Martinborough Music Festival (first three concerts). Martinborough Town Hall, September 23-24. Reviewed by Max Rashbrooke.
The Martinborough Music Festival, now in its fifth year, is an increasingly prominent part of the Wellington area’s classical scene; and its reputation seems set to grow, based on the first three of five concerts at this year’s festival.
The event benefits from the intimacy of its venue, the Martinborough Town Hall, and a talented line-up that on the first night comprised pianists Michael Houston and Dierdre Irons, playing a range of work for two pianos. The warm, good-humoured respect between the two players was well-displayed in the opening piece, Schubert’s Fantasia in F minor. That was followed by Bizet’s Jeux d’Enfants, a series of alternating fast and slow “child’s games” pieces that culminated in a bravura, blurred-hands rendition of Le Bal (‘The Ball’).
The concert also took in Rachmaninov’s Barcarolle, a delightful bit of liquid tone-painting, and the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski’s display piece Variations on a Theme by Paganini. Undoubtedly the highlight, though, was Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos. The first movement’s irrepressible flood of melody was followed by a second movement in which Houston’s playing, in particular, had a time-stilling quality. The audience was even rewarded for its extra-vigorous applause with an encore: Debussy’s own arrangement of his famous Prélude à L’Après-Midi d’un Faune.
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The second concert, on the Saturday afternoon, was every bit as good, beginning with a trio of pianist Benjamin Carter, festival artistic director Wilma Smith and cellist Matthias Balzat. A brief technical malfunction a couple of minutes in was no great hardship, as it meant we got a repeat of the extraordinary opening of Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 and its keening evocation of the Siberian wastes. The playing was superb throughout, right up to the macabre, Tim Burton-esque carnival dance of the last movement.
Less successful was the premiere of young New Zealand composer Tabea Squire’s Behind the Stars, a Dark Sky. The starting point of the quintet – with the piano, representing the stars, set against the dark-sky strings – tended to clump the latter together and leave little room for interplay, normally one of the most enjoyable features of a piano quintet. Although the later section, where the string parts seemed to emerge organically from the piano lines, worked better, overall the connections weren’t strong, and it was hard to imagine one’s way inside the sound-world Squire was trying to describe.
After the interval, though, we were treated to a wonderful performance of Dvorak’s Piano Quintet No. 2. Here the quintet seemed completely at ease, their playing characterised by a heartfelt and seemingly organic (though undoubtedly hard-won) understanding, and decorated by astonishingly assured playing from Carter, a rising star still at high school.
The third concert on Saturday night starred New Zealand-born but US-based Paul Whelan, a bass-baritone standing in at late notice for Teddy Tahu Rhodes. Somehow this concert was fractionally less engaging than the others, possibly owing to the line-up of pieces, each delightful in its own way but not obviously connected to, or congruent with, the others. Frequent changes of personnel and stage-shuffling didn’t help, even if a supportive crowd generously rewarded even the stagehands with their own round of applause.
Whelan, meanwhile, has a fine voice, as imposing as his physical presence and technically secure right across his range, but not perhaps the warmest or most expressive. Nor did the crowd of musicians – their numbers augmented by Michael Austin on oboe, Douglas Mews on harpsichord and Phoebe Russell on double bass, among others – sound as cohesive as the quintet had earlier in the day.
Nonetheless, it was a pleasure to hear Bach’s church cantata ‘Ich Habe Genug’ and – with a smaller set of performers – Imogen Holst’s Phantasy Quartet (an enchanting slice of English pastoral), not to mention Schubert’s famous An die Musik, with Irons providing a deft accompaniment.
After the interval, Strauss’s String Sextet from Capriccio was a mixed blessing, the textures blurry initially but improving as the piece went on, as cooking flavours marinate through time. Happily, the concert ended on a triumphant note with a rare rendition of Brahms’s Four Serious Songs. In this meditation on life, death and hope, Whelan sang wonderfully, his power and Stentorian quality a natural fit for the solemnity of Brahms’s musical writing.
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