Arts reflections

Mentioned in Despatches:

On occasion, in a past which may be visited only by memory, an elegant, even merely well-mannered, tea shop would please tea-bibbers and gossips by providing music as a background to their pleasure. On occasion it would be trio, more usually a piano, but always offering music which pleased in both volume and content, and often available on request. On occasion, in a present which is busily constructing future memory, cafes, so named because their portfolio beverage is coffee, play music, or what the great unwashed refer to as music. Only rarely does one find a teashop like the one in Bath which still has a live trio at peak times and a pianist at others, but then one rarely finds a teashop anywhere now. On occasion, a contemporary cafe´ may offer something suitably atmospheric, matching the choice of my hairdresser in which the tunefully unthreatening ambience of the salon is supported by a playlist entitled Music For Soaking In A Bath. Mostly however, cafes simply simply offer noise. That noise is exacerbated by the use of playlists which do not allow any kind of selection. Once there was a tube called a phonograph which would carry a single song. Then came discs, aka records, which in LP format played several numbers. That was enjoyable for those who enjoy a particular style or performer, but always included fillers, which, as the aural equivalent of excessive bread in sausages, include flavourless tracks we would never choose to listen to. Then magnetic tapes largely replaced discs and CDs replaced tapes, all the time extending the number of tracks and further reducing our ability to select what we want to hear. Now a range of digital devices have outgunned the lot with a potentially infinite number of different tracks. The cafes love them. They can run a digital playlist for a whole working day. The only thing they adjust is the volume, and, oddly, rarely downwards. The result is noise so intrusive it even kills conversation. Not only are some cafes responsible for some really bad coffee, their muzak is drowning our ability to make critical contact with the music we should enjoy. Take some delight in asking the offenders to turn it down, or even off, or you will turn down their coffee.

Feasting – No Famine in Sight

The next few weeks need careful planning. There is a plethora of performance, a proverbial promise to please everyone, and you will become aware of much of it after it has been, and gone. Publicity is an increasing problem, and even those of us who should know, find that events have already gone before we can organise to cover them. Even as I write, I have just become aware of the Sunday, April 15 afternoon performances in Morrinsville by Cantamus Women’s Choir, and the Aroha String Quartette in Cambridge. What follows is a selection which should command large audiences:

Beginning Thursday, April 19, with a programme which is accessible and fun, even if the Claudelands venue is neither, the NZSO is playing four works – a world premiere of Salina Fisher’s Tupaia, a commissioned work focusing on the translator who sailed with Cook, a Tahitian chief named Tupaia, and Les nuits d’ete Op 7 – Berlioz, La Mer Debussy, and Bolero by Ravel.

You might just get to the happily maturing pair, Foster and Allen, who hit the Irish buttons on today and tomorrow, April 17 and 18, at Clarence Street Theatre, or pick up some great jazz with Hopetoun Brown at the The Meteor tomorrow.

From April 23 to April 28, at 10.30 and 1pm daily, especially for the kids, The Meteor is staging Pushkin’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan.

On April 27, at the Gallagher Centre, Opus Orchestra plays Beethoven and Wagner, with a programme highlight being the Strauss Horn Concerto No 1 with Samuel Jacobs, principal horn from the NZSO as soloist.

On May 4, there are two dance events. Lumina, one of New Zealand’s top dance troupes, appears at the Gallagher Centre, while later in the evening, at The Factory in Alexandra St, Darude, described in the publicity as ‘‘one of the most influential artists to emerge from the dance scene in the past 20 years’’ makes his first Hamilton appearance. Two days later there is Cantando Choir’s performance Ain’t Misbehavin’ at the Gallagher in the afternoon, followed by more dance, as the Moscow Ballet La Classique stages The Nutcracker at Clarence Street, and then back to song on May 15 with The Ten Tenors. Phew!

REVIEW

What: Mayor’s Music Matinee

Who: Matthias Balzat and Vivian Balzat

When: 1pm, Friday, April 13

Where: Creative Waikato Performance Space

Works by: Brahms, Farr, and others Reviewer: Sam Edwards

There was a compelling temptation to focus this review on the remarkable Balzat family, and especially Matthias and Vivian who created today’s musical feast. Matthias particularly, a graduate of James Tennant and the University of Waikato, has provided Hamilton with memorable music over the past decade, and his leaving for Germany this year to complete his Masters means that, for many of us, today may have been the last opportunity to enjoy his unique cello in such an intimate and traditional chamber environment. The Creative Waikato space is minimalist and hard textured, but its traditional high-walled shoebox design is an unexpected acoustic blessing. The hour-long performance began with Brahms and the sensuously bewitching melodic passages of the Cello Sonata in D major op. 78 and ended with Moses Variations on One String, a work Paganini wrote to be performed using only the cello’s A string. The alpha and omega works of the programme were remarkable for their technical mastery on the one hand, and their interpretive sensitivity on the other, and made the more impressive as the audience was within reaching distance of the Balzat. We were offered a rare glimpse of their digital choreography as the flying fingers performed the impossible for bar after impressive bar. On the day, however, the ear was the winner. The sound was a pure melding of cello and piano, and one realised, with a joyous shiver, that there was no electronic interference to distort the beauty, the creative individuality, of the music. In the evocative aural landscape created by Gareth Farr in Shadow of the Hawk, in which the composer evokes the image of a hawk hunting in a hilly landscape, the piano provided the environment but Balzat’s cello gave the hawk wings to fly, and a personality which ranged from malevolence to aesthetic delight. Superb lunchtime experience indeed.