John Walsh and photographer Patrick Reynolds have just launched “Wellington Architecture, A Walking Guide” a revised edition of the book first published in 2022. This is their third book in the series of architectural walking tours following on from their books on Auckland and Christchurch. It is a great addition to books which explore and explain our built environment.
John Walsh in the introduction notes that he was born in Wellington which was as “compact and confined as a medieval city-state, intensely impressed itself on me, in the most impressionable part of my life. I remember the Freyberg Pool, where I learned to swim; the summer lights strung on the Norfolk pines along Oriental Parade; and the council yard where my father worked, next to the Herd Street Post and Telegraph Building. My high school was near the old National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum; we’d be sent to mass at St Mary of the Angels and, in blazers and ties, despatched from Wellington Railway Station on rugby expeditions into the hinterlands of the Hutt Valley.”
Public Trust Building
This reviewer also grew up in Wellington, living in the National Hotel across from the corner of Stout St and Lambton Quay. From our front room we had an impressive architectural vista including The Public Trust Building, The Government Departmental Building and The State Insurance Building. Further down the street was the Wellington Railway Station.
On my way to school I passed Ernst Plischke’s Massey House, The Old Supreme Court, The Old Government Building, The Beehive, Parliament building, the General Assembly Library, Turnbull House and the rather unfortunate Cathedral of St Paul. These were the background to my life at the time and it was only when I moved to suburban Karori that I noticed the difference in my daily environment.
Shed 7, Wellington Harbour Board
The place of architecture in our environment and in our personal and social history is important often more noticeable when we are in foreign cities. A city’s buildings are important in defining the nature of a place. When visiting a place for the first time the visitor will map a city through its buildings. The materials, the orientation, the colours, the decoration and the forms all help create the language of the way the city is perceived.
The buildings of Auckland Wellington and Christchurch have many similarities but the accumulation of the various periods of construction and styles in each of those places has created very individual environments.
“Wellington Architecture, A Walking Guide” features more than 126 significant buildings describing their purpose and history as well as providing a background on the architects who designed them. The buildings are grouped into five self-guided walking routes, each with a map together with itineraries which collectively create a portrait of the city.
St John’s
The building are a mix of colonial, nineteenth century Gothic, mid-century modernism and buildings of the last fifty years illustrating the changing nature of the architecture along with the changing nature of New Zealand and the city. The buildings are banks, businesses, government departments, churches, apartment buildings libraries, hotels, apartments, and a few private houses.
One of the tours features several of the government institutions surrounding Parliament including the Old Government Building (now the Victoria University Law School) and one on the largest wooden buildings in the world, all those other buildings I passed on the way to school along with the more recent brutalist National Library and the modernist Freyberg Building.
Several architects feature with a number of buildings such as Gummer & Ford, Thomas Turnbull and Ian Athfield who is represented by the Wellington Library (soon to be reopened) and his Oriental Parade flats as well as a few, often controversial, additions he made to existing buildings.
Asked which building he regarded as the most interesting nee building in Wellington he has stated that it is Heke Rua the new building for New Zealand’s Archive beside the National library, both for its architecture as well its signaling a commitment to preserving the nations documentary heritage.
John Walsh and photographer Patrick Reynolds have just launched “Wellington Architecture, A Walking Guide” a revised edition of the book first published in 2022. This is their third book in the series of architectural walking tours following on from their books on Auckland and Christchurch. It is a great addition to books which explore and explain our built environment.
John Walsh in the introduction notes that he was born in Wellington which was as “compact and confined as a medieval city-state, intensely impressed itself on me, in the most impressionable part of my life. I remember the Freyberg Pool, where I learned to swim; the summer lights strung on the Norfolk pines along Oriental Parade; and the council yard where my father worked, next to the Herd Street Post and Telegraph Building. My high school was near the old National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum; we’d be sent to mass at St Mary of the Angels and, in blazers and ties, despatched from Wellington Railway Station on rugby expeditions into the hinterlands of the Hutt Valley.”
Public Trust Building
This reviewer also grew up in Wellington, living in the National Hotel across from the corner of Stout St and Lambton Quay. From our front room we had an impressive architectural vista including The Public Trust Building, The Government Departmental Building and The State Insurance Building. Further down the street was the Wellington Railway Station.
On my way to school I passed Ernst Plischke’s Massey House, The Old Supreme Court, The Old Government Building, The Beehive, Parliament building, the General Assembly Library, Turnbull House and the rather unfortunate Cathedral of St Paul. These were the background to my life at the time and it was only when I moved to suburban Karori that I noticed the difference in my daily environment.
Shed 7, Wellington Harbour Board
The place of architecture in our environment and in our personal and social history is important often more noticeable when we are in foreign cities. A city’s buildings are important in defining the nature of a place. When visiting a place for the first time the visitor will map a city through its buildings. The materials, the orientation, the colours, the decoration and the forms all help create the language of the way the city is perceived.
The buildings of Auckland Wellington and Christchurch have many similarities but the accumulation of the various periods of construction and styles in each of those places has created very individual environments.
“Wellington Architecture, A Walking Guide” features more than 126 significant buildings describing their purpose and history as well as providing a background on the architects who designed them. The buildings are grouped into five self-guided walking routes, each with a map together with itineraries which collectively create a portrait of the city.
St John’s
The building are a mix of colonial, nineteenth century Gothic, mid-century modernism and buildings of the last fifty years illustrating the changing nature of the architecture along with the changing nature of New Zealand and the city. The buildings are banks, businesses, government departments, churches, apartment buildings libraries, hotels, apartments, and a few private houses.
One of the tours features several of the government institutions surrounding Parliament including the Old Government Building (now the Victoria University Law School) and one on the largest wooden buildings in the world, all those other buildings I passed on the way to school along with the more recent brutalist National Library and the modernist Freyberg Building.
Several architects feature with a number of buildings such as Gummer & Ford, Thomas Turnbull and Ian Athfield who is represented by the Wellington Library (soon to be reopened) and his Oriental Parade flats as well as a few, often controversial, additions he made to existing buildings.
Asked which building he regarded as the most interesting nee building in Wellington he has stated that it is Heke Rua the new building for New Zealand’s Archive beside the National library, both for its architecture as well its signaling a commitment to preserving the nations documentary heritage..
We are surrounded by music every day, in our houses, in the public space in shopping malls and with our audio devices and through this soundscape to our lives which we build up a huge sound bank of songs and music. Often, we are not aware of how this music is created but we are conscious of its components such as melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo, dynamics, timbre, texture, and form, which work together to create a piece of music. But we rarely investigate them, they are magically and mysteriously assembled, providing enjoyment and diversion There are many though who become obsessed by what a composer, band or singer have created and how these creators have seemingly produced something which touches on our psyche, our emotions and our way of seeing the world. There are some writers, composers and philosophers who try and understand this fascination with what music is and what it does.
Roger Horrocksm is deeply interested in this world of music and his new book “Music Without End; A book of listening” which follows on from his 2022 book “A book of Seeing” delves into areas of music which will resonate with readers as well as offering new perspectives and insights.
As the author says in his preface “I take a very broad approach … since I am interested in popular music, jazz, classical music contemporary classical sounds and music form non-Western traditions (including, Indian, African and Māori).
This very catholic approach has resulted in a book which covers the musical landscapes which most readers will be aware of but also presents new landscapes which will be new, novel and intriguing sending readers off in a quest for these often unknown composers, musicians and compositions.
The four chapters of the book are Music and Listening: A personal History, On Listening, Interviews and Music without End: A History of Western Classical Music
The opening chapter reads very much like the account many music lovers would write- early encounters with music which stimulated great interest in listening and collecting music. For Horrocks this has led to a very wide interest in both classical and popular music. He recounts his exploration of music with its various interwoven strands such as hearing Vivaldi’s “Four Season as the soundtrack to Kenneth Angers 1953 short film “Eaux d’Artifice” filmed at the Villa d’Este.
His music education really developed when he spent time in the1960’s is the US One encounter meant that he saw the Merce Cunningham dance groups performing to music by John Cage and David Tudor and also got to talk with John Cage. An encounter with Arab / Andalusian music in a taxi in Paris as well as exposure to the experimental jazz of the of the 1960’s hearing musicians such as Ornette Coleman and archie Shepp
He also includes miscellany of musical events such as a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at Crystal Palace in 1857 which had an orchestra of 500 and 2000 singers. Providing a New Zealand context, he notes that two years before the concert the infant Auckland Choral Society had performed the work in Auckland.
For the third chapter the author interviewed ten contemporary musicians who offer different perspectives on the Importance of listening, inspiration and process in the creation of music. These include contemporary composers Eve De Castro Robinson and Annea Lockwood, conductor / composer /performer, Petere Scholes and singer Caitlin Smith,
“Music Without End: A history of Western Classical Music”, is the final chapter in the book takes a broad approach to the history of Western Music. As the author notes, ‘What interests me is the constant evolution of styles and genres, along with development of instruments, venues and technologies.
Here he follows the course of the Western music over 800 years looking at the major periods – Baroque, Romanticism, Late Romanticism, Modernism, as well Atonal Music Serialism and Minimalism, He also devotes space to many of the Russian composers. including Sofia Gubaidulina, Alfred Schnittke and Valentin Silvestrov.
As well as looking at various aspects of music he devotes much of the book in tracing out the historical threads of Western Music he interested is in trying to understand how the music got to be written and the changes in approaches to composition.
In his exploration of the nature of listening he broadens out his enquiry, looking (and listening) at music from various perspectives such as the compositions of John Cage where the music is close to a theoretical or philosophical model.
This exceptional book not only introduces readers to many specialist areas of music, but it does so using an accessible language, providing interesting anecdotes and providing readers with a way of understanding their own approaches to music.
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The message came though just a short time before the NZSO’s “Summer Nights” concert – “Due to the global grounding of Airbus aircraft today, the NZSO can’t fly enough players from Wellington to Auckland to perform Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony in tonight’s programme. It has been replaced by Mozart’s Symphony No.41 Jupiter
The change does not impact on American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato’s debut with the NZSO in Auckland tonight.
So, it was the Mozart symphony No 21 which opened the “Summer Nights” concert with Berlioz’s “Les Nuits de ete” becoming the major work of the concert featuring Joyce DiDonato’s.
The song cycle is a setting of six poems by Theophile Gautier which Berlioz began in 1841. The work which began as a piece for soloist and piano accompaniment was later orchestrated with an additional song in 1856. It is now one of the composer’s most popular works.
The theme of the work is the progress of love, from youthful innocence to loss and finally renewal.
The opening “Villanelle” invites the beloved to wander through the forest in springtime and features a simple, melody above a chirping accompaniment but there were intimations of darker forces hovering above the surface.
There followed the evocative “The Spectre of the Rose”, the lament “On the lagoon”, the chilling “In the Cemetery” and onto the surreal “Unknown Sea”, depicting a lover steering a ship into the unknown future.
Along with her expressive voices DiDonato conjured up the notion of the lover with gestures which reinforced the text.
Between the songs she appeared to enter a period of repose in which she contemplated the sounds of the orchestra as well as apparitions in the hall as though taking inspiration from them
Her ravishing voice, full of depth flowed effortlessly around the hall, along with the inventive music – the soft pizzicato of the strings or the almost whispering sequences of the strings where the orchestra played what seemed like the soft rumour of a voice.
Then her voice would be increasingly dramatic, singing with an intensity which hovered over the orchestra like cloudburst, a voice which could shatter glass as well as hearts.
She was very attentive to Conductor New, the orchestra as well as the audience and with many of the sequences her forceful gestures and demeanour meant that her singing took on a more operatic dimension, her singing drenched with power and emotion which almost overwhelmed the orchestra.
After rapturous applause she delivered two powerful encores. The first a stunning interpretation of Bizet’s “Habanera” from Bizet’s Carmen which she delivered in true operatic style. This was followed by “Somewhere over the Rainbow” a song which was personally relevant to be sung by a gal from Kansas.
Opening the concert was Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, a remarkable work which the composer himself probably never heard performed; it certainly owes its name to somebody else. One scholar described it as ‘the greatest orchestral work of the world which preceded the French Revolution’ and the NZSO played the work as if they agreed with that dizzy estimation.
Gemma New reinforced the dance-like qualities of the music with some of her gesture and dance movements. She also was able to explore the qualities of the music bringing out the elegance of the music. So, the opening had an operatic quality much like the opening of “Don Giovani” (which he composes at the same time as the symphony) and many parts of the music had a sense of a conversation, the music often sounding soto voce.
She also highlighted some of the instruments notably the flute playing of Bridget Douglas and the double basses.
The way the symphony combines both clarity and complexity, especially in the last movement, was apparent throughout the orchestra’s sparkling rendition. We may not have got to hear Bruckner’s great work we were well compensated by one of Mozart’s last symphonies.
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Black Grace, If there ever was a time Image: Jinki Cabronero
Black Grace: Celebrating 30 years
Civic Theatre, Auckland
November 21
Then Isaac Theatre Royal, Christchurch
November 25 & 26
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
For their thirtieth anniversary finale Black Grace presented two works, one a new piece by Neil Ieremia and a work by the legendary American choreographer Paul Taylor, created in 1975.
Of the first work on the programme “If there ever was a time” Ieremia notes, “I was raised in the church, carried along by its stories, its hymns, its promises. I have been losing my religion for the last forty years. This work is my response to what I see as the weaponisation of faith”.
The work takes an ambivalent approach to his dilemma with the music he uses to propel the dancers a mixture of traditional Pacific music – Samoa Sila Sila and contemporary music including “Voodoo in my Blood” from Massive Attack & Young Fathers and “Monolith” featuring DJ Krush with their anti-capitalist rages.
The set featured a large image of the moon which slowly moved across the rear of the stag while above the stage was cloud form of wispy fabric which ultimately collapses, a metaphor for the failure of the old order and religion.
The music was a mixture of traditional Pacific music – Samoa Sila Sila and contemporary music including “Voodoo in my Blood” from Massive Attack & Young Fathers and “Monolith” featuring DJ Krush.
The work is like a series of rituals with repeated movements and sequences of action and reaction where the physical exertion of the dancers reflect idea about passion and emotion.
Like a lot of contemporary dance, the work owes much to the Stravinsky / Nijinsky ballet “The Rite of Spring” with its rituals and confrontations.
“If there ever was a time” used some of these ideas in addressing issues around religion, colonialism and Ieremia’s ambivalence about religio and its effects on the Pacic Island communities.
The dancers’ gestures and movements are those which have often been used by the company for many years – signalling with the hand, arm and leg displays which are strongly angular and abrupt. Some of the movements are close to rap moves with sharp slides, leaps and pivots, the agitated movements mirroring the frantic sounds of the music.
At one point group of dancers form an elaborate multi-faceted form – a parasite or insect which inches across the stage menacing the sole dancer who skips relentlessly.
The image of this confrontation evokes the imagery of Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” where an individual struggles to find identity and break from conformity.
In another sequence two figures – a betrothed couple, one holding a wedding bouquet enter from either side of the stage, their heads wrapped in cloth, restrained by straining figures. Their anonymity and desperation seem to have been taken from the Magritte painting “The Lovers” where two figures, their heads wrapped in cloth attempt to kiss, suggesting the complexities of love and intimacy.
The choreography was endlessly original and interesting where simple dance steps evolve into unusual and unsettling movements and as the music changes the forms, dynamics and energy evolve.
Black Grace , Esplanade Image; Jinki Cambronero
The second work on the programme was Paul Taylor’s 1975 work “Esplanade”, a piece Ieremia had been wanting to present for many years. It was inspired by the sight of a young woman running to catch a bus. This notion of using everyday movement and elevating it to dance has been a central concept of Black Grace dance since its inception.
The work links ballet, court dance and contemporary movement danced to Bach violin concertos providing a mix of elegance and simplicity.
Much of the time the dancers walk, run, slide, and whirl around the stage seeming to follow some predetermined paths in fluid and orderly formations. Elizabethan court dance refashioned in a modern form.
There were elements of energy and drama when the women took giant leaps into the male dancers’ arms as they rotated around the stage. These bolds moves contrasted with the more tender sequences which emphasised weightlessness and where the dancers met casually, touched lightly, bracing and gesturing in languid movements.
While much of the dancing was at frenetic pace there were also times when the dancers seemed to slow their movements to become more like stop motion sequences highlighting the nature of movement
While the work is based on the movement of the street there is a vibrancy and energy to the work with its combination of rushing and motionless dancers giving the work a visual and emotional power.
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Auckland Philharmonia, Deborah Humble, Kirstin Middle School Singers and Women of Choirs Aotearoa Photo: Thomas Hamill
Mahler 3
Auckland Philharmonia (in association with the Australian Academy of Music)
Auckland Town Hall
November 20
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
With the last of the Auckland Philharmonia Premier Series concerts for the year the orchestra presented Mahler’s Symphony No3. This is Mahler’s longest work of six movements and close to an hour and three quarters long. It also features over one hundred musicians, two choirs, (Women of Choirs Aotearoa and Kirstin Middle School Singers) and mezzo-soprano Deborah Humble.
It was described by Mahler as a gigantic musical poem and offers one of the most complete statements of the Austrian composer’s world view. Each of the movements represents an element of the universe – plants, animals, people, angels – culminating in a tranquil deeply felt finale, the celebration of divine love and the culmination of the works giant structure. Mahler once said “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything”. This performance certainly had everything with a huge range of instrument including four flutes, four oboes, four bassoons, eight horns, four trumpets, post horn, three trombones, bass and contrabass tuba, timpani, glockenspiel, and a large string section.
Where many great nineteenth century composers explored the nature of Man, in this symphony however it was the composer’s relationship with Nature which was his focus.
The massed sounds of the orchestra were impressive, notably the opening of the first movement with its two march-like themes which can be seen as a description and reflection on Nature and the evolutionary theories of Darwin.
There were several other sequences which featured the delicate and nuanced playing of individual instruments such as Andrew Beer’s violin solo and the sounds of birds brought to life by the woodwinds.
Deborah Humble and Giordano Bellincampi Image Thomas Hamill
Mezzo-soprano Deborah Humble sang Nietzsche’s Midnight Song from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, her mournful voice soaring above the plaintive orchestra, expressing sadness and frailty, suggested the words of a requiem.
The choirs gave a bright, simple delivery of one of the composer’s songs, “Kling! Glocken hell kling!” (Ring! Bells, ring!). Here, the choir imitating sounds of bells and a female chorus joined by the soloist represent the voice of angels in a joyous and innocent depiction of a heavenly scene.
Mahler’s used the instrument to create a sense of life evolving which along with the relentless march tunes which suggest the progress of Man. Throughout the work the massed instrument, often led by the horns sounded like the breathing of a huge entity.
Conductor Giordano Bellincampi generally took a precise and measured approach, balancing the various parts of the orchestra and ensuring that even the quietest of moments made an impression. However, with the more dramatic sequences he seemed to be imbued with the same fervour as the music.
This was an intense and rewarding performance by an orchestra which could take its place in any great concert chamber in the world with an astounding performance filled with profound emotion.
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The Collector; Thomas Cheesemen and the making of the Auckland Museum
Andrew McKay and Richard Wolfe
Massey University Press
RRP $65.00
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Museums have had a lot of critical press over the past few years, viewed as agents of the colonizers because their collections often contain artifacts taken from colonized countries, and their early practices reinforced colonial ideologies by presenting the colonizer as superior. They functioned as a means of control, where European museums collected objects from voyages of exploration and colonies to showcase their dominance and justify the imperial project. But a major thrust of museums has also been to preserve, interpret, and exhibit the local cultural and scientific heritage serving as a bridge between the past and present by collecting objects, telling stories, and providing a space for people to learn, reflect, and connect with history, art, and science.
That has certainly been the aim of the Auckland Museum and the individuals who initiated it, guided it and developed it. A new book “The Collector; Thomas Cheeseman and the making of the Auckland Museum” tells how the Auckland Museum, like man y other museums in the nineteenth century were guided by visionary individuals.
The newly opened Auckland and Institute in 1876 Thomas Cheeseman stands in the doorway
Authors Andrew McKay and Richard Wolfe write about the establishment of the museum’s first custom-built building in 1876 at the northern end of Princes Street. When it opened the director was Thomas Cheesman who had been in the post since 1874, remaining in the post remained in that post until his death in 1923.
They write about the original building which was unfavourably compared to the more ambitious Christchurch Museum. It was “plain, improvised and almost invisible … It was housed in an old public building, with little funding and few staff. But that’s what makes the story compelling. The contrast between the buildings isn’t just architectural — it reflects differing levels of civic support, cultural ambition and access to resources. Auckland’s museum didn’t look like much, but it had people with vision, especially Thomas Cheeseman. Over time, he took that underwhelming space and turned it into a serious scientific institution.”
Under his visionary guidance the Museum and its collections flourished, necessitating a further move and the commissioning of a world-wide architectural competition to design a new Museum for Auckland which would be combined with a war memorial to commemorate soldiers lost in World War I. That new museum opened on its current site in 1929.
Not only did Cheesman manage to the institution for nearly fifty years but as a self-taught botanist he travelled the length and breadth of New Zealand, collecting and recording plants, and observing the geography of the country. During his career, Cheeseman also published numerous important papers on a range of flora, described three plant genera, and numerous plant species from New Zealand and the Cook Islands. At the request of the New Zealand government, Cheeseman began his magnum opus, Manual of the New Zealand flora, which was first published in 1906and in 1914 he edited the two-volume work Illustrations of the New Zealand flora.
Thomas Cheeseman
Cheeseman met or corresponded with many of the scientists in New Zealand as well as extensive professional relationships with local and international colleagues, including the German-born geologist and director of the Canterbury Museum, Julius von Haast, the geologist James Hector of the the Colonial Museum, the geologist, zoologist and museum director Frederick Hutton as well as Sir Joseph Hooker at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England.
Early on in his career he even corresponded with Charles Darwin as the authors write. “Charles Darwin was arguably the most famous scientist in the world and also one of the most controversial. And it wasn’t just a lucky moment. Cheeseman’s note was careful, respectful and scientifically rigorous. It showed that he wasn’t just some amateur with an opinion — he was a careful observer who took the work seriously. Darwin saw that. For Cheeseman, it must have been thrilling and validating. It also helped open doors — that exchange helped establish his credibility in the scientific world, and it reinforced the idea that valuable knowledge didn’t just come from Oxford or London, it could come from a young man on the edge of empire, with a sharp mind and a notebook. That Cheeseman dared to write at all — and so confidently — speaks volumes about both his scientific maturity and his quiet self-assurance.”
The book highlights Cheeseman’s efforts to develop the taonga Māori component of the museum and also touches on the ethically sensitive area of collecting the art and culture of Māori noting ‘While Thomas Cheeseman was largely guided by the norms of nineteenth-century science, some of his actions — particularly around the acquisition and display of taonga Māori — now fall into ethically ambiguous, if not outright troubling, territory. His drive to build the Auckland museum’s collections sometimes led him to treat cultural objects as specimens, detached from the communities that made and valued them.
His acquisition methods could also be problematic. In several cases, taonga were obtained through missionary networks, collectors or private sales, often with little documentation about provenance or permission. Cheeseman rarely questioned the ethics of these transactions… These actions were not driven by malice, but rather by an unshakeable belief in the civilising power of museums and the primacy of scientific classification.”
The book tells the history and development of the Auckland Museum and its progress over more than fifty years to the triumph of the building on the present site in Auckland Doman. It also tells of the journey of Thomas Cheeseman who become a great person of influence not just in Auckland but nationally. The book also gives an account of the changing scientific and cultural landscape of the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century.
It is a well-researched and written book, thoughtfully designed with numerous images which help tell the entwined stories of Cheeseman, the development of scientific inquiry, the museum and museum’s collections.
Andrew McKay holds a PhD in art history from the University of Auckland and was a Professional Teaching Fellow in the university’s art history department.
Richard Wolfe is an Associate Emeritus of the Auckland War Memorial Museum and from 1978 to 1997 was Curator of Display. He has written numerous books on New Zealand art, history and popular culture.
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The Auckland Philharmonia’s Schumann’s “Cello Concerto” concert opened with Schubert’s “Rosamunde Overture”, a work which was written at a time when all of Beethoven’s symphonies (apart from his final – the Ninth) had been performed and composers made attempts at homages to the composer.
The opening features much of the drama typical of Beethoven with the dance-like passages caried along by the woodwinds. The joyous melodies are an ideal introduction to the play Rosamunde which tells of the adventures of a shepherdess in some idyllic settings.
Some of the dance-like music sounds like precursor of the later Viennese dance music which would come several years later. Conductor Giordano Bellincampi seemed to be inspired by the music, his arms performing arabesques as he responded to the passionate dance-like melodies.
The major work on the programme was Schumann’s “Cello Concerto”, a work which has some funereal tones throughout and is often thought of as foreshadowing his death. Cellist Daniel Muller-Schott opened the work with some melancholic sounds which slowly evolved into playing which was more ethereal and meditative with sequence which were supported by the strings.
With much of his playing he took a serious and studious approach as he explored some of the darker elements of the work which then morphed into more uplifting passages.
The second movement saw Muller-Schott playing in a more cautious manner and there was sense of apprehension before returning to the earlier theme as both he and the orchestra engaged in dramatic interchanges.
Muller-Schott played with a range of approaches. At times he was lethargic while at other times dramatic and towards the conclusion he took a more tentative approach as through trying to rediscover the main theme before producing a dramatic conclusion.
Overall Muller-Schott gave an elegant and expressive performance which showed him to be totally in control but also that he had an awareness of the orchestra and the emotional qualities of the music.
The final work on the programme was one of Beethoven earliest major works, “The Creation of Prometheus”, written for a ballet at the imperial court of Austria choreographed by Calvatore Vigano. The work has a similar theme to that which Mary Shelley explored in her “Frankenstein – a Modern Prometheus” – the implication s of man attempting to create life.
The ballet tells of Promethea creating a man and woman from stone statues, but they have no souls. Apollo helps Prometheus teaching them music, dance and drama. Through the series of dances Beethoven’s provides music which explores the qualities which make humans more knowledgeable and spiritual.
Each of the sections featured one of the orchestral sections – delicate music with strings harp and woodwinds, a brilliant cello sequence played by Ashley Brown, flute playing for a court dance sequence and a country dance by strings and woodwind. Beethoven seemed to have allocated certain instruments to characters in the ballet – Apollo the harp, Melpomene the oboe, the Male Creature the oboe bassoon.
While the music serves the ballet well it can also be seen as something of a calling card for Beethoven who had only written two of his symphonies at the time. With this work he showed his mastery of composition, his knowledge of the orchestra’s instruments.
With the various sections Beethoven also provided himself with melodies which he used in some of his later work with one of the sequences being used for his Eroica symphony.
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Miriama McDowell as Te Tiriti o Waitangi Mahana Photo: Andi Crown
Reviewed by Malcom Calder
Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking
He Kōpara: Haare Williams
By: Witi Ihimaera
Auckland Theatre Company
Dir: Katie Wolfe
Kaihapa Reo Māori & Translation: Maioho Allen
Mātanga Whakaari & Editor: Katie Wolfe
Set: John Verryt
Lighting: Jane Hakaraia
Costumes: Te Ura Taripo-Hoskins
Composition and Sound: Kingsley Spargo
Vision: Owen McCarhy
Movement and Assitant Director: Katrina George
With Miriama McDowell and Nī Dekkers-Reihana
ASB Waterfront Theatre
Until 23 November
Reviewer Malcolm Calder
Witi Ihimaera’s original words inclined, as he has himself has said, towards a blast of frustration and anger. This stunning contemporary production 25 years later remains true to those same frustrations but Katie Wolfe has rounded and matured them. The result is a stunning, and brilliantly executed production laced with personality and humanity that never loses sight of its own message while addressing them with a 21st century appreciation of all things treaty – from a uniquely maori perspective.
A good friend has bemoaned that fact that there is no script. And there’s not. Rather Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking is a deeply-felt, personalised memoir delivered bi-lingually as a rather different take on mainstream history. It is filled with pride, with joy and with a sense of fun that never loses sight of its primary concerns – what lies in peoples’ hearts, just beneath the surface.
With significant input from rangatira Sir Haare Williams and nuanced te reo from Maioha Allen, coupled with a dramatic staging and a cast that more than just shines, the result is something profoundly remarkable.
As such it stands as something not only relevant to audiences in Aotearoa New Zealand today but, just as Neil Ieremaia has done with dance, so Katie Wolfe has now done with theatre – placed a stake firmly in the ground with a serious work that is exportable to the world at large. It is something of which all New Zealanders should be proud.
I happen to be a fourth-generation kiwi of Scots descent who claims no te reo at all. Yet I surprised myself at how many words and phrases I actually know and understand. That is New Zealand today.
In my own case too, I vividly recall as a child some very aged kuia who would sit, shrouded in blankets and smoking their long pipes outside the Te Awamutu post office back in the 1950s. Just as Tiri does in this production, they were sharing their own past memories and I recall being staggered to come to the realisation that many had actually been at the nearby Orakau pa and the retreat across the river – albeit as children at the time – nearly 90 years previously.
It is all about memoirs and the memories that fuelled those kuia. Just as it is popular today for many of increasing years to write their own personalised memoirs, that is precisely what those kuia were doing. And it is what Ihimaera borrowed and expanded as a device for Tiri – albeit over a rather longer spread of years of which she constantly reminds us with a warmth and an irrepressible twinkle in her eyes putting her own literary longevity down to regular bowel movements and sex. Sex every day.
Miriama McDowell is a truly accomplished actor with an ever-increasing number of roles and accomplishments to her credit. But, as Te Tiriti o Waitangi Mahana, she has moved to another level where stunning is to devalue her performance. Here she can only be described as magisterial. The eyes have it and say so much. One wonders where her career will lead – it has a long way to go.
Nī Dekkers-Reihana (Tilly) and Miriama McDowell (Te Tiriti o Waitangi Mahana) Photo: Andi Crown
Offsetting her and drawing attention to Tiri’s strengths, weaknesses, and other attributes is Nī Dekkers-Reihana as her foil Tilly. Perhaps interestingly one definition of the word suggests it came from the practice of mounting a gem on a metal foil to make it shine more brightly. Nī does so irrepressibly.
Production values have been a feature of ATC’s work this year and this time around they can only be described as brilliantly understated abstraction. John Verryt’s set is simple, clean and cleverly focussed. It is enhanced by Jane Hakaraia’s dramatic lighting, and an ominous, murmuring soundscape created by Kingsley Spargo.
There were a couple of awkward moments on Opening Night –the introduction of the only prop, a stool, being one – but these very minor indeed.
Suffice to say that the audience response was celebratory. A haka indeed !
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Cover image, George Chance – The Storm, Wanaka (c1940)
New Zealand Photography Collected
175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa
Te Papa Press
Written by Athol McCredie
RRP $90.00
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
New Zealand Photography Collected illuminates New Zealand’s photographic history, from the earliest nineteenth-century portraits of Māori and local ‘scenic views’ to the latest contemporary art photography. The previous edition of the book published in 2015 went into two editions and this expanded version featuring 400 images from Te Papa’s collection of 400,000 works.
From the iconic to the previously unpublished, the selection includes outstanding photographs by the Burton Brothers, Leslie Adkin, Spencer Digby, John Pascoe, Brian Brake, Frank Hofmann, Ans Westra, Eric Lee-Johnson, Marti Friedlander, Laurence Aberhart, Ann Shelton, Glenn Jowitt, Anne Noble, Yvonne Todd – and many more.
The book not only provides a wide selection of images, it also introduces the reader to the photographic artists who have used photography to explore our history and environment. The photographs of the nineteenth century makes us realise that these images are often our only reference point for how the country, its people and events looked in the past.
Author and curator Athol McCredie provides a wide-ranging selection of images across portraiture, landscape, science, documentary photography and art with informative notes.
Ellis Dudgeon Lake Hawea, c.1947 Hand-coloured gelatin silver print, coloured by Elaine Watson, 1962, 404 × 500 mm Purchased 2023, O.051365 It is almost unknown for a hand-colourist to be identified on a photograph, but this one has a handwritten label on the back reading ‘Hand painted photograph by Elaine Watson, July 1962.’ This records that Watson hand-coloured it, not that she took it, for we know from a 1947 book in which it was reproduced in black and white that it was taken by Ellis Dudgeon, a photographer who ran a studio in Nelson from 1930 to 1970. Dudgeon’s scenic hand-coloured photographs were widely seen. Indeed, this image appears in colour on the cover of the upmarket magazine Mirror: New Zealand’s national home journal in 1955. In that version, the colouring is quite different: there is much more yellow in the tī kouka (cabbage trees), there are red flowers on the bushes by the lakeside, and it is much brighter and sunnier throughout. It is a more upbeat, holiday image than Watson’s subdued and uniformly toned version, showing just how much interpretive room there was for colourists, who were rarely present when the photograph was taken.
Together these photographs tell stories about life in this country from almost the earliest days of European colonisation and about how the practice of photography has evolved here, reflecting the dynamic and increasingly diverse nature of the collection, allowing for previously unseen treasures, and enabling familiar works to be recontextualised with fresh insights.
In making the selection, McCredie, says “I looked for photographs that were evocative, resonant, ambiguous, entertaining, and most especially, that might say something about the nature of photography itself.”
Whie no collection of photographs can be comprehensive the book offers many threads which weave together a sense of the nation’s history and culture. It is more than a history of photography tracing out our responses to the landscape, the built environment, events and people.
Through the book we see the taming and changing of the landscape, the changing domestic and commercial architecture, the way we dress and there are images of the citizens we valued for their contribution to our civic and cultural life.
There are portraits of Māori such as Tomika Te Mutu, as well as other history makers such as Peter Fraser, Ed Hillary and Mike Moore along with artists such as Kiri Te Kanawa, Tony Fomison and Yuki Kihara.
We also can see the way in which the photograph has changed from the need to simply record the landscape and people through to experimentation as well as viewing photography as a means of social and political change.
While there no comparative before and after images the book does have images of the changing face of the land as well as images of the major cities and the built environment from the nineteenth century and the twentieth which show the development of the urban areas. We are also able to see the changing nature of clothes, particularly those worn by females.
The inclusion of Frank Hofmann, one of the major modernist photographers is an example of the multi-talented artist who worked across the media providing many of the important modernist photographs as well as portraits. A photograph of the Christopher Bede Studio, which he founded also shows his ability to work across the commercial as well as experimental genres.
Frank Hofmann Christopher Bede Studios, 1967 Gelatin silver print, 418 × 578 mm Purchased 2016, O.044647 Christopher Bede Studios was formed by Frank Hofmann and Bill Doherty around 1950. It focused on home portraiture but also operated a studio, and this photograph was probably taken to promote its new premises being opened in Auckland in 1967. The image clearly sets out to demonstrate the varieties of photography the studio could undertake, from fashion and product photography to portraiture. It is pure advertising though, for it would be fanciful to imagine four photographers actually working simultaneously in the same studio space. The studio had branches in other centres, and in 1970 it claimed to be New Zealand’s largest photographic organisation. In 1975 it became Bede Photography.
There are number of images of individual Māori and Māori society which changes over the course of time from initially being of an ethnographic nature with images by John Nicol Crombuie and Alfred Burton through to seeing Māori as an integral part of society with photos by Ans Westra as well as seeing the inclusion of Māori photographers such as Tia Ranginui and Fiona Pardinton.
There are several small suites of work such as Eric Lee-Johnson images of Opo taken at Opononi in 1956, Gordon Burt’s commercial works mainly of automobiles and the Burton Brothers for their extensive images of the country.
Then there are individual images such as Frede Brockett’s dramatic image of the wreck of La Bella, Theo Schoon’s Geothermal studies or Eric Lee Johnson’s image of a bike wheel and shadow which predate similar work by Bill Culbert who, surprisingly, has no images in the book.
The landscape work in the book range from the nineteenth century images of the Burton Brothers through the NZ Tourism images, the myth-like work “Peter Pan on Mt Eden” by J. W. Chapman-Taylor through to the revisionist work of Mark Adams.
Les Wallace Napier after Hawke’s Bay earthquake, 1931 Gelatin silver print, 158 × 386 mm Gift of Holden New Zealand Limited, 1998, O.005635 The Hawke’s Bay earthquake of 3 February 1931 remains New Zealand’s deadliest natural disaster: 256 lost their lives, and the region was devastated. With limited water to fight the fires that ignited after the quake, eleven blocks of central Napier were completely gutted. According to an eyewitness, by evening the town ‘looked as if it had been subjected to a severe bombardment’: The centre of it for over a mile was a mass of flames. Every concrete and brick building had collapsed. It was like an upheaval and there was a terrible number of deaths . . . A number of people were lying in the streets and buried under the debris. Some were terribly injured and some were dead. The town was all in darkness and that added to the horror of the situation.
While there are not a lot of photographs of dramatic historical events like Les Wallace’s “Napier after the earthquake” there are a few, like Paul Simei Barton’s images of the demonstrations about the Springbok 1982 tour as well as the Covid 19 demonstration in Wellington by Adrian Lambert.
Mark Adams 13.11.2000 Hinemihi, ClandonPark, Surrey, England. Nga Tohunga:Wero Taroi, Tene Waitere, 2000 Chromogenic prints, 1200 × 3200 mm Purchased 2020, O.049055/A-C to C-C Mark Adams has often highlighted cultural incongruities in his photographs, and nowhere more so than in this triptych of the meeting house Hinemihi o te Ao Tawhito standing in a corner of an English country estate. The 1881 house was originally situated at Te Wairoa, the gateway village to the Pink and White Terraces. When Mount Tarawera erupted in 1886, the house was partially buried and subsequently abandoned. In 1891, the Earl of Onslow and Governor of New Zealand purchased Hinemihi and had it dismantled and reinstalled on his English estate as a sort of folly — something he probably didn’t see as incongruous himself, as he bought it as a reminder of his affection for New Zealand. Adams took another equally dissonant triptych that pairs with this photograph. It shows the site where Hinemihi originally stood — now just a forlorn patch of empty land covered in long grass and thistles. Hinemihi will be returned to New Zealand (though probably not to this site), placing Adams’s photograph in dialogue with the future as well as the past.
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New Zealand Arts Review 