Chamber Music New Zealand presents

Touring NZ 20 – 30 May 2018

Alex Rosswith Bianca Andrew

& STROMA

Presented in association with

Core FunderTour Partner

Supporting Partner

It’s not often you get to hear the world’s foremost music critic in person, accompanied by some of the most intriguing and beautiful music written for the 20th century. We welcome you to this exciting and varied programme with the celebrated critic and author Alex Ross, the hugely talented and much-loved young mezzo-soprano Bianca Andrew and the gifted musicians of STROMA who are always pushing boundaries and opening our ears. Chamber Music New Zealand’s promotion of such an interesting concert is to be admired and enjoyed.

Gillian DeaneChairDeane Endowment Trust

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CHAMBER MUSIC NEW ZEALAND presents

Alex Rosswith Bianca Andrew& STROMA

BERIO O KingBOULEZ Improvisé – pour le Dr. Kalmus XENAKIS CharismaGILLIAN WHITEHEAD ManutakiKAIJA SAARIAHO Oi Kuu DAVID LANG Short Fall

THE REST IS NOISE: An exploration of the history of chamber music in the 20th and 21st century.

Sun 20 May, 4pm Auckland Town Hall

Mon 21 May, 7.30pm Gallagher Academy HamiltonTue 22 May, 7.30pm Theatre Royal New PlymouthThu 24 May, 7.30pm MTG Century Theatre NapierFri 25 May, 7.30pm Shed 6 WellingtonSun 27 May, 6pm Nelson Centre of Musical Arts

Mon 28 May, 7.30pm Glenroy Auditorium DunedinWed 30 May, 7.30pm The Piano Christchurch

This concert will include excerpts from the following seminal works:

Duration: 120 minutes – including interval

SCHOENBERG Pierrot LunaireRAVEL Chansons MadécassesBARTÓK ContrastsMESSIAEN Quartet for the End of TimeLIGETI Baladă și joc (Ballad and Dance)

STRAVINSKY Three Songs from William ShakespeareJENNY MCLEOD For Seven

- INTERVAL -

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Having spent more than a quarter of a century lecturing on music at Victoria University of Wellington (please let’s not change this name), I am in awe of Alex Ross’s gift for communication. What is so brilliant about The Rest is Noise and Listen to This is the way Alex manages to synthesise fascinating historical and social detail with intelligent musical analysis. Listening to this (whatever this happens to be) is always more enjoyable and focused after reading what Alex has to say.

The Rest is Noise did the impossible. It made a mass readership interested in “contemporary” music. The scare quotes here – and “scare” seems right in more ways than one – because some of this music is over a century old, but still thought to be challenging. STROMA was created to champion this repertoire – and they do a magnificent job of that. What better way of illustrating the intrinsic interest and the beauty of music from Schoenberg to Saariaho than to bring Alex and Stroma together? A programme based on seminal chamber works of the modern era would have to include Pierrot Lunaire. For that we needed Bianca Andrew – a wonderful, intelligent young New Zealander who is forging a spectacular career in Europe.

I was delighted that the Auckland Writers’ Festival were so willing to partner CMNZ for this tour. Their patrons will have been treated to Alex talking about his new book on Wagner and another more general session by the time you are reading this. I’d like to thank Anne O’Brien warmly for working with us on bringing Alex to New Zealand.

Professor Jack Richards has provided generous support for Bianca Andrew on this tour. Thank you, Jack. STROMA draws on key players from the NZSO, and I would like to thank the Orchestra for their assistance in ensuring that this tour integrated with their own schedules and for allowing their players to take part.

We are indebted to our tour partners, Todd Corporation, and supporting partners, Lion Foundation and the Deane Endowment Trust. Sir Roderick and Lady Gillian Deane are long-time friends of Chamber Music New Zealand.

Enjoy the concert,

Peter Walls ONZMChief ExecutiveMusic Up Close | Puoro TaupiriChamber Music New Zealand

KIA ORA TĀTOU

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A graduate of the Guildhall School of Music in London and the New Zealand School of Music in Wellington, mezzo soprano Bianca Andrew began her career as an Emerging Artist with New Zealand Opera. She is now based in Germany, where she is a member of the Opernstudio with Oper Frankfurt.

Bianca is known for her engaging performances both in operatic and recital repertoire, and she was the winner of the 2016 Kathleen Ferrier Song Prize. Recent highlights include works by Thomas Adès with the Cambridge Philharmonic, Schumann with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, and the title role in Handel’s Radamisto with Guildhall Opera.

Bianca is an alumna of the New Zealand Opera School, and is generously supported by the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation.

Bianca is also supported by Professor Jack Richards for this tour.

BIANCA ANDREWMezzo Soprano

New Zealand born conductor Hamish McKeich has forged an impressive international conducting career alongside a passionate loyalty for developing the repertoire of contemporary and experimental music. He has established an acclaimed partnership with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra since 2002 and is currently their Associate Conductor. He has performed in New Zealand, Australia, China, the Netherlands, Italy, England, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Armenia and Lebanon.

Working regularly in Europe, and with all the major orchestras in New Zealand and Australia, McKeich performs in many musical genres, orchestral, opera, ballet, filmscores and cross-over projects. He has given over 100 world premieres of new works and is also chief conductor of the contemporary ensemble STROMA.

Initially a bassoonist, Hamish McKeich studied conducting with legendary teacher and pedagogue Professor Ilya Musin and also prominent conductors Valery Gergiev, Sian Edwards and Peter Eötvös. McKeich was a finalist of the Gergiev Festival Conductors Masterclass, under the guidance of Professor Ilya Musin and Valery Gergiev.

In 2012 Hamish McKeich was awarded a Douglas Lilburn Trust citation for services to New Zealand music.

HAMISH MCKEICH Conductor, Co-Director STROMA

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STROMA is one of New Zealand’s finest contemporary chamber ensembles, comprising players from the NZSO and other freelance Wellington performers. Since its inaugural concert in 2000, STROMA has performed regularly, with a repertoire of fresh, cutting-edge compositions. STROMA has also been active in commissioning new works from New Zealand composers. Stroma has appeared at each New Zealand Festival (of the Arts) since 2002, as well as the International Jazz Festival 2003, the Wellington Cathedral Festival 2003 and the Christchurch Arts Festival (formerly Christchurch Festival of the Arts 2005). They also toured for Chamber Music New Zealand in 2004.

Critics have called STROMA "one of the most interesting and original ensembles to have emerged recently", describing its performances as "vibrant and exhilarating", "stunning" and "staggeringly fine".

Alongside regular guest Emma Sayers, this particular ensemble of STROMA players also hold prominent positions in the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra: Associate Conductor Hamish McKeich, Concertmaster Vesa-Matti Leppänen, and Section Principals Patrick Barry, Bridget Douglas, Ken Ichinose, and Andrew Thomson.

STROMAHamish McKeich STROMA Conductor/Co-DirectorBridget Douglas FlutePatrick Barry ClarinetVesa-Matti Leppänen violinAndrew Thomson violaKen Ichinose celloEmma Sayers piano

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ALEX ROSS Author, Animateur

Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, won a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Guardian First Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His second book is the essay collection Listen to This. He is now at work on Wagnerism: Art in the Shadow of Music. Ross has received an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Belmont Prize in Germany, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship.

Some of the most ethereally beautiful music of the past century was first heard on a brutally cold January night in 1941, at the Stalag VIIIA prisoner-of-war camp, in Görlitz, Germany. The composer was Olivier Messiaen, the work Quartet for the End of Time. Messiaen wrote most of the piece after being captured as a French soldier during the German invasion of 1940. The premiere took place in an unheated barrack. An inscription in the score supplies a cataclysmic image from the Book of Revelation: “In homage to the Angel of the Apocalypse, who lifts his hand toward heaven, saying, ‘There shall be time no longer.’ This is, however, the gentlest apocalypse imaginable. The “seven trumpets” and other signs of doom take the form of fiercely elegant dances, whose rhythms swing along in intricate patterns without ever obeying a regular beat. Ultimately, Messiaen’s apocalypse has little to do with history and catastrophe; instead, it records the rebirth of an ordinary soul in the grip of extraordinary emotion.

Music of the 20th century is often associated with dissonance and difficulty. Many listeners still struggle to accept the innovative language that Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartók, and other innovators devised, although it has become familiar in other contexts, notably in the movies: try to imagine 2001: A Space Odyssey without the otherworldly soundscapes of György Ligeti. As museum-goers have come to terms with radical modern painting, perhaps concert-goers are ready to accept this outwardly challenging music, which contains enclaves of secret beauty. For 20th century composers were not merely instigators of mayhem; they also embraced past traditions, borrowed from folk and popular genres, and discovered

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new realms of pleasure – as in Messiaen’s ecstatic chorales and Kaija Saariaho’s shimmering textures. As John Cage once said, this has been a time of “many streams,” intersecting in a vast delta of musical possibility.

Our survey begins in 1912, when Schoenberg wrote his surreal, hallucinatory song cycle Pierrot Lunaire, and ends in 2000, when David Lang wrote his vividly coloured, post-minimalist piece Short Fall. You will hear a wide, wild range of styles – from the ethereal precision of Ravel’s Chansons madécasses to the grungy assault of Iannis Xenakis’s Charisma; from the abstract purity of Pierre Boulez’s Improvisé to the political-spiritual charge of Luciano Berio’s “O King,” written in memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. We include two New Zealand composers, Jenny McLeod and Gillian Whitehead: the one reaches out to the international avantgardism of Ligeti and Stockhausen, while the other looks homeward, evoking flights of swallows on the west coast of the North Island. Bartók is represented by a movement from Contrasts, which he wrote for the great jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman; Stravinsky, by a seldom-heard late-period work, “Full Fathom Five” from Three Songs from William Shakespeare.

Modern composers have often found themselves at odds with the mainstream classical music world, which tends to fear the alienating effect of the unfamiliar. Some of their finest works are written for tight little bands of winds and strings – ensembles that can be assembled quickly from the ranks of musician friends. This was the intent behind the then unusual ensemble of Pierrot Lunaire: voice, flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. Messiaen’s Quartet is written for the even more peculiar combo of clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, those being the instruments that were available in Stalag VIIIA. Huge worlds can arise, though, from these intimate groups. With the addition of the human voice, we move into a realm of abstract music theatre: opera made by a company of friends in the dead of night, before the end of time.

–– ALEX ROSS

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MICHAEL NORRISCo-Director STROMA

Michael Norris is Programme Leader, Composition at the New Zealand School of Music. He holds composition degrees from Victoria University of Wellington and City University, London. In 2003, Michael won the Douglas Lilburn Prize, a nationwide competition for orchestral composers. He has participated in composition courses featuring leading composers such as Peter Eötvös, Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff and Kaija Saariaho. His chamber orchestra work Sgraffito was commissioned by the SWR (Sudwestdeutsche Rundfunk) and premiered at the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2010 by the Radio Chamber Orchestra Hilversum, conducted by Peter Eötvös. In 2008, Michael organised the CANZ Composers Conference at the New Zealand School of Music and is Secretary General of the Asian Composers League. Michael maintains many active connections with performers, ensembles and composers worldwide, especially in Vienna, where he often spends time.

The story of the 20th century is one of a world undergoing rapid change. Global trauma took place on an unprecedented scale. Technological advances revolutionised travel and communication, opening the world to previously unseen and unheard-of cultures. Scientific truths, held self-evident for centuries, were suddenly destabtilised by relativity, uncertainty and incompleteness. Mass consumerism reared its ugly head, with all its attendant gloss and crass stereotypes.

And if art is a reflection of the world around us, then this anxiety, uncertainty and popularism had to present in music just as much as it was in Picasso’s angular, tortured Guernica, Duchamp’s snook-cocking Fountain or Roy Lichtenstein’s cartoony Whaam!

Some composers, however, responded not so much with reflection as with erasure: a blank slate, a tabula rasa that deliberately avoided any possible association with the major key, emotionally overblown music that had been co-opted by fascist regimes as the soundtrack to mass genocide and societal indoctrination.

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In doing so, some composers opened up a whole new world of sounds that had been previously prohibited. In 1952, for instance, John Cage wrote a piece consisting of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. It both erases the past, as well as opens our ears to the sounds around us. In the act of contemplating silence, Cage asks us to listen to our environment, to listen to others: to be tolerant, and to open our ears to new musical languages.

Tonight’s programme, then, takes us on a whistle-stop tour of some of the main musical languages of the twentieth century. It starts with one of the most radical works of the first decade: Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. Written two years before the start of World War I, Schoenberg sets an Albert Giraud poem, featuring the commedia dell’arte clown Pierrot, with dark surrealism and richly chromatic harmonies.

Maurice Ravel’s Chansons Madécasses, on the other hand, suggest another way to reinvent music from within: by maintaining conventional melody and harmony, but incorporating new, exotic scales and chords from around the world. Igor Stravinsky adopts Schoenberg’s serialism in his setting of William Shakespeare’s ‘Full Fathom Five’ from The Tempest, but with a typical Neo-classical crispness of line.

The internationalism of the mid-century is also captured in down-to-earth, folkmusic-inspired works by Hungarian composers Béla Bartók and György Ligeti. Olivier Messiaen’s dance from the Quartet for the End of Time is, on the other hand, an altogether more celestial and devotional one (the first six trumpets of the Apocalypse followed by the trumpet of the seventh angel announcing consummation of the mystery of God).

Messiaen’s student Pierre Boulez is often described as the enfant terrible of 20th century music, as much for his polemic as for his compositions. But in Improvisé — Pour le Dr. K, there is a playfulness and exquisite detail at work.

New Zealand composer Jenny McLeod, who was once a student of both Messiaen and Boulez, draws on the sounds and techniques of her teachers in For Seven, but by her own admission, suffuses the score with hints of New Zealand birdsong. Gillian Whitehead’s Manutaki features birds too: the Manutaki is the lead bird in a flock, the music suggesting the flight of sea swallows around the cliffs at Whatipu on the west coast of Auckland.

In Kaija Saariaho’s Oi Kuu and Iannis Xenakis’s Charisma, new sounds emerge from unusual instrumental techniques: in the case of Saariaho, they are fragile and elegant; in the case of Xenakis, strident and brutalist.

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David Lang’s Short Fall finally gets us to the 21st century. Representing American minimalism, his music loops, riffs and grooves, brings the concert to a rousing finale. Except that we leave the last word to Schoenberg: O Alter Duft floats through clouds of nostalgically consonant, if untethered harmonies. The strange juxtaposition of the consonant and the dissonant in this movement sums up, in one piece, the beautiful paradoxes of 20th century music.

–– MICHAEL NORRIS

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