Author: johndpart

New Zealand Trio, Origins

Auckland Concert Chamber

July 5

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

The New Zealand Trio’s recent concert, Origins, was one of the first live concerts post Coronavirus in Auckland and showed that they are one of the worlds outstanding musical groups, effortlessly spanning the classical and contemporary repertoire.

The five works in the concert spanned 200 years from Beethoven’s Piano Trio through to a recent commission by the New Zealand composer Sarah Ballard along with works by Mark-Anthony Turnage, Isang Yun and Alexander Zemlinsky. The five works were intended to show the range of influences on the various  composers  as well as the backgrounds and choices made by members of the trio.

The Beethoven work which gained its title for the  ghostlike second movement relies on the talents of the three players and the NZ Trio showed that they are threesome with a real sense of purpose. Individually they are exceptional musicians but when playing together they are electrifying.

Ashley Brown provided the bedrock of the piece, his cello moved from whispering to howling and rumbling, capturing an underling sense of tension. Amalia Hall gave a sensitive and energetic performance while Somi Kim at the piano never dominated the two string players integrating her beautifully expressed playing with verve.

Throughout the piece the three players seemed to communicate not only through the music but also with an empathy and awareness of each other. They brought a depth of understanding to the piece as through revisiting the composers own personal sense of nostalgia  and the mysterious.

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “A Fast Stomp” was radical mixture of classical music infused with punk, jazz and film music. The work encapsulates the evolution of music from the classical through to modernism with a number of experimental sequences.

Sarah Ballard’s commissioned work  “Prema Lahari”  was inspired by Indian music and Sanskrit poetry and made use of a  drone as well as prayer bells. The Western instruments replicated the sounds of  Indian instruments  such as the sitar with the trio played in a  relaxed, almost yoga-like contemplative style

Isang Yun’s  “Piano Trio”  was an acknowledgement of pianist Somi Kim’s Korean heritage. Yun’s music  is an amalgamation of Asian musical styles and Western avant-garde. The work composed in the 1970’s  pushes the boundaries of music with techniques and sounds the violin and cello being played in unconventional way  – using the wood of the bow to lay the strings and extended glissandos, sliding up and down the strings. the strings brushed and lucked in the violin and cello ss well as the piano with  Kim leaning into the piano to create eerie sounds.

The music provided watery sounds; rain falling, lakes shimmering and  water dripping. These sounds provided a sense of nature but also the ventured into the realm of electronic music.

The final work on the programme was Zemlinsky’s Piano Trio” written in the 1890’s when he impressed Brahms with his originality. This work was a far cry from his more modernist works such as his opera “The Dead City”, although it prefigures his more experimental music. The first movement  was late Romanticism on a grand scale  worthy of Brahms  while the middle section had theatricality to it with the finale displaying a passionate emotionalism. This was all delivered with flawless technique capturing the late flowering of Romanticism and hinting at an emerging modernism.

Future Concerts

Origins, Nathan Homestead, Manurewa

August 29

Interfusions

Wellington, September 27

Rotorua, October 1

Waikanae, October 4

Christchurch, October 7

Whangarei, October 10

Warkworth, October 11

APO VIOLINS PLAY BACH

Six violinists perform Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas at the Wallace Arts Centre, Pah Homestead

An  evening of solo Bach Sonatas and Partitas each performed by a violinist from the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra with six of New Zealand’s finest world class professional violinists play this famous and significant Bach series.

All violinists have volunteered their time and expertise with proceeds from the event being donated to the APO Orchestra Relief Fund.

Wallace Arts Centre, Pah Homestead

Friday 17 July, 7.30pm

After a few months of no live concerts both the Auckland Philharmonia and the NZSO start their new concert seasons next week.

Last week the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra was the first full-sized orchestra in the world to perform to a live audience in a concert hall since the COVID-19 pandemic.

In that  concert “Ngū Kīoro… Harikoa Ake – celebrating togetherness” at Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre the orchestra joined with Maisey Rika and Horomona Horo to performed music from their successful 2019 “An Instrumental Voyage Pae Tawhiti, Pae Tata” tour. They also played the first movement from Gareth Farr’s “From the Depths Sound the Great Sea Gongs”, John Psathas’ “Tarantismo” and Richard Strauss’ “Suite from Der Rosenkavalier”.

Simon O’Neill and Eliza Bloom performed arias from Bizet’s Carmen, Puccini’s La Bohème and Verdi’s Otello.

The concert finale featured the  soloists and members of Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir and more than 100 school children  singing “Pōkarekare Ana”.

On July 8   the Orchestra plays a  Beethoven concert featuring “The Emperor Concerto” with pianist Diedre Irons and his Pastoral Symphony. Two weeks later on July 22 they will be performing Johann Sebastian Bach’s baroque masterpiece “Goldberg Variations”.

Both these concerts will be livestreamed at live.nzso.co.nz

Next week (July 9) the Auckland Philharmonia will return to presenting live performances with Michael Houston performing Beethoven’s “First Piano Concerto”.

Opening the programme will be the world premiere of John Psathas’ “The Five Million”, a work intended as a celebration of the country’s team of five million. Also on the programme will be Richard Strauss’ “Wind Serenade” for 13 wind instruments, written when he was only 17 and. Dvořák’s “Serenade for Strings”, one of the composer’s more popular orchestral works.

Then on July 16 the orchestra will be playing Haydn’s “The Creation: The Representation of Chaos”. This replaces the scheduled performance of the entire Haydn work.  “The Creation: The Representation of Chaos” is the first of the oratorio’s three parts an orchestral prelude  that portrays the formlessness and disorder that preceded the Creation.

Also on the programme is Ives’s “The Unanswered Question”, Mozart’s “Bassoon Concerto in B-Flat” featuring Bassoonist Ingrid Hagan , and Dvořák “Symphony No.6”  inspired by Czech folk music.

The “New Horizons” concert on, July 30 will feature Lilburn’s “A Song of Islands”,  Szymanowski “Violin Concerto No.2” with Violinist   Andrew Beer  along with Sibelius’s  “Symphony No.2”>