• 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.

• 26 February 8pm: Mahler Symphony No. 8. Will be awesome. There is a free live broadcast in Civic Square, tickets for the real thing range from $46 to $176. I suspect that the $46 tickets will be really, really bad, probably a worse option than the broadcast, but probably that’s where I’ll end up.
• 5 March 8pm: Simon O’Neill sings a selection of Wagner. The Festival describes this as a “banquet of delights for opera-lovers”, but on the whole I’d rather have an actual opera, or at least a proper orchestral concert featuring contemporary music. In any case, didn’t essentially the same concert happen in Wellington fairly recently? Thanks are due to everybody who didn’t turn up at Resonances at the last festival – you’re the reason we can’t have nice things. $40-$125. Don’t throw your money away.
• 6-7 March between events: Breath of Wind, featuring the Levin Brass Band. I’ve no idea what this will actually sound/look like, but it’s free!
• 6 March 12pm: organ recital by John Wells. Free!
• 6 March 2pm: Stockhausen’s Helicopter String Quartet. Or, at least, a film of it, rather than the actual thing. Free.
• 6 March 4pm: the NZTrio perform a variety of movements from various string trios. The highlight will probably be a new work by David Downes, if only for the fact that it won’t have its integrity compromised by the Greatest Hits concept. Why is this happening at 4pm? $45 (one class of seating).
• 6 March 7.30pm: The Borodin Quartet play string quartets by Borodin, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. Not an astonishingly exciting programme, but it has Shostakovich 8th and there will supposedly be $15 student rush tickets available.
• 7 March 12pm: organ recital by Douglas Mews. Free!
• 7 March 2pm: a (mostly) children’s concert of music inspired by Tolkein and Dahl with the Zephyr Wind Quintet. Tickets are $36, kids $18.
• 7 March 4pm: the NZSQ perform Schubert, Alban Berg, Ross Harris and Beethoven (with Jenny Wollerman). The Alban Berg String Quartet really turned me on to 20th century music. It’s an absolute masterpiece, and definitely worth hearing. The Ross Harris should be interesting as well, although the Schubert is rather dull. $45 (one class of seating).
• 7 March 7.30pm: Keith Lewis in recital accompanied by Michael Houstoun. This is a total waste of Houstoun and of the festival’s money – a professional accompanist would do an equally good job. On the programme are Purcell, Britten, Barber and the inestimable Jenny McLeod. Probably the best programme on offer at the festival. $58 B reserve, $68 A reserve.
• 12 March 8pm: Ravi Shankar is 90 years old. This is the probably the last chance to see him play (I hope so, he certainly deserves a rest at that age) – and he certainly is a great musician – but there is quite a possibility that – as with Pavarotti’s tour a couple of years ago, he’s simply past it. Tickets range from $73 to $120.
• 17 March 7.30pm: The Freiburg Baroque orchestra performs Haydn and Mozart. Although the festival claims they are interpreters of “Classical Romantic and even contemporary music”, their two programmes belie this. It would be a fair bet that these two concerts will sound exactly the same, but if you must go to one, make it this first one, featuring the fourth Mozart Horn Concerto. $46-$98. You’ll need to spend $88 to be in a half-reasonable position.
• 18 March 7.30pm: The FBO snore their way through their second concert of Haydn and Mozart. $46-$98

Things I want to see:

While Trial of the Cannibal Dog was really quite unexpectedly good, I’d love there to be a contemporary opera with some kind of established reputation, or at least by an established international composer (cf. 2006 with Tan Dun’s Tea: A Mirror of Soul). The hottest such opera right at the moment, of course, is John Adams’ Doctor Atomic, but it would be strange to see this programmed after the NZSO performed the Doctor Atomic Symphony last year. My personal preference would be one of Olga Neuwirth’s operas Bählamms Fest or Lost Highway, but I suspect that she probably wouldn’t be well-known enough to the New Zealand public to attract much of an audience.

Olga Neuwirth on the programme might also satisfy one of my other ambitions for the festival – a really fine chamber ensemble. Klangforum Wien works regularly with Neuwirth, as well as with a large group of other contemporary composers. Unfortunately, they’re busy in February and March next year performing new operas. Next time please? An alternative would be Bang on a Can (or some variant thereof), which would be a better option for more accessible contemporary music.

It would be nice to have one other NZSO concert, but that might be dependent on whether an audience could be found. The best thing to be said for the attendance at the Adams concert last year was that it was very easy to ‘upgrade’ seats. It would be hard to beat the music on offer at that concert – when I was having my harp lessons at the NZSO offices I actually did have a fit of glee when I saw the score for Shaker Loops lying around. Alan Hovhaness will have been dead ten years in 2010, and while he may have been one of those ridiculous-number-of-symphonies composers, at least these symphonies are well-constructed and accessible, if not particularly stimulating.

Some early music would also be a welcome addition, but unlikely due to the choirs being tied up. I’d like to hear some Josquin des Prez.