Artefacts AND arty facts
The fervent ones:
Expect no compromise here. The fervent ones know their art. They are clearly so addicted to paint in any form that as with David Lange’s uranium addicts, I can smell it on their breath from where I sit.
In the morning they sniff it, inhale the pigments like a spectral snuff, sneeze over a board, wait until it dries, and offer a random scattering of molecular pigmentation as an art work they can sell so they can support their habit. The phenomenon was evident during a formal debate on the nature of art organised by the Friends of the (Art) Museum and people were overwhelmingly impressed by the fervency and the passion of both debaters and audience.
Each side was speaking to, defending or rejecting, a commissioned abstract painting. The question was, simply, Is it Art?
The audience was made up of Friends of the Museum, and friends of those friends. Intelligent, articulate, artfully and art fully experienced, they knew the difference between artefacts and arty facts. They also appreciated, in the literal sense of that word, the quality of debate.
This really was active reflecting on art by everyone and what pleasure it was.
Review
What: Michael Hill International Violin Competition: Winner’s Tour
Who: Chamber Music New Zealand
When: Thursday 11 October 2018
Where: Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts
Works by: Schubert, Enescu, and Brahms
With: Ioana Cristina Goicea, winner of the Michael Hill International Violin Competition in 2017, and Andrey Gugnin, winner of the Ernest Hutcheson First Prize in the 2016 Sydney International Piano Competition
Reviewer: Sam Edwards
Glittering stars indeed. These celebrities are not famous for being famous. They are unique musicians who have, between them, won a whole clutch of major international solo awards. That they are using Gallagher Centre acoustics in recording this concert for their forthcoming CD is yet another A+ for the Waikato University/Gallagher Performance Centre. Technical brilliance and aesthetically conscious approach to the music was perfectly framed in this venue left this audience spellbound. Because of its intense energy, performance passion often generates as vigorous an opposition as it does support.
Most of us like our tea with milk, full bodied, perhaps, but mild, friendly stuff. Chamber Music concerts have, on occasion, not catered to the milder audiences and in this year’s four CMNZ concerts we had it all.
To round off the season with La Goicea’s exquisite violin in combination with the piano virtuosity of Andrey Gugnin was to turn the performance into an uniquely organic whole, not merely two instruments playing together, not a soloist accompanied by another, but something which used the combination to highlight the brilliance of each.
When the performance began with Schubert’s Rondo in B minor, the opening chordal passage suggested that this could well be a contest for instrumental bragging rights, until the pair produced an exquisite, inseparable, balance of piano hammers and silken strokes of the violin bow on their respective ‘‘lee owens’’trings. This was, however, the display tour for Goicea’s violin in the hands of its magician mistress.
When she produced the Enescu Sonata No 3 Op. 25 it was to demonstrate a performance physicality which redefined the concept of attacca and engaged the audience with a combined technical genius and an evocative, melodic, atmospheric un derstanding of the music.
Those qualities alone will make the forthcoming CD a necessary purchase for everyone – even if we are unable to see the performance as we did.
Review
What: The Vicar of Dibley: The Second Coming
Who: Hamilton Playbox
When: 13 – 27 Ocotber 2018
Where: Riverlea Theatre Directed by: Jane Barnett
Written by: Richard Curtis, from the original television series.
Reviewer: Sam Edwards
One of the most pleasant of experiences is the sound of people laughing and tonight was most pleasant.
In such circumstances the cast receives the plaudits, but in this production the crew to cast ratio of two to one, and the crew deserves quite particular credit.
Even the programme for Dibley, a simple, practical, enlightened introduction to the play, with excellent act summaries, was perfectly matched to purpose.
One notes that the President of Playbox, Lee Owens, is an administrator who is also an experienced performer – she is the Vicar.
Director Barnett and husband Alastair designed the experimental set.
It is an immensely practical double stage design which encourages easy character flow and with Guy Dommett’s professional lighting plot focuses the audience efficiently on locii of narrative significance. Small and elegant mobile stages dsigned by Mr Barnett can be swiftly wheeled in for scenes with limited narrative time.
They are very useful devices for a dramatic form which grew out of the shoot, cut, and edit techniques of serial television.
That same form, with its picaresque and episodic style, also creates some narrative difficulties of continuity and timing, a characteristic which would benefit from some adjustment in the first two acts.
By the second half, however, The Vicar and her crew had sprouted figurative comedic wings, handling the stock in trade of entertainment comedy with creative aplomb.
Take the toast To Letty, and all those who sailed in her, when said Letty was a local woman much admired by the men.
Oxymoronic lines, delivered absolutely straight by Aleida Brown as the gormless Alice … with chocolate pudding you can never have enough haddock… A third act kiss between Brown’s shatteringly spellbinding Alice and Alan Torr’s hapless Hugo was classic.
This is a play with long legs on the laughter.
Technical brilliance and aesthetically conscious approach to the music was perfectly framed in this venue left this audience spellbound.