23 December 2013

Review: Handel's Messiah - Auckland Choral

Auckland Town Hall, 16 December 2013

Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli, soprano; Anna Pierard, mezzo soprano; Christopher Bowen, tenor; Shane Lowrencev, bass; Auckland Choral; Pipers Sinfonia; Uwe Grodd, conductor.

Reviewer: Ella Tunnicliffe-Glass


Auckland Choral’s annual performances of Handel’s Messiah are an institution, and it would be easy for conductor Uwe Grodd to rely on tradition and Christmas spirit to draw his audiences. Gratifyingly, this was not a Messiah that rested on its laurels. Excellent soloists joined Auckland Choral and Pipers Sinfonia to present an engaging and enjoyable performance, but one that struggled at times to present a united interpretative approach.

Tenor Christopher Bowen’s opening recit and aria were entrancing, with thoughtful ornamentation and pleasing interplay between singer and instrumentalists. He continued to impress throughout the oratorio, particularly in the still and affecting “Thy rebuke hath broken His heart” and declamatory “Thou shalt break them”. Shane Lowrencev was a commanding presence in “Thus saith the Lord”, bringing out Handel’s word-painting in the ornamentation of the word “shake”. Unfortunately, Grodd’s extremely fast tempi in some of the later arias proved too much for even this usually agile singer, and Lowrencev came across as an accompanist to Huw Dann’s trumpet in “The trumpet shall sound”, rather than as an equal. Acclaimed New Zealand mezzo Anna Pierard brought pathos and intensity to the famous aria “He was despised”, and was not put off by occasional lapses in intonation from the violins. Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli proved an excellent choice, the aria “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion” providing the perfect vehicle to display a facility for both vibrant ornamentation and affecting legato passages. At times, though, it was difficult to make out her words, a problem she shared with the tenors and basses of Auckland Choral.

The choir sang well overall, particularly in the fiery choruses “Surely he hath borne our griefs” and “He trusted in God”. At times, slower tempi might have resulted in more precise singing, and relieved the choir’s difficulties with the passagework in “All we like sheep” and “Let us break their bonds asunder”. Grodd’s decision to present the Messiah in its entirety was admirable. However, on this occasion, the choir seemed to struggle with the great length of the work, seemingly “saving themselves” for the more famous choruses. Judicious cuts might have resulted in a more consistent performance.

Once again, the audience was treated to a full arsenal of continuo instruments: two harpsichords, chamber organ, Town Hall organ, theorbo and bassoon, in addition to Pipers Sinfonia’s cello and bass sections, which were thoughtfully deployed in various combinations. Grodd’s choice of harpsichord and bassoon for the energetic final chorus of Part One was particularly apt. James Tibbles’ chamber organ was a delight, its gentle sound perfectly matched to Mazzulli’s interpretation of the recit “There were shepherds abiding in the field”. The cello section matched their articulation particularly well to the keyboard instruments, adding bite to the chamber organ and sustenance to the harpsichord. Unfortunately, Stephen Pickett’s theorbo was almost inaudible despite amplification, highlighting the difficulty of including a notably quiet early instrument in a modern orchestra performing in a large venue.

Many of the players in Pipers Sinfonia have early music affiliations, and concert master Amelia Giles lead the group in a light, energetic, and “baroque” interpretation of the work. The strings brought out the nuances of Handel’s score, and demonstrated biting precision in “O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion” and “Why do the nations so furiously rage together”. For the most part, Pipers Sinfonia’s interpretative decisions were very successful: Mazzulli, too, is experienced in early music, and the orchestra complemented her clear voice. In contrast, Pierard took a more Romantic, operatic approach to her arias and recits, as did Auckland Choral, and at times the contrast between musicians was disconcerting. In the duet “He shall feed his flock”, the contrast between Pierard and Mazzulli’s vocal styles detracted from their individually excellent performances. Selecting such contrasting voices did no favours for any of the singers, and in fact was disruptive to the overall listening experience: the first few bars of each entry were spent readjusting to a new sound world.

Nevertheless, this was a Messiah that held the listeners’ interest from beginning to end. The overall high quality of this performance, combined with moments of true brilliance, reminded listeners that this is a work worth hearing not just for tradition’s sake, but for its own merits.


12 December 2013

Review: 175 East

Q Theatre, Loft

Music by Philip Brownlee, James Saunders and Dorothy Ker
Performers: Ingrid Culliford, flutes; Donald Nicholls, clarinets; Andrew Uren, bass clarinet; Tim Sutton, bass trombone; Sam Rich, percussion; Robert Ashworth, viola; Katherine Hebley, cello; Bella Zilber, double bass; Hamish McKeich, conductor
Artistic director: Samuel Holloway

Alex Taylor

A 175 East concert is a keenly anticipated event amongst Auckland's new music community, guaranteed to present a unique and challenging programme. Artistic director Samuel Holloway has continued the group's staunch advocacy of both New Zealand composers and composers from the UK and Europe, especially those works with an uncompromising conceptual framework. A 175 East concert makes no apologies for demanding the attention and engagement of its audience; it is one of the few music events on the Auckland calendar that consistently provokes discussion and divides opinion. Some critics have opined 175 East's concerts as opaque or even hostile, committed to a particularly austere aesthetic. I would argue that this brand of combative listening experience is fundamental to Auckland's cultural life, encouraging us out of familiar and passive modes of listening.

In recent years 175 East's core instrumental line-up has shrunk to a handful of key members, so it was heartening to see the inclusion of new blood and a wider instrumental palette. Many of 175 East's early commissions included percussion, which has been generally absent for some years, but Sunday's concert was a percussion revival of sorts, featuring in ensemble works by Philip Brownlee and James Saunders. Brownlee's Tendril and Nebula was delicately crafted, with particularly nuanced percussion writing bookending the work. Mallet man Sam Rich proved himself equal to the task, bringing a taut and deliberate approach to his playing, a good foil to the rather relaxed style of some of the more experienced members of the ensemble. Tendril and Nebula for me had an appealing looseness to it, an organicism with roots in free improvisation, where other works in the programme seemed more tightly structured, albeit in decidedly non-linear fashion.

Just as Brownlee's work was bookended by reaching and receding tendrils of percussion, the concert itself was framed start and end by the two works featuring percussion. James Saunders's 511 possible mosaics presented a fascinating matrix of modular sounds, here sixty different “variations” of an eight-bar musical fragment. I say “variations” because these sixty repetitions are exactly identical except for which of the six instruments are participating in any given iteration. The work is completed when all possible instrumental combinations have been performed. I found myself alternately gripped with boredom and captive fascination, the distinctive but homogeneous sound of larger permutations of the group periodically undercut by more characterful solos and duos. Particularly effective was the late introduction of the percussion, waiting ominously in the back row, and the zippy contributions of Tim Sutton's muted trombone and Bella Zilber's double bass. Advocates of new music often complain that we need repeat listenings to fully appreciate a new work's language and craft; Holloway here let us listen sixty times, and I was surprised how much I became aware of changes in harmony and texture, each voicing containing its own very individual palette and character. I found myself inexorably drawn to the end of each repetition, where the scurries and stipples broadened out towards something sustained and tangible.

Saunders's other work on the programme, instruments with recordings, was a very different beast, although just as forceful in its exploration of a particular sound world. Abrasive, mechanical electronic sonorities, both harmonic and inharmonic, were joined by flute, trombone and cello. The entries and exits of these instruments drew attention to particular changes in the spectra of these huge monolithic columns of sound, although I wondered if closer attention to intonation could have produced a more brilliant and convincing intersection of the mechanical with the organic.

Nestled within the shiny boundaries of those two Saunders pieces were two works by UK-based New Zealander Dorothy Ker. Le kaléidoscope de l'obscurité, written in 2004 but revised for this performance, bore structural similarities to Saunders's 511 possible mosaics, insofar as gestures were largely small and self-contained, obscuring a linear reading of the work. For me this piece had a paratactic quality, reaching back and forward across fragments, residues reappearing and disappearing. I was reminded of the work of American poet Lyn Hejinian, whose prose-poetry autobiography My Life encapsulates this paratactic, non-linear quality, discrete sentences accumulating a massive network of sensory and linguistic connections. Many of Ker's gestures had a similar sensuousness: recurrent deep, rich chorales that swelled to broad plateaus; tactile flurries of amplified double bass pizzicato; melifluous bass clarinet licks touched with whimsy. As much as the kaleidoscopic effect of the work was jagged and dazzling, and at times startling despite its ephemerality, I longed for a few more moments spent hanging on those velvety bass chords.

Ker's Reef, a world premiere, seemed in this context almost a magnification, a concentration, of the opening swelling gesture of le kaleidoscope de l'obscurite. But here the process and residue of that ebb and flow was much clearer, more linear. Ingrid Culliford's flutes were expanded timbrally, both by the other instruments in the ensemble (including a star turn from Donald Nicholls on scampering piccolo clarinet) and through amplification. Culliford's liquid, dextrous lines left rich patterns on the texture of the music; one particularly exquisite moment came near the centre of the piece where the flute left a long static wake, edging towards inaudibility. When this moment shattered in an almost rude clarion call from the bass clarinet I found myself strangely perturbed; this concert had thrown up so few of these overtly dramatic structural points that its sudden impact felt alien. This reconfigured my attention back towards the gestural, the momentary, and though initially jolted, I listened almost vigilantly for the rest of the concert.

175 East continues to impress: with the opportunities it provides for its listeners to engage; with the dynamic interplay of the works themselves within a programme; with the quality of composition and performance; and most of all with the chance to reconsider and reshape how we listen.




27 November 2013

Guest Review: The Committee

MacLaurin Chapel, the University of Auckland

Music by Anthony Young, Ryan Youens, David Hamilton, Helen Bowater and others

Performers: Elizabeth Mandeno, soprano; Claire Scholes, mezzo-soprano; Stephen Rapana, tenor; Te Oti Rakena, baritone; David Kelly, piano

Guest review: Christiaan Swanepoel

The Committee’s Shorts and Suites programme provided an excellent opportunity for composers and performers alike to enjoy the talents of singers Elizabeth Mandeno, Claire Scholes, Steven Rapana and Te Oti Rakena and pianist David Kelly as well as the lush acoustics of the Maclaurin Chapel. The programme presented song cycles by established New Zealand composers interspersed with a variety of new vocal microscores, composed specifically for this concert.

The song cycles displayed a common lack of memorability and defining features. While occasional interesting moments did occur, in general little stood out to define each of the suites. There were certainly exceptions; the third piece from Anthony’s Young ‘Night Swimming’, ‘I miss you like’, provided a tongue-in-cheek relief from the overwhelming sentimentality and jazz-reminiscent songwriting of the other sections. The ‘cute’ text was well served by a characterful performance by baritone Te Oti Rakena: ‘I miss you... like espresso coffee - 10 cups a day with dark chocolate biscuits.’ Ryan Youens’ ‘Papatūānuku’ provided an enjoyable listening experience but suffered from the same lack of purpose and memorability as the others despite being masterfully rendered by soprano Elizabeth Mandeno. Helen Bowater’s ‘A wild sea for the crossing’ provided the most interest and escaped some of the excessive ‘songiness’ of the others through its greater rhythmic focus and tonal interest. This was well matched by a fantastic performance by Claire Scholes.

The brevity and variety of the microscores were in marked contrast with the aforementioned song suites. Humor and parody were prevalent, as was non-traditional vocal technique. Overall, they were entertaining and the short length provided an effective format for compositional communication. I felt that some of the microscores suffered from their overreliance on humour; Robbie Ellis’s ‘Saying Grace’ and ‘Sheepdog Plainchant’ had little musical depth beyond their parodical aspects. The second movement of Blaz González’s ‘Debris’ was marred by the same problem; it was over-reliant on the gimmick of musical ‘gargling’. The other two sections of the work were more effective and demonstrated greater compositional thought through their dystopian sound world. I felt that the only really effective use of humour was in Callum Blackmore’s ‘One Minute Opera #2’, in which deconstruction and compression of operatic cliche received a lively response from the audience. The standout of the ‘serious’ microscores was Celeste Oram’s ‘from the air, the skyscrapers and gravestones look much the same’. Oram’s use of the gentler side of the human voice was a refreshing implementation of extended vocal technique and suited the intimate nature of the venue and ensemble excellently.

Overall, while the quality of composition varied greatly, the performances were generally excellent. The range of styles and techniques used by the composers presented a challenging programme that was mostly well executed by the singers. Claire Scholes and Elizabeth Mandeno particularly distinguished themselves through their technical mastery and their commitment to the ‘characters’ they played. The highly resonant space of the Maclaurin Chapel suited this concert well, with its high ceilings and hard surfaces occasionally amplifying the voices to delightfully powerful levels.

The greater success of the microscores relative to the song cycles has implications for future programming and composition in general. The main issue with the longer works was a general lack of sustained purpose or energy. Conversely, the restricted parameters of the microscores here presented a more fertile ground for composition; it seems that restriction acts as a catalyst for creativity that, in light of this concert, composers need to utilize more often. For longer works, care needs to be taken in crafting the music so that purpose and direction are maintained throughout and the listener remains engaged.

30 September 2013

Guest Review: Karlheinz Company

The University of Auckland Music Theatre

Karlheinz Company: Spring Forward

Music by John Cage, Peter Scholes, John Elmsly and Jonathan Mandeno

Performers: Jennifer Maybee, soprano; Kenny Keppel, clarinet; Uwe Grodd, flute; Abigail Sperling, flute; Alex Taylor, violin; Angela Kong, violin; Rachel Grimwood, viola; Robert Drage, cello; Madeleine Lie, double bass; Laurence McFarlane, percussion; John Elmsly, conductor

Guest review: Callum Blackmore

---

The Karlheinz Company’s second annual offering, a daring and enriching programme aptly entitled “Spring Forward”, certainly had no lack of ‘spring’. Curated by music director John Elmsly, the buzzing Sunday afternoon audience were presented with a brilliant programme of old “new” music and new “new” music from both New Zealand and international composers, showcasing some of Auckland’s most outstanding performers.

John Cage’s 1958 “Aria” showcases the human voice at its most colourful. Notated in coloured wavy lines and black rectangles, containing texts from five different languages, this is a staple of 20th Century vocal repertoire. Veteran performer, soprano Jennifer Maybee, led the audience on a gripping exploration of the voice’s outer limits, not shying away from the most extreme forms of vocal production, from meandering pianissimo coloratura to barking fishwife. A mesmerising performer, Maybee kept us on the edge of our seats from start to finish, seamlessly transitioning between ten different vocal timbres, creating an endlessly evolving and seemingly continuous spectrum of colours. Moments of drama came in the form of the various “noisy events”, which punctuated the vocal line with various percussive interludes, including, among others, the maddened squeaking of a rubber toy, retrieved from inside the nearby piano. With her vocal versatility and striking dramatic intensity, Jennifer Maybee presented Cage’s masterpiece as an unforgettable concert experience.

Peter Scholes, in his “Wireless”, does for clarinet what John Cage does for the voice in “Aria”, exploring the very extremes of instrumental colour. Inspired by the development of radio transmission, Scholes creates a dazzling collage of vivid sonic gestures that range from squealing high register sirens and incessantly forceful multiphonics, to barely audible electric whispers which evolve into vibrant sonic swirls. Clarinettist Kenny Keppel chartered this virtuosic marathon with panache and musical flair, in an outstanding feat of performance that lasted just a little over thirteen minutes. Keppel demonstrated an incredible command of sound itself, shaping every gesture with remarkable sensitivity. His truly whole-hearted commitment to every sonic event resulted in a rare kind of raw energy that quickened the pulse and livened the soul.

The second John Cage offering provided the lowlight of the evening. Compared with the endless colour and energy of the first two items, “Three pieces for flute duet” seemed to fall flat. This is early Cage, and it seems to lack a certain dimensionality, with all three pieces presenting a sort of brazen contrapuntal monochrome. In these duets, harmonies occur almost by accident, resulting from the chance encounters of two independent contrapuntal voices and while this produced some distinctly vibrant intervallic combinations, the lack of timbral variety and musical dynamism and evolution certainly made this piece one of the less engaging items of the programme. It was not until the more cohesive third movement, where Cage distorts harmonic space through contrasting wide and small intervals, that flautists Uwe Grodd and Abigail Sperling truly began to inhabit the piece, more a criticism of the piece itself than of its musically meticulous and sonically expressive performers.

John Elmsly’s “Soft Drop II” for two flutes provided a stunning opening to the second half of the concert. This piece proved a much more effective showcase for the two talented flautists of the evening than the earlier Cage work, allowing a unique kind of chemistry and communication between the two that the Cage seemed to deny (in spite of the fact that Elmsly positions his performers antiphonally, at complete opposite poles of the space). A reworking of a piece written as a response to the death of John Cage, Elmsly demonstrates how simple musical formulae can be effectively woven into a delicious musical offering. Pitch material derived from the acronym C A G E ' S D E A D and rhythmic material derived from 1 9 9 2 (the year of Cage’s death), was systematically transformed, musically and spectrally, between the two flutes in a manner that hinted towards Stockhausen. The backdrop to this musical transformation is provided by the audience themselves, who were asked at the start of the piece to hum the notes C A G E continuously for the duration of the piece, creating an endlessly moving, yet eerily still, musical aura that enveloped the spatial to and fro of the two flautists (reminiscent perhaps of the “Unsichtbare Chöre” of Stockhausen’s “Donnerstag aus Licht”). As an audience member this was at first quite distracting, the focus being on the humming, and rather than on the delicate gestures of the performers. However as the voice became used to the mechanical production of these four notes and the ear became accustomed to the sonic balance of the piece, what resulted was a highly effective, deeply meditative and endlessly moving piece in which the souls of performers and audience members are collectively at one with the music. Particularly effective were the moments where the flutes took up the same melodic material as the audience, creating a magical sonic blend of vocal and woodwind timbres. My only criticism is that the audience instructions would have been more effective if they had been written verbatim in the programme to allow for more effective communication of the unorthodox audience role.

Jonathan Mandeno’s “Le Tribolazioni de Pulcinella”, the most recent work in the programme, provided an enchanting finale to the concert. Described as a “musical enactment of Italian Commedia Dell’Arte”, each instrument in the seven-strong ensemble takes on the persona of one of the stock characters of Commedia theatre, interacting with one another both musically and physically in a manner again akin to Stockhausen’s “Licht” (and more aptly, his hallmark clarinet work “Harlekin”, although the composer assures me that neither piece was a conscious influence). A lively and action-packed plot ensues, packed full of flamboyant pantomime and slapstick violence. This adventurous dramatic context was a courageous framework for the piece, and one that could have easily fallen into imagination-limiting programmaticism, or, worse, overblown pastiche. However Mandeno approaches this framework with the perfect balance of subtlety and boldness, creating work that is humorous and entertaining, yet mature and intellectually engaging. Pastiche, when used, is nuanced and sensitive and there is enough abstraction in the work to allow the intellect and the imagination to find engagement. The music itself is bristling with raw, uncontained energy, matching perfectly the primal instincts of the theatrical archetypes portrayed. Complex, intricate, dramatically shifting textures and always busy textures gave this piece a sizzling sonic pulse that was both fresh and rousing. Mandeno demonstrates a great dramatic impulse, with each gesture carefully sculpted to the theatrical flow of the piece.

This piece was another tour de force for the outstanding Kenny Keppel, who portrayed the delightfully vulgar protagonist of the title with charm and flair. Mandeno’s clarinet writing is very accomplished and Keppel takes the entire work in his stride. Keppel won the audience over right from the outset, from his flagrantly mischievous entrance to the taunting backstage echoes of his final strains. Keppel demonstrates the same commitment to sound and character that made his performance of the Scholes so endearing. His every movement totally embodied his dramatic persona, somehow managing to be simultaneously mischievous, malicious, adorable, crude, seductive, brutish and lively with a physicality that matched both his own sound and also Mandeno’s varied musical colours. Particularly effective was a sexy shimmy that accompanied a particularly gaudy passage in scene 5.

Under the animated baton of John Elmsly there was a strong cohesion in the ensemble. The interactions between the clarinet and the various stringed instruments were handled particularly well both by composer and performers (including the spicy interchange with Alex Taylor’s Columbina and the heated tussle with Madeleine Lie’s Il Dottore) with Laurence McFarlane skilfully providing a sharp percussive backing track that flitted between slapstick sound effect and emotional narrative. Delicious cameos from Anglea Kong, Rachel Grimwood and Robbie Drage proved that this was an ensemble of first-rate musicians. Mandeno has a knack for bringing out an eclectic array of colours from his ensemble. In select moments, he allows the string section to shine past the charismatic woodwind writing in intricately complex, spine-tinglingly vibrant and occasionally pointillistic counterpoint. I personally found the piece lost its spark a little in the third and fourth movements, which seemed to resolve a little into placidity; however this had the upside of providing relief from the intense sonic explosions of the outer movements. Overall this was a powerful, colourful, invigorating and fresh piece, which worked equally effectively as both theatre and abstract concert music, securing Jonathan Mandeno’s place as one of New Zealand’s most exciting musical voices.

In a recent article in this same publication Alex Taylor and Celeste Oram advocated for adventurous programming that presented “the boldest work of the highest available quality” and also presented the very best international works “to build a frame and a platform from which our music takes off”, advocating for risk and flair over familiarity and conservatism. This concert did just that, presenting the fresh, the bold, the exciting and the daring, for the intrepid audience to sink their teeth into.



27 September 2013

Guest Post: Celeste Oram and Alex Taylor

The University of Auckland Clocktower

The Committee: Equinox

https://www.facebook.com/thecommitteecomposers

Music by Yvette Audain, Sarah Ballard, Leonie Holmes, Kevin Kim, Rohan King, Louise Webster and Peter Willis

Performers: Yvette Audain, saxophones; Sharon Baylis, viola; Felicity Hanlon, oboe and cor anglais; Ben Hoadley, bassoon; Kevin Kim, recorders; Tom Pierard, cello; Claire Scholes, mezzo-soprano

Guest post: Celeste Oram and Alex Taylor


---


It would have been much easier not to write this article. Then we would still have all the skin on our noses; no toes would have been stepped on; no feathers ruffled. But we sense a lack of in-depth and provocative music critique in our city, and hence a lack of incisive discourse surrounding the work of young(ish) composers. This makes us itchy and impatient. New Zealanders can be notoriously acquiescent; but this is not particularly conducive to a robust composerly environment. This article is hence written the spirit of wanting to start the conversations that desperately need to be had, but we don't hear anyone else starting.

This is not an attempt to divide and conquer. It is not an attempt to snatch ourselves more pieces of pie. It is absolutely not fueled by any petty sense of resentment. It is a genuinely determined effort to start a discussion about how Auckland composers (and more widely, musicians and artists) can work together to forge an artistic scene that demands more of us, that makes us better composers and makes our performers better musicians, that enthuses our audiences, and that we can take a great deal of pride in. Our only "agenda" is to write seriously good music, to advocate for a scene in which we can do so proudly, to seek out the terra nova: and encourage our fellow composers to do the same, so we can all write the best music we can.

---
As young composers, we are told that entrepreneurship is the golden ticket to what we do. Gauche is the undergraduate who embarks on their path thinking that putting the right dots on the page is enough to establish them and their music. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard the phrase "composers have to make their own opportunities", I would probably have enough in the kitty to negate the need for this comment in the first place.

It is, of course, a catchy mantra. It is a convenient paraphrase of the mentality drilled into each Gen Y-er, in any field: cementing our generation's individualism and cutting some slack for the larger establishment organizations that are likely to fail us. This aphorism's valuable merit is that it encourages young composers to reject complacency with the scene they find themselves in: to imagine what a music scene could and should be, and to empower them to make happen what they see lacking.

This aphorism's problems, however, lie in its potential for sanctioning mediocrity and deincentivising a composer's striving for excellence. At its worst, this mentality spawns patchy, self-indulgent vanity projects. By essentially bypassing the quality control of third-party peer reviewers, anything goes: if you write it, it can get performed. At this point, you might think, but it's just simple market economics: if the audiences come, they must be doing something right. Or perhaps, that the tastemakers in their ivory towers are all wrong - that we need grass-roots vanguards who will democratize the process and give each creative voice an airing. These are very valid points. But they don't leave room for imagining how this DIY attitude can be put to best use. For, at its best, this mentality can fire up a community that works together to insistently lift their game, make possible valuable opportunities, and shake the cobwebs off the establishment mausoleums.

An interesting case study to use in exploring these questions is a recent concert by The Committee, an Auckland-based composers' collective, whose stated mission is to promote the work of Auckland composers. The idea of a composers' collective promoting their own work is not without merit; new music needs advocates wherever it can find them. But it is also essential for a community of composers to discuss how such a collective can best serve the composers in its city, and best cultivate its creative community.

Last weekend's concert gave us a good deal of hope by proving two encouraging points. The first is that The Committee had secured Auckland Council's Arts Alive funding to support the concert. One little pohutukawa blossom of hope printed on the programme's back page shows that central funding bodies--specifically, and rightfully, Auckland-based ones--are amenable to funding our efforts. But receiving funding is a two-way transaction: both backs must be scratched. In other words, a venture that spends taxpayer money must genuinely believe that they are embarking on something that best serves and enriches their artistic community. Composers must put their best feet forward to their city, and offer to their audiences only that which shows the boldest of what we do, so they keep coming back.

Secondly, the afternoon's performances were notably excellent; the Committee have succeeded in getting high-caliber performers onside to do justice to the works presented. Auckland is lucky to have mezzo Claire Scholes, whose sensitive versatility and indefatigable adventurousness makes her an ideal advocate for new vocal music. I greatly look forward to seeing her, and other singers, showcased in The Committee's next concert in November, devoted to vocal music. It is always a delight to hear performances from long-time champions of new Auckland music, such as Ben Hoadley and Tom Pierard. And we are also lucky to have the chops of Yvette Audain and Kevin Kim--great players on unusual instruments--who, as composers themselves, have the potential of bringing extra insights to the pieces they approach. It is clear that our city is home to superb performers who are committed to the work of composers, and with whom very fruitful relationships can be forged.

But again, there is a flipside to this: as advocates for composers and their new works, surely a composers' collective could (and should) be more proactive in engaging performers more comprehensively in the development of new works. Composers are never best served by an attitude of "make sure we can get it together in a couple of rehearsals". Really really good music can be really really hard. Music that is really worth playing sometimes takes more than a couple of calls to make magic happen. Composers advocating for composers must never settle for the easy way out when it comes to negotiating with performers. Yes, I know, we're all busy, our pockets are all a bit thin, all the good musos are overstretched. But this is precisely why a composers' collective has a responsibility to foster good relationships with fantastic performers, to get them as fired up about our music as we are. Despite the professionalism and undoubted ability of all the performers on Sunday, there was no sense that they were invested in the music, that they were really risking something.

With these two essential batters--financial and human resources--run home, an independent composers' organization such as The Committee are in a unique and privileged position. Free from the sometimes turgid immobility of larger arts organizations, their scope for adventure and innovation is unbridled. The best service such a composers' collective can therefore offer is to champion the boldest work of the highest available quality that would not necessarily get airings by other performance groups. We are not convinced that, on the whole, last weekend's concert measured up to those three parameters.

Although one might expect a bewildering plethora of styles and tones in a line-up of eight new works, there was a disappointing flatness to the programme. Notable exceptions were the tightly-wound lines of Webster's Quicken and the compressed vitality of Sarah Ballard's Axis. To commission a fresh face, such as highly talented emerging composer Ballard, to add to the Committee's regular lineup resulted in a beautiful, sophisticated work that was the unequivocal highlight of the concert.  Holmes's Fourth Station, too, was gripping and poignant, if rather earnest. 

The flatness of the programme came from a lack of energy, and a lack of concision. The remaining pieces tended to suffer from a debilitating verbosity and a reliance on meandering modal lines without much rhythmic or gestural impetus. There must be a note here too about programming – we were presented with seven long pieces; I experienced this as a sort of extended malaise, broken most convincingly by Ballard's bold ensemble work. The curator's role is surely to provide balance, tension and relief in a concert programme, to allow the listener space and to present each work in its best light. In another context, perhaps flanked by propulsive miniatures, Rohan King's Temporal could have been strikingly meditative, but here, at the end of a long programme, it felt tired and overworked.
It's all very well to criticise the make-up of the programme, you might say, but these were new works – surely the commissioners couldn't have predicted what the composers would do? Two of the works were not in fact new: Holmes's Fourth Station, fit for purpose as part of an Easter exhibition celebrating the stations of the cross, is an impressive piece, and a suitable if safe choice. Audain's Hazine has had many outings, and for me epitomised the meandering sameness of the concert as a whole. These two slots were an opportunity to create greater rhythm and direction in the evening's line-up, an opportunity perhaps not best used. The programming reflected an aversion to risk that is perhaps inevitable from such a collective; what is chosen is what is least offensive to the greatest number of Committee members. And this is at the heart of why for me the concert failed: risk and flair were sacrificed in favour of familiarity and mediocrity, even and especially in many of the newly commissioned works. Conservatism for its own sake is surely the death of new music.
To begin to imagine what a highly successful and valuable composer-run performance platform might look like, let's offer the example of Sydney's Chronology Arts, founded in 2007 by then-emerging (now established) composers Andrew Batt-Rawden and Alex Pozniak. Chronology Arts have an audaciously ambitious vision for their support of emerging composers. Whilst commissioning and performing works from emerging composers is the bulk of what they do, they also facilitate professional and commercially released recordings of young composers' works, commission brokerage, and mentoring and professional development. Since its inception, Chronology Arts has premiered 130 new works by 80 composers - some internationally, such as kiwi Alexandra Hay. They are funded by the federal Australia Council for the Arts, the local Arts NSW and City of Sydney, and private donors. They collaborate with other local artists--dancers, video artists, photographers--and have jumped on the bandwagon of major festivals, including the ICSM World Music Days, when it was in Sydney in 2010. All this, dreamt up over a few beers (so I have been told) by two young and hungry composers who desperately wanted to lift Sydney's game.

To whinge that there is more arts money in Australia is to completely chicken out of facing up to why there is not a similar drive and vision among composers in New Zealand. Chronology Arts work bloody hard, but they have radically changed the new music scene in Sydney, and powerfully bolstered the careers of many young composers. Around the world there are countless instances of similar organizations.

And something else I'd like to put forward: a group that aims to serve NZ composers does not necessarily have to play New Zealand music all the time. If we want performers to get better at playing new music, if we want audiences to better understand and appreciate the crazy places we're coming from, it certainly won't hurt to engage them in the stuff that we know and love: to build a frame and a platform from which our music takes off. And there's a lot of karma at play in this business: to showcase the work of superb international emerging composers here in NZ is to open up avenues for NZ music to heard overseas. A parochial attitude only limits our horizons.

On a smaller matter, I personally was not convinced by the venue of the Clocktower. Yes, it's beautiful, yes, the in-the-round setup is highly effective, and yes, the mezzanine space was used well. But its hyper-sensitive acoustics brought out all the worst awkwardness of classical music concerts: the audience feeling paralyzed, like bugs in amber, lest the slightest shuffle or throat-clearing wrench the limelight away from the performance at hand. Why we continue to insist that internment in such an uncomfortable coffin is the most effective way to listen to and be engaged in music is completely beyond me. When interval comes as a relief, you know there's problems.

The Committee have a long and solid history behind them of supporting Auckland composers, and it is a legacy which ought to continue. They have the potential to offer a great service to new music in Auckland and beyond. But a concert such as this does not best represent the city's talent and creativity, nor does it do the greatest service to composers and the composition tradition in Auckland and beyond. If we as composers are committed to being fiercely innovative, to striving for excellence, determined to avoid stagnation and mediocrity, we need to have some more astute and discerning conversations about the kinds of channels we forge for our music.


26 February 2013

Review: Nostalgia presented by ARCO string orchestra

Kerr St Artspace (Museum of the Vernacular)

ARCO string orchestra
Alex Taylor - Conductor

Carolyn Drake

ARCO is now a well established feature of the Devonport musical scene, with many memorable performances over the last three years taking place at the Kerr St Artspace on the slopes of Mt Victoria. The brainchild of Silver Scrolls winner and local Alex Taylor, these concerts and other Intrepid Music Projects always promise audiences innovative interpretations of old and new music.

The ensemble began confidently with Edvard Grieg’s Holberg Suite. The first violins balanced playfulness with grace in the Praeludium, supported by robust rhythmic drive in the accompaniment. The Sarabande was lovingly shaped but was inflicted by moments of indigestible intonation. The Gavotte was too delicate, lacking the crispness demanded by the score; the task was made difficult by the soggy acoustic. This burden turned into great assistance in the Air where the first violins and lower strings traded beautifully dark and yearning phrases, softly cradled by the inner voices’ solemn pulses. The Rigaudon provided an energetic finish to the suite, with displays of outstanding virtuosity by Concertmaster Olivia Francis and Principal Viola Emma Fetherston.

Ronald Tremain's Five Epigrams for Twelve Solo Strings had the orchestra briefly explore different compositional methods. The concise programme notes were helpful for the listener to observe these Webern-esque process miniatures. The overall sound effect achieved by the orchestra in each movement was convincing, even if strict adherence to detail was hard to appreciate. The players managed the angular musical deconstructions with clarity and aplomb, undoubtedly helped in this instance with the direction of Taylor centre-stage.

The Dances of Brittany by Larry Pruden provided a lyrical contrast to the Tremain. The tolling undercurrent established by the violins energised the resonant viola section in their opening folk-like melody. Emma Fetherston crafted evocative viola solos in the second movement and reinvigorated the ensemble into the sparkling and fleetingly impressionistic final movement. This was certainly the highlight of the evening – excellent music performed with great joy.

After the interval came Tchaikovsky’s demanding Souvenir de Florence. The frolicsome first movement limped at a cumbersome pace, causing its usually flamboyant gestures and lilting phrases to become uncomfortably transparent and sometimes rather mechanical. The movement ended aggressively, saved from an abyss of cacophony with seconds to spare.

The central movements – Adagio cantabile e con moto and Allegretto moderato – were captivating in their simple beauty. The ensemble played the slow movement with a charming naïveté, however a more relaxed sound would have allowed subtler expressivo passages. The addition of double basses to the traditional sextet caused a few balance and intonation problems, however the additional power was particularly welcome in the third movement.

The Allegro vivace requires the players to create a tone of silky lightness but with the strength of steel. The violas and lower strings provided the secure rhythmic platform allowing glorious themes to flourish in the violins and upper celli. Animated by the liveliness of the music, the bright young musicians brought the concert to a rapturous conclusion.

25 February 2013

Review: After Lilburn - the music of New Zealand's gay composers.

Auckland University Music Theatre, Auckland

Performers: Mark Menzies, violin/viola; Claire Scholes, voice; Luca Manghi, flutes; Flavio Villani, piano; Justine Cormack, violin; Ashley Brown, cello; Sarah Watkins, piano; Finn Schofield, clarinet; Alex Taylor, spoken voice.


Carolyn Drake


It is good to hear a non-choral piece of David Hamilton's. After years of putting the composer in a box, one can finally take him out. Yet is it such fresh air? Slides 3 (1982) and 8 (1987) for solo flute, were the eldest pieces of the evening. The music presented two pronounced ideas: a spectral 'jet whistle' against ornamental melodic phrases, never to become homogenous although seemingly moving in that direction. The second of the two 'slides' had interesting but vague analogous relationships to the previous, yet it was a strange partner, the piece attempting to summarise a host of six other pieces we hadn't heard. Flutist Luca Manghi made an admirable performance of the pieces, and succeeded in focussing the ears of the audience, a necessary manoeuvre at the outset of any concert.



Claire Cowan's piano trio: wood : strings : hammers : flesh (2008) presented much entertainment for the evening. Aesthetically consistent and resourceful, Cowan's writing was fascinating, however compromised between stylistic regions (as alluded to in the programme notes). Pianist Sarah Watkins danced around her piano, slapping the various faces of the instrument and plucking its inner guts whilst the two string players pulsed in pizzicato beats of five. However engaging at the surface, I felt the piece floated above a less satisfying underlying structure and so failed to take me in any further.

constellations (2012), a composition for solo piano by young composer Alex Taylor contained a rather wonderful sound world of pitch geometry. Flavio Villani's fingers remained for the most part in the clear register of the piano, before finally summoning a spread of beating harmonics derived from the low keys. The result was a slow, directional piece, with complex patterns but towards the middle became stagnant, and ended far too late.

Then came the central piece of the programme. Jack Body's Meditations on Michelangelo (2008/9) was by far the most pronounced in 'gay sensibility'. Each meditation, in the form of monologues, was introduced with fragments of poetry by Michelangelo di Lodovico, then meditated by a solo piece for 'shaded' violin, shaded and coloured by the piano. The first movements were slow and dark modal monophonic lines, ornamented in various fashions of Body's Asian interests. On the fourth meditation, with the words of Michelangelo's verse to his lord: 'and he who loves you faithfully rises to God above and holds death sweet', the music became a compelling sequence of chromatic rises in major tonality. The piece continued, though for far too long, perhaps in the way that such music is easy to generate - to excess. I feel that the last movement proved, to the words 'Sleep is sweet, but better to be made of stone', the lack of subtlety in both players, and thus rather tested the patience (or fed the boredom) of audience members.


After a second entrance of applause for violinst Menzies and pianist Watkins, concert curator Samuel Holloway took the stage to announce an eight minute interval, presumably due to the concert starting at least two minutes late. And, to the disappointment of many, that there would be no wine.


Annea Lockwood's I give you back (1993), a thrilling solo piece for soprano Claire Scholes bewildered the audience in the beginning moments of the second half. At times unbearable and horrible, the poetry and the singing were constrained to a select few pitches and to repetitive phrases: 'I release you'. At a couple of points Scholes shook the rafters with extraordinary strength in her high register shrieks, as the poetry and music attempted to intimate the weird sensation of fear becoming freedom. The last word formant 'ng' of 'dying' was particularly exquisite, slowly imploding into the soprano as the sound moved to the back of her throat, and below.


Waipoua (1994), a duo for clarinet and piano by Gareth Farr, was a lower-light in the programme. Farr's pleasant use of suspended triads lent its allegiance to Pop music, but as a short piece with no direction contained nothing more than its premise - 'an exploration of the lyrical and emotional capabilities of my favorite instrument, the clarinet' - without being at all an exploration of any kind. Finn Schofield played with remarkable sensitivity, yet a few unpolished moments prevailed where the young clarinetist struggled to control the overtones over the soft ending tones.


Ben Hoadley's excessively light Winter I was (2009), a duet for flute and recited poetry, had a similar appeal to the previous piece. Short, modal/tonal, repeating, and light, there was nothing taxing about it. The musical material seemed oddly paired with poetry taken from Gregory O'Brien's Winter I Was (1992), itself a remembrance of (the gay) Cage and (the not gay) Feldman. And yet the piece, written seventeen years afterwards, with no other reason than to accompany a piece not already heard in this concert, was at the least a peculiar choice.


After these two 'interludes' was Samuel Holloway's Stapes. The title correlating to a bone of the inner ear, impressions of various sound transformations, spectra alterations, amplifications and so on, occur within the simplicity of the acoustic piano trio. The piece is evocative of a magnified and contorted tour of the inner ear. Cellist Ashley Brown and violinist Justine Cormack retained utter command in the fast passages of natural harmonics; Brown's ending solo was controlled with sensitivity, and slanted with all the implications a fade out has. One thing that strikes me about this piece is that it is often programmed without its counterparts (two other trios, both named for other parts of the inner ear), and thus floats above its context (a recurring theme this evening…).


The final piece of the evening, John Elmsly's Four Echoes for viola, contained the last articulate ties to the premise of the concert. Holloway's commentary at the top of the programme notes, suggesting that 'gay sensibilities' might be discovered in this bundle of works, specifically mentioned the relationship between composer Jack Body and Douglas Lilburn. Now in this final piece we encountered a second reference to Lilburn, a remembrance of him written in this soliloquy of four movements. Elmsly wrote for the programme 'musical shadows appeared in the work, particularly in the Lament, which is specifically in his memory'. Shadows certainly did appear: Prelude, silhouettes of Grisey's Prologue for solo viola, and throughout the work various melodic fragments much like that from Ligeti's Musica Ricercata. Not clearly Lilburn though, but the lyrical writing may have been enough of a salute to his spirit.


With many moments of great and varied music this evening one feels amazed with the sheer contribution of the queer community to New Zealand music. On reflection, I feel some voices of this community were in fact left out (apart from the titular, Lilburn himself wasn't included, along with many other strong composers such as Chris Gendall). The concert, having been advertised to both the gay community and also more generally to the public, seemed to attract a mixed audience to the university theatre; a concert of gay composers, but an experience for anyone interested in music.

19 February 2013

Review: Stroma’s Pierrot Lunaire

Q Theatre Loft, Auckland

Performers: Madeleine Pierard, soprano; Kirstin Eade, flutes; Phil Green, clarinets; Sarah Watkins, piano; Andrew Thomson, violin/viola; Robert Ibell, cello; Megan Molina, violin (Eisler/Webern only); Hamish McKeich, conductor

Carolyn Drake

Stroma’s much-awaited trip to Auckland on Sunday was greeted with enormous enthusiasm and nervous excitement from the audience, a full house: those trying their luck for a ticket at the door were turned away, missing a rare performance of Schoenberg’s classic vocal mindbender, Pierrot Lunaire. Q Theatre made an attractive, if acoustically deficient, venue, and Stroma director Michael Norris provided insightful programme notes, along with a vivid English translation of the German text.

If Pierrot promised surreal drama, Hanns Eisler's soundtrack to Joris Ivens’s film Regen (Rain) seemed an exercise in the mundane, spluttering and meandering through an acerbic, predictable serial score to a strikingly open ending. While the journey felt rather dry in its tightly focused, bustling activity, the destination lifted the music into a more transcendental sphere, washing out the cares of the day with open fifths. There was also a memorable solo turn from pianist Sarah Watkins, who had a chance to showcase her remarkable dexterity and clear tone.

Webern's Streichtrio op. 20 is a platform for his intricate patterning of accumulation and synchronisation; this is a masterwork, and its performance here was lacklustre, with the presence of a conductor deeply distracting and surely unnecessary, one would have thought, for performers of this calibre. Furthermore, the performance did not make the structure clear: apart from the very ending and one or two other moments of absolute clarity, there needed to be a greater awareness of how the phrases and “cadences” were constructed, in order to better project the music in performance. Although wrestling with a dry acoustic, the violin needed more presence.

After the previous two slightly underwhelming offerings, Pierrot Lunaire confronted us with the almost lizard-like figure of Madeleine Pierard, whose German swung and hissed with richly expressive diction. Pierard possesses a surprisingly powerful lower register, which served her well throughout the demanding vocal part, although her sprechstimme was often more sung than spoken. I also wondered whether she had really got to grips with the pitch material, or whether she had purposefully adopted a looser approach to pitching. Just as the string trio in the Webern seemed trapped behind their conductor, Pierard too was at times constrained between the piano and her music stand. For me the theatrical potential of the work was never fully realised. 

The ensemble was generally very tight, with a great blend of tone, although balance was sometimes an issue, with the violin in particular often fighting to be heard over the piano and lower instruments. Of the instrumentalists, cellist Robert Ibell was the undoubted standout, displaying a fearlessness and formidable variety of tone colour even in tackling the most technically difficult passages. Although generally leading the ensemble very precisely, conductor Hamish McKeich sometimes struggled to align the piano and wind/string quartet, and his approach to tempo was simply too laid-back to adequately differentiate the potentially stark characters of the individual movements in Part 1.

If Part 1 lacked some of the rawness and momentum it might have had, Part 2 more than made up for it in an utterly compelling cluster of activity: Nacht's gigantic black moths had a truly frightening menace, the dark and feathery timbre of Ibell's cello periodically devouring the texture, while Gebet an Pierrot (Prayer to Pierrot) featured a maniacally neighing Pierard leading the ensemble into an incisive, cantering Raub (Theft). The ensemble achieved a particularly stunning composite sound in Rote Messe (Red Mass), which balanced perfectly with the following Galgenlied (Gallows Song), whose disconcertingly crisp tone foretold a sudden, precipitous ending.

Part 3 provided a strange, dreamy counterweight to the sustained violence of Part 2, and though the broadly symmetrical structure of the work makes it difficult to sustain the intensity of the second part into the third, Stroma did an admirable job. The final movement, O Alter Duft, wafted by in a beautifully nostalgic haze; even today, a century after its composition, Pierrot still proved confronting, alluring and utterly unique.

5 February 2013

Review: Mark Menzies with 175 East

Musgrove Theatre, Auckland
Performers: Mark Menzies, violin; Samuel Holloway, electronics and percussion; Katherine Hebley, cello; Andrew Uren, clarinets; Luca Manghi, flutes; Glenda Keam and James Gardner, percussion

Carolyn Drake

“Thank you for coming out.” Samuel Holloway’s opening greeting provided an interesting angle from which to hear the evening's offerings: with James Gardner's Queer Studies on the programme along with a number of other suggestively-titled works, one might infer an agenda of openness, of coming to grips with difficult material, and perhaps even of the sensuality of music. Whether the phrasing was intentional is moot but even so, from the outset this was a concert of bristling ideas and sensations.

The enigmatic hyperkinesis of Holloway's Management Decision-Making in Chinese Enterprises set the tone for what was a bewildering and sometimes quite strange concert event. Flicking between crisply shaped, angular episodes and highly exaggerated, almost syrupy expressiveness, Mark Menzies' violin paired with Holloway's performance – consisting of both physical gestures such as jumping, and live electronics – to present a thoroughly indecipherable language. The sensation was of watching and listening to the fascinating trajectories and inflections of a mathematically apportioned language that was nevertheless completely foreign. Menzies seemed to be having fun here: perhaps almost to the point of danger, in that the indulgent expressiveness of the improvised material often threatened to overwhelm the structure containing it.

No less enigmatic, but certainly more subtly expressed, were Holloway's aphoristic pair of Dualities. The first of the pair was a particularly concise, delicately constructed musical object; the stippled undulating of the upper and lower voices of Menzies's solo violin was skillfully woven in and out of audibility, joining together in a final elusive wispy sigh. The second piece combined rhythmically independent left and right hands to produce a taut, jittery effect. In both pieces it was not a simplistic dualism but a thoroughly dynamic interplay between elements that created tension and movement.

Between Decision-Making and Dualities, Rachael Morgan's attractively crafted Whisperings felt almost catatonically calm, with its limited harmonic and dynamic palette focusing the ear on the fine timbral gradations of flute and cello. Sadly balance was an issue here, with the dominance of the flute preventing a really satisfying blended texture.

Completing the first half was Laurence Crane's Estonia, warmly meditative and transparent, though marred by some uneven intonation in such unforgivably simple material. It was surprising that these musicians – technically excellent in many ways – at times struggled to play in tune with each other. Perhaps most contemporary aesthetic approaches provide avenues for hiding issues of intonation, but this was not such an aesthetic.

After the interval, Bryn Harrison's Five miniatures in three parts was sandwiched between two much larger, much more materially diverse works. Harrison's focus on intricate heterophonic textures through counterpoint rather than timbre provided an interesting counterbalance to the colourific world of Morgan's Whisperings in the first half. His technique of zooming in on very limited material – with each movement slower than the preceding one – revealed a fascinating jungle of seesawing lines and gradients.

Although Mark Menzies's technique and charisma as a violinist was clear throughout the evening, his compositional contribution was less successful. Ending the concert was Menzies’ like Georgie (auckland's) gardens: / uncaged music / with piwakawaka / and swongering butterfly, a protracted work that at times felt like a catalogue of violin maneuvers. The violin performance was indeed impressive, but most of the work seemed purely an exercise in virtuosity, with seven performers on stage and all but one of them woefully under-utilised.

For me the undoubted highlight of this unique, frustrating event was James Gardner's Queer Studies. These pieces swooped and hovered, sang and cackled, and generally reveled in an accomplished sense of drama and narrative. A fine attention to embellishment and the striking use of hard accents complimented the compelling structure and drew the ear to multiple layers of discourse. This was a feathery, ephemeral, sensual masterpiece, showcasing Menzies at his sensitive and satanic best.