• Aaron Copland: Appalachian Spring Suite
• Jennifer Higdon: Percussion Concerto
• Lyell Cresswell: Landscapes of the Soul
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral”

First of all, I have not yet forgotten about the NYO. At some point I’ll hopefully write something about it.

Second, a hearty congratulations to the NZSO, who with this incredible concert took Beethoven’s 6th, punched it in the face, and hung a placard around its neck saying “Please stop playing me”. Lined up against one of American concert music’s definitive works, a spectacular concerto by one of the 21st Century’s most important composers and a dazzling new piece of Kiwi music, the Pastoral was finally exposed as an emotionless, music-less corpse, which ought now be interred into the thick loam of music history.

I must confess, I’ve never really appreciated the Appalachian Spring Suite as much as many others. That would be because I’ve never heard it played so brilliantly as at this concert. The chief attraction of the Appalachian Spring Suite is Copland’s thrilling arrangement of the “Shaker Tune” (or, for those of us who treat it as a religious moment, “Lord of the Dance”) near the end of the work, and the transitions between the suite’s images prior to this can be a little hairy. Shelley kept the NZSO in restrained, contemplative mood for much of the work, carefully controlling the  transitions and allowing the beautifully phrased woodwind lines to speak for themselves. To a large extent, this is a pastoral piece, but unlike Beethoven in the Pastoral, Copland clearly understood that the only way to make such music function is through contrast, particularly in timbre, and a clear sense of direction – managed so fluidly by Shelley.

Jennifer Higdon is a somewhat more recent American product, and  something of an unknown quantity for most New Zealand audience members (these members really should spend more time on LastFM listening to contemporary classical composers). Percussion concertos must be an extremely difficult task for a composer to plan: there are numerous instruments to show off, but there needs to be a reasonable motivation for the performer to utilise these. Higdon succeeds admirably, using the orchestra, and in particular the orchestral percussionists, to focus these transitions. Much of the work is built around the relationship between Currie and the other percussionists, creating an amazing sense of space as they play off against each other in imitative fashion. Much of the pitched percussion work appears to be based off the initial marimba phrases. The unpitched instruments receive a little less attention. They feature in a couple of short bursts after a session of mallet swapping with the marimba and vibraphone, sweeping the orchestra along with them in the process. Near the end of the work Currie returns to the drumkit for a ferocious (and rather trippy) cadenza that blurs into another duet with the orchestral percussionists to finish. And of course there’s the seemingly constant, unearthly hum of vibraphone motors. This is simply joyful, passionate, brash music, which is how Higdon works, at least on an orchestral scale. It’s how composers like John Psathas and Gareth Farr work too, albeit with vastly different colours.

Oh, and the audience went pretty wild.

Lyell Cresswell is a funny old composer (well, maybe he isn’t actually funny. I’ve never met him. To my knowledge). The first piece of his I heard, his trumpet concertino Alas, how swift! was fairly unspectacular; the second, The Pumpkin Massacre, was completely different, and considerably more satisfying. Landscapes of the Soul, for string orchestra, fits much more into the mould of The Pumpkin Massacre, but is vastly superior again. Landscapes of the Soul taps into (I believe) our collective memory of Greek mythology – the landscapes being the realm of Hades. Cresswell uses hushed, dissonant noises, rushing, rumbling and tumbling. While the music as a whole flows slowly past, the underlying parts are extraordinarily dynamic. If many of  the sounds may be familiar from the mid-20th century avant-garde, at least they are familiar from quality music, and it is simply impossible to tear one’s ears away from the work. It might not be an audience favourite, it might never be played again after this series, and it will certainly never win a Grammy, yet Landscapes of the Soul is inspired music, for me the unexpected highlight of the programme.

And Beethoven’s 6th! What have I not yet said about it? Frankly, the fact that the first two movements are the dullest twenty minutes in music is less important than (but related to) their complete failure to act like a well-constructed symphony. There is simply no contrast – certainly, there is motific development, but there is no moment capable of arresting the hearer, breaking them out of their slumber. All pastoral music is cursed with being “nice”. Beethoven’s 6th is certainly nice, like an old lady inviting one in for tea, except that after a couple of minutes you work out that the tea is actually mud flavoured with cat dribble. And she has no chocolate biscuits. And she’s knitted you a nice brown woolen jersey. Out of her own hair.

But the Pastoral is not just the sum of its first two movements! Oh no! Because after twenty five minutes you discover that the old lady is actually Megatron in drag! She? tears your face off, then offers you another cup of tea.

Yeah, sorry, Herr Beethoven,, but your symphony is exactly that nonsensical. There is simply no musical motivation for the “storm”, which is not nearly convincing enough to pull off the imagery properly. And don’t tell me it’s pathetic because Beethoven didn’t have the techniques or instruments available to him. It’s just that musicians playing in uniform rhythm just don’t raise that violence quotient very high.

New Zealand School of Music Orchestra at St. Andrew’s on the Terrace conducted by Ken Young with Diedre Irons, piano

There are two other concerts I had planned on writing about before getting to this one – but that was before actually going to the concert, which was really an amazing experience (at least in the second half). Robert Schumann is one of the biggest names of Romantic composition, but his reputation frankly exceeds the quality of his music; indeed, I’m sure I have spent considerably more time reading his music criticism than actually listening to his music. This Piano Concerto is in all honesty a deplorable piece of music, a vehicle for his wife’s virtuosity that never approaches the depth to which the word ‘concerto’ aspires. The first movement, the Fantasie to which the rest of the work was attached, is a shapeless, formless, emotionless, tuneless, too-long wretch with a pathetic coda affixed to patch over the utter lack of direction. The following Intermezzo is no better; it is not until the final Allegro vivace that the players have so much as a theme to get their teeth into* – in fact, they get two rather fine themes, although one is really only toyed with. It would be extremely unfair to judge any of the performers on the basis of this ‘concerto’, for although the balance of sound from the orchestra was rather lovely and intimate in the relatively small setting of St. Andrew’s, but this is simply shallow salon music (albeit for richly talented performers).

How wonderful then, and how much of a vindication for twentieth century composition that Schumann’s miserable work should be followed by an utterly spectacular performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11, surely the finest, most vital performance of a symphony I have been privileged to witness since the NZSO’s rendition of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 1 (with the hyper-energetic Alexander Lazarev). Some of Shostakovich’s work possibly suffers a little from taking it out of its historical context, but this symphony really flourishes, allowing the listener to get right into the composer’s headspace. The faux-patriotic sentiment of the melodies lifted from revolutionary songs is stripped away to leave an hour of sheer, abject terror. Shostakovich opens with a long passage focusing on strings and harp that is beautiful in isolation, but alarmingly tense at the same time. A jeering brass interjection breaks the flow temporarily, but cannot relieve the general anxiety.

The second movement is simply astonishing – wailings from the strings and brass that gather in intensity and cut straight to the heart. In classic Shostakovich style it isn’t until the xylophone is brought in that the work becomes truly horrifying. The xylophone is truly Shostakovich’s death rattle, driving the closing portion of the invasion section of the “Leningrad” Symphony and appearing to spine-chilling effect in the On the Watch movement of Symphony No. 14. Even in the music’s brief returns to the theme of the first movement there is little relief. In the third movement the audience hears a similar journey to that of the first; the strings play a sweet, yet ominous theme, growly slowly in intensity, gnawing into the mind, and once again everything breaks down in an orgy of agony. Shostakovich’s ‘vulgar’ side (much abhorred – and underestimated – by critics) comes straight to the fore of the beginning of the final movement with a violent, oppressively loud introduction dominated by some wonderfully clear brass playing. After a brief lull the onslaught continues, Shostakovich placing all his fear and horror of tyranny onto the page. One can’t help feeling shattered by the finish, wrung out by the ferocity and emotional intensity of the music. Amazing.

*yes, I realise this blog is subtitled “What do you mean, you don’t like Stockhausen”, but Stockhausen’s work has far more thematic flesh on it than Schumann’s, even if it isn’t all melodic. Schumann has nothing.

• Improvising on traditional melodies and folk songs. I may spend most of my time listening to contemporary art music, but as a harpist it’s important to maintain a soft spot for folk music, and while there may be plenty off it lying around in neat little books around my bedroom, folk music just isn’t supposed to live that way – it needs to be played around with. Most folk songs are pretty epic creatures – they aren’t simply a couple of lines of music repeated – and so it’s important for a performance (even if it’s purely instrumental) to reflect the development of the song, both in terms of its content and history.
• Creating fresh and hopefully coherent music that exploits the lever harp. When I’m performing in public, this currently tends to be modal music, because it’s easier both on the ears of anybody listening and on my brain (at the moment). It’s easy enough to root around for a set of chords and melodic fragments, that will transpose easily and can be used creatively enough while sliding into place almost entirely from muscle memory (which allows me to plot a direction for the music and plan for lever changes if necessary. It’s a pretty relaxing way to play for, say, an hour. Playing more chromatic music, however, actually requires some planning beforehand. The lever harp offers twelve tones (or far more, depending on tuning), and although improvising serial music would be a bridge too far, plotting a few things out beforehand allows for some pretty interesting sounds.
• Finding and using a variety of extended techniques and performance practices. This is really tremendous fun. Everybody knows what a harp sounds like, and most standard techniques do little to disillusion them of their conceptions, so a major focus for me has been trying to find ‘dirty sounds’ – techniques that completely change the character of the instrument. Maybe it’s something to do with being a male harpist?
  • Plastic bags! We don’t seem to have nearly as many of them around the house as in previous times, thank goodness, but they are still useful for something! Just grabbing a couple of bags and sticking them over your hands changes pretty much the entire experience of playing the harp. For a start, it’s much more difficult because, um, there’s plastic in the way of your fingers, and this affects the way the strings must be plucked. Depending on how loosely the bags are in place, they will also affect dampening, buzzing around adjacent strings. Oh. And they also rustle when you move your hands. It’s particularly effective in the upper range as a very dry staccatissimo.
  • Tuning key-soundboard buzz! Whether this will work will depend largely on what type of tuning key you have. Place the tuning key flat on the soundboard, holding the key bit loosely with the left hand between two central strings. Plucking a string should sound the tuning key against the soundboard in something like a snare effect. 
  • A few little things. I’ve been working quite often with stopped strings and exploring which techniques work best in conjuction with this, at least with my harp. Although it isn’t necessarily the nicest sound, I’ve found that using the nails is extremely useful when trying to play with the left hand any higher up the strings than sons xylophoniques position, certainly when not in a harmonic position. In addition, there’s a nice plucking method that can be achieved by pressing 1 and 2 together, sliding them over the string and pulling away (not too forcefully). Sounds niiice. Especially with sons xylophoniques, for some reason.

Sooo… I think this is a pretty good summary of what I’ve been up to, harp-wise. There’s some music up on Last.FM – an album called Idylls of some pretty lousy recordings made for a friend, featuring most of the above stuff. Unfortunately, Last has got rid of full length previews, so, um, you’d have to subscribe to listen to it.

• Jack Body: Turtle Time
• Anton Killin: A Priori
• Simon Eastwood: Jericho: Walls Will Fall
• Karlo Margetic: Hommage à W.L..
• Jan W. Morthenson: Unisono
• Charles Ives: The unanswered question
  Interval
• John Adams: "John Philip Sousa"
• Francis Poulenc: Sonata for clarinet and bassoon
• Henryk Gorecki: Piano Sonata No. 1
• Richard Robertshawe and Andrzej Nowicki: Concertino 5b
• Carol Shortis: Tesknota

SMP Ensemble’s first concert of the year, part of the St. Andrew’s Season running concurrently with the New Zealand Festival of the Arts was promoted in the media only by an article in the New Zealand Herald (although there was a little thumbnail in the Dominion Post). As a result, the audience was undesirably small, particularly considering the number of performers, and the volume and quality of their music. The concert drew heavily on last year’s Podróze series, but mixed in several other works to form a programme that looked (particularly in the second half) towards the more joyful side of contemporary music.

The opening rendition of Jack Body’s Turtle Time saw Karlo Margetic performing his best imitation of an over-caffeinated puppy in the spoken-voice role, bursting through the swirling textures to deliver Russell Haley’s appealingly bizarre text, setting the scene for the other witty music further down the programme. Anton Killin’s A Priori is a diverting exploration of language, opening with a collage of vowel sounds from different languages and speakers, vaguely reminiscent of John Young’s Sju Rather than dissolving into (so-called) abstraction, however, it segues into spoken sentences of German (and possibly other languages – I’d need to listen again). Of course, language is just a different means of organising – and hence abstracting – sound.

Two of the local compositions from Podróze followed in Simon Eastwood and Karlo Margetic’s works. After hearing each of these compositions twice previously the awkward section endings in Jericho feel somewhat less disturbing, but the eighty seconds or so of each section really is only enough to establish its bare features. Sitting on the opposite side of the venue from the previous performances of Hommage à W.L. offered a slightly different perspective, particularly of the first section, with the piano sounding much more clearly above, rather than through the texture.

Unisono, for bassoon, piano and electronics is a curious piece; the performance  at the Adam Concert Room last year was far more successful. The piece opens with the instruments playing sustained unisons, and gathers complexity as the instruments depart from each other and electronics coarsen the bassoon. Unfortunately, something seemed a bit off about the electronics – possibly unsatisfactory speaker position (I’m really not an expert) – which caused them to distract from, rather than add to the performance. Ives’s The unanswered question is possibly as far removed as possible from the stereotype of impossible complexity that his music attracts. This is a proto-minimalist work, founded upon a continuous pattern of soft strings, against which a solo trumpet and woodwind section (which were both positioned at the rear of the church) occasionally interject with their own motifs. On the surface there isn’t an awful lot going on here. Ives’ personification of the instrumental groups offers an explanation better than any that could be provided by a student one hundred years after the work’s composition on the basis of a single hearing.

“John Philip Sousa” is so utterly tongue-in-cheek that one can’t help grinning broadly from beginning to end. Adams’ aleatoric score specifies the directions of changes in pitch, but not the actual values of the pitches, creating harmonic chaos within a rigid rhythmic framework. Although it could be construed as either a homage to or mockery of Sousa, in the end it’s simply a joy to hear. Little changed when the action switched to Poulenc’s Sonata for clarinet and bassoon, which – especially in the third movement – might have been mistaken for fairground music played by a pair of tipsy monkeys, in this case Andrzej Nowicki and Kylie Nesbit.

Gorecki’s Piano Sonata No. 1 has seen a change of personnel since last year, with Sam Jury taking over from Laurel Hungerford. This resulted in a substantially different performance, with Jury treading more lightly than Hungerford in the opening Allegro molto, con fuoco, but balancing the angst-equation with a ferocious Allegro vivace. Now, going simply on the basis of those movement titles, this might seem like the wrong way round, but then I Am Not Henryk Gorecki. In any case, the obviously technically tough third movement received a pleasingly polished treatment. Concertino 5b was an entry in the NZSM Composers’ Competition (besides having an SMP performance). The work’s organic structure make it difficult (in the absence of a lights show) to determine exactly when preparation finishes and music begins. However, the Concertino doesn’t really need lighting to be spectacular, particularly with the ear-shattering tones of the central section. Perhaps neither this nor the Gorecki fit into the narrative of ‘happy’ music, but their turbocharged natures are nevertheless thrilling.

Carol Shortis’ composition is another that leaves one smiling contentedly. Shortis’ use of Polish folksong is stirring; the choir’s canonical half-whispering (or however one might term it) still sounds fresh. Perhaps it doesn’t seem quite so fitting as at the close of two of the Podróze concerts, but it really is a very impressive work. It’s also about the only thing on the Podróze CD that my father can bear to hear.

• Henry Purcell: So when the glittering Queen of night; Not all my torments; Cold Song; Evening Hymn
• Jenny McLeod: Peaks of Cloud
• Benjamin Britten: On this Island
• Samuel Barber: Three songs from Ten Early Songs; Three songs from Collected Songs; Two songs from Hermit Songs

At the time the Festival programme was announced I pondered why the Festival chose to employ Michael Houstoun to accompany Keith Lewis for this concert rather than a professional accompanist. Although Jenny McLeod worked hard in her piano writing to justify Houstoun’s appearance, I’m still not convinced it was altogether necessary.

The four Purcell songs were all artfully and delicately sung, although the use of a piano as accompaniment detracted slightly from So when the glittering Queen of night in particular, the block chords seemingly alien and irrelevant to the finely detailed vocal line. Possibly a spread approach might have lent more homogeneity, but ultimately the piano is simply not the best way to experience this music. Happily, none of the other Purcell songs were particularly affected by this, and the Evening Hymn proved particularly powerful. The Cold Song’s accompaniment is almost amusing in the light of minimalism – Philip Glass could easily stick on some cheesy synthesisers and claim it for his own.

Jenny McLeod’s Peaks of Cloud, commisioned by Lewis and composed in 2007, although not premiered until this concert, may have to wait some time to receive a representative performance. One has to ponder the degree of communication between composer and performer, because Lewis struggled at both ends of his range, sucking the power out of what ought to have been the most effective song. Promise, the fourth of seven songs, possessed a frightening intensity until its ending, when Lewis could only muster a half-hearted “scream”. The following song, Gods, was also beautiful music that suffered from uncertainty in the lower register. This is not to suggest that the entire song cycle was unsatisfactorily performed – the first two songs were especially enjoyable; the dichotomy between the characters of the piano and voice in the opening song I Met a Man was cleverly conceived and executed.

The concert’s highlight proved to be Britten’s cycle On this island, settings of Auden poems. Britten’s songs displayed more of a common nature with the Purcell selection than with either McLeod or Barber’s music. Both composers display a certain English restraint; while his music might not carry quite thee same intensity as Peaks of Cloud, this does not affect its expressiveness. Moreover, Lewis displayed an ability to reach some of the notes that seemed to elude him in the McLeod cycle. The Nocturne displayed a wonderful harmony of intent between performer and composer, never straining for emotional effect, but rather commenting upon the curiosities of the lyrics from a distance.

If nothing else, the Barber songs illustrated the effect that a poor text can have upon a piece of music. Although Barber’s music is impossibly capital-R Romantic in any case, the combination of his music with these overwhelmingly cloying texts (Joyce being the prime suspect) is simply nauseating and unmusical. They offered nothing in any way thoughtful or unexpected, and thus there was no point in either their composition, their performance, or the continued presence of the audience, with the exception of the setting of The Cruxifiction.

• A festival will probably make more money or, more likely, recoup more of its losses, if it actually gets people to come to events. This also helps to justify the festival’s future existence. Because of this, it is most likely a good idea to actually advertise what the festival has on offer. Between the announcement of the programme and the start of the chamber music weekend there seems to have been a complete lack of advertising (exacerbated by the chamber music weekend never having been promoted when the programme was announced). The Festival seems to have chosen instead to promote a handful of theatre works – Sutra and The Sound of Silence. Aside from Apollo 13, which got quite a lot of publicity from the Dominion Post, everything else has been completely under the radar.
• Having decided that you will in fact not bother to advertise an event, it might be wise to pay some attention to ticket sales. Most of the tickets that are sold for an event that is only half-heartedly promoted once are probably going to be sold around that time, so it could well be worthwhile to see how many tickets are sold early on and then reconsider prices (or even better, recognise that an unadvertised show should probably have low ticket prices from that outset.
• Sometimes it looks better if there are actually younger people at chamber music events. Unfortunately, because ticket prices are outrageously high, they will either only be able to get to one or two concerts or none at all. So if you are going to offer NZSM students tickets for $10, it would be real nice to actually offer these from the outset. You know, before they spend quite a lot of money on going to one concert, and then find that they could have gone to every concert at the chamber music weekend for less money. Yeah.
• Having caused immense frustration to at least one NZSM student, please make sure that concert they spent six times too much money on is flawless.

For roughly the same price, you can go to one of the scarce art music concerts at the New Zealand Festival of the Arts. You cannot, of course, go to Mahler 8 unless you were far more organised than me and actually bought a ticket before they sold out (note: I haven’t seen any notice of, say, a repeat of the concert, clearly the most sought after event at the Festival). As a result, I’ll probably only be going to the Keith Lewis and Michael Houston concert, which is disappointing. Instead of Mahler 8, I went to Joanna Newsom, which was great fun and, I suppose, demonstrated why everybody should at least start a composition degree.

Much as I found out about John Psathas’ pretty much unheard of international success by randomly browsing Promethean Editions, I found out about the St Andrew’s on the Terrace Season in the Herald (I only touch it on Saturdays! Don’t shoot!), when their really quite excellent classical critic (maybe he’s just a little too excited about the merits of the APO over the NZSO sometimes) announced it with a large photo of SMP performing. There’s an incredible range of music available, with a fair swathe of contemporary and/or New Zealand music. It isn’t quite a new music festival. It doesn’t have an orchestra. But it does what the NZFotA should have done.

As I listen to increasing volumes of contemporary music – and more serious contemporary music at that – I also seem to listen to less Christian music. This is largely because of the oppositional attitudes of art and religion on the functionality of music, and although this problem may be exacerbated by current trends, it is certainly not a new dilemma. Composers of Renaissance religious music faced two separate questions of functionality; firstly, the textural nature of their music and the technical implications thereof; secondly, the question of language. Debate over polyphony (in Rome) centred at the time over whether the use of melisma rendered texts incomprehensible, and while worship practices dictated that music be sung by the choir without the participation of the congregation (at least audibly), polyphonic singing would have required a high degree of technical skill were congregational singing to take place. The effect of polyphony on Roman congregations was essentially the same as that of Latin singing (and services in general) on churchgoers elsewhere in Europe – one of alienation from worship. These same qualities are no less present in the ears of contemporary listeners; The wondrous complexity of Renaissance masses and motets eliminates much of their religious import.

Much the same might be written about the religious music of composers today. Few composers with truly contemporary styles have devoted a great deal of their output to religious music. Minimalism (particularly the Eastern variant) has undoubtedly been kindest, with apparent simplicity enabling strong communication. It is unfortunate, then, that so little of this music is in English. Arvo Pärt’s music, while deeply involving, is ultimately frustrating in that it is set to Latin texts; it is possibly only his De Profundis that really overcomes the language barrier.

Also a nuisance in the creation of religious art music is the need for the music to act as reinforcement for the text, and yet this is somewhat contradictory to the nature of art, which demands the attention for itself. It seems impossible for such music to actually attempt to break new ground in any way, particularly if married to an ancient, if potentially extremely potent text. Creating a contemporary text for contemporary music, of course, creates a whole new series of problems. All in all, this leaves me rather befuddled. If contemporary music really can’t achieve this, what actually is the point? One other option, of course, is to write religious music sans text which, while possibly helpful from a compositional perspective, may leave the listener dry. Composers have used plenty of different ways to incorporate religious symbolism into instrumental music – the classic example being the use of plainsong melodies – but this does place enormous demands on an audience to recognise the subtext. A curved line in the sand.