• Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov: Capriccio Espagnol  
• Joaquín Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez
• Claude Debussy: Iberia
• Manuel De Falla: Three-Cornered Hat Suite No.2 (Three Dances)

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christoph König with Xuefei Yang (guitar) at the Michael Fowler Centre

The NZSO’s Sketches of Spain concert made me rather glad that there seems to be no “New Zealand” style of classical music, because the one that’s been foisted on Spain gets rather dreary over the course of a couple of hours.

A key concept which the concert brought up for me is the subjectivity of listening to music, not least because the concert was pretty much full, so I had a terrible seat (why do they call it “Restricted Viewing” – far more pertinently, it’s restricted listening). This probably contributed slightly to the underwhelming feeling I got from the Capriccio Espagnol – in particular one passage where the second violins were echoing off the firsts, but they basically sounded dead through the mass of first violins. This is undoubtedly one of the joys and frustrations of the spacialisation inherent in the concert experience – the flipside was that the sound from the celesta was much fuller in the Debussy and De Falla than I’d experienced before.

The main problem with the concert for me was that neither Capriccio nor the Rodrigo are pieces which I feel the need to listen to with my full attention. Indeed, I associate the Capriccio with making pavlova more than I do with a concert experience. There were some effective moments in the performance, particularly the fanfare-like bit in the middle, but the sound seemed to be in something of a cocoon. There was very little genuine dynamic variation – which I feel is partly due to a somewhat overstuffed orchestration which Rimsky-Korsakov tries to hide with twiddly little solo bits in the middle. To be really effective, the piece really needs to raise the roof at the end, and this performance didn’t achieve that.

The Rodrigo is the perfect length and atmosphere for a spot of praying!

The first part of Iberia suffered from castanet fatigue – it seemed to me to be a rather lame way of conjuring up Spanishness, particularly for Debussy. In the rather beautiful second movement, however, the combination of celesta and harp stood out really strongly, the weight of the music seemingly slipping smoothly between them and the strings. The long absence of percussion in this movement meant that the last movement could get away with its slightly more creative usage, the sharp contrast between be-percussioned and un-percussioned sections working quite effectively.

De Falla’s Dances were vastly more ear-catching than anything which preceded them. Rather than concentrating on sounding “Spanish”, as the rest of the music had, the dances concentrated on actually being good music (which is not to say that I don’t enjoy all the rest of the music). They had quite an earthy tone throughout, with some really chunky string sounds. The third dance was particularly impulsive, with fierce unison passages contrasted with legato fragments. I even realised at the end why the castanets had been so annoying throughout, because De Falla had finally worked out how to use them smartly – because they sound so high, they act to compress the sound of the orchestra into a higher register, which can be effective, but only if the rest of the orchestra is following the same trajectory.

Michael Houstoun (piano) and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Vasily Petrenko at the Michael Fowler Centre

My first encounter with Shostakovich’s 7th symphony came with a book about 20th century symphonies which I inherited from my mother. Although not all of the writers in this particular book took a particularly conservative line on the works they examined (this was also the book where I found out about Havergal Brian), the stances taken in the chapters on Prokofiev and Shostakovich seemed rather off to me. The Leningrad Symphony came under particularly fierce criticism, particularly the first movement, with its Bolero-esque central section. How dare Shostakovich employ such a vulgar device instead of a classical development section?! How dare he write programmatically in a symphony, the last resting place of pure music?!

Naturally, as soon as I actually had the opportunity to hear the symphony (via the fine Bernard Haitink recording), I fell in love with it, and it’s been my favourite symphony ever since.

And so I sat through Michael Houstoun’s performance gleefully, perhaps not paying complete attention. The third movement, crisply articulated and full of life, was definitely a standout; I didn’t think much of the first movement, and suspect that the composer may be at fault with this – there’s simply more piano than music)

Leningrad is definitely a symphony for dark times, but Shostakovich does not allow that to control the symphony. Rather, for me it’s a work about dealing with that terror, with pushing it away and living your life in defiance. I think that it’s probably unique among symphonies of this length (and perhaps even all symphonies) in that there is never an inessential moment, never a motif or a texture or a timbre that doesn’t add something to that which came before it. That is, I feel, a much truer idea of a symphony than any formal definition. It’s also something which the NZSO really brought out in their performance. There are plenty of tender moments in the symphony – indeed, perhaps the bulk of the duration – and while these might not have the same selling power as the bone-crunching tutti, it was evident that a lot of work went into shaping these moments, judging dynamics, textures and articulation. The strings flew beautifully between sweet and keening, pulling the heart around on a whim.

It’s usually the xylophone that really strikes me with fear in a Shostakovich symphony, but in this performance, at the height of the great crescendo in the first movement, it seemed to have quite a different quality, pushing back the tides of war and terror rather than driving them on. There’s a reason why this crescendo is better music than Bolero: the different strands of melody that push at each other. While most conductors might look at this passage as the march upon Stalingrad, Petrenko never let the battle go one way, unleashing musicians from the far corners of the orchestra to confront the onslaught. The snare drum, for its part, seemed to begin almost impossibly quietly, barely registering with the ears, yet resonating throughout the body.

The masterful control of dynamics proved absolutely crucial to shaping the work. Really only the coda matched the level of the first movement crescendo: Petrenko seemed to find ten thousand new dynamics betweeen pianissimo and forte. Every moment got its chance to sing out from under the shadow (in fact I had a great deal of difficulty in restraining myself from sing along), with much of the music almost attaining a romantic affectation. While some of the sentiments officially one display in the piece might be present with a hint of bitterness, it is clear from this performance just how much love Shostakovich really did hold for the people who surrounded him in Leningrad. This symphony does not consist of fleeting moments of sweetness in a sea of terror, but rather a place of peace and compassion into which foul breezes intrude.

This is music, after all, which brought the people of the USSR and USA together. It is music about love and bravery.

It could almost be about Neville Longbottom.

I found reading this Henry Brant interview fascinating not so much for the content (although I agree with most of what he says) but for the forthright way in which he expresses himself. It seems to me that there are broadly two types of composers: one group, whose members feel the need to constantly defend the value of their music, and another group, who really don’t particularly care what other people think of their music, because they’re absolutely convinced that theirs is almost the only way to write music. Brant fits clearly into the second group, along with John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cousins and others. This seems to me to be the only way to write music – which is unfortunate given that the way the arts are funded these days effectively forces composers to become members of the first group.

One of the key points Brant makes which I am essentially in agreement with is the idea that a tightly packed group of instrumentalists turns counterpoint into sludge. If there are, as Brant offers as an example, ten separate parts, then most of these will be completely unidentifiable by ear. While timbre can help to aurally separate parts, this only works up to a point, and is pretty much ineffective with instruments of similar timbres. By adding the spatial element to performance, Brant creates another, much more powerful means of interpreting contrapuntal textures. This may not always be what the composer wants, of course, but if they are convinced that their parts are worthy of being heard, why not ensure that this is actually possible? There is also the potential to create variation between blurred and unblurred contrapuntal textures through the movement of players.

A good example of the problem with having spatially-bunched parts – which also relates to Brant’s later comments about the deficiencies of recordings – is aural testing (at least as conducted in NZSM theory papers). My ears simply aren’t capable of distinguishing between “different lines” when they are projected from a single sound source. That isn’t how they were designed to function or how they function in everyday life. This means that, at least for me, aural tests become a matter of finding the right brand of almost indistinguishable porridge – this one’s too hot, this one’s too cold, ah! this sounds just right!

Probably the thing which keeps me most from writing (intended) spatial music is the challenge of rehearsing. How does one get musicians throughout a space to perform a piece coherently? I think that Brant’s response is that a certain amount of incoherence is simply part of the pleasure of spatial music. He speaks of the “sublimely messy” experience of an authentic spatialised performance of Gabrieli as being an inspiration for his own experiments in spatialisation, which I suspect may be due as much to the lack of an ensemble with a decades-long history of performing antiphonal music in that space (as Gabrieli would have had) as to the nature of spatialisation. These messy sounds are, in Brant’s view, a fine reflection of the reality of our sound universe. Sounds don’t happen all together, or in a single place, in life, so there’s absolutely no reason why we should be so insistent that they do in music.

Brant’s comments on sound engineers are, I feel, less justifiable in general than the rest of the piece – I suspect that few composers feel as maligned by engineers as does Brant, and I suspect also that most classical engineers have a great deal of respect for composers. They are, however, absolutely understandable in the context of the demands of his music. I regret to say that I have only ever heard Brant’s music on stereo recordings (where, yes, his orchestration does carry the day), so I cannot comment specifically on whether they damage his music – I can only trust Brant’s own instincts, which are really the only relevant ones. His attitude reminds me strongly of that of John Cousins – paraphrasing: “If my music can’t be heard properly, it shouldn’t be heard at all”. Why, when Brant and Cousins have made such great efforts to shape their music around a particular spatial arrangement, should their soundworlds be misrepresented by removing that element? I suspect that other composers would be equally annoyed were engineers to, say, completely equalise the dynamics on their symphony, or to iron out the rubato on their piano piece. In the end, it comes down to Brant’s membership of the second group of composers – it’s his music, and he’ll do what he likes with it.

The NZSM Orchestra, conducted by Kenneth Young, with Martin Riseley (violin), at St. Andrew’s on the Terrace, 14 May 2011

Before the concert…

After their spectacular interpretation of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 last year I hoped there would be more Shostakovich on offer and lo! it appeared! Martin Riseley (head of strings at the NZSM) is somebody I only really recall for texting while marking recitals, so I’m wondering whether we will be asked to turn mobile devices off for this concert. On the other hand, quite a few people seem to think he can play the violin, which can rectify a few faults. I’ve listened to the Britten work a number of times, although none of the recordings were particularly satisfactory (that is, they didn’t quite match up to its reputation). The Romeo and Juliet Overture is a pleasant and sporadically exciting piece which, curiously, the NZSO is also playing this year in its “Romeo and Juliet” concert (yeah, that’s never been done before). At least the NZSM’s version will be considerably cheaper to attend!

After the concert…

I think it would have to be said that the NZSM really, really excels at terrifying people.

Few concertgoers could deny that this was another almost unbelievably splendid performance. The riveting Passacaglia brought flashes of violence – precariously balanced between anger, terror, and foreboding – sandwiched between two tentative viola solos, performed with feeling by John Roxburgh. The texture felt extremely well judged, with the lower strings and the lower region of the harp providing a restless underbelly After the Passacaglia, Dawn, the first sea interlude, with its seemingly sweet opening might have brought a drop in intensity, but there proved to be a sharpness to the violins which lent a great sense of imminent danger. Even the intermittent wind-and-harp passages lent more nausea than fairytale to the atmosphere. The second interlude, Sunday Morning was performed vigourously, a deep sense of forced frivolity connecting this movement clearly with the similar sentiments found in Shostakovich. The wind section seemed very much on edge, while the strings successfully avoided any sentimentality in the opening.

Anybody expecting Moonlight to sound anything like a certain movement of Beethoven would be disappointed to hear a much deeper, unsettling piece. The scene might seem suitable for a moment of calm, but the orchestra would not allow this, crafting a sense of continual movement which reflected the organic character of the sea. Indeed, the only point in the performance which seemed to offer even a sliver of piece came near the end of the fourth part, Storm, and  then only after the wild cavalcade of music that forms the meat of that interlude. This ending feels a little bit weird to me – it’s certainly shaped in a cadential way, but somehow that isn’t quite what the music is doing. Perhaps in terms of sheer sustained intensity, the performance was slightly behind that of Shostakovich 11, but I would defy most professional orchestras to put in a performance as passionate and terrifying as this one.

Martin Riseley needed to put in a great performance in Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 to rival the Britten, and I feel he largely succeeded. In comparison to the symphonies, Shostakovich’s violin concerti will always feel a little pared down to accommodate the violin, requiring a fairly sophisticated performance in order to match their heights of passion. The concerto began fairly dryly – the Nocturne, not even remotely resembling Chopin, being dominated by the violin, with the orchestra reduced to more of an accompanimental role. Indeed, the violin part itself is not the most interesting example of Shostakovichian writing, but Riseley executed it elegantly. The Scherzo is considerably more interesting, a raucous, bitter piece of music. Its opening, with interplay between violin and bassoon, ought to be funny – and with any other composer it probably would have been – but the instruments simply don’t seem to happy about it. The orchestra is busier here, and the violin part more shapely; Riseley managed to bridge the gap between the harsh exuberance of folk-ish rhythms and technical bravura nicely, while miraculously retaining audibility as the orchestra swelled

The Passacaglia shared a little of its colour with that of Britten, but Riseley did not allow any of the fleeting sweetness of that work to enter into his playing. The movement almost seems to exist in order to provide a context for the long cadenza, for which it provides much of the musical material. There seemed to be a real emotional journey in the violin playing, even if a more subtle one than might be expected. Initially, Riseley seemed grumpy, channelling the energy of somebody unhappy with their lot in life,  but unsure of what to do about it, but as the transition into the cadenza arrived, the intensity of feeling swelled to fill the gap left by the orchestra, frustration boiling over into anger. The technical extremes of the developing cadenza force the violin to bottle up its feelings for a while, but this cannot last. The final movement, Burlesca, is almost consumed by deep fury, If there is rejoicing or pleasure here, it is centred in Shostakovich’s ability to seek justice – or vengeance – through his music. And possibly the most impressive moment in the movement… a violin section playing pizzicato together. Surreal.

Naturally, the Tchaikovsky opening the concert seemed rather tame by comparison. The first couple of minutes did not hang together as well as they might have, but it flowed nicely from there. When considered against the marvellous performances it preceded, even mentioning the piece actually feels like a slight waste of time

Karen Batten (flutes), Martin Jaenecke (violin, soprano saxophone) and Victoria Jaenecke, (viola) at the Adam Concert Room

The Elios Ensemble’s Friday Lunchtime concert at the NZSM provided a delightful mix of sounds, in terms of both timbre and genre, with music ranging from an intense contemporary saxophone and viola duo to a musically-sedate Beethoven chamber work. The ensemble began with transcriptions of Bartok’s 44 Duos for violin, adding the three musicians’ rich variety of instruments into the mix, to greater or less success. While the combination of piccolo and violin worked well in the highly rhythmically intense settings in which it was deployed, the alto flute fared less well, particularly when paired with the soprano saxophone, which overpowered it at every turn. To my slight disappointment, I found that the version which sat best with me was the violin and viola combination, which probably just goes to show that Bartok wrote very carefully for his instruments.

Katherine Hoover’s solo flute piece Kokopeli can be described satisfactorily as “idiomatic”. The work is a single meandering melody line, and was played without any noticeable dynamic variance, so I’m just not quite sure what the point was. The other contemporary work on the programme, Lachrymae for soprano saxophone and viola, was much more satisfying, although it too possible suffered from a lack of dynamic variance. The work is dominated by the fierce, repetitive blasts from the saxophone, in a fairly low register, with which the viola eventually blends. For me, the special moments in this performance came when Martin Jaenecke was forced to take a breath, and the viola swelled to fill the space.

Beethoven’s Serenade Op. 25 was somewhat unexpected, although I suppose it probably should not have been. The work is an example of professional composition at its finest, in that it feels as if there is no way that Beethoven would have written such a work under his own steam, but he manages to put enough personal touches in to save face. The first two movements in particular are almost embarrassingly classical; in fact, I broke into silent laughter during the Minuetto, which included one section so trite that I’m convinced Beethoven must have intended it as a joke. Thankfully, there were moments in the Allegro molto and Andante con variazoni which reminded us of Beethoven’s ability to manipulate his audience’s expectations (in a rather more complex method than Haydnesque false endings). In fact, I imagine that there were some awkward pauses in the dinner party conversation without anybody realising quite why.

Generally speaking, Henze’s symphonies take one of two broad formal plans, a plain three movement form or a single movement, through-composed form. The first symphony, originally composed in 1947, was subsequently revised for a smaller orchestra. In this post, I am trying to give a fairly thorough analysis of part of the third movement of this symphony. I would have attempted the whole work, but I started writing this first, and it may have got out of hand somewhat.

It is in the third movement that Henze deploys possibly the symphony’s first instance of a clearly recognisable theme. Curiously, it is introduced (at least in the revised version) by the harp, which has a particularly substantial role in the movement. Opening on a single pitch class of Db, Henze uses an oscillating octave gesture to trigger movement in the rest of the orchestral, before launching into exposition with the sparsely accompanied harp. The theme is a cautious, conventional one, beginning with a simple but easily identifiable Db-Cb-Db-Ab pattern, after which follow two distinctive leaps, of a minor 9th and augmented 6th. Henze is relatively free with his melodic material throughout the movement, but it is these elements that unify the movement and act to shape many melodic contours. Closing off the introductory passage with a wild harp flourish, Henze immediately begins development, changin from triple to quadruple time and offsetting a clear statement of the theme from the viola with characteristic interjections of four rapid-fire notes in the reeds, horn and bass strings. The first violin takes up the theme as the music builds with the addition of fluttertongue flute and the viola begins a tremolo section, and as the violin part powers into the stratosphere the winds, joining with first horn, first trumpet, celeste, second violin and viola, take up a short, melodically descending, ‘chordal’ sequence, bringing the piece to an unresolved climax.

Henze: Symphony No. 1: Allegro con moto VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The next episode, returning to triple time, is a step back in orchestral weight, but a step up in violence, as the brass instruments engage in a punchy contrapuntal battle, variations of the theme hidden away in the maelstrom as the first trumpet seeks to overpower the others. Henze wipes the battle away as soon as the trumpet appears to have the upper hand, replacing it with a quietly animated clarinet dialogue, similarly based on the beginning of the theme. Although both of these episodes are related quite closely to the theme, the ways in which they are developed and placed amidst a framework of equally treated notes means that the theme is heard really only on the boundaries of aural perception. While listeners may not catch all of the direct thematic connections (particularly while hidden in thick counterpoint, as in the brass passage),  the reuse of familiar intervals nonetheless creates an impression of safety, bridging the chasms between episodes.

Some of the ways in which Henze employs the central motif are shown in the first two score excerpts in the photo album on the right. In the brass example, (a) shows a chromatically altered version of beginning of the theme, with the initial oscillation using only a semitone. (b) is an extremely obscure variation, showing an inverted retrograde form with an addition transforming the oscillation from a mordent into a cambiata figure. (c) is easily the most prominent instance, particularly given its position on the surface of the texture, using an inverted motif that can be heard either forwards or backwards. (d), or at least its fourth-leap, is quite audible, as a chromatically altered motif in the same spirit as (a).

The second example, of the clarinet and bass clarinet parts, shows an even greater degree of fragmentation in places, although it also features one particularly strong thematic variation. One technique Henze uses to reinforce the impression of the theme while simultaneously obscuring its exact nature is evident in the almost-imitative nature of the counterpoint in this excerpt, where (c) is an inversion of (a), and (f) is an inversion of (d). (a), (b), (c) and (e) are all registrally displaced instances of the main motif with an omitted (but clearly implied) note. (d) and (f) are similarly tangentially recognisable – they switch around the final two notes of the main motif. Of all of these examples, (d) is perhaps the clearest instance of the theme, because unlike the others, it is subsequently confirmed by the presence of the completion of the theme at (g), obscured only by registral displacement in the final three notes and the compression of the final interval from an augmented to a major 6th. Such clear statements of the motif act almost as if to give the music a misleading sense of tonal movement which helps to shape the movement as a whole.

Henze’s next move is an effective reprise of the brass section, again stepping up the volume, and creating a sense of even greater agitation than before by reducing the silences between phrases and adding in staccato string gestures in semiquavers. The clarinets’ melody arrives again, transferred to the flute and alto flute. The first phrase of this is inverted, and then Henze begins again with the first few notes before going into a second passage with a sense of extemporisation. As this second passage progresses, Henze changes the focus of the staccato strings to the theme, making an almost complete, registrally compressed rendition. Another reprise of the brass passage follows, closing off the section with parallel downward runs in the brass and similar movement in the strings. Before this phrase the strings have another version of the main motif (see gallery) which, together with the addition of a prominent piano figure, adds intensity leading up to the climax with its chromatic variation.

OH NO! Please settle down Britney! You’re rocking the boat so hard! Why, that “flute which is probably a synthesiser” pretty much makes you John Cage!

The problem: dull, stale harmonic onsets

The solution: press the string with the fleshy part of the left-hand thumb as in a left-hand harmonic (well, to be honest I play left-hand harmonics on both hands, but ignore me!), pluck the string with the right hand index nail.

The outcome: gorgeous, strong harmonics, suitable for occasions with a little bit of preparation time and not-too-quick movement (as the thumb requires careful positioning).

There are any number of reasons for people to go see Handel’s Xerxes before its Wellington run finishes. For a start, there’s Xerxes himself, sung breathtakingly well by countertenor Tobias Cole. In the more familiar Classical and Romantic opera repertoire, there aren’t so many operas where the male lead puts the female lead to shame for coloratura, but this is what Xerxes’ unashamedly florid part achieves, particularly in his last ‘big’ aria Cruel Furies, a complex morass of notes punctuated by increasingly desperate pleas that pushes at the boundaries of “baroque” refinement. I felt too, that there was a great deal of depth to the dramatic side of Xerxes’ character. Initially harmlessly batty, he seems to be transformed by love, but the audience can never be completely certain what exactly he has transformed into.

A second reason is the baroque orchestra, the Lautten Compagney accompanying the opera who are, to put it bluntly, sensational. Although Handel doesn’t give them much material to work with in the overtures, their accompaniments are always fresh, and the most distinguished part of many of the arias. They balanced particularly well with the pair of countertenors, who with somewhat lighter voices than the regular operatic contingent might have struggled with a bastardised orchestra. Anyhow, who wouldn’t want to hear a theorbo in action?

A third really great reason? If you’re under 25, tickets are $27 (including booking fee) before the show. I imagine it might be busier Friday and Saturday. But we got seated in gold. Otherwise known as $151.50 tickets.

So, any criticism? Kristin Darragh was disappointing, particularly early on, singing from upstage, where she was barely audible. And, um, that would be it. The second countertenor, Arsamene, played more of a lyric role than Xerxes, with an equally impressive voice that wasn’t deployed so much. His duet with Tiffany Speight’s Romilda was deliciously fiery. So fiery in fact, that it didn’t make a great deal of sense in the story. Perhaps a number self-plagiarised by Handel?