Author: Corrina

Inner Visions: Orchestra Wellington Presents ‘Pharaoh’

Corrina

On Saturday 7 October, Orchestra Wellington presents ‘Pharaoh‘, the penultimate concert of its 2023 Inner Visions season. The programme brings together five works that each realise ‘inner visions’: from Gemma Peacocke’s response to the mysterious world of manta rays in the Hauraki Gulf in her new work Manta; there is a collision of archaism and ultra-modernism in Webern’s Passacaglia (1908). Briar Prastiti’s White, Red, Black envisions a folkloric world, through the symbolic qualities of these three colours in story-telling. John Psathas’s Planet Damnation, a concerto for timpani and orchestra, draws us into a different time and landscape, taking its inspiration from the chapter in Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation that gives the author’s eyewitness account of catastrophic events in the Gulf War. To conclude the programme, Mozart’s music for the play Thamos, King of Egypt heightens the themes of treachery and death that pervade the drama by Tobias Philipp, Freiherr von Gebler (1726-1786). Joining Orchestra Wellington, conducted by Music Director Marc Taddei, will be the Arohanui Strings in Manta, percussionist Tomomi Ozaki, and the Orpheus Choir.

Today’s blog explores some of the books in the WCL collection about the two composers central to the First and Second Viennese Schools of composition, providing additional context to the music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), and Anton von Webern (1883-1945).

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Strike the Viol! Renaissance and Baroque Music for Viola da Gamba

Corrina

Strike the viol, touch the lute,
Wake the harp, inspire the flute.
Sing your patroness’s praise,
In cheerful and harmonious lays.

Treble viol by Alan Clayton. Picture © Alan Clayton. Picture reproduced with permission from Alan Clayton.
A treble violin by Alan Clayton

The viol — a bowed, fretted string instrument also known as a viola da gamba — rose to prominence in Europe at the end of the fifteenth century, and by the seventeenth century, it was one of the most popular ensemble and solo instruments. In Renaissance England, the viol consort, a group of viols of different sizes (treble, tenor, and bass), was one of the preeminent ensembles of the day, playing extraordinarily complex music; right through to the mid-eighteenth century, the viol remained an important solo instrument, especially for French and German composers. Eclipsed by the violoncello in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the viol was relegated to the status of a quaint relic until the ‘early music revival’ of the twentieth century reignited interest in viols and their music. Today, different members of the viol family can be found in many ensembles — and not only those specialising in early music or historical performance. The sound of viols and the virtuosity of their players inspire increasing numbers of contemporary composers (Nico Muhly, Sally Beamish, James MacMillan, and New Zealand’s own Yvette Audain, and Ross Harris to name a few) to write music for solo and ensemble viols. 

Pardessus de viole in the workshop. Picture © Alan Clayton.Image reproduced with permission from Alan Clayton.
In the workshop: a pardessus de viole by Alan Clayton

Locally, Wellington is home to Aotearoa’s only viol consort, the Palliser Viols. While the repertoire of the group is predominantly that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they also demonstrate the versatility of the viol by commissioning and performing new works including Ross Harris’s Gaudete and Image of Melancholy, Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead’s Douglas Lilburn, travelling on the Limited, regards the mountains in the moonlight and Colin Decio’s Lord have Mercy. And, perhaps more unexpectedly, there is a specialist maker of viols based in Wellington as well: Alan Clayton’s beautiful instruments — which he makes on commission from musicians here and overseas — can sometimes be seen at Alastair’s Music in Cuba Street. Today’s blog explores some of the recordings of music played by viols in different combinations and emerging from different countries and eras.

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The Musical Legacy of Gillian Bibby MNZM

Corrina

The pianist, composer, teacher, and scholar Gillian Bibby who passed away in Wellington on 7 August 2023, was integral to Wellington’s musical world for several decades. While countless numbers of young musicians in Wellington and beyond benefitted from Gillian’s work — whether through piano or music theory lessons, chamber music coaching, the Institute of Registered Music Teachers, the New Zealand Suzuki Institute, or by learning pieces from her edited collections of piano music — her legacy as a composer and performer is less well-known than it should be.

Bibby’s career took her from a childhood in Lower Hutt and Greymouth to university in Dunedin, and then postgraduate study in Germany, where her teachers included Karlheinz Stockhausen. She was the recipient of prestigious awards, including the Kranichsteiner Music Prize (1972), and she was a Mozart Fellow at Otago University (1976-77). After returning to Wellington, Bibby established a flourishing teaching studio in Roseneath and became heavily involved in Suzuki Talent Education, receiving in 1992 a Churchill Fellowship to pursue further study in Suzuki teaching training in North America.

It is impossible to do justice to Gillian Bibby’s career here, but something of the scale of her achievements can be seen in Bibby’s 70th birthday concert in 2015. Many eminent members of the music profession, including friends, family, and former pupils, came together to perform her music in Wellington’s Adam Concert Room. SOUNZ recorded these performances, which you can view here, alongside a fascinating interview with Bibby, and short introductions to the pieces. This collection of performances and discussions provides a rich portrait of Bibby’s work as a composer: eclectic, drawing on avant-garde techniques, diverse in instrumentation, and encompassing a wide variety of influences. A more extensive catalogue of her compositions can again be accessed via SOUNZ, while additional recordings and scores are available at the Alexander Turnbull Library.

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Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello — Recordings and Books

Corrina

Bach’s Six Suites for Solo Violoncello (BWV1007-1012) form one of his greatest musical monuments.  The suites, and their constituent preludes and dances are essential to every cellist, and the moment when a cello student learns their first Minuet, Gigue, or Allemande, is the start of a long, challenging journey. In his biography of Bach from 1802 Johann Nikolaus Forkel noted that:

There are few instruments for which Bach has not composed something. In his time, it was usual to play in the church, during communion, a concerto or solo upon some instrument. He often wrote such pieces himself, and always contrived them so that his performers could, by their means, improve upon their instruments. Most of these pieces, however, are lost. But, on the other hand, two principal works of another kind have been preserved, which, in all probability, richly indemnify us for the loss of the others. For a long series of years, the Violin Solos were universally considered by the greatest performers on the violin as the best means to make an ambitious student a perfect master of his instrument. The solos of the violoncello are, in this respect, of equal value.”  Nikolaus Forkel, Johann Sebastian Bach: his life, art, and work 

It is unclear when Bach wrote the cello suites; there is much debate about whether they pre- or post-date the solo violin sonatas and partitas. Similarly, we do not know whether he composed all six suites consecutively, or whether they were a project Bach completed over time. The same uncertainty applies to the solo violin works, although in their case there exists a fair copy in Bach’s hand, dated 1720.  Bach’s second wife, Anne Magdelene made another copy between 1727 and 1731, for which Bach’s pupil Schwanenberg wrote the frontispieces. It appears that Anne Magdelene’s copy of the suites for cello dates from the same time, possibly intended to be one volume with the violin solos, but Schwanenberg later wrote another frontispiece for them: 6 Suites, a Violoncello Solo senza Basso composes par Sr. J. S. Bach, Maitre de Chapelle. Other copies of the violin and cello solos were made by Bach’s associate, Johann Peter Kellner. 

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The writing on the wall: Musical prophecies with Orchestra Wellington

Corrina

Three works by British composers and a new piece by Briar Prastiti each exemplify different interpretations of the theme Prophecy at Orchestra Wellington’s concert on Saturday 5 August, the next instalment in the 2023 Inner Visions season. This blog presents a selection of materials that provide additional context and discussion about some of the music that Orchestra Wellington will perform with soloist Amalia Hall, the Orpheus Choir, baritone Benson Wilson, and the Wellington Brass Band, conducted by Orchestral Wellington’s Music Director, Marc Taddei.

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Songs and colours of water and earth: Mahler, Schoenberg, and Orchestra Wellington

Corrina

Continuing the series of posts that explore links between the WCL music collection and Orchestra Wellington’s 2023 Inner Visions season, today’s blog investigates the connections between their July concert ‘Three Colours‘ and books about Arnold Schoenberg (Five Pieces for Orchestra) and Gustav Mahler (Das Lied von der Erde) whose music frames the programme. In between these pieces, sits Richard Strauss’s Burleske for piano and orchestra, an exuberant work of the composer’s youth.

Burleske, which will feature Jian Liu playing the mercurial solo part, dates from 1885-1886 when Strauss was 21 years old. At the time of Burleske‘s genesis, Strauss had completed his tenure as Hans von Bülow’s assistant with the Meiningen Court Orchestra, and was deep in the phase of his ‘Brahms Adoration’. Burleske offers some unabashedly Brahmsian moments, but Strauss’s musical identity — which would be realized more fully in a few years, with Don Juan — is entirely clear. In fact, by the time Burleske had its premiere in Eisenach in 1890, the public had already been introduced to Don Juan in Weimar, a performance that cemented Strauss’s reputation as a leader of the avant-garde.

Strauss wrote Burleske for Hans von Bülow to perform as soloist, but the veteran pianist and conductor did not warm to the piece, writing to Brahms in January 1891 that ‘Strauss’s Burleske decidedly has some genius in it, but in other respects, it is horrifying.’ Strauss himself came to view the piece as something of an aberration, but despite his doubts, Burleske endured: in 1947, a festival dedicated to Strauss and his music was held in London, and the 83-year-old composer conducted a performance by the Philharmonia Orchestra, the programme consisting of Burleske, Don Juan, and Symphonia Domestica. You can read more about Strauss’s life and music in an earlier blog post.

The first performance of Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra also took place in London, at one of Sir Henry Wood’s Promenade Concerts in the Queen’s Hall. The orchestra had never encountered such music, and Wood devoted an almost unprecedented amount of rehearsal to the Five Pieces, ‘three consecutive rehearsals of an hour each,’ as Eugene Goossens (then a violinist in the Queen’s Hall Orchestra) remembered:

Wood, cutting, thrusting, parrying, and dissecting with that long white baton, fighting down the thing that all conductors have to fight sooner or later in varying degrees – the hostility of an orchestra that has fatally prejudged a novelty – eventually secured order out of chaos.” Eugene Goossens, The New York Times, 3 September 1944

Despite Wood’s meticulous preparation, the audience at the premiere on 3 September 1912 was hostile, derisive, and baffled. Undeterred, Wood  invited Schoenberg to come to London in January 1914 to conduct a second performance, and this received a far better reception: a note included in the programme stated that ‘Herr ARNOLD SCHOENBERG has promised his cooperation at today’s concert on condition that during the performance of his Orchestral Pieces perfect silence is maintained.’ Any hostile elements in the audience were drowned out by substantial applause.

It is from Schoenberg’s Five Pieces that the title for this week’s concert, ‘Colours’ is at least partially derived. The third of the pieces, unnamed at the time of composition in 1909, and even in the first edition of the score in 1912, later acquired the title ‘Farben’, possibly shortened from Akkordfaerbungen (‘chord hues’). When Schoenberg conducted a performance of the Five Pieces at Salzburg in 1920, this central piece was subtitled ‘Der Traunsee am Morgen,’ reflecting Schoenberg’s initial idea for the piece, seeing the colours of dawn on the waters of the Traunsee through the eye of an accomplished painter.

Evocations of light, liquid, and colour are also central to the poetic texts in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth). This symphony or song cycle was completed in 1909, making the work contemporaneous with Schoenberg’s Five Pieces. After Mahler read Die chinesische Flöte (The Chinese Flute), a collection of free translations (‘Nachdichtungen’) by Hans Bethge of existing translations of Tang dynasty poetry into German and French, he was moved by their expression and imagery, choosing  poems by Li Bai, Quian Qui, Men Haoran, and Wang Wei to set to music.  In the first poem, ‘Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde’ (‘The Drinking Song of the Earth’s Sorrow’), we hear of cellars full of golden wines (‘Dein Keller birgt die Fülle des goldenen Weins!’) and the eternal blue of the heavens (‘Das Firmament blaut ewig’). The second movement, ‘Der Einsame im Herbst’ (‘The Solitary One in Autumn’ begins with images of bluish mists creeping over a lake,  while the frosty grass seems sprinkled with jade dust.’ Another image of colour and water occurs in the fourth movement, ‘Von der Schönheit’ (‘Of beauty’) where the poet describes girls picking lotus flowers at a river bank, as ‘Golden sun plays about their form/Reflecting them in the clear water.’ (Gold’ne Sonne webt um die Gestalten/Spiegelt sie im blanken Wasser wider’). 

Detailed discussion and contextualization of Das Lied von der Erde can be found in three excellent books in the Wellington City Libraries collection, each written from a different perspective, and with a different intention in the author’s mind:

Gustav Mahler : songs and symphonies of life and death : interpretations and annotations / Mitchell, Donald
Donald Mitchell (1925-2017) was a pioneering Mahler scholar, his research and writing on his subject spanned many decades, and was frequently revised and updated. Songs and Symphonies of Life and Death (1985) followed on the heels of two groundbreaking studies, Gustav Mahler: the Early Years (1958) and Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years (1975). Mitchell’s Songs and Symphonies of Life and Death focuses on Mahler’s vocal music, with a deep discussion of Das Lied von der Erde that illuminates the composer’s sketches and process, his interpretation of the poetic texts, and the personal significance of this monumental work.

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