• 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.

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.

• Traditional, arranged by Carol Shortis: Polskie Kwiaty
• Simon Eastwood: Jericho: Walls Will Fall
• Henryk Górecki: Three Pieces in Olden Style
• Witold Lutoslawski: Melodie Ludowe
• Krzysztof Penderecki: Allegro Moderato from Sextet
• Henryk Górecki: Totus Tuus
• Karol Szymanowski: Rymy Dzieciece  – Children’s Rhymes Op. 49
• Karlo Margetic: Hommage  à W.L.
• Carol Shortis: Tesknota (Yearning)

6 November at the ACR

• Traditional, arranged by Carol Shortis: Polskie Kwiaty
• Krysztof Penderecki: 3 miniature per clarinetto e pianoforte
• Grazyna Bacewicz: Quintet for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon and Horn
• Henryk Górecki: Piano Sonata No. 1
• Anton Killin: Podróze
• Aleksander Tansman: Sonatine for Bassoon and Piano
• Aleksander Tansman: Studio from Pièces brèves pour guitare and Canzonetta from Trois pièces pour guitare
• Andrzej Nowicki: Abstand und Nähe

7 November at St Andrew’s on the Terrace

• Traditional, arranged by Carol Shortis: Polskie Kwiaty
• Simon Dickson: Jericho: Walls Will Fall
• Henryk Górecki: Piano Sonata No. 1
• Henryk Górecki: Three Pieces in Olden Style
• Witold Lutoslawski: Melodie Ludowe
• Anton Killin: Podróze
• Henryk Górecki: Totus Tuus
• Karlo Margetic: Hommage  à W.L.
• Carol Shortis: Tesknota (Yearning)

SMP’s final concert series for 2009 was certainly an ambitious undertaking – three concerts featuring seventeen pieces by eleven composers. Each concert opened with a rendition of the Polish folk song Polskie Kwiaty. Jonathan Berkahn’s accordion offered both a connection to folk traditions and a keen timbre that echoed the song’s sentiments and matched well to Olga Gryniewicz’s voice. Her replacement in the second concert by countertenor Laurie Fleming due to family reasons could not be considered particularly successful – Fleming’s voice felt far too light for the arrangement – but this failed to prevent the Polish segments of the audience vocally endorsing each performance. Polskie Kwiaty was also an element in two of the commissioned works – Carol Shortis’ Tesknota and, to a lesser extent, Anton Killin’s Podróze.

Simon Eastwood’s work for trumpet, horn and trombone reflecting upon the Solidarity movement felt less successful. Jericho consists of a series of disjunct miniatures, with few discernable connections. Although it makes use of several appealing musical ideas and brass techniques, but none of these are explored in any detail, but are abruptly dropped in moving to the next section of music. Possibly some of these section changes could have been masked by the use of a slightly larger ensemble and a longer time frame, avoiding the necessity of an uncomfortable silence for the performers to change their mutes. The lengths of the miniatures also creates a rather unnatural, unresolved ending, that feels out of kilter with the messages of the work. Jericho shows defiance in spades, but not much hope.

The music of Henryk Górecki proved an integral part of all three programmes. The utterly unpretentious Three Pieces in Olden Style are amongst Górecki’s best known work and the SMP String Ensemble performed them with appropriate crispness. Only in the third of the pieces is there any hint of the angst that pervades much of the composer’s work; the first two pieces are based on simple folk-like melodies that might come from any country in Europe. These pieces could not be any more different from the Piano Sonata No. 1. This is a proto-minimalist work, foreshadowing Górecki’s later output. The first movement throws out melodic fragments from a thick – and violent – chordal texture before an abrupt departure into a sparse, quiet interlude. When the original texture returns it still possesses the latent fury of the opening, but with more positive undertones. The middle movement is an extreme contrast – a stagnant monophonic theme and subsequent harmonisation. Unfortunately, this does not in itself make a particularly effective piece of music – the movement feels as if it has been thrown in to justify the ‘sonata’ title. The third movement returns to the spirit of the first, although this time it is the chords that seem to be spat out of the melody; Laurel Hungerford experienced some difficulties with this movement during both performances, but still did a great job of harnessing the work’s energy. Totus Tuus simply does not measure up to either of these works. Although the sounds are attractive, they are simply repeated too often, rendering the music almost lifeless. In the first performance there also seemed to be some issues of balance with the choir – which felt a little bottom-heavy – although these cleared up on the 7th.

Witold Lutoslawski’s Melodie Ludowe are hardly the  most exciting part of his output; one cannot help wondering whether the time of both the composer and the string ensemble could have been put to better use. Karlo Margetic’s homage to Witold Lutoslawski has everything that Melodie Ludowe does not; Hommage  à W.L. uses a variety of interesting sounds arranged within a clear structure. The overall tripartite form is delineated by woodblock interludes, while sectional changes within these parts are dictated by the conductor. Particularly effective were the use of bowed cymbal in the first part, which really sang at times, and the densely packed second part. There were some aethetic similarities between Margetic’s work and the Allegro Moderato from Penderecki’s Sextet. Although the music is hardly boneshattering, Penderecki does not flinch from some quite complex instrumental interactions that provide a superb sonic soup. The miniatures performed in the second concert provided a further stripped down iteration of the composer’s style that showcased the skills of Andrzej Nowicki to marvellous effect.

Karol Szymanowski, although a prominent part of Polish compositional history, never made a significant impact in the wider world; his music lacks the distinctive style that propelled Czech and Russian nationalists to prominence. The Children’s Rhymes written for his niece might be a very personal compositional statement, but they largely lacked the most important trait of the genre – that any child or parent might ever want to sing them. Perhaps Szymanowski was simply well ahead of his time in this one area, or perhaps a Polish upbringing is even further from the New Zealand experience than one might imagine, but a children’s song really ought to have an attractive melody. Olga Gryniewicz sang better than the music deserved.

Alexander Tansman provided three works of varying quality for the second programme. The Sonatine for Bassoon and Piano is an attractive work that manages to be energetic without Studio betrays its faults in its title; while it may function perfectly well as an etude for study, the absence of textural or rhythmic variation makes it unsuitable as concert piece, particularly as the somewhat fractured performance revealed an apparent host of technical difficulties for little aural reward. While the Canzonetta was played with more surety and expression, it did much less than the Sonatine to make a case for the composer’s abilities. Grazyna Bacewicz’s wind quintet proved an accessible, yet oftentimes intriguing piece of music. In particular that “Air”, which played with both the musical and literal meanings of the title in the swirling interludes of the flute, oboe and clarinet.

It tends to be quite difficult to consider a piece of New Zealand anecdotal/radiophonic music without thinking of John Cousins, but although Podróze displays many of the signs it manages to move beyond these. The use of unnervingly loud bangs at sectional points is one link, but these tend to be used as part of dramatic events rather than as changes in focus. Podróze is electroacoustic music for an audience not necessarily very familiar with the genre. Unlike in Cousins’ work (and that of his protégés), the narrative takes a linear form, and many of the sound choices are obvious emphases of various elements of the journey – particularly things like water noises. Other sounds, like the long, barely heightening drumroll near the beginning might be assigned several meanings. The gamelan interlude, however, really needs an explanation of some kind.

Andrzej Nowicki’s piece Abstand und Nähe, originally written for gamelan and bassoon, survives the transfer to marimba and bassoon remarkably well. Unsurprisingly, the marimba writing is hardly idiomatic, which leaves the audience to consider the missing elements, but it is still an engaging work. Carol Shortis’ Tesknota, which finished the 1st and 3rd concerts, is an entirely different kettle of fish. Much of its material originates from Polskie Kwaity and a second traditional song, but the string parts appear to reference Górecki’s style. The choir sings a complex array of murmured fragments, while soprano and countertenor bear the pieced together verses. The second performance (with better balance between the soloists) was utterly intoxicating between the unchecked power of the folksong and the churning background noise.