the composer about the piece, here spoken by the NZSQ’s General Manager Aslinn Ryan who had welcomed us to the concert, and then introduced the musicians and their four stringed acoustic instruments. It was, in general terms, a scenario whose inescapably “public” ambience seemed, most fascinatingly, to be somewhat at odds initially with what seemed like the essentially miniature, almost microscopic processes required to bring about fruition!

Mika’s words succinctly characterised their work’s depictions, descriptions and delineations of the subject’s components and the latters’ processes for us, movement by movement – firstly there were the “hyphae” – these were “delicate threads that form the foundation of fungi”. How distant, primitive, primordial and raw seemed the sounds made by the players’ instruments, singular and insubstantial, spontaneous by default in their existence, unresponsive to the presence or movement of others. Whatever the scale of things, microscopic, nanoscopic and sub-atomic, or of magnitudes thicker, longer, wider, taller and deeper than one could imagine, these “hyphae” at some point were stimulated by bearers of stimulus which could be described as magical, and given here the universal symbol of “autumn rain”.

The sounds made by the players began to coalesce in almost spontaneous and seemingly random ways – some of the interactions were rhythmic, while others were slow and linear; some connected readily to neighbours, while others were more independent – all rather like a process of adolescence, with  variously-growing foci, but somehow these impregnated, coalescent organisms couldn’t help but express a destiny, expressed here by a burst of rhythmic unanimity, a shock to systems whether active or passive! – they became products, results, outcomes!

This newness of identity began to coalesce as spores! – they appeared, whether randomely or purposefully, and with enough self awareness to perform a graceful dance! Tending to pizzicato at first, the sounds gradually “grew into” arco, instrument by instrument, entering a realm of what the composer called “silent eruptions of energy”, with spiralling tones whirling as they took flight!  “Is this world our oyster?” became a “Tower-of-Babel-catch-cry”, a buzzing, chattering, babbling refrain as the energies sought their destiny.

A heartfelt, winsome, sighing kind of dance slowly crystallised as the “mycellum”, the “Mecca” of the world of fungi, formed an intricate web – more recitative than melody, and interweaving the individual lines of expression, tremulously draping its sounds all about the textures  as the mycellum infiltrated all around and over the earth, forming what the composer called “a Universal Veil”, and validifying at one and the same time the idea of individuality having a collective essence – we ourselves are, like ants, or termites – or, ultimately, fungi! – connected!  The music’s lines ended quietly and reflectively, its course showing the way for its infinite progeny to follow….

After this musical version of our somewhat “Magic Schoolbus” adventure we were able to resize, and refocus our existential parameters on a youthful Franz  Schubert’s Quartet No.10 in E-flat Major, written when just sixteen years old, and intended for performance by members of the composer’s family – consequently, the work’s become known in some quarters as the “Haushaltung”,  (“Household” or “Family”  Quartet). The many hours the young musician spent in the “family” quartet gave him a working insight into what each instrument could do. While the individual parts in this quartet (which has the date “1813” on the autograph manuscript) certainly don’t match the excellence or difficulty found in the composer’s later, “great” masterpieces, they are by no means negligible – Schubert would probably have conceived these early works less as aspects of a “personal testament” and more as “things to be effectively performed” – with several notable touches immediately apparent in the NZSQ’s fresh-sounding reading.

The warm initial tones of the work’s opening phrase, with its three conclusive staccato notes brought out, in a single phrase a sense of both balance and humour, with lovely lines and deftly-touched impulses, a young composer’s sense of equilibrium at work, here and in the interplay between lyricism and playfulness as the exposition unfolded. The development and recapitulation sections followed traditional sonata-form practice, maintaining the E-flat major key this time in the latter right through to the movement’s concluding chords – conventional but still impressive!

I straightaway recognised from a previous encounter the perky, leaping-octave opening of the scherzo with its dancing reply – here put second, instead of third, as on my recording  (optional?) which followed with its leaping octave briefly taking on the clamour of a concerted chorus at one point, and also cheekily inserting a “false start” grace note on occasions! – and what a beautiful and redolently flowing minor-key“ trio interlude the players delighted us with!

The slow movement’s opening began with forte/piano phrases, here, beautifully and simply delivered, the songful themes then continuing, here-and-there further decorated by repeated-note sequences both together and separately – all serene and unclouded and lullabic. As for the finale, I loved the music’s opening  Keystone Cops-like scampering rhythmic trajectories, the players hardly missing a beat when reverting to triplets, and, then, even more cheekily, to the insouciant walking rhythms of the second subject – with  Schubert all the while indulging in his already-burgeoning melodic gift of producing hummable tunes!  Naturally, with unalloyed glee the players again “pounced” on the “running” rhythms at the reprise of the opening, whirling us through the trajectories to the work’s coda!  The final ensembled gestures of the piece here had all the conviviality of a family occasion with a burst of devil-may-care energy just to round things off at the end – so very enjoyable!

I was looking forward immensely to the programme’s next scheduled item, Gareth Farr’s String Quartet No. 2 Mondo Rondo, which I’d heard once before in concert but had much earlier (1999, in fact!) reviewed the work’s first recording by the NZSQ of that time for the Morrison Music Trust. We were amused greatly when the players this evening told us of an occasion somewhere when they’d asked audience members to record and send to the group their reactions to Gareth Farr’s music! – subsequent responses included  reports of “accelerated heart rates” and images of “disturbed ants’ nests” – though the zaniest was of “sped-up scenes of a New York train station interspersed with images from a sausage factory!”….whether any further such hallucinatory impressions would emanate from this evening’s audience as a result of tonight’s performance will remain to be seen!

I found myself sufficiently “challenged” by the players’ invitation to audience members to contribute their own impressions of what thoughts and images the music generated, though I remembered at the end of the first movement (subtitled “Mondo Rondo”) that I was supposed to be reviewing the Quartet’s performance, rather than my own recreative reactions to it!  Nevertheless, by that movement’s end I had firmly fixed in my mind the pathetic struggles of a puppet on a stage in a half-dressed state trying at once to pull the rest of its clothes on properly while acting out and dancing a story, and getting in a terrible tangle as a result!

It just wouldn’t have done to continue in this vein – so I returned to my “critic” guise for the rest of the work, registering the second “Mumbo Jumbo” movement as a kind of rhythmic-texture loop-cycle, sounds ensnared in the workings of a machine, the tones and timbres characterised by dry pizzicati and instrument-tapping which almost without warning changes completely in character to arco-bowed cries of distress and despair, as if the sounds had suddenly acquired a distinguishable “voice” and were crying to be heard, saved, released, helped to escape – arco, pizzicato and “struck” timbres jostled and tumbled together until the voices gradually relinquished their tones and were distantly silenced, leaving what seemed like a kind of void of impulse and emotion – a feeling no longer able to feel……

Like a kick-started machine bursting into life after a few vain attempts, the rhythm of the third movement “Mambo Rambo” got under way, the ostinato rhythms supporting an exotic, Middle-eastern-like theme with both languid and more energised forms alternated by violin and viola over the incessant trajectories of the second violin and ‘cello, in places rhythmically “crunchy”, in others beset by syncopated “groans” and eerily wandering lines, before the exotic melody returned, enjoying a full throated reprise on all the instruments and then abruptly flung to the winds and disappearing! I couldn’t remember enjoying the piece more than I did here – all so engaging and persuasive, even my very own half-dressed pathetic puppet at the beginning!

After an interval enabled us to get our breath back, we were enjoined to steel ourselves for a visit to “Death Valley Junction”, which was the name of a piece by the American composer Missy Mazzoli, a ten-minute work for string quartet which recreates the ambiences of one of the most renowned places of desolation on Earth – Death Valley, in California’s Mojave Desert. The Junction was “discovered” by Mazzoli on a road trip with her husband in 2004, finding a building that, almost forty years before, in 1967, had been converted from some kind of recreation hall into a hotel-cum-opera house through the efforts of Marta Becket, a former ballet dancer who, inspired by the location of the building developed the idea of establishing a performing arts centre – she herself presented weekly one-woman shows there as well! Mazzoli was, in turn, inspired by the whole concept of what Marta Becket had done, and in  2010 wrote her piece Death Valley Junction, dedicated to Marta Becket herself (the latter died in 2017, aged 92, but her spirit lives on in this music).

In her programme note for the work the composer described the piece as beginning “with a sparse, edgy texture – the harsh desert landscape” and then transforming the ambiences with “a wild and buoyant dance”. From the outset we were made aware of the environment’s notorious heat and aridity by the bleakness and dryness of the instruments sostenuto lines, augmented by the viola’s vivid, and almost in places sinister glissandi, as if representing swooping birds of prey. Gradually the tones took on increased movement and rhythm, glissandi and note-patternings coming together, as if life was signalling its presence, and with movement and energies even suggesting the spirit of song and dance. We were borne, dream-like, through a soundscape suggesting a fusion of co-existence, not through heavy-handed subjugation, but more by determined adaptation of the human spirit to what seemed like a particularly intractable instance of the natural world’s harsh environment. This was particularly characterised by the ‘cello’s on-going dynamic activity, its “human” component in the soundscapes achieving the sense of a small but nevertheless significant instance of survival and achievement.

The programme’s final work was Benjamin Britten’s String Quartet No.1, part of the NZSQ’s tribute to the composer to mark his fiftieth anniversary year. Whether purposed or merely coincidental, the work gave me the impression of seeming to naturally “grow out of” the various soundscapes the NZSQ had already presented us with in the concert –  Britten’s writing had elements of the microcosmic growth impulses of Mika Cornelius’s vision, the youthful exuberances of Schubert’s quartet, the madcap energies in places of Gareth Farr’s pulsations and the distinctive feeling for particular “ambiences” demonstrated by Missy Mazzoli’s work. It was the first of his three numbered String Quartets (Britten had written various others as student efforts), and written in 1941 in the United States, the composer and his partner Peter Pears, both pacifists and conscientious objectors, having fled the strictures of the war in Europe. The work was the direct result of a commission by arts patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, and received its premiere in Los Angeles from the Coolidge Quartet, to grateful acclaim from the composer.

In four movements Britten combines elements of classic forms and instances of freer, more spontaneous expression, with marked contrasts of mood both between and in the course of some of the movements. The first movement began quite wondrously with unearthly, top-of-the-range, sostenuto tone-clusters from the upper strings, leaving the ‘cello as if earthbound, looking up and succinctly commenting upon the wonders all about what seemed like the upper reaches of the music’s firmament. Halfway through the movement these sounds died away and the stillness of the visionary mood was suddenly set upon by all the instruments, playing a vigorously-racing, exhilarating, almost “disturbed” kind of triplet-rhythmed, “flailing -in-all-directions” episode, before the pace of things slowed and the music seemed to want to climb back up to the stratospheric heights from whence it began. This process echoed in varied guises until a final “star-cluster, like glow-worms suddenly disturbed in a dark cavern, peremptorily extinguished their light-lines! – superbly-managed musical theatricalities here from the players!

The second movement was a cheekily rhythmic Allegretto, punctuated by abrupt triplet exclamations, and running passages, the mood spontaneous and volatile, almost a kind of danse macabre featuring spasms of energy which dissipated as quickly as they appeared. Not so with the third Andante calmo movement, here as good as its word, with the music seeming in places almost to anticipate the “Moonlight” orchestral interlude in Britten’s yet-to-be-written opera “Peter Grimes”. This was the sequence that ostensibly impressed the American critics who attended the premiere most profoundly, one likening the movement to a kind of “Memorial for a lost world” – the steadily played-out 5/4 rhythms enabled individual instruments to gently rhapsodise in different keys through moments reflecting quiet intensities of both stillness and motion.

The first of a series of scampering arch-like gestures began the final movement, individually and haltingly at first, and then coalescing into partnership in a kind of joyous ferment! Again, the upper string and the ‘cello undertook different pathways through the same scenarios, interchanging turns at intoning soaring lines set next to vigorously dancing figurations, the players achieving exquisite balancings of different themes and counter-rhythms, and delighting us with the tonal, textural and rhythmic differences! And, what a wonderful concerted declamation the ensemble achieved at the end, with trajectories spiralling downwards so heart-stoppingly and spectacularly into the gestures leading to the final chord! Tremendous and resonating stuff for me, as it was also for a number of people I talked with afterwards – a new leaf of exploration turned over for me regarding the fascinating compositional world of Benjamin Britten, but a definite feather in the collective cap of the New Zealand                 String Quartet!

Wellington Youth Orchestra with Mark Carter serves up an orchestral feast.

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Youth Orchestra with Mark Carter at St.Andrews-on-The-Terrace  –  photo credit:  Cindy Young Waldron

SIBELIUS – Finlandia
ELGAR – Suite No. 2 from “The Wand of Youth”
VAUGHAN WILLIAMS – A London Symphony

Wellington Youth Orchestra
Mark Carter, conductor

St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Sunday, May 3rd, 2026

“Pines to Pastures” was the Wellington Youth Orchestra’s programme-title for its first 2026 concert – it succinctly described the book-ends containing the action-packed musical journey we were taken upon by the orchestra and its inspirational conductor Marc Carter throughout an eventful Sunday afternoon. The programme featured the music of three composers whose names often appear on the lists of “master orchestrators” –  Sibelius, Elgar and Vaughan Williams – with each of the pieces’ very different evocations bringing its own particular technical and interpretative set of challenges for the players to grapple with. The end result was a triumph – throughout the concert the playing regaled us with wall-to-wall instances of ear-catching detailings, characterfully-wrought vignettes and larger scale scenarios of beauty, drama and excitement. Every note sounded was accorded, to my ears, a kind of living, pulsating quality, with the players’ concentration seeming never to flag  nor the energies falter.

Opening with Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s “Finlandia”, the big, dark-browed brasses at the start straightaway  focused our attention, contrasting sharply with the plangent pastoral sounds of the winds, and then the passionately insistent strings, and with the winds and strings building the urgencies towards the brass’s sharp-edged calls – the wonderfully “grinding” lower strings conveyed a sense of a force about to be unleashed as the rest of the strings and the brass traded outbursts of pent-up energies. All of this led into the precipitous allegro, with tumultuous percussion heralding the driving orchestral forces, joyously and vigorously responding to the great horn calls, and surging excitingly into and through the climaxes! That done, and the exhausted forces having given their all, the way was open for, firstly the winds, and then the strings to sonorously intone the famous ”tune” that has subsequently found its way into all kinds of celebratory and worshipful scenarios world-wide. It was fitting that, having regained their composure, the more combatative sections of the orchestra were then able to rouse themselves for a return to the allegro in its most celebratory tones, capped off by a splendidly conclusive, and full-blooded “Amen-like” coup de grace!

Stirring though the Sibelius performance was, I subsequently felt that it was during the playing of the various dances comprising the next item (an adorable suite of dances by Edward Elgar called “The Wand of Youth”), that the orchestra seemed more relaxed and assured, having “played themselves in” during the Sibelius for the concert’s remainder.  While “Finlandia” was exciting, it felt very “tightly-wound” throughout – with the Elgar, however, conductor and players seemed to “expand” further, and fill parts of the music up with a different kind of relaxed exuberance. I particularly noticed how both “The Little Bells” and “The Wild Bears” pieces exuded such great warmth, whole-heartedness and unbuttoned “swagger” in places. While “The Little Bells” has always been a favourite of mine, due to its heart-wrenching echt-Elgarian “second” theme (such a beautiful counter-theme on the lower strings the second time through! – and I was especially taken by the excellent playing of the glockenspiel by a nimble, if unsighted percussionist), I did so enjoy the orchestra’s spectacularly exuberant playing of “The Wild Bears” –  it was wonderful stuff (though I had to strain to make out that very first and well-remembered triangle “ping!”)!  These dances were from two orchestral suites based on some of the composer’s childhood musical sketches he had made when aged eleven, for a kind of “fantasy play” which he and his siblings were to perform, and which were miraculously relocated much later, and reworked for our pleasure!).  A small point here – I realised after the concert that I had NO memory of the orchestra playing the enchanting “Fountain Dance” listed in the programme – was the spell cast by the music so great that I actually took leave of my senses for a few minutes during the proceedings? – or did Mark Carter and the orchestra simply omit the dance?

No matter – there were even greater landmarks looming on the musical horizon for the players, in the form of a four-movement symphony that’s become almost as iconic as anything written by Elgar – this was his younger English contemporary Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “A London Symphony”, first completed and then extensively revised by its composer after its first performance in 1914 (this ‘original version” still exists, found nowadays in a revelatory Chandos recording made by the late, lamented conductor Richard Hickox).  The symphony continued to be revised (and even occasionally performed in “newer” manifestations) until a final authorized performing version appeared, published in 1936 (Wikipedia has an absorbing account of the genesis and various appearances of different versions of this work!). Richard Hickox’s fascinating reading of the “original” gives the work’s supporters cause for both lamentation (that so many passages in the original were removed) and relief (that the work displays increased coherence and stature with those same passages excised)!

One doubts whether the “original” 1914 version will ever outstrip the 1936 “finished” work in popularity, but it certainly adds to the fascination of the work in particular and the trajectories of the composing process in general. Vaughan Williams was certainly no Bruckner regarding the latter’s woeful lack of confidence in his own, composing abilities, but he did listen to advice from friends, including interpreters of his music who occasionally might suggest the occasional change or an edit here or there. He certainly retained a great affection for this work, and is on record as declaring, later in life, that it was perhaps still “the favourite” of all his symphonic offspring!

The work gives a confident impression from the outset as indeed being a “Symphony by a Londoner” (as the composer later mused over what he thought should perhaps have been the work’s “proper title”). The opening Lento, here. with lower strings and murmuring winds sounding atmospheric chords and lines was an evocation of a city before dawn magically emerging from the darkness, the instruments gradually opening up the vistas as the ambiences lightened and everything gradually came alive – the Westminster chimes sounded, and amid fanfare calls the sun’s rays seemed to suddenly break through and reveal the pulsating heartbeat of a city! We got plenty of activity from the strings in response to the joyously percussive fanfares, and the jaunty “walking movement”, firstly from the winds, then the strings, and then the brass carried the exuberant rhythms onwards towards a return of the great introductory fanfare of the city’s awakening! The  players enjoyed the folk-dance-like ditties and the exuberant shouts alike as the city boisterously flexed its human muscles, then took us to quieter, more subdued vistas where the melancholy strains from the cor anglais initiated moments of reflection, leading then to a ‘cello solo joined by other strings – a poignant episode, practically chamber-music! – and beautifully sounded by the players, obviously revelling in such gorgeous string-writing!  The fanfares sounded again in the distance and the energies reawakened, gradually rebuilding and redoubling the previous excitements and working up to a last, protracted fanfare resonating through to the end of a long-held final chord.

“Bloomsbury Square on a November afternoon” was the composer’s description of the slow movement’s opening – a beautiful solo from the cor anglais rose out of quiet string passages, the strings repeating the melody and extending the tranquil mood – a gentle horn and trumpet passages, and the strings returned more impassioned than before – altogether a heartfelt evocation – a solo viola fluently began a series of atmospheric street-call-like phrases, answered by other instruments and punctuated by the percussion’s gentle jingling of cab harnesses passing by, and drawing forth a rapturous burst of nostalgic tones from the whole orchestra – it was scalp-pricking stuff! – all beautifully evoked! It was left to the cor anglais, horn and solo cello to re-establish the prevailing atmospheres, giving the movement’s last few sounds to the solo viola once again.

The scherzo was a lively nocturne, with specific instructions from the composer to the listener, to “imagine himself standing on Westminster Embankment at night, surrounded by the distant sounds of the Strand….with its crowded streets and flaring lights….” Conductor Mark Carter encouraged a delightfully insoucient swagger from his players throughout this engaging music relying on accent and nuance rather than speed to invest the music with plenty of characterful “bounce” – this music always reminds me of certain books I read when young about English childhood adventures, such as “The Otterbury Incident” and “Stig of the Dump”, with their somewhat rollicking, devil-may-care attitudes adopted by the protagonists! I particularly enjoyed the orchestra’s detailing throughout, (including an especially spectacular piece of horn-playing of the main theme at one point!) – and the winds and percussion also had great fun with the trio-like interlude featuring the sounds of a busker’s wheezing accordion! And conductor and players “coaxed” the dying strains of the day from out of the movement’s end so very sensitively.

Every time I hear this work’s finale, with its “cry of pain” at the very opening, I find myself wondering just what Vaughan Williams was meaning – it’s almost Mahlerian in its unexpected angst and darkness of aspect! Not unlike Mahler’s Fifth Symphony’s opening, it has an explosive beginning, then settles into a march-like episode of grim, dark-browed intent! – was this REALLY VW’s view of London? I remember reading somewhere very early on that VW was here expressing the city’s darker, more tragic side – the march-like rhythms hinting at the misery of those down on their luck, hungry, unemployed, and even homeless. Other commentators have referred to the city’s traditional pomp and ceremonial gravitas over centuries, which are expressed here in tones of sombre grandeur. Typically, the composer kept his thoughts largely to himself regarding much of his music, though in this particular movement’s case he famously referred to H.G. Wells’s 1908 novel Tono-Bungay, which contains a passage describing the novel’s narrator sailing down the River Thames and seeming “to be passing all England in review”, as influencing the work’s elegiac closing pages, beginning with a reiteration of the first movement’s “Westminster Chimes” and then simply drifting unhurriedly to a close……the concluding words in the novel are – “The river passes…..London passes….England passes.”

I hope I’m forgiven for dwelling on this aspect of the music besides writing about its performance – these references to aspects of the composer’s inspiration for the work can’t help but further inform my opinion of the excellence of the Youth Orchestra’s performance and the surety of the guiding hand of conductor Mark Carter throughout. It’s precisely that tragic and  lament-like aspect that hovers over this music which was what these players brought out so movingly – the silence at the piece’s end in this performance was indicative of the effect it all had on its audience – we had been witness to something extraordinary, something that deserved its moment of contemplation as well as acclaim at the very end. I’ve refrained from describing anything specific at this point in the work – it all seemed integrated and inevitable, just as night follows day, with the players’ energies and concentration seemingly unflagging! And afterwards, who could blame them for wanting to conclude the afternoon with something a bit more festive and rousing! – especially since it was the return of  “The Wild Bears” which came to the rescue of the symphony’s “stricken” conclusion with even more panache than in the first-half performance – and THIS time I definitely and unequivocally heard that wonderful, nostalgic tintinnabulation of the triangle first time round! I went home after hearing all of that as happily as any concertgoer had a right to be – no affirmation could be more appropriate or deserved!

 

 

 

Echoes of woodland scenes rubbing shoulders with companionable coffee-houses! – an echt-Viennese musical lunchtime experience for Wellingtonians at St. Andrew’s-on-the-Terrace!

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Christine Wang (violin), Beth Chen (piano), and Sebastian Dunn (horn)

EUGÈNE BOZZA (1905-1991) – En Forêt (In the Forest) Op.40
Sebastian Dunn (horn), Beth Chen (piano)

FRITZ KREISLER (1875-1962) – Schön Rosmarin (Old Viennese Dance No. 3)
Christine Wang (violin), Beth Chen (piano)

JOHANNES BRAHMS  (1833-1897) – Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano in E-flat Major Op.40
Christine Wang (violin), Sebastian Dunn (horn), Beth Chen (piano)

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

Every now and then in a concert one encounters music one has never before heard, or even heard of, and sometimes even whose composer has a name one doesn’t know. On certain occasions audiences sit primly and attentively and at the end applaud, congratulating the composer(s) and the musicians, and of course, one another upon according the piece or pieces due attention. But on once-in-a-blue-moon occasions such hitherto unknown music can unexpectedly generate an instant impact akin to a real frisson of excitement, one which lingers on in the memory for ages afterwards. It’s happened to me a few times over my years of concert-going experience – the latest being my attendance at a recent St Andrew’s-on-The Terrace concert featuring three outstanding musicians – Sebastian Dunn, horn, Christine Wang, violin, and Beth Chen, piano.

To be accurate, the truly “instant combustion” fireworks took place most markedly during the concert’s first item, featuring horn player Sebastian Dunn and pianist Beth Chen in a vivid presentation of an ear-opening horn-and-piano piece by French composer, Eugène Bozza (1905-1991). This was En forêt  (In the Forest), a piece written in 1941 as an entrance exam piece for the Conservatoire de Paris, and one regarded ever since as embodying the entire technical and expressive capabilities of the French horn. The piece depicted a hunting party in a forest, the writing combining different horn-playing techniques with an impressionistic piano accompaniment. Both  Sebastian Dunn and Beth Chen revelled in their concerted evocations of the hunt and their individual depictions of various scenes and moods throughout – a particularly atmospheric feature was the horn’s magical use of call and distanced (or muted) respondings. The visceral impact of the piece and its performance almost literally “brought the house down” at the conclusion, so evocative was the playing of both musicians throughout in terms of recreating presence and distance, activity and reflection.

After these somewhat “larger-than-life” exertions, violinist Christine Wang next took the platform with Beth Chen to give us “something completely different” – a most charming and nostalgia-soaked piece titled Schön Rosemarin – Old Viennese Dance No.3, by Fritz Kreisler. Before the piece was even halfway though, the winsome charm and delicacy of the players’ violin and piano strains had taken us far away from the forests and the hunters, and was instead enabling us to “drink in” the ambience of the Viennese coffee-house with its traditional “Atmosphäre von Gemütlichkeit”. Fritz Kreisler, besides having been, of course, a renowned virtuoso violinist, was also a composer, but he preferred to publish some of his music under an assumed name so as to give the pieces the chance to be judged by their own merits and not by his “virtuoso violinist’s” reputation. By comparison with Sebastian Dunn’s riveting display of “virtuoso roar” with HIS instrument, violinist Christine Wang seemed to me to catch the completely different kind of “olde-worldly” ambience of the Kreisler piece perfectly, as did Beth Chen’s equally delightful pianistic identification with the spirit of the music.

These seemingly far-flung performing aureoles and contrasts in delivery then magically came together for the programme’s third item, Johannes Brahms’s Horn Trio in E-flat Major. In his introduction to the piece Sebastian Dunn talked about the composer’s preference for the “natural” (i.e. “valveless) horn over the more modern version.  Obviously the “Waldhorn” as it was known, had nostalgic connections for Brahms (his father had taught him as a child to play the instrument) besides what the composer specifically referred to as the horn’s more “natural” characteristics, its intrinsic tonal shadings and generally “softer” sound. Dunn assured us that he would do his best in this performance to compensate for his own “modern” instrument’s relative “brashness”!

This work was written in 1865, and probably inspired chiefly by the death of the composer’s mother earlier that same year. As with Brahms, its genesis wasn’t perhaps entirely straightforward, as befitted his generally enigmatic response to various influences regarding his music.  The Trio’s somewhat changeable moods across its four-movement span have prompted various other conjectures regarding sources of inspiration – besides recalling his mother singing the folksong “Dort in den Weide steht ein Haus” (There among the willows stands a house) as influencing part of the Adagio Mesto slow movement, Brahms hinted at another, more mischievous song in the work’s finale, “Es soll sich ja keiner mit der Liebe abgeben” (No-one should have anything to do with love), one which ably suited his ongoing “confirmed bachelor” status. As with any piece of music its creative motivations, whether conscious or otherwise, invariably reflect a veritable jigsaw of influences.

Brahms’s combination of violin, piano and horn was innovative at the time, but has since inspired a number of other works, most obviously (and perhaps, surprisingly) György Ligeti’s 1982 work Hommage à Brahms. Here, the performance of the “original” generously brought out all of the work’s inherent qualities, the opening Andante movement enjoying its relative freedom as the only “sonata-ish” work of Brahms’ to pay little heed to sonata form! – this was more of a rondo-patterned melancholy main theme with a livelier contrasting sequence, the two sections alternating and  subtly blending gestures from one another’s material into a beautiful coda.

The second movement was a dancing Scherzo begun by the piano, and juxtaposing a leaping opening theme with occasional syncopated shouts of consenting glee, catapaulting the trajectories through to the resonantly sombre Trio, after which the Scherzo’s return restored the music’s high spirits. Came the Adagio mesto slow movement, a funereal introduction by the piano heralding a scenario of sorrowful lament, violin and horn almost weeping, it seemed, as the piano moved the cortege forwards – there appeared no respite until the movement’s end, despite an occasional “lifting up” of the melodic line, only to be brought down to earth again under the weight of emotion and gradually dissolving into the mists of gloom….

What a transformation the music then underwent with the finale’s delicious bubbling-up of energies from within!  – with rompings and frolickings spreading like wildfire through the music’s textures! Christine Wang’s violinistic brilliance, by now fully come into its own, and Beth Chen’s vigorous “foundation-rock” piano-tones were the constant “movers and shakers” of the music throughout. Interestingly, (and ironically), I’ve always felt Brahms’ writing for the horn never fully conveyed the out-and-out exhilarations of the “Waldhorn” world, one made so manifest by the Bozza piece we heard at the concert’s beginning – though, of course Sebastian Dunn’s skilfully-reproduced rumbustions during the Brahms work were sufficiently ebullient in certain places to make the instrument’s presence felt, and especially towards the piece’s end!

A group of us, amid plenty of excited babble, managed to make our way across the Terrace to a coffee-shop afterwards, where we were able to reflect anew (and not by any means for the first time!) upon our good fortune at having a lunchtime concert series in the city to attend which featured such resoundingly memorable musical treasures delivered via absolutely first-class performances!

 

 

 

 

 

Bright, Capricious and Colourful – Arohanui Strings’ Benefit Concert at Roseneath, Wellington ’s “Long Hall”

Posted on by Peter Mechen

MORITZ MOSZKOWSKI – Allegro Energico (from “Suite in C Minor Op. 71)
The Treble-Makers – Whitney Wu  and Izabela Ibanez, violins, (Arohanui Strings)
Amelia Liu, piano, (Queen Margaret College, Wellington)
JS BACH – Three Dances (Bouree – Loure – Courante) from French Suite in G Major BWV 816
(arr. Pohl/Gjelsten)
Helene Pohl, violin, Rolf Gjelsten, ’cello
ALBERT ROUSSEL – Trio for Flute, Viola and ‘Cello (1929)
Bridget Douglas, flute, NIcholas Hancox, viola, Rolf Gjelsten ‘cello
WOLFGANG MOZART – Quartet for Flute, Violin, Viola and ‘Cello K.298
Bridget Douglas, flute, Helene Pohl, violin, Nicholas Hancox, viola, Rolf Gjelsten, ‘cello

The Long Hall, Point Jerningham, Roseneath. Wellington
Saturday 25th April, 2026

One of the more delightful aspects of concert-going is the singular pleasure of encountering “new music” on the programme – by “new”, I mean in this instance music that one has never before encountered, rather than something “contemporary”. –  from this twenty-first century viewpoint the latter term has for many of us seen works thus described undergo the inevitable ageing process!

Not that I can remember the music of Polish/German pianist and composer Moritz Moszkowski (1854-1925) ever sounding “contemporary”, though what we heard today from the output of French composer Albert Roussel (1869-1937) was certainly rather more acerbic and  “modern-sounding ” than that of either Moszkowski or the music of Russian composer Reinhold Glière (1875-1956), the third of the trio of nineteenth/twentieth-century names accompanying that of JS Bach’s and Mozart’s on the programme I heard today at Roseneath’s “The Long Hall”.

Helene Pohl’s and Rolf Gjelsten’s continued espousal of their Pot-Pourri Chamber Ensemble activities brought together a brilliant and wholehearted array of talents for today’s concert, featuring flutist Bridget Douglas and violist Nicholas Hancox, as well as an inspiring trio of young musicians, two of whom, violinists  Whitney Wu and Izabella Ibanez play in the inspirational group Arohanui Strings, and a third, pianist Amelia Liu, a competition winner from Queen Margaret College in Wellington. The last-named occasioned the bringing out of an upright piano for the Moszkowski work, which was a “first” for this listener at the Long Hall – a rare treat! (I loved the name this Trio had concocted and made reference to in the programme, for our pleasure! – “The Treble-Makers”!)

I came to this concert largely uninitiated as far as the music by the three aforementioned era-spanning composers was concerned – in fact, the only music by Moszkowski I had previously heard was a set of “Spanish Dances Op.12” beloved by audiophiles due to a justly-famous early stereo (late 1950s) recording of the same, sporting the title “Espana”. (Elsewhere, as well, there’s definitely a highly-regarded piano concerto I’ve yet to catch up with!) Though only the first movement, Allegro  energico, of a “Suite in G Minor Op. 71” was played by the Trio, the group caught the “striving melancholy” of the violins’ firmly-centred descending phrases, in both minor and major keys, deftly supported by the piano when alternating heartfelt descending melodic lines with tumbling rhythmic surges, and creating infectious excitement by building the intensities leading to a spiritedly accelerated coda – what fun! – and what a joy to experience such youthful exuberance in triplicate!

Next came three dances taken from one of JS Bach’s keyboard works, a French Suite in G Major, and transcribed here for violin and ‘cello – Helene Pohl described the transcription of this music in the progrqmme as “working beautifully for string duo”, with counterpoints “to be savoured”! First came a spirited and joyous Boureé, the violin singing the melody and the ‘cello keeping things moving with a running counterpoint, the latter seemingly tempted at various cadences to follow the violin canonically, but after a few imitative notes skipping back into dance-mode! After this came the Loure (a languid, waltz-like dance) with its opening phrase imitative between the instruments before the ‘cello took up the rhythmic trajectories, enjoying, in the second sequence, some deliciously insouciant accompanying gestures. Finally, we heard the Courante, the music again imitative between the instruments at first, before the second part featured the ‘cello dancing in attendance of the violin, the latter picking up the cello’s figurations in response – gorgeously interactive!

We then got what was for me another rarity, four pieces from Reinhold Glière’s Eight Duets for Violin and ‘Cello, Op. 39. I’d actually heard more of Glière’s music than of Moszkowski’s or of Roussel’s, having encountered probably his most well-known piece from a Soviet-style ballet, “The Red Poppy”, a boisterous, crowd-pleasing romp called  the “Russian Sailors’ Dance”.  I’d also heard, more momentously, the most famous of his three symphonies –  an epic 80-minute work subtitled “Ilya Muromets” celebrating the adventures and death of a mythological Russian “Bogatyr” hero based on the lives of several such personae from different epochs of Russian history – strong stuff for a beginner-listener to encounter, back in my College years, but with startling sequences that still resonate in the memory, however dimly. Another notable claim to fame of Gliere’s was his tutorship of the youthful Serge Prokofiev, beginning lessons in 1902 when the latter was just ten years old and continuing until Prokofiev was accepted into the St.Petersburg Conservatory as a student at the age of thirteen.

Much of Glière’s output is unexplored, including a not inconsiderable amount of chamber and instrumental works (though he caused a posthumous ripple of interest in his music when soprano Joan Sutherland enterprisingly recorded in the 1970s a “Concerto for coloratura soprano and orchestra”). The Four Duets we heard were taken from his Op.39, written in 1909. The Prelude, beginning the set, was practically a “tuning-up” exercise, with the violin holding a single note and the ‘cello intoning a wistful, repeated phrase, before the instruments “swopped” roles – a simple, sombre, but resonantly effective piece. The Berceuse which followed featured a gorgeous violin melody in tandem with the cello’s  attendant repeated rising phrase – simply enchanting!   Then came the Intermezzo, a melancholy Schumannesque melody with a “rocking” motion, reminiscent of parts of Schumann’s Kinderscenen. Interestingly, the Gavotte that followed seemed to jump into a harmonically different dance-floor world altogether, with an engaging middle section, very “pesante” themes from the violin and drone-sounds from the ‘cello, then taking us back for something of an abrupt farewell to the dance and its mercurial world.

Our two aforementioned additional players joined the ensemble after a short break – one of them, violist Nicholas Hancox, was of course a stalwart of the ensemble at many of last year’s concerts at the hall and was thus welcomed like an old friend! But we felt especially honoured to have with us for the second half flutist Bridget Douglas, well-known for her participation in many memorable NZSO concerts as a principal section leader, and also in numerous chamber performances in the Wellington region. These players brought with them more (for me)  relatively unfamiliar music, a Trio for flute, viola and ‘cello by Albert Roussel, a name I knew only through a recording I’d purchased  long ago of a ballet of his with the name Le Festin de l’araignée (“The Spider’s Feast”), a work filled with gorgeous impressionistic sounds buoyed along by insinuating rhythms and extremely wry characterisations.

This Trio, written in 1929, I thought an extraordinary piece! – it promised something similar to the ballet at its outset, the Allegro featuring  buoyant rhythms dancing through open-air ambiences, and suggesting all nature at play, despite the occasional tinges of melancholy. The flute enjoined its companions more readily to share its bright-and-breezy manner, and viola and ‘cello did occasionally “buck themselves up”  with spirited surges of march-rhythm merriment and even a patch of  “triplet-flavoured bonhomie” towards the movement’s end that helped keep us all smiling!

But “O, mon Dieu!”  – the Andante was introduced by a sombre viola melody with an equally rueful arpeggiated ‘cello accompaniment, to which the flute added a kind of would-be-but-on-another-day-consoling melody – that done the viola and ‘cello had an exceedingly gloomy duet sequence (“those poor dears!”), one which the ‘cello tried next to “cheer up”, without success! The flute also persisted but without much joy (“What on earth could be the matter?” I wanted to ask the composer’s shade……). A sustained note seemed to be the only floating Pooh-stick the players could find to grasp and hold onto, and wait for the end!  Goodness! – the silence was golden!

And then, wonder of wonders, the music’s first-movement cheerfulness returned for the finale! The ‘cello had stepwise pizzicati, the viola a dancing figure and the flute a perky, bright-faced tune! Such was the camaraderie, the players sped up the trajectories as the blood started to flow more quickly, bringing our listeners’ hearts into our mouths with the relief of it all! – we even had a bit of unbridled stamping sailors’ dance excitement at one point! The movement’s opening returned with even more insouciance, bringing back the sailors for a bit more hi-jinks stamping – and then we heard an eerie passage featuring extraordinary harmonics-like texturings from the strings and near-lullabic tones from the flute.  However, the players seemed to then pick up on the composer’s “homeward bound” urgings, as they responded stepwise to the music’s ever-growing trajectories,  some helter-skelter, almost “silent movie’  soundtrack-scamperings with more “sailors’ dance” roisterings, leading to a concerted “knees-up-like” final flourish! Golly! – Did we dream him? –  or did Roussel dream us? – I ask myself as I write these wry remembrances of what we heard!

With the Mozart Flute Quartet K.298 (a later work than the K-number suggests) which followed, we were presented with a different kind of wryness, firstly in the form of the widespread supposition that the composer didn’t really CARE for the flute despite writing various works for the instrument, one set against a counter-argument that it was actually the person who COMMISSIONED the works for the instrument that Mozart really abhorred! This having been said, we then learned that Mozart had possibly written this particular work for himself, purely for pleasure!

Whatever the case, the music was simply divine – a lovely opening, half-hymn, half popular ditty, featured the flute carrying the melody. This was actually a ”theme and variations” movement, with Bridget Douglas “dancing”  her instrument through the ensuing moments of sheer contrapuntal enjoyment, and ringing the changes in the other variations, the second a running counterpoint for the violin against long-held flute notes, the third a florid version of the theme from the viola (just superb!) with “ambient” comments from the others, and the last a return by the flute to the theme with the ‘cello supplying the knowingly droll trajectories!

The second movement, Menuetto, jumped into D Major, with the flute leading a sprightly, upwardly  soaring opening harmonised phrase striding out confidently, then impishly dancing about in a single variation of the theme in a middle section. Back came the opening key for the last movement with gentle finality, the melody tossed about the instruments with an art-that-conceals-art kind of spontaneity, so that we got the composer’s intention of a group of friends making music for the sheer pleasure of doing so, a pleasure we in the audience felt, in such company, pleased and privileged to share and similarly enjoy.

Scriabin and Rachmaninov from Tony Lee – a piano-fancier’s ultimate dream concert?

Posted on by Peter Mechen

ALEXANDER SCRIABIN – Preludes –  Op.11 No.1 in C Major
Op.17 No.5 in F Minor
Op.16 No.1 in B Major
Etude – Op. 2 No. 1 in C-sharp Minor

SERGEI RACHMANINOV – Piano Sonata No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 28

Tony Lee (piano)
St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, 22nd April, 2026

Perhaps the use of the word “ultimate” in the heading unfairly inflates the overall impact of what was, in anybody’s language, a sensational recent display of piano-playing in all aspects of the art-form.  This was delivered by Australian pianist Tony Lee at one of St.Andrew’s-on-The-Terrace’s free and absolute “mana-from-heaven” lunchtime concerts regularly enjoyed by the capital’s music-lovers. The “ultimate” description would of course be contested hotly by lovers of piano-playing over the choice of repertoire – and even in regard to technical wizardry opinions would differ as to which pieces might be accorded the most elevatedly demanding places in the pianistic pantheon.

Enough to say, the repertoire chosen by Tony Lee amply demonstrated the pianist’s extraordinary mastery of the keyboard challenges posed by the music of two composers, Sergei Rachmaninov and Alexander Scriabin. Each were themselves virtuoso pianists, Rachmaninov gaining the higher honours from the Moscow Conservatory with the “Great Gold Medal” for piano-playing, and Scriabin a close second with the “Small Gold Medal”. Their own music took markedly different paths  though each was greatly influenced by Chopin at the beginning, with Rachmaninov evolving a rather more conventional kind of individuality, and Scriabin being more the “innovator”, increasingly exploring chromaticism and tonality to almost mystical degrees in his later music.

Their different directions gave rise to contentious moments between them  – Scriabin was critical of  Rachmaninov both regarding his music and plano-playing, at one point even deriding the latter’s music as “earthbound”. And he famously told Rachmaninov at one point that a passage in the latter’s music (the opera “The Miserly Knight) perfectly accorded with his, Scriabin’s “colour-theories” relating to musical keys – when Rachmaninov expressed his disagreement, Scriabin replied, “…Your intuition has unconsciously followed the laws whose very existence you have tried to deny!…..”

Despite all of this, Rachmaninov was determined, after Scriabin’s unexpected death, to promote his colleague’s music, performing it almost exclusively on a tour of Russia, and donating the proceeds to Scriabin’s family. Since those times, the two composers’ musical reputations have continued on different courses, each being in separate ways somewhat misunderstood – rather like with Liszt’s music, much of Rachmaninov’s output has enjoyed a near-instant popularity to this day, though parallelled by strains of outright critical contempt in certain quarters, whereas Scriabin’s music has gradually risen in stature from initial bewilderment and neglect to increased fascination and acceptance on the part of the listening public.

Today’s concert underlined significant aspects of each composer’s creative achievement in terms of the piano, though surprisingly, not in relation to larger forms – Scriabin actually wrote no less than nine piano sonatas, though none were offered here as a comparison to the first of Rachmaninov’s two efforts in the genre. Instead we were given examples of the former’s music in a kind of miniaturist guise, the pieces being from larger collections, though each beautifully self-contained in effect. These exquisitely-crafted morceaux  while obviously derivative, still conveyed enough of their composer’s individuality, though It would have been interesting to have compared the two composers’ individual way with sonata form. Here, I couldn’t help but note my responses to some of the music regarding what I felt were influences, and, surprisingly, more so in Scriabin’s case than in Rachmaninov’s.

First came Prelude Op. 11 No. 1 in C Major, based on a lyrically floated phrase repeatedly used, here, with great sensitivity and imagination, both poetic and passionate in utterance, and reminiscent for me of Debussy’s early music Then we heard Prelude Op 17 No 5 in F Minor, a work with stormy cascadings, impulsive gallopings and unbridled agitations, the pianist splendidly maintaining the wildness and passions of the opening throughout until the sounds came exhaustedly to rest at the very end – it all had something of the energy and drive of Chopin’s very first Op. 28 Prelude, but seemed uncannily to me as if the music might just as well have been Rachmaninov’s.

The following Prelude Op.16 No. 1 in B major recalled for me  firstly Grieg and then Schumann, with sounds resembling  the former’s piquant harmonic explorations venturing into and mingling with the latter’s poetic evening semblances – though as with all of these there was a feeling of a growingly independent spirit already taking flight and pushing out its own capabilities.

And then, the opening of the last of the Scriabin pieces,, the Etude Op. 2 No, 1 in C-sharp Minor, strangely reminded me of Rachmaninov once again – not the stormy C-sharp Minor manner of the latter’s most famous of his Preludes, but of a similar kind of obsessiveness with the opening rising melodic motif, used by him in other pieces, such as the well-known B Minor Prelude’s constant reiteration of its opening. It was all such vividly concentrated playing! – It left me feeling that Lee’s performances would have readily won Scriabin’s music some new friends on this extraordinary showing.

After a short break there came a different kind of “extraordinary”! I had heard Rachmaninov’s two piano sonatas played many years ago on a recording by the legendary John Ogdon, and remembered how “overwhelmed” my then relatively jejune ears felt after listening to what seemed cascades and cascades of notes! Today, those same cascades seemed, in Tony Lee’s hands, to sound-sculpt a magnificently “alive” and spontaneously driven plethora of musical impulses, instantly proclaiming a sense of beginning an epic journey, and exhibiting the means by which this would happen – the portentous themes, the flashes of brilliance and the ever-burgeoning sense of expectation which drew us further into the music’s world. It couldn’t help but recall for me the opening of the Liszt Sonata, though with themes that were even more expansive, taking more time and space to coalesce.

The big repeated-note theme was allowed to sing and resound, majestically suggesting a Faustian kind of spirit, both tremulous and eager in regard to any impending journey. It was irresistibly drawn by a rolling, agitated triplet theme  elaborated here by the pianist with great “presence” and remarkable poise and control but then giving way to a rising. arpeggiated idea that suggested aspiration to a “higher goal”, a Faust-like evocation!  We were made to feel the conflict between competing urges and impulses, between passions and ideals, all building up to a majestic climax – how does Rachmaninov do it?  Then, dramatically, it all seemed to, for the moment, expiate itself – and at that point I heard the unmistakeable echoes of the Third Piano Concerto, the two-note major-key repetitions whose minor-key transition produced an inwardly rising lump-in-the-throat effect as the movement came to its close.

Rachmaninov had reputedly began this work with Goethe’s “Faust” in mind, with each of the movements inspired by the main characters in the  latter’s version of the legend – though the composer was to later downplay the specifics of his inspiration, the movements certainly fitted the “Faust/Gretchen/Mephisofeles” programmatic order, with the second movement’s tenderness and lyricism readily suggesting the innocence and beauty of Gretchen – a perfect foil for the dark turbulence and brooding self-doubt portrayed in the opening movement. Here, Lee allowed  the music to drift, dream-like out of the silences, the oscillating figures framing a gentle song whose sinuous and mesmeric trajectories could ensnare any adventurer, its spell gradually growing in insistence, resembling a flow of openhearted longing and unfulfilled desire, and reaching a point where it cascaded over and down, again fleetingly sounding those echoed reminiscences of the Concerto! Lee then gently and patiently revisited the composer’s lines of the opening dream, this time building gradually towards a kind of effervescent frisson, whose almost-visionary moment glowed and then sank into what some listeners might have described as a post-orgasmic reverie at the end.

Came the finale – a “wild-horse-ride”, tremendously exciting, and a performance which seemed to us in the audience to give every tone, every impulse, every NOTE its due place in the music’s texture, impregnating everything with its particular significance, so that we were caught up in the music’s realms of wonderment and vividly-wrought realisation! The Dies Irae theme, one of the composer’s trademarks, leapt into the fray, its trajectories defiant and remorseless under Lee’s fingers, before its Mephistofelean spirit suddenly wavered at the appearance of a plaintive descending theme, a wholehearted counterweight to the Spirit of Denial and his combatative roisterings! A war of sorts was then waged by the music with the various elements brought into play by Lee’s near superhuman resources until the opening theme of the work was again sounded as if peace had been restored – but almost as if Heaven was shutting its doors, the Dies Irae theme came roaring back and laid all to waste with a series of coruscating descending chords! We were agog as our pianist’s energies hurled the final chords at us with stupendous irrevocability!

Wow! – what a work and what a performance! As I’ve had occasion to mention a few times previously in relation to other St.Andrew’s concerts, considerations such as appetite and hunger seemed well-nigh dwarfed by what we had all experienced this time round, with Rachmaninov and Tony Lee!  At the very least, it was, certainly, a lunchtime to remember!!

Gary Wilby – To those who dwell in realms of day…….

Posted on by Peter Mechen

REFLECTIONS, MINIATURES, AND SOUNDSCAPES  by Gary Wilby – FUTUNA CHAPEL 2026
Gary Wilby – electric piano
Petrina Wu, Tina Wilby (‘cellos)
Natasha McMillan (violin)
Julie Coulson (narrator)
Futuna Chapel, Friend St., Karori, Wellington
Sunday, 19th April, 2026

Gary Wilby himself regards his sound-creations as “miniatures and intimate”, echoing in a real sense something of poet William Blake’s respect for small things, with the latter’s  words “a world in a grain of sand”, reflecting Wilby’s own reflection of the worth that can be found, as he himself says, “…..sometimes in a small cell….”.

At Futuna Chapel in Karori we were invited to join In Gary’s “looking back” presentation of his own soundscapes and miniatures, often in interactive tandem with well-known works by some of the “greats” in cases when there’s been particular empathies with certain of these pieces – to the point where cross-fertilisation delightfully bubbles over like a babbling fountain. He actually used the music of JS Bach both to introduce and “round off” his concert, playing for us on an electric piano the theme from the “Goldberg Variations” and some impulsive “variants” which any Baroque composer transported to the twenty-first century would have surely recogtnised as viable connective musical tissue!.

Futuna Chapel, of course, needs no introduction to many Wellington concertgoers since its “induction” into the process of becoming a music-performing venue. Its wonderfully-vaulted ceiling acoustic gives the sound a “bloom”, and its striking stained-glass window configurations a visual ambience which together beautifully enhance the atmospheres generated by the efforts of modestly-numbered groups of musicians, both instrumental and vocal. Wilby cherishes a particular connection to the venue as a great and singular honour, in the form of his previous association with sculptor Jim Allen whose work in the chapel brilliantly enhanced the designs of the original architect John Scott.

After the Bachian introduction to the concert we next head a recording made by two string instrument players from Aotearoa New Zealand when visiting another far-off part of the world, the Monastery of Santa Maria in Sobrado dos Monxes. I’m guessing that one of these string players was a ‘cellist, but am unsure whether the other was a violist or violinist, or even another ‘cellist! Whatever the case Gary Wilby’s ensuing “Chant Futuna Connections” composition was given its first hearing in this country via the recording, haunting sounds putting something of a girdle about the earth!

Wilby then played a piece which he had come to associate with the Erebus Air New Zealand disaster, as the first music that came to his mind after hearing news of the tragedy – a teaching colleague from the UK whom he had got to know while at the same school during her time in New Zealand was among those killed in the disaster. The piece played was Chopin’s C Minor Prelude Op.28 No.20 – the lively and energetic variation was intended as a reprise which reflected Wilby’s recollection of somebody replete with an abundance of life and energy.

He then dashed into a kind of medley which he had given the title “Mashup” and which featured pieces with a similarly recurring harmonic pattern  – I didn’t list the pieces whose transmorgrifications  I still recognised, but the exercise seemed as much fun to play as to listen to! The following piece by Darius Milhaud then gave us one of the dances “Sorocaba”, from a Suite of the Saudades do Brazil Op.67 – this was the first of the dances which hearkened back to Latin American dance rhythms, though more wry and nostalgic than I was expecting from the composer.

I did enjoy Richard Rodney Bennett’s “A Week of Birthdays” characterising the famous nursery rhyme describing different “birthday” attributes, stimulating and picturesque little “character-sketches”, one for each day of the week. Footnote: – I remember once checking out my own actual birth week-day and vaguely remembering it might have been Wednesday – oo-er!!  – still, Bennett’s “Wednesday’ piece is not unlike in character and mood a couple of Dmitri Shostakovich’s more “moody” Preludes from the Op. 87 set, so I’m perhaps in good company!  I had not previously heard the Ravel piece, to my shame (and I thought I knew all of the composer’s keyboard works!) – Wilby’s description of this brief piece mentions its “notational ambiguity and surprising dissonance” which seemed to sum up what we heard most enchantingly and disconcertingly.

True to instinct, his next piece was very much a concerted effort on the part of some fellow-musicians – it was named “Compassion Chant” resulting in a spontaneously-composed outpouring of feeling in response to the Island Bay Home of Compassion ‘s Sisterhood making a ‘millenium gift” oi a substantioal lease owed the Home by the adjoining Marae, Taput e Ranga, for the purchase of land some years earlier. The piece was first performed for the ceremonial Millenium handover which took place late in December 1999.

The occasion’s “reimagined” piece featured violinist Natasha McMillan playing a “prelude” to Julie Coulson’s spoken introduction to the work, followed by cellist Petrina Wu, whose instrument sounded the “chant proper”, before being joined in duet by the second  ‘cellist, Tina Wilby – the recitative-like line became animated, even agitated in places, but then returned to a more peaceful and considered tone, imparting an awareness for us of the emotional range and scope of the situation.

Next, Gary Wilby reiterated William Blake’s idea of “a World in a grain of sand” with his “Three Contrasts”, pieces by turns whimsical, wry, deft, off-beat and abrupt, and then followed by a more extended collection of shortish characterisations, one which he had called “Simple Simon”, and based on a series of three descending notes.  Two of the seven  pieces (I think they were the last two) continued to resonate afterwards, each reminding me of Russian music –  the bass resonances of one of the pieces brought Mussorgsky’s more reflective parts of his “Pictures” to mind, while the following piece featured a wayward-sounding Russian song with off-beat accompaniments, like a Tchaikovsky “Troika” gone slightly awry!

Perhaps the most esoteric of the presentations was ‘Water, Voice, Pulse”, three separate sound-bytes brought together on a pre-recorded “take” whose repeated character certainly garnered a mesmeric kind of effect, and with the rhythms gradually slowed down, leaving at the end a kind of “lost in space” effect – the chords resonate as the voice murmurs indistinctly until only single sounds are left, in the original repeated note form, followed by silence.

All that was left was the return of the “Goldberg Variations” theme,  itself having now been “seasoned” or “grounded” by the concert’s multifarious influences one realised upon hearing the results of such exposure that things for the relatively straightforward theme could never be quite the same again, as the player’s musings and impulses demonstrated. Sincere appreciation to Gary Wilby and his candidly-expressed musical revelations, the afternoon’s peregrinations giving us all something to think about, and think about again……..

Two far-flung universalities from the Orpheus Choir – Mozart and Christopher Tin

Posted on by Peter Mechen

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART – Requiem
CHRISTOPHER TIN – To Shiver the Sky

Emma Pearson (soprano), Charlotte Secker (mezzo-soprano),
Ridge Ponini (tenor), Robert Tucker (bass)
Orpheus Choir, Wellington
Children’s Choir (Samuel Marsden  Collegiate School, Wellington Girls’ College,
Wellington East Girls’ College)
Orchestra Wellington
Brent Stewart (conductor)

Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Saturday, April 18th, 2026

Music can readily speak to us from across the ages, especially with word-settings of frequently-performed choral works, from Renaissance and Baroque times, throughout the classical and romantic eras and into and including works up to the present day. Tonight’s presentation featured music from, firstly, the classical world of Mozart, his poignantly unfinished but still resounding Requiem, and from the present day, a work by American-born composer of Chinese descent, Christopher Tin –  his choral work “To Shiver the Sky” an epic, time-traversing tribute to human flight in various aspirations and forms.

Firstly came the Mozart – a work that’s grown partly out of legend wrought by confused, incomplete documentations and by the transcendence of the work itself (its genesis was a request from a dilettante nobleman wanting to pass the work off as his own, though Mozart’s health had declined to the point where he became convinced he was writing his own Requiem). He died with parts of it unfinished, leaving his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr, to finish the uncompleted sections so that the promised fee would be paid to Mozart’s widow, Constanze. What Süssmayr did has since been hotly debated by scholars in regard to its extent, with even further revised versions appearing that reduce the latter’s contributions and reconstruct certain parts based on the composer’s own structural and harmonic style  – which, to be fair, is what the much-maligned Süssmayr reconstructions themselves partly succeeded in doing anyway!

Some performances have presented what Mozart wrote and no more, though the outcomes have come across as more pedantic than musical – so the tradition of an unfinished piece of music completed by one or more helping hands has become firmly entrenched, probably to the relief of the majority of listeners in this case!. Heard this evening in a brilliantly-wrought performance by conductor Brent Stewart with a nimbly sonorous Orpheus Choir and full-blooded responses complementing exquisite detailings from Orchestra Wellington, the results were eminently satisfying. Only the solo singing was variable in a couple of places –  the women’s voices, the ever-pleasing soprano of  Emma Pearson and that of her enthusiastic and capable mezzo counterpart Charlotte Secker, were a consistent joy throughout, but both men, tenor Ridge Ponini and bass Robert Tucker seemed, I thought, to have to work surprisingly hard in their delivery of some of the orchestra-accompanied text. The tenor was a new name to me but I had previously heard and enjoyed Robert Tucker in a number of roles (a wonderful Noye in Britten’s “Noye’s Fludde” for instance), so  I was, for instance, surprised at my difficulty in picking up some of his lower notes in passages such as his “Tuba Mirum” solo, admittedly treacherous that they are to sing.

Brent Stewart maintained a lucid balance between orchestra and choir throughout, with vocal lines and orchestral detailing alike maintaining a splendid clarity. The fugal “Kyrie Eleison” was well-sprung but not rushed, allowing us to revel in the delicious energies of the singing’s contrapuntal passagework. I liked the impetuousness  of the beginning of the “Dies Irae”, plunging into the ferment of terror and dread conjured up by text and music immediately at the end of the “Kyrie”, the different sections engaging a multitude of responses from solo and choral voices, with the “Tuba Mirum” sequence bringing all the soloists into play – bass Robert Tucker sounding splendid with his very opening declamation, while tenor Ridge Ponini stylishly delivered “Mors stupebit” (what wonderful poetry these words make!). Charlotte Secker’s mezzo was suitably awe-struck at the judge’s entrance (“Judex ergo cum sedebit”), bringing into relief soprano Emma Pearson’s heartfelt “Quid sum miser”, the voices harmonising beautifully for the verse’s final “Cum vix justus sit securus” plea for justice and mercy.

As for the choir, the voices responded as readily to their conductor’s encouragement of majestic tone from the men with “Rex, tremende majestatis”  as with beseeching and  piteous pleas at “Salve me fons pietatis” uttered by the women.from the women’s voices. Such a dramatic, almost theatrical contrast with adjoining passages was repeated with the men’s plunging into “Confutatis maledictis” with sterling orchestral support, and the women’s almost ethereal plea “Voca me cum Benedictus” in response. Even more ethereal and atmospheric was the wonderfully spooky “Oro supplex et acclinis” for the whole choir, sung sotto voce, with the trombones helping to colour the accompanying chords in the most downcast and submissive manner for the concluding “Gere curam mei finis” (Help me in my final condition!)

All Requiem roads lead, of course, into and through the “Lacrimosa” the pity of which was beautifully captured here, emphasised by the haltingly staccato-ish delivery of the rising notes of “Qua resurget ex favilla” – the “rising from the ashes”  of all humanity – a particularly heart-stopping moment bursting into full-blooded  feeling came with “Judicandus homo reus”  – when Man shall be judged! Such depth of feeling needed a stirring and well-focused end-point which was delivered with a splendidly rock-solid “Amen”.

No rest, however, was accorded the forces, the immediately following sequence a driving and exciting Offetorium,  “Domine Jesu Christe”, with music and texts urgently and agitatedly delivered, first by the choir and then by the soloists summonsing up the celestial standard-bearer St Michael to lead the way (“Sed signifier Sanctus Michael”). But even more thrilling were the exhortations for the redemption of Abraham and his descendants  – here, presented as and duly given exciting contrapuntal treatment from both voices and players (“Quam olim Abrahae”) to absolutely exhilarating effect!

The following “Hostias” wrought the changes most effectively – the music’s pacing was more meditative, though the voices varied their dynamics tellingly throughout alternating both complete lines and short phrases of text with dramatic “loud-soft” changes. But the sudden, theatrical return of “Quam olim Abrahae” as before was brilliantly handled, with the contrapuntal lines tossed exhilaratingly back and forth until the music cried “enough!” with a final, hushed “et semini ejus!”.

Then came the grandly-voiced “Sanctus”, here an outpouring of glorious acclamation, though with a surprisingly abrupt fugal treatment of “Hosanna in excelsis”. However, the “Benedictus” which followed was here so exquisite one could forgive the composer the seeming rush to immerse everybody in such beauteous strains – again the women’s voices had a “presence” which the men couldn’t quite match, though both bass and tenor had solo moments allowing their voices space in which to “sound” – and, together with some noble brass playing, the general effect gave considerable pleasure to all.

More scalp-prickling contrasts were afforded by the “Agnus Dei”, with emotionally astringent opening chorus tones heightened in retrospect by hushed responses of “Dona eis requiem, the third beautifully elongated with the word “sempiternam”. Back came the music of “Te decet hymnus”  from the Introitus, again sung by the soprano – “Lux Aeterna lucceat eis” (Let eternal light shine”), leading to a reprise of the “Kyrie” fugal music for the work’s concluding “Cum Sanctus tuis in aeternum” – vigorous, confident and fulfilling, as befitted the final moments of such a work.

Whatever criticism might be levelled at the much-maligned Sussmayr for his “completions”  Brent Stewart and his forces gave the kind of performance that disarmed any thoughts of inadequacy or inappropriateness relating to the overall effect of the work – one was reminded of that great Mozartean Sir Thomas Beecham who once caustically remarked upon certain freshly discovered “edits” relating to Haydn’s music with the words “Are they scholarly or musical?” At the conclusion of this performance I felt more than readily inclined to credit Mozart’s posthumous Requiem’s editor with a  completed task worthy of Beecham’s approval!

A different world awaited us in the concert’s second half, enthusiastically introduced by conductor Brent Stewart, and featuring American composer Christopher Tin’s work “To Shiver the Sky”. The composer himself describes the work as “an oratorio about the history of flight, and mankind’s quest to conquer the heavens”. Tin used texts from eleven sources and in different languages, the writings of astronomers, inventors, visionaries and aviators themselves – the work’s title was taken from a poem by Rudyard Kipling, one whose subject was actually the ill-fated “Tower of Babel” which the poet describes as built “to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart”. Significantly, some of these efforts included in the work described disastrous failures and/or destructive rather than life-enhancing purposes, though the over-riding theme is one of adventure, progress and outward-looking aspiration.

I felt I was suddenly in a “minority” in the concert-hall, as many of the audience audibly resonated with Brent Stewart’s description of the work as having connections with a video game, Civilization IV, one whose theme music was used in the opening section of tonight’s presentation, the “Sogno di Volare”. Though a conventional orchestra and choral forces were used, the music had a definite kind of “New Age” flavour and excitement, one to which my rather more old-fashioned sensibilities still managed to positively respond in all but one particular instance!

Beginning with the aforementioned Sogno di Volare (Dream of Flight), a setting of writings of Leonardo da Vinci, the orchestra launched into an excitable repeated rhythmic pattern to which the choir firstly contributed a recitative-like refrain describing the poet’s aspiration towards imitating what birds can do, and thus achieving the heart’s desire – to fly! Choir and orchestra then moved majestically towards imagining mankind’s great joy at achieving what the birds achieve, and “filling the universe with wonder and glory”.  The subtitles were difficult to read from where I was sitting, and the programme notes impossible due to the dim light in the auditorium – so following specific ideas from the text during the performance posed difficulties! However, the sheer energies of the singing and playing enabled one to be caught up in a kind of torrent of inspiration, even when reference-points were difficult to decipher!

The 11th-Century mystic Hildegarde of Bingen was the next librettist, with “The Heavenly Kingdom”, the words describing how the birds in flight expressed devotion to heavenly things, and in doing so expressed heavenly love – a smaller group of women’s voices intoned timeless-sounding  melismatic phrases describing the seeming devotion of birds,  strings and winds gradually adding their supporting strains, then joined by  larger groups of voices, the effect almost canonical when intertwining their lines with the women’s voices, their interactions bedecked by shimmering percussion and excitable winds in places before allowing the smaller group of voices the final say.

The first truly dramatic sequence darkly followed, a setting of Ovid’s account in “Metamorphosis” of Daedalus and Icarus attempting to escape their imprisonment on the island of Crete by King Minos, through the use of bird’s feathers made and shaped into wings and held together by wax and flying to freedom. Daedalus warned his son Icarus to take a “middle course” when flying, neither too high nor too low, but Icarus disobeyed his father, exulting in his powers of flight and soaring upwards towards the sun – when the wax melted and the feathers were lost Icarus plunged into the sea and drowned. A darkly urgent and fearful orchestral opening  introduced Daedalus outlining his plan to his son – though tenor Ridge Ponini gave his all to the text the ever-mounting orchestral forces made it difficult for us to decipher his words, though we still got the sense of the father warning the son, and the excitement felt by the boy at being able to fly like a bird! – the sense, firstly of exhilaration, and then of impending danger, were ardently conveyed by orchestra and choir. The most heart-rending moment was Daedalus’s despairing cries of “Icare! Icare!” after the boy had fallen – the women’s voices continued the despairing lament for Icarus with a repeated percussion- accompanied sequence (which, though initially moving, I thought by the end somewhat too much of a good thing!)

It followed that the fourth poem “The Fall” from Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy” eminently suited the sense of loss and failure which followed the fall of Icarus, equating it with the larger principle of success often being accompanied by failure. The words from both soloist and choir were unclear throughout, but a general sense of lamentation came across as paramount.

The fifth sequence, Astronomy, with lyrics by Nicolaus Copernicus, was given a passionately-delivered  performance by the choir, sparklingly punctuated with percussive scintillations, the words a paean of homage to the heavens, their beauties fully revealed through observation, as “the work of God”. A strikingly colourful contrast came with the setting which followed, that of Jules Verne’s “De la Terre a la Lune”  – I enjoyed the spaciousness of the orchestral textures and the lightness of the singing from the children’s choruses – the music had an engagingly innocent, almost naïve quality about its buoyancy and confidence, and made an even more telling variance with what then followed, harsh, aggressive tones introducing words attributed to German inventor Ferdinand von Zeppelin regarding the use of aircraft for peaceful human interaction between nations, and concluding with the despairing words “Oh, the Misfortune!” – a nightmarish sequence mercifully relieved without a pause by humming voices introducing (or transitioning) to the next sequence!

This was a setting of aviatrix Amelia Earhart’s poem “Courage”, one which, though heartfelt, didn’t, in a sense, for me, convey sufficient real and palpable sense of the loneliness and solitude which would have been part-and-parcel of the explorer’s experience. It seemed intent, instead, upon morphing into a kind of show-stopping aria-like outpouring of emotion, almost a stock-in-trade moment which I thought missed some of the essence of what was Earhart’s achievement – however, others will (and seemed to at the time) feel differently! What however, garnered an undisputed unanimity of response was the following setting – an incredible evocation of implacable power, might and destruction far beyond ordinary human experience  – this was “Become Death” , J.Robert Oppenheimer’s famous quote from the Sanskrit Bhagavad Gita, upon witnessing the first nuclear bomb test in the United States in the 1940s, sung in the original language. Its effect was indescribable, remaining in my mind long after all other sounds from the work had ceased to resound – incredible in a kind of nihilistic way….the ghostly opening voices were followed by mournfully beseeching string tones, leading to sudden ghoulish reiterations of the voice representing Death the Destroyer, as the percussion incessantly roared and winds repeatedly shrieked, until all that was left was a piercing single note which died into nothingness…….

Just as impactful, but in an entirely different way was the composer’s treatment of the words of space’s first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, a soulful statement of humanity that transcended national boundaries and  spoke for all peoples. I liked Tin’s “growing” of the voices from the men’s very matter-of-fact beginnings and burgeoning into a whole-choir paean of love and respect for Planet Earth, and the desire to “preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!”, then finishing with an evocation of “the power of the spirit” in mankind. It was, I thought in retrospect,, one that might well have provided a fitting climax to the work! However…….

The final setting was of words drawn from President John F. Kennedy’s famous  “We choose to go to the moon” speech in relation to the United States space exploration programme. While it seemed like a great idea for a setting in theory,  I actually found parts of it somewhat uncomfortable to listen to – though the sentiments expressed may have been worthy ones in their original context many of the words seemed to me here to be forced into a hasty marriage with a kind of all-purpose Disney-like musical surface sheen. Parts of the text did for me work, responding to music-setting more readily than did others – the section ‘We set sail on this new sea…..” down to “….the progress of all people” shared with the words a rhythmic swing and a lyrical unanimity of purpose – as did some of the section leading up to “….a theatre of war”……with appropriately baleful orchestral accompaniments.  And the rhetoric associated with weapons and hostile flags was appropriately mitigated by mention of “the banner of freedom and peace”. But so much of the rest of it (even the Mallory story, for example, containing the mountaineer’s well known reasoning for climbing Mt.Everest – “Because it’s there!”) seemed to me like earnestly-delivered note-spinning – words simply out of kilter with their music!

Obviously my reaction will not be shared by many, judging by the ovation the work received at the end – I am even finding myself at odds with younger generation family members who also heard the work!! And I did think Tin’s work in general an astounding achievement in its range and scope, despite what I thought were the occasional longeurs, and the final setting’s “in-places intractability”. The sheer impact, and the underlying message of the “Become Death” sequence, for one, will haunt my sensibilities for a long time to come, and I would readily go back to many of the other evocations to enjoy, once again, the various librettists’ inspirational words and Christopher Tin’s insightful elaborations through his inspired settings of almost  (in my opinion) all of them!

Very great credit to conductor Brent Stewart for his unflagging energies and inspirational direction – and to his performers, vocalists and instrumentalists, who manifestly “gave it all” throughout the evening – the coupling of “established” with the “new” was a great success, truly inspired and engaging, and the results as performed and received were nothing short of tumultuous tumultuous!

 

 

 

Saxophone opening up the chamber vistas – Simon Brew with the Amici Ensemble at St.Andrew’s

Posted on by Peter Mechen

Wellington Chamber Music Series 2026 – Simon Brew with the Amici Ensemble

RUSSELL PETERSON (b.1969) – Quintet for alto saxophone and strings 2003
MAX RICHTER  (b.1966) – On the Nature of Daylight (2004)
ELLEN TAAFFE ZWILICH (b.1939) – Quintet for Saxophone and Strings
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) – String Quartet in F Major K.590
ASTOR PIAZZOLLA (1921-1992) Winter and Spring from The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (arr. Mary Osborn)

Amici Ensemble (Saxophone Quintet)
Donald Armstrong (violin), Anna van der Zee  (violin), Nicholas Hancox (viola), Andrew Joyce (‘cello), Simon Brew (saxophone)

St.Andrews-on-The-Terrace
Sunday, 12th April 2026

The saxophone as a musical instrument has made quite a journey – its inventor, Adolphe Sax, intended his instrument as a kind of “missing link” between winds and brass in the symphony orchestra, wanting  to combine the power of brass instruments with the flexibility of woodwinds, though the earliest saxophones tended to find their way into French military bands because of their ability to project their sounds outdoors. The instrument did appear in some nineteenth-century classical compositions, mostly by composers with names unknown today (has anybody previously heard the names of Jean-Baptiste Singelée, who wrote a Premier Quatuor  for Saxophones in 1857?- or Jules Demersseman, the composer of an 1860 Fantasie for Saxophone and Piano? ) but also with a number of “pioneering” examples of usage, such as in George Bizet’s incidental music for the play “L’Arlesienne” (1872), in music by Delibes (the 1876 ballet “Sylvia”) and in Massenet’s operas (“Le Roi de Lahore”, “Herodiade” and “Werther”) the earliest of these in 1877.

Of course since the turn of the century the orchestral gates have occasionally opened to admit the saxophone, with concertante works from composers such as Debussy, Glazunov and Ibert, and significant contributions from the instrument in works by Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Strauss, Vaughan Williams, Richard Strauss and Ravel (via Mussorgsky) among others. In chamber music, too, the saxophone has noticeably figured, both in original works for the instrument and different kinds of arrangements, each of which were featured in this afternoon’s presentation by saxophonist Simon Brew and the Amici Ensemble.

Our concert began with American composer Russell Peterson’s 2003 Quintet for Alto Saxophone and Strings, the music beginning plaintively with strings only, then hauntingly continuing with the saxophone’s disarmingly dulcet tones – a sombre, processional-like exposition with gently melancholy dialogues and concerted passages – whose ambiences were then briefly but arrestingly galvanised by an impassionedly rising saxophone sequence, the music falling back to the previous subdued manner , only to again arch splendidly and disconcertingly – one was transfixed anew by the saxophone’s arresting power of utterance when at “full throttle”! –  I enjoyed the movement’s following dance-like, somewhat exotic-sounding sequences, despite a  “sameness” about the saxophone’s repeated “rise-and-fall” aspect to the music.

The second movement’s Bartok-like dance rhythms brought repeated-note patterms, more saxophonic declamations and running figurations, with the violin’s folkish lines echoed by the cello’s soulful responses. What appeared to be a third movement was begun by the saxophone, partnered by the ‘cello in a kind of  sombre and almost canonic duet, whose musings were broken into by the viola, beginning a fugal-like sequence, and joined by the second violin, the mood remaining sombre until the first violin burst in with a more dance-like line, inspiring the ‘cello to begin a spirited, “running” kind of response to which the saxophone joined, the pace of the music quickening until the opening chords of the second movement returned. This then sent the music into a kind of “spin”, the saxophone pursuing a kind of orgiastic folk-theme, whose cries brought the strings running towards and executing as one a brilliant concluding flourish!

The contrast with Max Richter’s meditative and “slow-chapp’d”  work for strings On The Nature Of Daylight,  which followed couldn’t have been more profound – at first, not unlike the opening of Strauss’s “Metamorphosen” the music almost straightaway developed in a different, more esoteric direction, beginning here with three players delivering long, slow, mesmeric and suggestive chords, until a fourth enters with a melody that derives wholly from these chord progressions. The piece’s popularity has actually begun to generate a kind of reaction to its over-use by film-makers, a counterproductive kind of  “bleeding the piece dry” effect, though Richter’s powerfully simple evocation will, like so many over-used pieces of music have previously done, doubtless survive its unselfconscious fecundity and remain fixed for future generations. I couldn’t imagine a more “centred”, sensitively-judged performance than we got here from our quartet of string-players.

The first half’s highlight for me was the Ellen Taafe Zwilich work, a 2008 Quintet for Saxophone and Strings, one with its opening Beethoven Grosse-Fugue-like beginning announcing its credentials and intents before setting off to a jogtrot-like journey throughout vistas of ear-catching detail. At first, the strings trod measured steps while the saxophone undertook a “whistling an air” kind of attitude, but with the group occasionally varying the trajectories, moving between a kind of lyrical wonderment, spontaneously impulsive gesturings and a droll “take it as it comes” manner.

Short, sharp impulses aplenty set the second movement on its intriguing course, in-and-out of occasional sequences which “papered over the cracks” in the music’s sustained lines (some evocative saxophone outpourings in places!). Our ears were kept engagingly activated by these wonderfully benign conniptions of expression, and highly entertained by an amusingly po-faced set of false “endings” to the movement leading up to the music’s true one!

The cello took up a nostalgic rocking rhythm at the third movement’s opening over which the saxophone sang a lullabic refrain, the strings joining in with a repeated-note accompaniment – fabulously ear-catching! As the saxophone began to energise its voice, the strings caught the mood and adroitly “syncopated” the exchanges, until the opening rocking rhythm made a sudden reappearance on the strings – saxophone and violin rhapsodised over the import of the moment, which intensified as the “chugging” rhythm also returned. The opening chord of the work then resounded, and echoed, before the players decided to have done with the past with a few terse, no-nonsense chords. I sat at the end, unexpectedly enchanted by it all!

After the interval, Mozart proved to be a perfect re-entry point to the concert with one of his “Prussian” Quartets (K.590 in F Major), albeit one of his greatest compositions, and one fraught with “might-have-beens” at the time the quartet was written – the circumstances have conspired to give this quartet a particularly distinctive flavour in a number of respects. At the time of writing this work the composer was in financial straits due to a recession in the Austrian economy caused by a drawn-out war with Turkey, resulting in fewer concerts and commissions. He had, in 1789, travelled to Berlin to meet the Prussian monarch Friedrich William II, an amateur cellist, hoping to make a good impression on the music-loving monarch, but instead had to be content with meeting the King’s Director of Chamber Music, the ‘cellist Jean-Pierre Dupont.

Afterwards he wrote to Constanze, his wife, that he had received money and commissions for six string quartets and six keyboard sonatas after performing for the Queen on a second visit. But there is no entry in the Court records for either money or commissions being made, and researchers have concluded that Mozart probably borrowed the money from friends, and invented the story regarding the visit and the commissions so he would have something to show for his efforts on his return to Vienna! He did complete three string quartets, two of them during 1790, the year following the Berlin visit, the second of which we heard today.

It’s an extraordinary work in itself, right from the beginning – two soft introductory notes and then a third louder and more insistent, followed by a scampering and unresolved unison descent – the whole then balanced by a repetition with solo violin, the dynamic contrasts softened, and the descent harmonically resolved. Mozart then uses that same three-note pattern and the scampered descent throughout the movement, the playing here of the Amici’s strings as deft and tonally varied as one might wish.

The following Andante has a hymn-like beginning, to which each instrument adds an embellished dance-like variation, leading to a stratospherically piquant ending. The Menuetto’s lively dance is characterised by an oscillating accompanying figure which passes from voice to voice throughout and in places moves up-and-down in almost vertiginous chromatic ways, while the Trio makes much of gawkily-witty grace-notes at some of the phrase-ends – charming! As for the finale it thrives on fluidity of utterance and quicksilver reactions, with several of the modulations seeming to flirt with atonality in places, while leaving our ears to actively wonder whether the lines would actually “find” one another again – such extraordinarily forward-looking juxtaposing of rhythms and harmonies! And what a delightfully po-faced concluding cadence – a wonderful sleight-of-hand ending!

Simon Brew brought his soprano saxophone with him this time, to conclude the concert with music by Astor Piazzolla, and featuring two excerpts from a work I’d not previously heard and was looking forward to – Piazzolla’s “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires”. The composer originally wrote and scored the pieces separately between 1965 and 1970 for his own ensemble, which featured his own instrument, the bandoneon (a kind of accordion). Like much of the composer’s music they have been arranged for all kinds of combinations, including a version by Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov for string ensemble which occasionally quotes from Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.

The Amici players performed two of  these “seasons”, winter and  spring, the first Invierno Porteño (Winter),having a gorgeous melancholic flavour, with much languishing at the piece’s beginning, and then with the saxophone tones bring out a truly exotic flavour to the textures and tones. Both pieces use the term Porteño, a word referring to a native of Buenos Aires, so that the Spring is given the name Primavera Porteña –  the music’s somewhat livelier than the first piece, though the players here give even the slower middle section’s rhythms plenty of “heft” . We enjoyed the experience so much we were able to persuade the ensemble to return to the platform and give us some more Piazzolla, a characteristically sultry opening, with the strings sighing as the saxophone literally took flight, the lines soaring like a bird, before the instrument brought these impulses back to earth, joining the strings for a soulful concluding melody in luscious thirds. Gorgeous sounds! – we couldn’t have helped enjoying the ensemble’s wonderfully cosmopolitean adventurings throughout a variety of times and places – a real treat for the senses in every way!

Resonances from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra – suggestive Ravel, effusive Dessner and harrowing Shostakovich

Posted on by Peter Mechen

André de Ridder conducting the NZSO – image Latitude Creative/NZSO

RAVEL – Pavane pour une Infante Défunte / BRYCE DESSNER  Trombone Concerto
SHOSTAKOVICH – Symphony No. 8 in C Minor Op.65

David Bremner (trombone) New Zealand Symphony Orchestra / André de Ridder (conductor)
Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington
Thursday, April 9th, 2026

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert brought together three disparate works under the generic title ”Resonance”, demonstrating orchestral music’s well-nigh infinite variety of evocation in drawing from both specific and integral sources.

The most directly effusive of these was American guitarist and composer Bryce Dessner’s trombone concerto, one substituting for  a similarly-conceived work (Slip: Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra) by American composer Andrew Norman, one intended as a premiere! – disappointinngly, the original  soloist, Dutch virtuoso Jörgen van Rijen (who’s principal trombonist with Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra), was prevented by injury from presenting the work. However, the NZSO’s own principal trombonist, the deservedly popular David Bremner, gave at short notice the inspired substitute choice of Dessner’s work with a truly sparkling performance that merited an enthusiastic “local hero” audience ovation.

At the orchestral helm for this presentation was André de Ridder, the NZSO’s Music Director Designate for 2027, due to take over from Gemma New at the conclusion of her five-year tenure in the position. De Ridder began the concert with the orchestra in fine fettle for Maurice Ravel’s sheerly beautiful Pavane pour une Infanta défunte, procuring winsome solo lines from firstly a horn (a shade late, I thought, in sounding its opening note, but flawless thereafter), and winds and strings, each counterbalancing the music’s meticulous symmetries, until the whole orchestra lustrously returned to the piece’s opening melody, the harp as before gently caressing the piece’s breath-catching luftpauses. Conductor de Ridder’s ear seemed as fastidious as the composer’s in realising the music’s beguiling textures throughout.

Bryce Dessner’s Trombone Concerto certainly put player and instrument through their respective paces, even if the end result seemed for much of the work’s duration a kind of compendium of capabilities on the part of a skilled player of a distinctive-sounding instrument rather than an expression of distinctive pictorial, emotional or philosophical content. Perhaps the slow movement focused more directly on the solo instrument’s attempts to cohere with its sonic surroundings, a kind of metaphor for modern life’s isolation – with orchestral backdrops in places withdrawn and spectral- sounding, and in others contesting the ambient spaces with the soloist. And the third movement broke into different “dance” trajectories in places, seeming to invite (or perhaps “dare”) the trombone to join in (with trombone and trumpet actually sharing a few slinky measures of roguish alliance). I thought the work more entertainment than anything else, as befitted the traditional role of a concerto, Davd Bremner and his instrument well-nigh inseparable in their shared ownership of the work’s capabilities!

No two works could have made more of a contrast with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony which took up the concert’s second half. Written in 1943 and following the enormous success of the composer’s Seventh Symphony as a wartime statement of patriotic resistance, the Eighth was straightaway a different kettle of fish. This work completely and utterly turned its back on the Seventh’s triumphal aspect and its glorification of the Russian people’s resolve in the face of the Nazi invasion – instead Shostakovich called the new Symphony “a poem of suffering”, and  “an attempt to reflect the terrible tragedy of war”.

Consequently, its Moscow premiere in November that same year, by the work’s dedicatee, Evgeny Mravinsky, though acclaimed by the audience, brought only tepid critical reviews, and savage official disapproval, which resulted in the work being withdrawn until its second-only Moscow performance in 1956! Since then, it’s gradually clambered towards a position of near pre-eminence among the composer’s symphonic works, as much for its historical range of ambiguities as its overall singularity of purpose. To a violinist in one of the early performances who remarked to Shostakovich on the wonders of the C Major passage that began the finale, the composer replied, “My dear friend, if only you knew how much blood that C Major cost me!”

This presentation from the NZSO was one to resound in the memory – André de Ridder briefly introduced the work to his audience, relating the music’s intents and purposes to the prevailing misery and hardship faced by people in the world’s present-day troublespots, and then plunging the orchestral strings into the dark-browed ambiences of the work’s at once sonorous and incisive beginning. Under his continued direction the sounds coalesced slowly and purposefully, the strings leading the way for similarly-wrought wind-playing, gradually building the tensions up to the movement’s series of utterly cataclysmic crescendi with their overwhelming evocations of widespread suffering caused by war and oppression. These were acknowledged eloquently by the extended cor anglais solo (here superbly delivered) which followed the orchestral maelstroms, and in tandem with the strings whose sounds seemed to us to emanate from the very souls of all who thus suffered. A brief brass fanfare attested to the human spirit’s refusal to accept defeat before returning to the lament, whose wrung-out intensities occasioned, at the end, the feeling of a  huge but guarded exhalation of breath!

Such an evocation brought forth not just one scherzo-like response, but two diametrically different reactions – the first, an Allegretto, was given amazing sweep and grandiloquence dressed up as grotesquerie, the irony savage in its futility, here brilliantly depicted by the winds, especially the piccolo and bassoon, and later joined in the onslaught by the percussion, with strings and brass gleeful collaborators. Then came the third movement Allegro non troppo, a savagely insistent orchestral toccata, here given the most trenchant performance I’d ever encountered since hearing Russian conductor Kyril Kondrashin’s 1960s Moscow recording – this was a fiercely relentless assault punctuated by a macabre circus-like sequence for solo trumpet and side-drum (brilliant, burlesque-like playing!), the energies veering in effect between wild exhilaration and fraught anxiety, and with de Ridder encouraging his players to occasionally push the intensities further forwards. It was a sequence culminating in some almost destabilising timpani-playing driving the needle into the red at the music’s climax while simultaneously giving birth to a sombre fourth-movement Passacaglia.

Here, the music’s previous agonies were echoed in a new and terrible kind of tranquility, called by one commentator “an expression of timeless grief”, and leading up to the  numinous impact of that C major chord which brought a ray of hope . De Ridder and his players performed as if inspired, here, with the sounds lifting us from out of the slough, reinvigorating energies and teasing out sensibilities as well as plunging us once more into a brief reiteration of those hellish first movement depictions of destruction and terror wrought by war and brutal dictatorship. After this we were dazedly brought back to our senses by a trio of instrumental voices whose superbly-wrought equivocal interactions and powerfully muted orchestral responses seemed to suggest that life for each one of us, despite its vicissitudes, would nevertheless go on.

Pianist Otis Prescott-Mason – an unexpected but precious gift for us of Schubert’s heavenly G-Major Sonata D.894.

Posted on by Peter Mechen

FRANZ SCHUBERT – Piano Sonata in G Major D.894

Otis Prescott-Mason (piano)
St.Andrews’-on-The-Terrace, Wellington
Wednesday, 8th April, 2026

Firstly, a bit of background, which I gleaned from the concert’s programme leaflet  – pianist Otis Prescott-Mason has recently completed his undergraduate studies with Dr.Jian Liu at the New Zealand School of Music here in Wellington. During this time, he’s taken part in several competitions throughout the country, winning firstly the 2020 New Zealand Junior Piano Competition and then both the 2022 PACANZ National Piano Competition, and the Lewis Eady National Piano Competition in Auckland that same year. More recently, in  2025 he won Third Prize at the National Concerto Competition in Christchurch with Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, and has performed with various regional orchestras such as the Christchurch Symphony, Orchestra Wellington, and the Auckland Philharmonia.

Now having completed his undergraduate studies, Prescott-Mason is looking forward to his next step on the pianistic ladder, taking him to a course of study further afield at the prestigious Yale School, of Music in New Haven, Connecticut, USA during the 2026-27 academic year, and working towards a Master of Music with the great Boris Berman, a Professor at the school, and a pianistic “hero” for the young musician. He joins a prestigious group  of past keyboard-achievers from these shores who have similarly  ventured outwards to seek further artistic and musical fulfilment.

I had seen and heard Otis play before on occasions which included a memorable 2020 St. Andrews’ solo recital (review at https://middle-c.org/2021/11/firstly-sparks-and-then-a-conflagration-pianist-otis-prescott-mason-in-recital/), as well as a “shared” recital with other solo pianists (actually a ”preparation”  concert for the aforementioned 2020 NZ Junior Piano Competition, which Prescott-Mason won!), and a sparkling lunchtime concert duo recital (four hands) with Sunny Cheng in 2021. In all, my expectations had been suitably primed by the above to regard this concert as something not to be missed!.

Upon making his appearance, the pianist explained to us that, rather than fronting up with his originally-planned programme of predominantly virtuoso pieces (which I was expecting to hear) he’d felt of late much more like spending time with an audience in the company of a composer like Schubert – so to my special delight (and partly also because I had already heard him play a couple of the originally-scheduled items, and this was something very different!) he’d decided to play the Schubert Sonata in G Major D.894, a work I’d become particularly fond of in recent times thanks to Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter’s daringly leisurely (and, for me, utterly mesmerising!) performance, especially in the case of the work’s first movement.

Though Prescott-Mason didn’t attempt to emulate Richter’s “near-timeless traversal”
of the first movement’s oceanic-like expanses, he caught at the very outset the music’s unique blend of surety and resonant utterance which the slightest hint of any haste or impatience or anything mechanical in a performance can deaden and neutralise. In fact, at the work’s very beginning the pianist “set the scene” for all of us so very beautifully by adopting the once-fashionable opening gesture of playing a series of gently-modulating figures (sometimes chordal, sometimes arpeggiated) as a kind of “storyteller’s introduction” to what was to follow. (Those readers who know of and have heard the late, great Roumanian pianist Dinu Lipatti’s legendary “farewell” recital, recorded “live” as long ago as1950, will be familiar with this enchanting and heartwarming practice!).

Schubert’s own opening chords were then gorgeously-voiced, the whole introduction entirely and disarmingly spontaneous in effect – even more elfin-like were the sounds of the following contrasting sequence, both hushed and beautifully darkened by the deeper bass notes. The music then “opened up”, gloriously amplified through its newly- burgeoning joy and intensity. Though Prescott-Mason seemed to allow the ensuing flowing trajectories of movement at first “play themselves”, he made the following filigree right-hand decorations dancing above the music’s gentle progress utterly captivating. And the timing of these decorations’ sudden downward movement was superb, generating just enough sense of momentum, strength and spontaneity to underline the sense of a kind of “arrival” at the exposition’s end, though with things remaining yet to be fully understood.

Throughout the repeat we found ourselves as entranced by the pianist’s concentration as before, the music unfolding as delightfully and spontaneously, with the descent into those declamatory chords leading to an enchanting postlude resonating with even greater gravitas and resonance this time round. Of course, the development’s sudden pitiless onset of dark-toned attack opened up a new world of frightening disturbance, from which the music’s furtive moments of “escape” into desperately-sought gesturings of consolation get beaten back by the composer’s own demons. We heard one or two instances of near-derailment as the pianist wrestled with these dark forces before managing by sheer effort of will to endure their grim purposes with sufficient patience – though I thought the recapitulation of the opening here could have conveyed a deeper, more spacious and exhausted sense of the “trauma of experience” the music conveyed so vividly in those throes of despair.

All was well by the time the coda was reached, with Prescott-Mason’s re-entry into the music’s trance-like world bringing out those almost archway-like “gates of heaven” utterances with what seemed like wonderment and gratitude, surely and generously taking us with him, as the descending phrases concluded this first part of the journey.

What enchanting song-like lines we then heard at the Andante’s beginning, the tones engaging and the mood almost joyous in its reiteration of full-throated lyrical phrasings – then, how dramatic a plunge into the second group of utterances we got here! Some  detailings seemed to have a couple of out-of-focus moments in the more beseeching parts, but the pianist kept his head and steered the music back on course  – along with the occasional unexpectedly “repeated” phrase, these felt like “corrections” of things originally mistimed…… (perhaps a by-product of the programme’s relatively late re-alignment for the recital?)

Far more important was Prescott-Mason’s maintaining of the music’s overall character, the reprise of the movement’s opening was again beautifully elaborated, with just enough suggestibility and insinuation for us to register the lasting impact of the various plungings into more shadowy and stressful sequences, a wonderful exposition of a relationship between well-being, conflict and eventual resolution. The dramatic Menuetto/Scherzo, too, was delivered with telling contrast between the opening’s muscular purpose and the wryly piquant responses, an interaction which largely dominated the movement – a lovely moment is the occasional quixotic reprise of the opening in more muted tones and with occasional wry grace-notes (as if the more bumptious manner of the opening can occasionally exhibit a more personable “inner” character, one which is brought out here to perfection. As for the Trio, it was pure enchantment on this occasion, almost like a “sleepwalking” sequence displaying an alternative side of the same coin, an “echt-Schubert” moment!

The finale here is surely one of the composer’s happiest creations, an utterly disarming instance of a composer “coming to terms” with the demons lurking in some of the music’s earlier recesses. Prescott-Mason beautifully captures the music’s charm and good humour of the opening, his technique having the spring and pliability that readily give these qualities an irresistible demeanour. And he has the gift of a delightful insouciance, which adds to the music’s appeal while keeping its significance in the larger scheme of things intact and resonant – his playing doesn’t erase memories of the journey but adds to the composer’s own achievement in  deepening the impact of the whole as a living entity. Implicit in this was his simple and heartfelt playing of the work’s final phrase, whose silences that followed were true resonances of memory. What a way to spend a lunchtime! – one, at the end of which we were left feeling such gratitude to both composer and performer!