Arts reflections

Mentioned in Despatches:

For those of you who need it, which is everyone who does not have it already, the Creative Waikato email is: hello@creativewaikato.co.nz. Use it to make sure that you are on their emailing list, and receive their regular listings of events and happenings – including their reminder that various council long-term plans are still taking submissions – Hamilton’s closes on April 30.

Research:

Waikato University’s music department, under the leadership of Dr Rachael Griffiths-Hughes and with the assistance of PhD candidate, top soprano Amy Thomas, is engaged in an interesting, original, and internationally recognised research project, the finding and performing of musical works called cantatas which were written to replace the sermon in a service known as vespers. They find and work with original scores by composers like Bach, Telemann, and Christoph Graupner. Not an easy start, as the manuscripts are often well weatherbeaten, so difficult to read, and in 18th century German which needs translating for the 21st century. There is then a detailed sequence of examination and editing, before reproducing them so that they can be performed, here in Hamilton, by Vox Baroque, a choral group accompanied by a chamber group playing baroque instruments of the period. It is providing remarkable music, and turns up at St Peter’s Cathedral at 5pm on the third Saturday of each month. Great research project, and even better music.

Reliable information:

I have just come from a performance of the NZSO. It was in the Claudelands Arena. An arena is, by definition, a place for large crowd entertainment and pleasure – from Lorde, to the rapper Kendrick Lamar who has just won the Pulitzer Prize for music – now there’s an oxymoron – and for circuses and prize fights and netball games. The word comes from the Latin term harena which was the fine, smooth sand used to absorb blood shed in gladiatorial contests like boxing, chariot racing, and rugby. It was not helpful for the executive director of H3 – the events and venues division of Hamilton City Council – to be saying that across the wider New Zealand entertainment industry, Claudelands Arena is regarded as a live entertainment venue with excellent acoustic treatment delivering a high quality environment for amplified performance. Acoustically, amplification or not, it is a dog. Acoustic treatment turns audible artistry into noise, and last night the NZSO performed a minor miracle as it made significantly beautiful music audible, albeit still sounding as though they were playing through a wall of felt.

I had been looking forward to the return of the NZSO after missing the film score visit earlier in the year. That programme raised the issues of audiences, funding, and change, and questioned the changes orchestral music is being forced to make to retain audiences. They are issues which are not going to be resolved by images of glamorous violinists caressing the strings with immaculately blonde horsehair. Neither is that style of music we are wont to label classical going to be the regular choice of millions when the latest Pulitzer Prize for music has been awarded to a rapper whose album of award choice is labelled Damn. So how do we go forward? For a start, with Tupaia, a work by Salina Fisher commissioned by the NZSO as part of a commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Cook’s Pacific Ocean voyages in 1769. Beginning with a few bars of exquisitely rendered sotto voce beauty which moved seamlessly from apparent silence to silky, barely audible, sound, the orchestra delivered an onomatopoeic landscape which turned into an evocative tone poem illustrating the journey of Tupaia, the Tahitian priest and navigator who sailed with Cook and helped map the journey through the Pacific. It was a beginning which underlined the discipline and interpretive perception with which the orchestra, under the baton of the hugely experienced Edo De Waart, is freshly captivating audiences. That discipline and perception was essential, because mezzo Sasha Cooke, producing such a full, honeyed tone and delicious lower register, sang six poems by Theophile Gautier. Berlioz had set these to music, and the NZSO interpretation, and their ability to perform with such delicate sensitivity, illuminating the Cooke voice as they played, made one spectacularly aware of the true depth and intensity of the poetry. The poems are love songs, but the images range from the romantic wanderings of lovers who, straying, scare off a hidden rabbit, or where, after the death of his beloved, Over me the vast night Unfolds like a shroud until landing on a faithful shore where love lasts forever, the poet can ask, light heartedly, Where do you want to go? The breeze is getting up. The Berlioz, as, indeed, in the two remaining works, the music was illuminated by constant instrumental highlights. The two flutes were as passionate as they were pure, Douglas and Eade offering insights which are good for the soul and refreshing for the mind. They stood out in a night in which Debussy’s La Mer picked up the sea themes from Fisher’s opening work and the horns seduced the audience and magnificent strings lifted us all. Then in a demonstration of pure iconoclastic braggadocio, the NZSO, disciplined by a remarkably secure snare drummer, turned that most simple of melodic riffs, the essential motif in Ravel’s Bolero, closer to classical 12 bar blues than mathematical Bach, into an experience which lifted the audience to a final foot-stamping, clapping, cheering finale. It was the NZSO’s evening, but it was also, uniquely, ours.