Cellos HERALD spring
Mentioned in dispatches:
Spring must have been born in a cello, and this first month of spring has seen, and heard, the cello in its most glorious forms from the extraordinary Waikato University Cellophonics, through various chamber groups, to the superb virtuosity of the musicians like NZSO’s Andrew Joyce.
With the university’s James Tennant and performers from Matthias Balzat to Hillcrest High School’s Joo Eun Kim, the very birds have been knocked off their spring perches and we have revelled in a new spring dawn chorus with an iconic, mystical, beauty.
Nothing like it in New Zealand, and probably in the world.
Some reminders:
Many production companies believe that they are so well known they do not need to work at marketing.
We know there is change in newspaper priorities, but neither in print, nor the digital arm of journalism, do we understand those changes.
As a result, even the A-listers like Hamilton Operatic and Opus need to relearn to woo the paper and its staff, so that you can meet for coffee on first-name terms, provide updates on the year’s programmes and talk about what is coming next year, and call each other regularly.
Most importantly, remembering that the paper owes you nothing, in your briefings remind the paper what it gains by supporting the arts, not by denigrating sport, but by knowing what the arts offers business – because the Waikato
Times and others are businesses in serious competition for the dollar.
Her introduction to the professor of piano and head of the piano department at Krakow University was wonderfully succinct.
Her final words were prophetic. Katherine Austin, herself Waikato University’s head of piano studies, simply commanded us to ‘‘...sit in our seats and luxuriate.’’ Luxuriate we did.
It began with a nostalgic delight in the march of the three polonaises, from the reassuring Pom te Pom da da da da Pom te Pom which heralded the iconic A major, through the poignantly haunting C minor, resonating like a visit to an ancient baroque chapel, and on to the driving braggadocio of the A flat major where Pikul performed with such authority that it explained why this audience had packed the left of the auditorium.
There they could see the flying fingers of one of the world’s authorities on Chopin.
On to a pair of nocturnes which began with notes from the top hand dropping like pearls into cream, and leading us to dance nostalgic dreams and revel in the passionate dynamics. Spectacular fortissimos? Pouf!
Here the real power was in the most delicate, the most controlled, the most beautiful of pianissimo passages.
The final work – which actually wasn’t, because the audience dragged him back for two encores – was a display of conspicuous technical brilliance providing the kind of music for which films should be written, rather than vice versa.
At the same time, there was a stylistic qualification to be noted.
At times Pikul interpreted tempi with considerable elasticity. It is a style one hears frequently from US instrumentalists, pianists particularly, with periods of anticipation before a note is struck, and where tempo is manipulated to heighten emotion as if it were not originally there in the music.
There are some who enjoy that experience.
We all, however, revelled in this performance, and it was still only lunchtime.
Of course the title Urinetown will suggest an endless flow of bodily function jokes, but the reality is infinitely better than any stream of cheap laugh grabbers.
It is so creatively directed by Scot Hall that even a traditional slapstick blow to the crotch becomes painfully funny.
The stand-up witticisms occurring when the formidable lead police officer speaks directly to the audience about aspects of musicals and offers opinions on the narrative are hilarious.
Some of the best wit comes in that central pairing of officers Lockstock (superb characterisation from KM Adams) and Zac Clarke’s Barrel (hahaha!), while overall the dialogue and the lyrics are loaded with surprisingly subtle subtexts as well as generous double entendre for hoi poloi carousing in the back seats.
The narrative is almost incidental – poor people are forced to pay to use a public loo because private loos have been removed by order of the local council, acting on the draconian and exploitive advice of Mike Williams’s bullying town developer Caldwell B Cladwell.
In the consequent uprising there is pace, interest and spectacle, the latter largely in the form of routines developed by choreographer Chesham.
Really digging into the old Baroque doctrine of the affections, where the music and movement manipulates the mood and response of the audience, Chesham has her cast moving superbly from intentional, situation matching, chaos to a precision of unities as harmony and balance are restored.
It is a fascinating and effective adaptation of traditions of musical theatre, and with clear homage references from Evita to Fiddler on the Roof, Urinetown has an unexpected edge.
Some stunning voices, like Anika Haye’s Little Sally, and the racy power of a Penelope Pennywise sung by Julia Watkins, were representative of fine musical theatre singing from the ensemble.
A first class set facilitated the pacy, often complex movement and other narrative elements, and with a soundly purposed lighting plot, enabled the audience to follow the physically demanding movement.
Uniquely different, and a performance to be savoured.