Recent Performances |

Time

(Tuesday) 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm UTC+12:00

Location

Loft at Q

305 Queen St Auckland 1011

11nov5:00 pm- 7:00 pmLoft Series 3: TwineAuckland Sunday performance

Philip Glass (USA; b. 1937): String Quartet No.3 (Mishima), c. 3’

vi. Mishima/Closing

Arranged for piano trio, this 6th and final movement from Glass’s String Quartet No. 3 is a tribute to Yukio Mishima – a deeply loved figure in his native Japan, and an important figure in the world. Poet, playwright, actor, director and author of over 30 novels, he was also a militant nationalist who on 25 November, 1970, plunged a dagger into his abdomen in a ritual act of Seppuku, despairing at the loss of Japan’s dignity in the Second World War and having failed in his attempt at a coup d’etat. This music comes from the Paul Schrader movie Mishima, A Life in Four Chapters: “The value of a man appears in the moment in which life confronts death”.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Glass studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud before heading to Europe in search of new sounds. He joins ranks with Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones as understudies of the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 where he formed the Philip Glass Ensemble. Glass prefers ‘repetitive structures’ over the often-used term ‘minimalism’ when describing his musical style. His vast body of work encompasses ensemble work, ten symphonies, more than twenty operas, two piano concertos, a wide range of film soundtracks and animation (Fantasia), popular music, and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with artists such as Twyla Tharp, Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Simon and David Bowie.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Robert Schumann (GER; 1810 – 1856): Piano Trio No.2 in F Major, c. 25’

i. Sehr lebhaft
ii. Mit innigem Ausdruck – Lebhaft “With earnestly affectionate expression.”
iii. In mässiger Bewegung
iv. Nicht zu rasch

The summer of 1847 was one of the happiest of Schumann’s life. The whole year had begun well, with an extensive concert tour for Clara, the pianist, and they had a wonderful spring in Prague before Schumann himself was received rapturously in Berlin – momentous for him, as for the first time, he was possibly even more famous than his wife. Then, for his birthday in the summer, they decided to holiday in the place where he grew up and spent his whole childhood – Zwickau, the ancient capital of the south west of Saxony, surrounded by the silver mines which made the town’s fortune and the forests and castles and the river. They took a house not far from where he had been born – Clara, Robert and their (so-far) three daughters – and he immediately, freed from the demons that had been plaguing him for years (tinnitus, phobias, nervous fits, apprehension of death), began to compose.

He chose piano trios, possibly as a rejoinder to Clara herself, who had had a great success with her own Piano Trio in G minor the previous year. The first, Schumann wrote, was born of “a time of gloomy moods,” while this F-major was “of a completely different character – it makes a breezier and more ingratiating impression.” It’s also, beautifully, entirely inspired by love. They had been married seven years by this stage, Robert was 37, Clara was just turning 28: they had (after their first son died age just one) three daughters; and despite Robert’s troubles – his demons had always been present in their marriage – it was just as passionate as when they first were courting. The first movement is vigorously bustling forth and reaches a climax when suddenly the piano drops into quiet arpeggios and the violin sings the second song from his Liederkreiscycle, written just at the time (May 1840) when they were struggling to be allowed to get married. The (Eichendorff) words go “I bear your beautiful likeness in the depths of my heart”: and just to make sure, he quotes another song for Clara from Frauenliebe und Leben, also from 1840, in the third movement.

Clara played for the premiere, and she later wrote of it, “It is one of the pieces of Robert’s that delights and warms the depths of my soul from beginning to end. I love it passionately, and would like to go on playing it again and again.”

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Matthew Hindson AM (AUS; b. 1968): Rush, c. 9’

Rush displays its own style unique to the composer, but inspired by Felix Mendelssohn. The fast and technically challenging passages found in the final movement of the Mendelssohn String Octet influenced Hindson’s decision to compose a work that is highly virtuosic in nature. The composer remarks, “it is much more the spirit of Mendelssohn’s string writing that was influential, particularly the last movements of his string quartets and the String Octet, rather than any sort of harmony or melodic invention.”

In addition to Mendelssohn, Hindson has also found inspiration in the popular music idiom. Popular and, in particular, ‘techno’ music and culture have played a large role in the development of Hindson’s musical style (with his other works displaying such titles as SPEED and Homage to Metallica), and Rush is no exception. The playful, up-beat and repetitive rhythms found in popular music are a prominent feature of this work making the work accessible to a wide audience. The playful nature of the music can also be considered as a reflection of the hedonistic nature of modern society, where a large emphasis is placed on the pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment.

Hindson is one of the most frequently performed and commissioned Australian composers of his generation. His works have been featured at national and international festivals, with orchestras, and Musica Viva and by dance by companies such as the Birmingham Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Ballett Schindowski and the Sydney Dance Company.
As well as composer, Matthew Hindson is Chair of the Composition Unit and associate professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; he is Chair of the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts; he has co-authored a book entitled Music Composition Toolbox, published by Science Press; and in 2006 was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his contributions to music composition and music education.

His music often displays influences of popular music styles within a classical music context, and, as a result, directness and immediacy are common features in much of his music.

Programme note by Michelle Kennedy, abridged.

Celeste Oram (NZ; b. 1990): the naming of waters(new commission), c. 10’

the naming of waters is a genre-busting newly commissioned work more akin to performance art than chamber music. Using props and prompts by both musicians and audience, Celeste sets the tone with the following words:

SCENE: A burial. North Sea.
Three colours of a flag clattering.
Boat heaving and pitching. Ashes fly in
faces and cling to clothes. Flowers tossed
overboard and bruised by churning.
Trio of hired musicians on deck. Despite
best solemnities, losing battle with wind to
keep bows on strings or fingers on keys. All
things wooden prone to creaking in sympathy
with the hull. Voices are swallowed.
Indelicate seagulls.
Engine cuts. Flag droops. Bells toll for the
dead. Boat turns and follows its wake home.
The ghost boat continues course toward open
sea. Music drifts, grows fainter, until it
can no longer be heard on the wind from
shore.

Celeste was born in Manhattan, learned to walk and talk in London, grew up in Auckland, and is presently based in Southern California. Her work investigates new media and strategies for musical notation: namely, video and audio scores and has been performed and recorded by numerous notable ensembles across the USA, New Zealand and Australia. Celeste was the Auckland Philharmonia’s Rising Star young composer-in-residence (2013/14); her commissioned orchestral work macropsiawas selected as a finalist in the 2014 SOUNZ Contemporary Award for excellence in New Zealand contemporary composition; she performed her non-instrumental solo piece O I at the 2016 Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in Germany and was awarded the Kranichstein Prize for composition.

An ongoing project is the renovation of histories of New Zealand music and sonic cultures. At present, this revolves around research into early 20th-century ham radio activity, and the figure of Vera Wyse Munro (1897-1966). This project is rapidly snowballing into an obsession with building re-creations of early radio circuits. She is currently pursuing a PhD in music composition at the University of California San Diego, where she completed an MA in 2016. She completed a BMusBA with first-class Honours at the University of Auckland in 2012, studying with Eve de Castro-Robinson, John Elmsly, and Leonie Holmes.

Johannes Brahms (GER; 1833 – 1897): Piano Trio No.1 in B Major, Op. 8, c. 29’

i. Allegro con brio
ii. Scherzo: Allegro molto – Meno allegro – Tempo primo
iii. Adagio
iv. Finale: Allegro

In April 1853, Johannes Brahms set out on a concert tour of Germany with one of his friends. He was just about to turn 20, on May 7, and little did he know that he was about to get the best birthday present ever. When the two of them got to Hanover, Joseph Joachim was in the audience – Joachim the great violinist – and he was so impressed, that he offered to play a concert with Brahms to fundraise for the next part of his trip. But that was not all. Joachim also gave Brahms letters of introduction to Robert and Clara Schumann, who would go on to play such a massive part in his life. He arrived at their door on the last day of September, in Düsseldorf, and was immediately invited in and pressed to stay. Clara wrote in her diary that night: ‘Here is one of those who comes as if sent straight from God.’

1854 began in Hanover, celebrating the new year with Joachim again, and that’s when Brahms began this trio. It’s one of the few of his early works to escape being thrown in the fire (he was relentlessly self-critical). Yet the story does not end there. Over 30 years later, in 1889, Brahms had a complete edition of his works coming out and decided to revise the trio to tighten it up and temper its youthful extravagance. He was on summer vacation at the time, at the beautiful spa town of Bad Ischl in Austria, and he wrote to Clara: ‘With what childish amusement I whiled away the beautiful summer days you will never guess. I have rewritten my B major Trio…. It will not be as wild as before – but will it be better?’ Most people agree that it is – it is the most common version performed today. And yet, interestingly, Brahms never withdrew the original. Perhaps it’s because it’s the first work he ever showed Clara. The mystery over what exactly was the nature of their relationship endures to this day.

It begins softly and mysteriously on the piano before the cello enters with a beautiful singing theme that migrates to the other instruments and unfolds like the first movement of a symphony, incredibly rich in ideas. The impish scherzo bursts exuberantly through into the major in the middle, building in intensity and drama before the imps come back to bring the movement to a close. The adagio, preminiscent of his piano concertos, is one of the most serene and beautiful things that Brahms ever wrote: and the piano leads the finale to a magnificent minor climax, epic in scope.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Concert Details

Twine
GLASS • SCHUMANN • HINDSON • ORAM • BRAHMS
Ashley Brown (cello) with guest musicians Amalia Hall (violin) and Somi Kim (piano)

In the finale of the series, Twine knits together the linear sway from Philip Glass(USA) and the refreshing new pluck and spin from Matthew Hindson (AUS), with a new commission from Celeste Oram (NZ). Robert Schumann (GER) and Johannes Brahms (GER) deliver lashings of romantic sentimentality, outpourings from their lives entwined.

Programme 90 mins plus interval:

Philip Glass (USA): Mishima

Robert Schumann (GER): Piano Trio No.2 in F Major (movement)

Matthew Hindson (AUS): Rush

~

Celeste Oram (NZ): the naming of waters (new commission)

Johannes Brahms (GER): Piano Trio No.1 in B Major, Op 8

TICKETS: $50 Adults / $25 Students

Time

(Sunday) 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm UTC+12:00

Location

Loft at Q

305 Queen St Auckland 1011

10nov2:30 pm- 4:30 pmMERCURY BAY PRESENTS: TWINECooks Beach, Coromandel

Philip Glass (USA; b. 1937): String Quartet No.3 (Mishima), c. 3’

vi. Mishima/Closing

Arranged for piano trio, this 6th and final movement from Glass’s String Quartet No. 3 is a tribute to Yukio Mishima – a deeply loved figure in his native Japan, and an important figure in the world. Poet, playwright, actor, director and author of over 30 novels, he was also a militant nationalist who on 25 November, 1970, plunged a dagger into his abdomen in a ritual act of Seppuku, despairing at the loss of Japan’s dignity in the Second World War and having failed in his attempt at a coup d’etat. This music comes from the Paul Schrader movie Mishima, A Life in Four Chapters: “The value of a man appears in the moment in which life confronts death”.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Glass studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud before heading to Europe in search of new sounds. He joins ranks with Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones as understudies of the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 where he formed the Philip Glass Ensemble. Glass prefers ‘repetitive structures’ over the often-used term ‘minimalism’ when describing his musical style. His vast body of work encompasses ensemble work, ten symphonies, more than twenty operas, two piano concertos, a wide range of film soundtracks and animation (Fantasia), popular music, and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with artists such as Twyla Tharp, Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Simon and David Bowie.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Robert Schumann (GER; 1810 – 1856): Piano Trio No.2 in F Major, c. 25’

i. Sehr lebhaft
ii. Mit innigem Ausdruck – Lebhaft “With earnestly affectionate expression.”
iii. In mässiger Bewegung
iv. Nicht zu rasch

The summer of 1847 was one of the happiest of Schumann’s life. The whole year had begun well, with an extensive concert tour for Clara, the pianist, and they had a wonderful spring in Prague before Schumann himself was received rapturously in Berlin – momentous for him, as for the first time, he was possibly even more famous than his wife. Then, for his birthday in the summer, they decided to holiday in the place where he grew up and spent his whole childhood – Zwickau, the ancient capital of the south west of Saxony, surrounded by the silver mines which made the town’s fortune and the forests and castles and the river. They took a house not far from where he had been born – Clara, Robert and their (so-far) three daughters – and he immediately, freed from the demons that had been plaguing him for years (tinnitus, phobias, nervous fits, apprehension of death), began to compose.

He chose piano trios, possibly as a rejoinder to Clara herself, who had had a great success with her own Piano Trio in G minor the previous year. The first, Schumann wrote, was born of “a time of gloomy moods,” while this F-major was “of a completely different character – it makes a breezier and more ingratiating impression.” It’s also, beautifully, entirely inspired by love. They had been married seven years by this stage, Robert was 37, Clara was just turning 28: they had (after their first son died age just one) three daughters; and despite Robert’s troubles – his demons had always been present in their marriage – it was just as passionate as when they first were courting. The first movement is vigorously bustling forth and reaches a climax when suddenly the piano drops into quiet arpeggios and the violin sings the second song from his Liederkreiscycle, written just at the time (May 1840) when they were struggling to be allowed to get married. The (Eichendorff) words go “I bear your beautiful likeness in the depths of my heart”: and just to make sure, he quotes another song for Clara from Frauenliebe und Leben, also from 1840, in the third movement.

Clara played for the premiere, and she later wrote of it, “It is one of the pieces of Robert’s that delights and warms the depths of my soul from beginning to end. I love it passionately, and would like to go on playing it again and again.”

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Matthew Hindson AM (AUS; b. 1968): Rush, c. 9’

Rush displays its own style unique to the composer, but inspired by Felix Mendelssohn. The fast and technically challenging passages found in the final movement of the Mendelssohn String Octet influenced Hindson’s decision to compose a work that is highly virtuosic in nature. The composer remarks, “it is much more the spirit of Mendelssohn’s string writing that was influential, particularly the last movements of his string quartets and the String Octet, rather than any sort of harmony or melodic invention.”

In addition to Mendelssohn, Hindson has also found inspiration in the popular music idiom. Popular and, in particular, ‘techno’ music and culture have played a large role in the development of Hindson’s musical style (with his other works displaying such titles as SPEED and Homage to Metallica), and Rush is no exception. The playful, up-beat and repetitive rhythms found in popular music are a prominent feature of this work making the work accessible to a wide audience. The playful nature of the music can also be considered as a reflection of the hedonistic nature of modern society, where a large emphasis is placed on the pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment.

Hindson is one of the most frequently performed and commissioned Australian composers of his generation. His works have been featured at national and international festivals, with orchestras, and Musica Viva and by dance by companies such as the Birmingham Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Ballett Schindowski and the Sydney Dance Company.
As well as composer, Matthew Hindson is Chair of the Composition Unit and associate professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; he is Chair of the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts; he has co-authored a book entitled Music Composition Toolbox, published by Science Press; and in 2006 was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his contributions to music composition and music education.

His music often displays influences of popular music styles within a classical music context, and, as a result, directness and immediacy are common features in much of his music.

Programme note by Michelle Kennedy, abridged.

Celeste Oram (NZ; b. 1990): the naming of waters(new commission), c. 10’

the naming of waters is a genre-busting newly commissioned work more akin to performance art than chamber music. Using props and prompts by both musicians and audience, Celeste sets the tone with the following words:

SCENE: A burial. North Sea.
Three colours of a flag clattering.
Boat heaving and pitching. Ashes fly in
faces and cling to clothes. Flowers tossed
overboard and bruised by churning.
Trio of hired musicians on deck. Despite
best solemnities, losing battle with wind to
keep bows on strings or fingers on keys. All
things wooden prone to creaking in sympathy
with the hull. Voices are swallowed.
Indelicate seagulls.
Engine cuts. Flag droops. Bells toll for the
dead. Boat turns and follows its wake home.
The ghost boat continues course toward open
sea. Music drifts, grows fainter, until it
can no longer be heard on the wind from
shore.

Celeste was born in Manhattan, learned to walk and talk in London, grew up in Auckland, and is presently based in Southern California. Her work investigates new media and strategies for musical notation: namely, video and audio scores and has been performed and recorded by numerous notable ensembles across the USA, New Zealand and Australia. Celeste was the Auckland Philharmonia’s Rising Star young composer-in-residence (2013/14); her commissioned orchestral work macropsiawas selected as a finalist in the 2014 SOUNZ Contemporary Award for excellence in New Zealand contemporary composition; she performed her non-instrumental solo piece O I at the 2016 Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in Germany and was awarded the Kranichstein Prize for composition.

An ongoing project is the renovation of histories of New Zealand music and sonic cultures. At present, this revolves around research into early 20th-century ham radio activity, and the figure of Vera Wyse Munro (1897-1966). This project is rapidly snowballing into an obsession with building re-creations of early radio circuits. She is currently pursuing a PhD in music composition at the University of California San Diego, where she completed an MA in 2016. She completed a BMusBA with first-class Honours at the University of Auckland in 2012, studying with Eve de Castro-Robinson, John Elmsly, and Leonie Holmes.

Johannes Brahms (GER; 1833 – 1897): Piano Trio No.1 in B Major, Op. 8, c. 29’

i. Allegro con brio
ii. Scherzo: Allegro molto – Meno allegro – Tempo primo
iii. Adagio
iv. Finale: Allegro

In April 1853, Johannes Brahms set out on a concert tour of Germany with one of his friends. He was just about to turn 20, on May 7, and little did he know that he was about to get the best birthday present ever. When the two of them got to Hanover, Joseph Joachim was in the audience – Joachim the great violinist – and he was so impressed, that he offered to play a concert with Brahms to fundraise for the next part of his trip. But that was not all. Joachim also gave Brahms letters of introduction to Robert and Clara Schumann, who would go on to play such a massive part in his life. He arrived at their door on the last day of September, in Düsseldorf, and was immediately invited in and pressed to stay. Clara wrote in her diary that night: ‘Here is one of those who comes as if sent straight from God.’

1854 began in Hanover, celebrating the new year with Joachim again, and that’s when Brahms began this trio. It’s one of the few of his early works to escape being thrown in the fire (he was relentlessly self-critical). Yet the story does not end there. Over 30 years later, in 1889, Brahms had a complete edition of his works coming out and decided to revise the trio to tighten it up and temper its youthful extravagance. He was on summer vacation at the time, at the beautiful spa town of Bad Ischl in Austria, and he wrote to Clara: ‘With what childish amusement I whiled away the beautiful summer days you will never guess. I have rewritten my B major Trio…. It will not be as wild as before – but will it be better?’ Most people agree that it is – it is the most common version performed today. And yet, interestingly, Brahms never withdrew the original. Perhaps it’s because it’s the first work he ever showed Clara. The mystery over what exactly was the nature of their relationship endures to this day.

It begins softly and mysteriously on the piano before the cello enters with a beautiful singing theme that migrates to the other instruments and unfolds like the first movement of a symphony, incredibly rich in ideas. The impish scherzo bursts exuberantly through into the major in the middle, building in intensity and drama before the imps come back to bring the movement to a close. The adagio, preminiscent of his piano concertos, is one of the most serene and beautiful things that Brahms ever wrote: and the piano leads the finale to a magnificent minor climax, epic in scope.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Concert Details

Join NZTrio in beautiful Cooks Beach, Coromandel on November 10th at the Morcom residence for an afternoon performance of Twine.

GLASS • SCHUMANN • HINDSON • ORAM • BRAHMS
Ashley Brown (cello) with guest musicians Amalia Hall (violin) and Somi Kim (piano)

Twine knits together the linear sway from Philip Glass(USA) and the refreshing new pluck and spin from Matthew Hindson (AUS), with a new commission from Celeste Oram (NZ). Robert Schumann (GER) and Johannes Brahms (GER) deliver lashings of romantic sentimentality, outpourings from their lives entwined.

Programme approx. 90 mins hours plus interval:

Philip Glass (USA): Mishima

Robert Schumann (GER): Piano Trio No.2 in F Major

Matthew Hindson (AUS): Rush

~

Celeste Oram (NZ): the naming of waters (new commission)

Johannes Brahms (GER): Piano Trio No.1 in B Major, Op 8

TICKETS: $45 each

Bookings via Paper Plus Whitianga, 71 Albert St, Whitianga

Phone: 07 866 5698

Time

(Saturday) 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm UTC+12:00

Location

Morcom Residence

705 Purangi Road, Cooks Beach

8nov7:30 pm- 9:30 pmGreytown Music Group presents: TwineGreytown

Philip Glass (USA; b. 1937): String Quartet No.3 (Mishima), c. 3’

vi. Mishima/Closing

Arranged for piano trio, this 6th and final movement from Glass’s String Quartet No. 3 is a tribute to Yukio Mishima – a deeply loved figure in his native Japan, and an important figure in the world. Poet, playwright, actor, director and author of over 30 novels, he was also a militant nationalist who on 25 November, 1970, plunged a dagger into his abdomen in a ritual act of Seppuku, despairing at the loss of Japan’s dignity in the Second World War and having failed in his attempt at a coup d’etat. This music comes from the Paul Schrader movie Mishima, A Life in Four Chapters: “The value of a man appears in the moment in which life confronts death”.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Glass studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud before heading to Europe in search of new sounds. He joins ranks with Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones as understudies of the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 where he formed the Philip Glass Ensemble. Glass prefers ‘repetitive structures’ over the often-used term ‘minimalism’ when describing his musical style. His vast body of work encompasses ensemble work, ten symphonies, more than twenty operas, two piano concertos, a wide range of film soundtracks and animation (Fantasia), popular music, and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with artists such as Twyla Tharp, Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Simon and David Bowie.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Robert Schumann (GER; 1810 – 1856): Piano Trio No.2 in F Major, c. 25’

i. Sehr lebhaft
ii. Mit innigem Ausdruck – Lebhaft “With earnestly affectionate expression.”
iii. In mässiger Bewegung
iv. Nicht zu rasch

The summer of 1847 was one of the happiest of Schumann’s life. The whole year had begun well, with an extensive concert tour for Clara, the pianist, and they had a wonderful spring in Prague before Schumann himself was received rapturously in Berlin – momentous for him, as for the first time, he was possibly even more famous than his wife. Then, for his birthday in the summer, they decided to holiday in the place where he grew up and spent his whole childhood – Zwickau, the ancient capital of the south west of Saxony, surrounded by the silver mines which made the town’s fortune and the forests and castles and the river. They took a house not far from where he had been born – Clara, Robert and their (so-far) three daughters – and he immediately, freed from the demons that had been plaguing him for years (tinnitus, phobias, nervous fits, apprehension of death), began to compose.

He chose piano trios, possibly as a rejoinder to Clara herself, who had had a great success with her own Piano Trio in G minor the previous year. The first, Schumann wrote, was born of “a time of gloomy moods,” while this F-major was “of a completely different character – it makes a breezier and more ingratiating impression.” It’s also, beautifully, entirely inspired by love. They had been married seven years by this stage, Robert was 37, Clara was just turning 28: they had (after their first son died age just one) three daughters; and despite Robert’s troubles – his demons had always been present in their marriage – it was just as passionate as when they first were courting. The first movement is vigorously bustling forth and reaches a climax when suddenly the piano drops into quiet arpeggios and the violin sings the second song from his Liederkreiscycle, written just at the time (May 1840) when they were struggling to be allowed to get married. The (Eichendorff) words go “I bear your beautiful likeness in the depths of my heart”: and just to make sure, he quotes another song for Clara from Frauenliebe und Leben, also from 1840, in the third movement.

Clara played for the premiere, and she later wrote of it, “It is one of the pieces of Robert’s that delights and warms the depths of my soul from beginning to end. I love it passionately, and would like to go on playing it again and again.”

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Matthew Hindson AM (AUS; b. 1968): Rush, c. 9’

Rush displays its own style unique to the composer, but inspired by Felix Mendelssohn. The fast and technically challenging passages found in the final movement of the Mendelssohn String Octet influenced Hindson’s decision to compose a work that is highly virtuosic in nature. The composer remarks, “it is much more the spirit of Mendelssohn’s string writing that was influential, particularly the last movements of his string quartets and the String Octet, rather than any sort of harmony or melodic invention.”

In addition to Mendelssohn, Hindson has also found inspiration in the popular music idiom. Popular and, in particular, ‘techno’ music and culture have played a large role in the development of Hindson’s musical style (with his other works displaying such titles as SPEED and Homage to Metallica), and Rush is no exception. The playful, up-beat and repetitive rhythms found in popular music are a prominent feature of this work making the work accessible to a wide audience. The playful nature of the music can also be considered as a reflection of the hedonistic nature of modern society, where a large emphasis is placed on the pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment.

Hindson is one of the most frequently performed and commissioned Australian composers of his generation. His works have been featured at national and international festivals, with orchestras, and Musica Viva and by dance by companies such as the Birmingham Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Ballett Schindowski and the Sydney Dance Company.
As well as composer, Matthew Hindson is Chair of the Composition Unit and associate professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; he is Chair of the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts; he has co-authored a book entitled Music Composition Toolbox, published by Science Press; and in 2006 was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his contributions to music composition and music education.

His music often displays influences of popular music styles within a classical music context, and, as a result, directness and immediacy are common features in much of his music.

Programme note by Michelle Kennedy, abridged.

Celeste Oram (NZ; b. 1990): the naming of waters(new commission), c. 10’

the naming of waters is a genre-busting newly commissioned work more akin to performance art than chamber music. Using props and prompts by both musicians and audience, Celeste sets the tone with the following words:

SCENE: A burial. North Sea.
Three colours of a flag clattering.
Boat heaving and pitching. Ashes fly in
faces and cling to clothes. Flowers tossed
overboard and bruised by churning.
Trio of hired musicians on deck. Despite
best solemnities, losing battle with wind to
keep bows on strings or fingers on keys. All
things wooden prone to creaking in sympathy
with the hull. Voices are swallowed.
Indelicate seagulls.
Engine cuts. Flag droops. Bells toll for the
dead. Boat turns and follows its wake home.
The ghost boat continues course toward open
sea. Music drifts, grows fainter, until it
can no longer be heard on the wind from
shore.

Celeste was born in Manhattan, learned to walk and talk in London, grew up in Auckland, and is presently based in Southern California. Her work investigates new media and strategies for musical notation: namely, video and audio scores and has been performed and recorded by numerous notable ensembles across the USA, New Zealand and Australia. Celeste was the Auckland Philharmonia’s Rising Star young composer-in-residence (2013/14); her commissioned orchestral work macropsiawas selected as a finalist in the 2014 SOUNZ Contemporary Award for excellence in New Zealand contemporary composition; she performed her non-instrumental solo piece O I at the 2016 Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in Germany and was awarded the Kranichstein Prize for composition.

An ongoing project is the renovation of histories of New Zealand music and sonic cultures. At present, this revolves around research into early 20th-century ham radio activity, and the figure of Vera Wyse Munro (1897-1966). This project is rapidly snowballing into an obsession with building re-creations of early radio circuits. She is currently pursuing a PhD in music composition at the University of California San Diego, where she completed an MA in 2016. She completed a BMusBA with first-class Honours at the University of Auckland in 2012, studying with Eve de Castro-Robinson, John Elmsly, and Leonie Holmes.

Johannes Brahms (GER; 1833 – 1897): Piano Trio No.1 in B Major, Op. 8, c. 29’

i. Allegro con brio
ii. Scherzo: Allegro molto – Meno allegro – Tempo primo
iii. Adagio
iv. Finale: Allegro

In April 1853, Johannes Brahms set out on a concert tour of Germany with one of his friends. He was just about to turn 20, on May 7, and little did he know that he was about to get the best birthday present ever. When the two of them got to Hanover, Joseph Joachim was in the audience – Joachim the great violinist – and he was so impressed, that he offered to play a concert with Brahms to fundraise for the next part of his trip. But that was not all. Joachim also gave Brahms letters of introduction to Robert and Clara Schumann, who would go on to play such a massive part in his life. He arrived at their door on the last day of September, in Düsseldorf, and was immediately invited in and pressed to stay. Clara wrote in her diary that night: ‘Here is one of those who comes as if sent straight from God.’

1854 began in Hanover, celebrating the new year with Joachim again, and that’s when Brahms began this trio. It’s one of the few of his early works to escape being thrown in the fire (he was relentlessly self-critical). Yet the story does not end there. Over 30 years later, in 1889, Brahms had a complete edition of his works coming out and decided to revise the trio to tighten it up and temper its youthful extravagance. He was on summer vacation at the time, at the beautiful spa town of Bad Ischl in Austria, and he wrote to Clara: ‘With what childish amusement I whiled away the beautiful summer days you will never guess. I have rewritten my B major Trio…. It will not be as wild as before – but will it be better?’ Most people agree that it is – it is the most common version performed today. And yet, interestingly, Brahms never withdrew the original. Perhaps it’s because it’s the first work he ever showed Clara. The mystery over what exactly was the nature of their relationship endures to this day.

It begins softly and mysteriously on the piano before the cello enters with a beautiful singing theme that migrates to the other instruments and unfolds like the first movement of a symphony, incredibly rich in ideas. The impish scherzo bursts exuberantly through into the major in the middle, building in intensity and drama before the imps come back to bring the movement to a close. The adagio, preminiscent of his piano concertos, is one of the most serene and beautiful things that Brahms ever wrote: and the piano leads the finale to a magnificent minor climax, epic in scope.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Concert Details

Join NZTrio in the intimate setting of Ed & Juliette Cooke’s home in Greytown for an evening of chamber music like the old days, presented by Greytown Music Group.

Thursday, 8th November 7:30pm

57 Wood Street, Greytown

$25 Adults / $10 Students

Tickets by phone reservation (evenings): Ed & Juliette 06 304 9497

Advance booking highly recommended!

PROGRAMME:

Approx. 90 minutes plus interval

Twine
Philip Glass: Mishima
Robert Schumann: Piano Trio No.2 in F Major
Matthew Hindson: Rush
~
Celeste Oram: the naming of waters (new commission)
Johannes Brahms: Piano Trio No.1 in B Major, Op 8

Time

(Thursday) 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm UTC+12:00

Location

House concert - Ed & Juliette Cooke

57 Wood Street, Greytown NZ

7nov7:00 pm- 9:00 pmArt3: TwinePiecesNew Plymouth

Philip Glass (USA; b. 1937): String Quartet No.3 (Mishima), c. 3’

vi. Mishima/Closing

Arranged for piano trio, this 6th and final movement from Glass’s String Quartet No. 3 is a tribute to Yukio Mishima – a deeply loved figure in his native Japan, and an important figure in the world. Poet, playwright, actor, director and author of over 30 novels, he was also a militant nationalist who on 25 November, 1970, plunged a dagger into his abdomen in a ritual act of Seppuku, despairing at the loss of Japan’s dignity in the Second World War and having failed in his attempt at a coup d’etat. This music comes from the Paul Schrader movie Mishima, A Life in Four Chapters: “The value of a man appears in the moment in which life confronts death”.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Glass studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud before heading to Europe in search of new sounds. He joins ranks with Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones as understudies of the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 where he formed the Philip Glass Ensemble. Glass prefers ‘repetitive structures’ over the often-used term ‘minimalism’ when describing his musical style. His vast body of work encompasses ensemble work, ten symphonies, more than twenty operas, two piano concertos, a wide range of film soundtracks and animation (Fantasia), popular music, and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with artists such as Twyla Tharp, Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Simon and David Bowie.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Robert Schumann (GER; 1810 – 1856): Piano Trio No.2 in F Major, c. 25’

i. Sehr lebhaft
ii. Mit innigem Ausdruck – Lebhaft “With earnestly affectionate expression.”
iii. In mässiger Bewegung
iv. Nicht zu rasch

The summer of 1847 was one of the happiest of Schumann’s life. The whole year had begun well, with an extensive concert tour for Clara, the pianist, and they had a wonderful spring in Prague before Schumann himself was received rapturously in Berlin – momentous for him, as for the first time, he was possibly even more famous than his wife. Then, for his birthday in the summer, they decided to holiday in the place where he grew up and spent his whole childhood – Zwickau, the ancient capital of the south west of Saxony, surrounded by the silver mines which made the town’s fortune and the forests and castles and the river. They took a house not far from where he had been born – Clara, Robert and their (so-far) three daughters – and he immediately, freed from the demons that had been plaguing him for years (tinnitus, phobias, nervous fits, apprehension of death), began to compose.

He chose piano trios, possibly as a rejoinder to Clara herself, who had had a great success with her own Piano Trio in G minor the previous year. The first, Schumann wrote, was born of “a time of gloomy moods,” while this F-major was “of a completely different character – it makes a breezier and more ingratiating impression.” It’s also, beautifully, entirely inspired by love. They had been married seven years by this stage, Robert was 37, Clara was just turning 28: they had (after their first son died age just one) three daughters; and despite Robert’s troubles – his demons had always been present in their marriage – it was just as passionate as when they first were courting. The first movement is vigorously bustling forth and reaches a climax when suddenly the piano drops into quiet arpeggios and the violin sings the second song from his Liederkreiscycle, written just at the time (May 1840) when they were struggling to be allowed to get married. The (Eichendorff) words go “I bear your beautiful likeness in the depths of my heart”: and just to make sure, he quotes another song for Clara from Frauenliebe und Leben, also from 1840, in the third movement.

Clara played for the premiere, and she later wrote of it, “It is one of the pieces of Robert’s that delights and warms the depths of my soul from beginning to end. I love it passionately, and would like to go on playing it again and again.”

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Matthew Hindson AM (AUS; b. 1968): Rush, c. 9’

Rush displays its own style unique to the composer, but inspired by Felix Mendelssohn. The fast and technically challenging passages found in the final movement of the Mendelssohn String Octet influenced Hindson’s decision to compose a work that is highly virtuosic in nature. The composer remarks, “it is much more the spirit of Mendelssohn’s string writing that was influential, particularly the last movements of his string quartets and the String Octet, rather than any sort of harmony or melodic invention.”

In addition to Mendelssohn, Hindson has also found inspiration in the popular music idiom. Popular and, in particular, ‘techno’ music and culture have played a large role in the development of Hindson’s musical style (with his other works displaying such titles as SPEED and Homage to Metallica), and Rush is no exception. The playful, up-beat and repetitive rhythms found in popular music are a prominent feature of this work making the work accessible to a wide audience. The playful nature of the music can also be considered as a reflection of the hedonistic nature of modern society, where a large emphasis is placed on the pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment.

Hindson is one of the most frequently performed and commissioned Australian composers of his generation. His works have been featured at national and international festivals, with orchestras, and Musica Viva and by dance by companies such as the Birmingham Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Ballett Schindowski and the Sydney Dance Company.
As well as composer, Matthew Hindson is Chair of the Composition Unit and associate professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; he is Chair of the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts; he has co-authored a book entitled Music Composition Toolbox, published by Science Press; and in 2006 was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his contributions to music composition and music education.

His music often displays influences of popular music styles within a classical music context, and, as a result, directness and immediacy are common features in much of his music.

Programme note by Michelle Kennedy, abridged.

Celeste Oram (NZ; b. 1990): the naming of waters(new commission), c. 10’

the naming of waters is a genre-busting newly commissioned work more akin to performance art than chamber music. Using props and prompts by both musicians and audience, Celeste sets the tone with the following words:

SCENE: A burial. North Sea.
Three colours of a flag clattering.
Boat heaving and pitching. Ashes fly in
faces and cling to clothes. Flowers tossed
overboard and bruised by churning.
Trio of hired musicians on deck. Despite
best solemnities, losing battle with wind to
keep bows on strings or fingers on keys. All
things wooden prone to creaking in sympathy
with the hull. Voices are swallowed.
Indelicate seagulls.
Engine cuts. Flag droops. Bells toll for the
dead. Boat turns and follows its wake home.
The ghost boat continues course toward open
sea. Music drifts, grows fainter, until it
can no longer be heard on the wind from
shore.

Celeste was born in Manhattan, learned to walk and talk in London, grew up in Auckland, and is presently based in Southern California. Her work investigates new media and strategies for musical notation: namely, video and audio scores and has been performed and recorded by numerous notable ensembles across the USA, New Zealand and Australia. Celeste was the Auckland Philharmonia’s Rising Star young composer-in-residence (2013/14); her commissioned orchestral work macropsiawas selected as a finalist in the 2014 SOUNZ Contemporary Award for excellence in New Zealand contemporary composition; she performed her non-instrumental solo piece O I at the 2016 Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in Germany and was awarded the Kranichstein Prize for composition.

An ongoing project is the renovation of histories of New Zealand music and sonic cultures. At present, this revolves around research into early 20th-century ham radio activity, and the figure of Vera Wyse Munro (1897-1966). This project is rapidly snowballing into an obsession with building re-creations of early radio circuits. She is currently pursuing a PhD in music composition at the University of California San Diego, where she completed an MA in 2016. She completed a BMusBA with first-class Honours at the University of Auckland in 2012, studying with Eve de Castro-Robinson, John Elmsly, and Leonie Holmes.

Johannes Brahms (GER; 1833 – 1897): Piano Trio No.1 in B Major, Op. 8, c. 29’

i. Allegro con brio
ii. Scherzo: Allegro molto – Meno allegro – Tempo primo
iii. Adagio
iv. Finale: Allegro

In April 1853, Johannes Brahms set out on a concert tour of Germany with one of his friends. He was just about to turn 20, on May 7, and little did he know that he was about to get the best birthday present ever. When the two of them got to Hanover, Joseph Joachim was in the audience – Joachim the great violinist – and he was so impressed, that he offered to play a concert with Brahms to fundraise for the next part of his trip. But that was not all. Joachim also gave Brahms letters of introduction to Robert and Clara Schumann, who would go on to play such a massive part in his life. He arrived at their door on the last day of September, in Düsseldorf, and was immediately invited in and pressed to stay. Clara wrote in her diary that night: ‘Here is one of those who comes as if sent straight from God.’

1854 began in Hanover, celebrating the new year with Joachim again, and that’s when Brahms began this trio. It’s one of the few of his early works to escape being thrown in the fire (he was relentlessly self-critical). Yet the story does not end there. Over 30 years later, in 1889, Brahms had a complete edition of his works coming out and decided to revise the trio to tighten it up and temper its youthful extravagance. He was on summer vacation at the time, at the beautiful spa town of Bad Ischl in Austria, and he wrote to Clara: ‘With what childish amusement I whiled away the beautiful summer days you will never guess. I have rewritten my B major Trio…. It will not be as wild as before – but will it be better?’ Most people agree that it is – it is the most common version performed today. And yet, interestingly, Brahms never withdrew the original. Perhaps it’s because it’s the first work he ever showed Clara. The mystery over what exactly was the nature of their relationship endures to this day.

It begins softly and mysteriously on the piano before the cello enters with a beautiful singing theme that migrates to the other instruments and unfolds like the first movement of a symphony, incredibly rich in ideas. The impish scherzo bursts exuberantly through into the major in the middle, building in intensity and drama before the imps come back to bring the movement to a close. The adagio, preminiscent of his piano concertos, is one of the most serene and beautiful things that Brahms ever wrote: and the piano leads the finale to a magnificent minor climax, epic in scope.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Concert Details

TwinePieces
GLASS • SCHUMANN • HINDSON • ORAM • BRAHMS
Ashley Brown (cello) with guest musicians Amalia Hall (violin) and Somi Kim (piano)

We’re heading to New Plymouth! TwinePieces (a condensed version of the full Twine programme) knits together the linear sway from Philip Glass and the refreshing new pluck and spin from Matthew Hindson, including an exciting new commission from New Zealand composer Celeste Oram. Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms deliver lashings of romantic sentimentality, outpourings from their lives entwined.

Performing in architecturally stunning Len Lye Gallery, it will be an arts experience ‘to the power of 3’ (Art3). Join us for complimentary wine and nibbles following the performance.

Programme approx. 80 mins including interval

Philip Glass (USA): Mishima
Robert Schumann (GER): Piano Trio No. 2 in F Major (movement)
Matthew Hindson (AUS): Rush
Celeste Oram (NZ): the naming of waters (new commission)

~

Johannes Brahms (GER): Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op 8

TICKETS: $35 Adults / $15 Students and Friends of the Gallery

BOOK VIA EVENTFINDA HERE

Time

(Wednesday) 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm UTC+12:00

Location

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre

42 Queen Street, New Plymouth 4310

4nov5:00 pm- 6:30 pmArt3: TwinePiecesManurewa, Auckland

Philip Glass (USA; b. 1937): String Quartet No.3 (Mishima), c. 3’

vi. Mishima/Closing

Arranged for piano trio, this 6th and final movement from Glass’s String Quartet No. 3 is a tribute to Yukio Mishima – a deeply loved figure in his native Japan, and an important figure in the world. Poet, playwright, actor, director and author of over 30 novels, he was also a militant nationalist who on 25 November, 1970, plunged a dagger into his abdomen in a ritual act of Seppuku, despairing at the loss of Japan’s dignity in the Second World War and having failed in his attempt at a coup d’etat. This music comes from the Paul Schrader movie Mishima, A Life in Four Chapters: “The value of a man appears in the moment in which life confronts death”.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Glass studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud before heading to Europe in search of new sounds. He joins ranks with Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones as understudies of the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 where he formed the Philip Glass Ensemble. Glass prefers ‘repetitive structures’ over the often-used term ‘minimalism’ when describing his musical style. His vast body of work encompasses ensemble work, ten symphonies, more than twenty operas, two piano concertos, a wide range of film soundtracks and animation (Fantasia), popular music, and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with artists such as Twyla Tharp, Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Simon and David Bowie.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Robert Schumann (GER; 1810 – 1856): Piano Trio No.2 in F Major, c. 25’

i. Sehr lebhaft
ii. Mit innigem Ausdruck – Lebhaft “With earnestly affectionate expression.”
iii. In mässiger Bewegung
iv. Nicht zu rasch

The summer of 1847 was one of the happiest of Schumann’s life. The whole year had begun well, with an extensive concert tour for Clara, the pianist, and they had a wonderful spring in Prague before Schumann himself was received rapturously in Berlin – momentous for him, as for the first time, he was possibly even more famous than his wife. Then, for his birthday in the summer, they decided to holiday in the place where he grew up and spent his whole childhood – Zwickau, the ancient capital of the south west of Saxony, surrounded by the silver mines which made the town’s fortune and the forests and castles and the river. They took a house not far from where he had been born – Clara, Robert and their (so-far) three daughters – and he immediately, freed from the demons that had been plaguing him for years (tinnitus, phobias, nervous fits, apprehension of death), began to compose.

He chose piano trios, possibly as a rejoinder to Clara herself, who had had a great success with her own Piano Trio in G minor the previous year. The first, Schumann wrote, was born of “a time of gloomy moods,” while this F-major was “of a completely different character – it makes a breezier and more ingratiating impression.” It’s also, beautifully, entirely inspired by love. They had been married seven years by this stage, Robert was 37, Clara was just turning 28: they had (after their first son died age just one) three daughters; and despite Robert’s troubles – his demons had always been present in their marriage – it was just as passionate as when they first were courting. The first movement is vigorously bustling forth and reaches a climax when suddenly the piano drops into quiet arpeggios and the violin sings the second song from his Liederkreiscycle, written just at the time (May 1840) when they were struggling to be allowed to get married. The (Eichendorff) words go “I bear your beautiful likeness in the depths of my heart”: and just to make sure, he quotes another song for Clara from Frauenliebe und Leben, also from 1840, in the third movement.

Clara played for the premiere, and she later wrote of it, “It is one of the pieces of Robert’s that delights and warms the depths of my soul from beginning to end. I love it passionately, and would like to go on playing it again and again.”

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Matthew Hindson AM (AUS; b. 1968): Rush, c. 9’

Rush displays its own style unique to the composer, but inspired by Felix Mendelssohn. The fast and technically challenging passages found in the final movement of the Mendelssohn String Octet influenced Hindson’s decision to compose a work that is highly virtuosic in nature. The composer remarks, “it is much more the spirit of Mendelssohn’s string writing that was influential, particularly the last movements of his string quartets and the String Octet, rather than any sort of harmony or melodic invention.”

In addition to Mendelssohn, Hindson has also found inspiration in the popular music idiom. Popular and, in particular, ‘techno’ music and culture have played a large role in the development of Hindson’s musical style (with his other works displaying such titles as SPEED and Homage to Metallica), and Rush is no exception. The playful, up-beat and repetitive rhythms found in popular music are a prominent feature of this work making the work accessible to a wide audience. The playful nature of the music can also be considered as a reflection of the hedonistic nature of modern society, where a large emphasis is placed on the pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment.

Hindson is one of the most frequently performed and commissioned Australian composers of his generation. His works have been featured at national and international festivals, with orchestras, and Musica Viva and by dance by companies such as the Birmingham Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Ballett Schindowski and the Sydney Dance Company.
As well as composer, Matthew Hindson is Chair of the Composition Unit and associate professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; he is Chair of the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts; he has co-authored a book entitled Music Composition Toolbox, published by Science Press; and in 2006 was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his contributions to music composition and music education.

His music often displays influences of popular music styles within a classical music context, and, as a result, directness and immediacy are common features in much of his music.

Programme note by Michelle Kennedy, abridged.

Celeste Oram (NZ; b. 1990): the naming of waters(new commission), c. 10’

the naming of waters is a genre-busting newly commissioned work more akin to performance art than chamber music. Using props and prompts by both musicians and audience, Celeste sets the tone with the following words:

SCENE: A burial. North Sea.
Three colours of a flag clattering.
Boat heaving and pitching. Ashes fly in
faces and cling to clothes. Flowers tossed
overboard and bruised by churning.
Trio of hired musicians on deck. Despite
best solemnities, losing battle with wind to
keep bows on strings or fingers on keys. All
things wooden prone to creaking in sympathy
with the hull. Voices are swallowed.
Indelicate seagulls.
Engine cuts. Flag droops. Bells toll for the
dead. Boat turns and follows its wake home.
The ghost boat continues course toward open
sea. Music drifts, grows fainter, until it
can no longer be heard on the wind from
shore.

Celeste was born in Manhattan, learned to walk and talk in London, grew up in Auckland, and is presently based in Southern California. Her work investigates new media and strategies for musical notation: namely, video and audio scores and has been performed and recorded by numerous notable ensembles across the USA, New Zealand and Australia. Celeste was the Auckland Philharmonia’s Rising Star young composer-in-residence (2013/14); her commissioned orchestral work macropsiawas selected as a finalist in the 2014 SOUNZ Contemporary Award for excellence in New Zealand contemporary composition; she performed her non-instrumental solo piece O I at the 2016 Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in Germany and was awarded the Kranichstein Prize for composition.

An ongoing project is the renovation of histories of New Zealand music and sonic cultures. At present, this revolves around research into early 20th-century ham radio activity, and the figure of Vera Wyse Munro (1897-1966). This project is rapidly snowballing into an obsession with building re-creations of early radio circuits. She is currently pursuing a PhD in music composition at the University of California San Diego, where she completed an MA in 2016. She completed a BMusBA with first-class Honours at the University of Auckland in 2012, studying with Eve de Castro-Robinson, John Elmsly, and Leonie Holmes.

Johannes Brahms (GER; 1833 – 1897): Piano Trio No.1 in B Major, Op. 8, c. 29’

i. Allegro con brio
ii. Scherzo: Allegro molto – Meno allegro – Tempo primo
iii. Adagio
iv. Finale: Allegro

In April 1853, Johannes Brahms set out on a concert tour of Germany with one of his friends. He was just about to turn 20, on May 7, and little did he know that he was about to get the best birthday present ever. When the two of them got to Hanover, Joseph Joachim was in the audience – Joachim the great violinist – and he was so impressed, that he offered to play a concert with Brahms to fundraise for the next part of his trip. But that was not all. Joachim also gave Brahms letters of introduction to Robert and Clara Schumann, who would go on to play such a massive part in his life. He arrived at their door on the last day of September, in Düsseldorf, and was immediately invited in and pressed to stay. Clara wrote in her diary that night: ‘Here is one of those who comes as if sent straight from God.’

1854 began in Hanover, celebrating the new year with Joachim again, and that’s when Brahms began this trio. It’s one of the few of his early works to escape being thrown in the fire (he was relentlessly self-critical). Yet the story does not end there. Over 30 years later, in 1889, Brahms had a complete edition of his works coming out and decided to revise the trio to tighten it up and temper its youthful extravagance. He was on summer vacation at the time, at the beautiful spa town of Bad Ischl in Austria, and he wrote to Clara: ‘With what childish amusement I whiled away the beautiful summer days you will never guess. I have rewritten my B major Trio…. It will not be as wild as before – but will it be better?’ Most people agree that it is – it is the most common version performed today. And yet, interestingly, Brahms never withdrew the original. Perhaps it’s because it’s the first work he ever showed Clara. The mystery over what exactly was the nature of their relationship endures to this day.

It begins softly and mysteriously on the piano before the cello enters with a beautiful singing theme that migrates to the other instruments and unfolds like the first movement of a symphony, incredibly rich in ideas. The impish scherzo bursts exuberantly through into the major in the middle, building in intensity and drama before the imps come back to bring the movement to a close. The adagio, preminiscent of his piano concertos, is one of the most serene and beautiful things that Brahms ever wrote: and the piano leads the finale to a magnificent minor climax, epic in scope.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Concert Details

TwinePieces
GLASS • SCHUMANN • HINDSON • ORAM • BRAHMS
Ashley Brown (cello) with guest musicians Amalia Hall (violin) and Somi Kim (piano)

TwinePieces (a condensed version of the full Twine programme) knits together the linear sway from Philip Glass and the refreshing new pluck and spin from Matthew Hindson, including an exciting new commission from New Zealand composer Celeste Oram. Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms deliver lashings of romantic sentimentality, outpourings from their lives entwined.

Performing in the beautiful Nathan Homestead, it is a musical experience rich in timeless ambience. Join the musicians for complimentary wine and nibbles following the performance.

Programme approx. 80 mins including interval

Philip Glass (USA): Mishima
Robert Schumann (GER): Piano Trio No. 2 in F Major (movement)
Matthew Hindson (AUS): Rush
Celeste Oram (NZ): the naming of waters (new commission)

~

Johannes Brahms (GER): Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op 8

TICKETS: $40 Adults / $25 Locals / $20 Students

BOOK VIA EVENTFINDA HERE

Time

(Sunday) 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm UTC+12:00

Location

Nathan Homestead

70 Hill Road, Manurewa, Auckland

3nov7:00 pm- 8:30 pmArt3: TwinePiecesAuckland North Shore

Philip Glass (USA; b. 1937): String Quartet No.3 (Mishima), c. 3’

vi. Mishima/Closing

Arranged for piano trio, this 6th and final movement from Glass’s String Quartet No. 3 is a tribute to Yukio Mishima – a deeply loved figure in his native Japan, and an important figure in the world. Poet, playwright, actor, director and author of over 30 novels, he was also a militant nationalist who on 25 November, 1970, plunged a dagger into his abdomen in a ritual act of Seppuku, despairing at the loss of Japan’s dignity in the Second World War and having failed in his attempt at a coup d’etat. This music comes from the Paul Schrader movie Mishima, A Life in Four Chapters: “The value of a man appears in the moment in which life confronts death”.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Glass studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud before heading to Europe in search of new sounds. He joins ranks with Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones as understudies of the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 where he formed the Philip Glass Ensemble. Glass prefers ‘repetitive structures’ over the often-used term ‘minimalism’ when describing his musical style. His vast body of work encompasses ensemble work, ten symphonies, more than twenty operas, two piano concertos, a wide range of film soundtracks and animation (Fantasia), popular music, and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with artists such as Twyla Tharp, Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Simon and David Bowie.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Robert Schumann (GER; 1810 – 1856): Piano Trio No.2 in F Major, c. 25’

i. Sehr lebhaft
ii. Mit innigem Ausdruck – Lebhaft “With earnestly affectionate expression.”
iii. In mässiger Bewegung
iv. Nicht zu rasch

The summer of 1847 was one of the happiest of Schumann’s life. The whole year had begun well, with an extensive concert tour for Clara, the pianist, and they had a wonderful spring in Prague before Schumann himself was received rapturously in Berlin – momentous for him, as for the first time, he was possibly even more famous than his wife. Then, for his birthday in the summer, they decided to holiday in the place where he grew up and spent his whole childhood – Zwickau, the ancient capital of the south west of Saxony, surrounded by the silver mines which made the town’s fortune and the forests and castles and the river. They took a house not far from where he had been born – Clara, Robert and their (so-far) three daughters – and he immediately, freed from the demons that had been plaguing him for years (tinnitus, phobias, nervous fits, apprehension of death), began to compose.

He chose piano trios, possibly as a rejoinder to Clara herself, who had had a great success with her own Piano Trio in G minor the previous year. The first, Schumann wrote, was born of “a time of gloomy moods,” while this F-major was “of a completely different character – it makes a breezier and more ingratiating impression.” It’s also, beautifully, entirely inspired by love. They had been married seven years by this stage, Robert was 37, Clara was just turning 28: they had (after their first son died age just one) three daughters; and despite Robert’s troubles – his demons had always been present in their marriage – it was just as passionate as when they first were courting. The first movement is vigorously bustling forth and reaches a climax when suddenly the piano drops into quiet arpeggios and the violin sings the second song from his Liederkreiscycle, written just at the time (May 1840) when they were struggling to be allowed to get married. The (Eichendorff) words go “I bear your beautiful likeness in the depths of my heart”: and just to make sure, he quotes another song for Clara from Frauenliebe und Leben, also from 1840, in the third movement.

Clara played for the premiere, and she later wrote of it, “It is one of the pieces of Robert’s that delights and warms the depths of my soul from beginning to end. I love it passionately, and would like to go on playing it again and again.”

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Matthew Hindson AM (AUS; b. 1968): Rush, c. 9’

Rush displays its own style unique to the composer, but inspired by Felix Mendelssohn. The fast and technically challenging passages found in the final movement of the Mendelssohn String Octet influenced Hindson’s decision to compose a work that is highly virtuosic in nature. The composer remarks, “it is much more the spirit of Mendelssohn’s string writing that was influential, particularly the last movements of his string quartets and the String Octet, rather than any sort of harmony or melodic invention.”

In addition to Mendelssohn, Hindson has also found inspiration in the popular music idiom. Popular and, in particular, ‘techno’ music and culture have played a large role in the development of Hindson’s musical style (with his other works displaying such titles as SPEED and Homage to Metallica), and Rush is no exception. The playful, up-beat and repetitive rhythms found in popular music are a prominent feature of this work making the work accessible to a wide audience. The playful nature of the music can also be considered as a reflection of the hedonistic nature of modern society, where a large emphasis is placed on the pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment.

Hindson is one of the most frequently performed and commissioned Australian composers of his generation. His works have been featured at national and international festivals, with orchestras, and Musica Viva and by dance by companies such as the Birmingham Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Ballett Schindowski and the Sydney Dance Company.
As well as composer, Matthew Hindson is Chair of the Composition Unit and associate professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; he is Chair of the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts; he has co-authored a book entitled Music Composition Toolbox, published by Science Press; and in 2006 was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his contributions to music composition and music education.

His music often displays influences of popular music styles within a classical music context, and, as a result, directness and immediacy are common features in much of his music.

Programme note by Michelle Kennedy, abridged.

Celeste Oram (NZ; b. 1990): the naming of waters(new commission), c. 10’

the naming of waters is a genre-busting newly commissioned work more akin to performance art than chamber music. Using props and prompts by both musicians and audience, Celeste sets the tone with the following words:

SCENE: A burial. North Sea.
Three colours of a flag clattering.
Boat heaving and pitching. Ashes fly in
faces and cling to clothes. Flowers tossed
overboard and bruised by churning.
Trio of hired musicians on deck. Despite
best solemnities, losing battle with wind to
keep bows on strings or fingers on keys. All
things wooden prone to creaking in sympathy
with the hull. Voices are swallowed.
Indelicate seagulls.
Engine cuts. Flag droops. Bells toll for the
dead. Boat turns and follows its wake home.
The ghost boat continues course toward open
sea. Music drifts, grows fainter, until it
can no longer be heard on the wind from
shore.

Celeste was born in Manhattan, learned to walk and talk in London, grew up in Auckland, and is presently based in Southern California. Her work investigates new media and strategies for musical notation: namely, video and audio scores and has been performed and recorded by numerous notable ensembles across the USA, New Zealand and Australia. Celeste was the Auckland Philharmonia’s Rising Star young composer-in-residence (2013/14); her commissioned orchestral work macropsiawas selected as a finalist in the 2014 SOUNZ Contemporary Award for excellence in New Zealand contemporary composition; she performed her non-instrumental solo piece O I at the 2016 Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in Germany and was awarded the Kranichstein Prize for composition.

An ongoing project is the renovation of histories of New Zealand music and sonic cultures. At present, this revolves around research into early 20th-century ham radio activity, and the figure of Vera Wyse Munro (1897-1966). This project is rapidly snowballing into an obsession with building re-creations of early radio circuits. She is currently pursuing a PhD in music composition at the University of California San Diego, where she completed an MA in 2016. She completed a BMusBA with first-class Honours at the University of Auckland in 2012, studying with Eve de Castro-Robinson, John Elmsly, and Leonie Holmes.

Johannes Brahms (GER; 1833 – 1897): Piano Trio No.1 in B Major, Op. 8, c. 29’

i. Allegro con brio
ii. Scherzo: Allegro molto – Meno allegro – Tempo primo
iii. Adagio
iv. Finale: Allegro

In April 1853, Johannes Brahms set out on a concert tour of Germany with one of his friends. He was just about to turn 20, on May 7, and little did he know that he was about to get the best birthday present ever. When the two of them got to Hanover, Joseph Joachim was in the audience – Joachim the great violinist – and he was so impressed, that he offered to play a concert with Brahms to fundraise for the next part of his trip. But that was not all. Joachim also gave Brahms letters of introduction to Robert and Clara Schumann, who would go on to play such a massive part in his life. He arrived at their door on the last day of September, in Düsseldorf, and was immediately invited in and pressed to stay. Clara wrote in her diary that night: ‘Here is one of those who comes as if sent straight from God.’

1854 began in Hanover, celebrating the new year with Joachim again, and that’s when Brahms began this trio. It’s one of the few of his early works to escape being thrown in the fire (he was relentlessly self-critical). Yet the story does not end there. Over 30 years later, in 1889, Brahms had a complete edition of his works coming out and decided to revise the trio to tighten it up and temper its youthful extravagance. He was on summer vacation at the time, at the beautiful spa town of Bad Ischl in Austria, and he wrote to Clara: ‘With what childish amusement I whiled away the beautiful summer days you will never guess. I have rewritten my B major Trio…. It will not be as wild as before – but will it be better?’ Most people agree that it is – it is the most common version performed today. And yet, interestingly, Brahms never withdrew the original. Perhaps it’s because it’s the first work he ever showed Clara. The mystery over what exactly was the nature of their relationship endures to this day.

It begins softly and mysteriously on the piano before the cello enters with a beautiful singing theme that migrates to the other instruments and unfolds like the first movement of a symphony, incredibly rich in ideas. The impish scherzo bursts exuberantly through into the major in the middle, building in intensity and drama before the imps come back to bring the movement to a close. The adagio, preminiscent of his piano concertos, is one of the most serene and beautiful things that Brahms ever wrote: and the piano leads the finale to a magnificent minor climax, epic in scope.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Concert Details

TwinePieces
GLASS • SCHUMANN • HINDSON • ORAM • BRAHMS
Ashley Brown (cello) with guest musicians Amalia Hall (violin) and Somi Kim (piano)

TwinePieces (a condensed version of the full Twine programme) knits together the linear sway from Philip Glass and the refreshing new pluck and spin from Matthew Hindson, including an exciting new commission from New Zealand composer Celeste Oram. Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms deliver lashings of romantic sentimentality, outpourings from their lives entwined.

Performing amidst beautiful carved calligraphy artworks at Mairangi Arts Centre, it promises to be an arts experience ‘to the power of 3’ (Art3). Join the musicians for complimentary wine and nibbles following the performance.

Programme approx. 80 mins including interval

Philip Glass (USA): Mishima
Robert Schumann (GER): Piano Trio No. 2 in F Major (movement)
Matthew Hindson (AUS): Rush
Celeste Oram (NZ): the naming of waters (new commission)

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Johannes Brahms (GER): Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op 8

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*Online sales close 4pm Nov 3rd – cash door sales from 6:30pm

Time

(Saturday) 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm UTC+12:00

Location

Mairangi Arts Centre

20 Hastings Rd, Mairangi Bay, Auckland

13oct7:00 pmNZTrio at Nelson Arts FestivalExotica

Philip Glass (USA; b. 1937): String Quartet No.3 (Mishima), c. 3’

vi. Mishima/Closing

Arranged for piano trio, this 6th and final movement from Glass’s String Quartet No. 3 is a tribute to Yukio Mishima – a deeply loved figure in his native Japan, and an important figure in the world. Poet, playwright, actor, director and author of over 30 novels, he was also a militant nationalist who on 25 November, 1970, plunged a dagger into his abdomen in a ritual act of Seppuku, despairing at the loss of Japan’s dignity in the Second World War and having failed in his attempt at a coup d’etat. This music comes from the Paul Schrader movie Mishima, A Life in Four Chapters: “The value of a man appears in the moment in which life confronts death”.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Glass studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud before heading to Europe in search of new sounds. He joins ranks with Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones as understudies of the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 where he formed the Philip Glass Ensemble. Glass prefers ‘repetitive structures’ over the often-used term ‘minimalism’ when describing his musical style. His vast body of work encompasses ensemble work, ten symphonies, more than twenty operas, two piano concertos, a wide range of film soundtracks and animation (Fantasia), popular music, and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with artists such as Twyla Tharp, Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Simon and David Bowie.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Robert Schumann (GER; 1810 – 1856): Piano Trio No.2 in F Major, c. 25’

i. Sehr lebhaft
ii. Mit innigem Ausdruck – Lebhaft “With earnestly affectionate expression.”
iii. In mässiger Bewegung
iv. Nicht zu rasch

The summer of 1847 was one of the happiest of Schumann’s life. The whole year had begun well, with an extensive concert tour for Clara, the pianist, and they had a wonderful spring in Prague before Schumann himself was received rapturously in Berlin – momentous for him, as for the first time, he was possibly even more famous than his wife. Then, for his birthday in the summer, they decided to holiday in the place where he grew up and spent his whole childhood – Zwickau, the ancient capital of the south west of Saxony, surrounded by the silver mines which made the town’s fortune and the forests and castles and the river. They took a house not far from where he had been born – Clara, Robert and their (so-far) three daughters – and he immediately, freed from the demons that had been plaguing him for years (tinnitus, phobias, nervous fits, apprehension of death), began to compose.

He chose piano trios, possibly as a rejoinder to Clara herself, who had had a great success with her own Piano Trio in G minor the previous year. The first, Schumann wrote, was born of “a time of gloomy moods,” while this F-major was “of a completely different character – it makes a breezier and more ingratiating impression.” It’s also, beautifully, entirely inspired by love. They had been married seven years by this stage, Robert was 37, Clara was just turning 28: they had (after their first son died age just one) three daughters; and despite Robert’s troubles – his demons had always been present in their marriage – it was just as passionate as when they first were courting. The first movement is vigorously bustling forth and reaches a climax when suddenly the piano drops into quiet arpeggios and the violin sings the second song from his Liederkreiscycle, written just at the time (May 1840) when they were struggling to be allowed to get married. The (Eichendorff) words go “I bear your beautiful likeness in the depths of my heart”: and just to make sure, he quotes another song for Clara from Frauenliebe und Leben, also from 1840, in the third movement.

Clara played for the premiere, and she later wrote of it, “It is one of the pieces of Robert’s that delights and warms the depths of my soul from beginning to end. I love it passionately, and would like to go on playing it again and again.”

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Matthew Hindson AM (AUS; b. 1968): Rush, c. 9’

Rush displays its own style unique to the composer, but inspired by Felix Mendelssohn. The fast and technically challenging passages found in the final movement of the Mendelssohn String Octet influenced Hindson’s decision to compose a work that is highly virtuosic in nature. The composer remarks, “it is much more the spirit of Mendelssohn’s string writing that was influential, particularly the last movements of his string quartets and the String Octet, rather than any sort of harmony or melodic invention.”

In addition to Mendelssohn, Hindson has also found inspiration in the popular music idiom. Popular and, in particular, ‘techno’ music and culture have played a large role in the development of Hindson’s musical style (with his other works displaying such titles as SPEED and Homage to Metallica), and Rush is no exception. The playful, up-beat and repetitive rhythms found in popular music are a prominent feature of this work making the work accessible to a wide audience. The playful nature of the music can also be considered as a reflection of the hedonistic nature of modern society, where a large emphasis is placed on the pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment.

Hindson is one of the most frequently performed and commissioned Australian composers of his generation. His works have been featured at national and international festivals, with orchestras, and Musica Viva and by dance by companies such as the Birmingham Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Ballett Schindowski and the Sydney Dance Company.
As well as composer, Matthew Hindson is Chair of the Composition Unit and associate professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music; he is Chair of the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts; he has co-authored a book entitled Music Composition Toolbox, published by Science Press; and in 2006 was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his contributions to music composition and music education.

His music often displays influences of popular music styles within a classical music context, and, as a result, directness and immediacy are common features in much of his music.

Programme note by Michelle Kennedy, abridged.

Celeste Oram (NZ; b. 1990): the naming of waters(new commission), c. 10’

the naming of waters is a genre-busting newly commissioned work more akin to performance art than chamber music. Using props and prompts by both musicians and audience, Celeste sets the tone with the following words:

SCENE: A burial. North Sea.
Three colours of a flag clattering.
Boat heaving and pitching. Ashes fly in
faces and cling to clothes. Flowers tossed
overboard and bruised by churning.
Trio of hired musicians on deck. Despite
best solemnities, losing battle with wind to
keep bows on strings or fingers on keys. All
things wooden prone to creaking in sympathy
with the hull. Voices are swallowed.
Indelicate seagulls.
Engine cuts. Flag droops. Bells toll for the
dead. Boat turns and follows its wake home.
The ghost boat continues course toward open
sea. Music drifts, grows fainter, until it
can no longer be heard on the wind from
shore.

Celeste was born in Manhattan, learned to walk and talk in London, grew up in Auckland, and is presently based in Southern California. Her work investigates new media and strategies for musical notation: namely, video and audio scores and has been performed and recorded by numerous notable ensembles across the USA, New Zealand and Australia. Celeste was the Auckland Philharmonia’s Rising Star young composer-in-residence (2013/14); her commissioned orchestral work macropsiawas selected as a finalist in the 2014 SOUNZ Contemporary Award for excellence in New Zealand contemporary composition; she performed her non-instrumental solo piece O I at the 2016 Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music in Germany and was awarded the Kranichstein Prize for composition.

An ongoing project is the renovation of histories of New Zealand music and sonic cultures. At present, this revolves around research into early 20th-century ham radio activity, and the figure of Vera Wyse Munro (1897-1966). This project is rapidly snowballing into an obsession with building re-creations of early radio circuits. She is currently pursuing a PhD in music composition at the University of California San Diego, where she completed an MA in 2016. She completed a BMusBA with first-class Honours at the University of Auckland in 2012, studying with Eve de Castro-Robinson, John Elmsly, and Leonie Holmes.

Johannes Brahms (GER; 1833 – 1897): Piano Trio No.1 in B Major, Op. 8, c. 29’

i. Allegro con brio
ii. Scherzo: Allegro molto – Meno allegro – Tempo primo
iii. Adagio
iv. Finale: Allegro

In April 1853, Johannes Brahms set out on a concert tour of Germany with one of his friends. He was just about to turn 20, on May 7, and little did he know that he was about to get the best birthday present ever. When the two of them got to Hanover, Joseph Joachim was in the audience – Joachim the great violinist – and he was so impressed, that he offered to play a concert with Brahms to fundraise for the next part of his trip. But that was not all. Joachim also gave Brahms letters of introduction to Robert and Clara Schumann, who would go on to play such a massive part in his life. He arrived at their door on the last day of September, in Düsseldorf, and was immediately invited in and pressed to stay. Clara wrote in her diary that night: ‘Here is one of those who comes as if sent straight from God.’

1854 began in Hanover, celebrating the new year with Joachim again, and that’s when Brahms began this trio. It’s one of the few of his early works to escape being thrown in the fire (he was relentlessly self-critical). Yet the story does not end there. Over 30 years later, in 1889, Brahms had a complete edition of his works coming out and decided to revise the trio to tighten it up and temper its youthful extravagance. He was on summer vacation at the time, at the beautiful spa town of Bad Ischl in Austria, and he wrote to Clara: ‘With what childish amusement I whiled away the beautiful summer days you will never guess. I have rewritten my B major Trio…. It will not be as wild as before – but will it be better?’ Most people agree that it is – it is the most common version performed today. And yet, interestingly, Brahms never withdrew the original. Perhaps it’s because it’s the first work he ever showed Clara. The mystery over what exactly was the nature of their relationship endures to this day.

It begins softly and mysteriously on the piano before the cello enters with a beautiful singing theme that migrates to the other instruments and unfolds like the first movement of a symphony, incredibly rich in ideas. The impish scherzo bursts exuberantly through into the major in the middle, building in intensity and drama before the imps come back to bring the movement to a close. The adagio, preminiscent of his piano concertos, is one of the most serene and beautiful things that Brahms ever wrote: and the piano leads the finale to a magnificent minor climax, epic in scope.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

11oct7:00 pm- 8:30 pmNZTrio: ExoticaGisborne International Music Competition

Concert Details

Presented in support of the Gisborne International Music Competition. A function to launch the 30th anniversary of the GIMC will follow the concert performance.

This masterfully curated, tapas style menu of music has been a festival highlight for two years running. Enjoy a programme of single movements, like a vibrant, piquant tasting platter of music from Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and beyond. Works by Ravel, Piazzolla, and Cassadó will be ‘served’ alongside fresh toe-tapping local delicacies by kiwis Claire Cowan and Alex Taylor.

Here are some audience responses from last year’s debut of Exotica:

‘Absolutely wonderful … riveting … intimate … joyful … brilliant … inspired’

Joining Ashley are violinist Andrew Beer (APO Concertmaster) and pianist Stephen De Pledge. This powerhouse ensemble of New Zealand’s best have each played extensively throughout North America,
Europe, Asia and Australasia, with performances broadcast on TV and radio networks worldwide, and have multiple recordings and accolades to their names.

Duration approx. 80 minutes, no interval

BOOK VIA TICKETDIRECT HERE

Tickets $30 ea – General Admission

Piazzolla (ARG) – Primavera Porteña
Cassadó (SP) – piano trio, 2nd mvt
Penaforte (BR) – Capiba
Ravel (FR) – piece en forme de habanera
Taylor (NZ) – a spanner
Ravel (FR) – Tempo di blues
Penaforte (BR) – Maurice
Piazzolla (ARG) – Grand Tango
Gerhard (SP) – tres calme
Cowan (NZ) – Subtle Dances
Cassadó (SP) – Piano trio, 3rd mvt

Time

(Thursday) 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm UTC+12:00

Location

Gisborne War Memorial Theatre

159 Bright Street, Gisborne 4010

29sep7:00 pmNZTrio at Arts Festival DunedinEvening performance of Exotica

There are no programme notes for this performance, the musicians will introduce each work verbally from the stage.

28sep12:00 pmNZTrio at Arts Festival DunedinLunchtime performance of Braid

26sep7:00 pm- 8:30 pmNZTrio Art3: BraidCity Gallery Wellington

Concert Details

Braid
CLEMENT • MENDELSSOHN • KATS-CHERNIN • KELLY • SCHUMANN
Ashley Brown (cello) with guest musicians Benjamin Baker (violin) and Stephen De Pledge (piano)

In recognition of the 125th anniversary celebration for women’s suffrage in New Zealand, Braid unleashes an all-female cast of composers. These remarkable women are represented in this powerful tribute by a perfect tangle of traits – enigma in the Clement (NZ), protective embrace in the Kelly (NZ), enduring strength in the Kats-Chernin (AUS), compassion in the Schumann (GER) and emotional wisdom in the Mendelssohn (GER).

Complimentary drinks and nibbles with the musicians following the performance.

Programme:

Rachel Clement (NZ): Shifting States – Sabbia (Sand)

Fanny Mendelssohn (GER): Piano Trio in D Minor

Elena Kats-Chernin (AUS): Spirit and the Maiden

~

Victoria Kelly (NZ): Sono

Clara Schumann (GER): Piano Trio in G Minor

TICKETS $40 Adults / $20 Students and Friends of CGW

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Time

(Wednesday) 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm UTC+12:00

Location

City Gallery Wellington

101 Wakefield St, Wellington

25sep7:00 pmLoft Series 2: BraidAuckland Tuesday performance

Rachel Clement (NZ; b. 1972): Shifting States

1. sabbia (sand)

Rachel Clement studied composition with John Rimmer and John Elmsly at the University of Auckland, graduating with a Bachelor of Music (Hons.) in 1995 and a Master of Music (composition) with distinction in 1997. She has composed for a range of contemporary performers and groups, including 175 East and Stroma, lectured part-time in Composition at the University of Canterbury, managed the library of the Christchurch Symphony, and worked as the National Secondary Schools Arts Co-ordinator for Music (on behalf of the Music Educators of NZ, Aotearoa) under contract to the Ministry of Education. In 2005 and 2006 she held the position of Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago.

Sabbia (sand) is from a set of five short pieces inspired by an interest in mid-Twentieth Century art glass. Clement explores the process of changing state, or changing phase (freezing, melting, vaporization, condensation and sublimation) essential to the production of the many types of art glass. Each piece expresses a style of finished effect (e.g. bubbles, flowers, submerged colour) with sand being the first step, and most essential ingredient.

Shifting states was commissioned by NZTrio with funding from Creative New Zealand.

Fanny Mendelssohn (GER; 1805 – 1847): Piano Trio in D Minor, Op.11

i.        Allegro molto vivace
ii.        Andante espressivo
iii.        Lied (Allegretto)
iv.        Allegro moderato

“Music will perhaps become Felix’s profession, while for youit can and must be only an ornament” (Abraham Mendelssohn, father, 1820)

In the mid 1980s, in Berlin, a researcher by the name of Marcia Citron finally gained access to the papers of Fanny Mendelssohn. She had to get past the curator, a fervent admirer of Felix, who called his older sister “just a housewife” and had blocked access to the archives for his entire tenure. She wore him down eventually. And what she found was astonishing – letters and diaries, all written in anOld German that she had to enlist the help of her landlady to decode, some 500 compositions that included a Cholera Cantata, dozens of songs and piano Songs Without Words, and her own wedding music (written while the rest of the family were celebrating the night before). Like Felix she turned out to have been a formidable pianist, so much so (“she plays like a man”) that even the best musicians were terrified of playing for her: like Felix she had been composing since the age of ten; like Felix she was also a fine conductor; and it was not unusual for visitors, apparently, to find her actually the more talented of the pair. Felix saw this very well – they discussed all of their music together, they were inseparable – and he published many of her songs under his own name. Indeed, when he was invited to Buckingham Palace and Queen Victoria announced that she would sing, he had the embarrassment of having to confess that this favourite song of Her Majesty’s was actually by his sister, and not his own.

And yet, Felix was sent off on a Grand Tour of the capitals of Europe to gain musical experience, and Fanny stayed at home to prepare her trousseau. Her husband (Wilhelm Hensel, the court painter) was supportive, luckily, and actually refused to marry her unless she promised to continue to compose: she did, but she never published much, or imagined anything but a private audience at home. This is her last published opus, written for her sister’s birthday on April 11, only a month before her death.

The first movement was called a masterpiece even at the time, with rumbling piano ushering in her gorgeous gift for melody. Two song-like movements follow – she quotes an aria from Felix’s Elijahin the third – and the finale, opening with a stately Bach-like flourish, quickly turns passionately romantic before wrapping up the whole with perfection.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Elena Kats-Chernin (AUS; b. 1957): Spirit and the Maiden

Born in 1957 in Uzbekistan, Elena Kats-Chernin received training at the Gnessin Musical College before immigrating to Australia in 1975. She graduated from the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in 1980 and was awarded a DAAD (German academic exchange) grant to study with Helmut Lachenmann in Hanover. She remained in Germany for 13 years, returning in 1994 to Australia where she now lives in Sydney.

Elena has created works in nearly every genre. Among her many commissions are pieces for Ensemble Modern, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian World Orchestra, the Adelaide, Tasmanian, Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the North Carolina Symphony. In 2000 she collaborated with leading Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard on Deep Sea Dreaming which was broadcast to an audience of millions worldwide as part of the opening ceremonies of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

Elena’s music continues to be heard on TV and at the cinema in the UK with the long-running Lloyds TSB advertising campaign ‘For the journey…’, Meryl Tankard’s Wild Swans, and the theme in claymation film Max & Mary by Adam Elliott. She is one of the subjects of a Creative Minds 6-episode series of artist portraits by Robin Hughes. In 2017 she was composer in residence with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Her music is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.

A work of 3 movements, Spirit and the Maiden is based on a Russian fairy-tale about a young girl whose job it was to carry water back and forth between her village and the well. One summer’s afternoon, as she put down her buckets and rested for a moment on the wall of the well, her turquoise shawl, a gift from her grandmother, rumoured to be a witch, slid from her shoulders and sank into the dark cold waters. When she reached down to grasp it, to her surprise what she felt was not her shawl but a hand.

As she pulled it out, she gasped at the sight of a beautiful young man emerging from the water – the water spirit. She was transfixed with wonder at his pale beauty, his voice deep like a resounding waterfall, and her heart beat so loudly, she thought her chest would burst.
The second movement describes a momentary love affair, dancing, teasing, and twirling in the sunlight which glistened on his steaming skin, his hands running through her hair making it wet and curly as she flirted with him. But soon he began to evaporate in the noon-day sun, until suddenly he was a mere pearlescent drop left on her palm.

The third movement laments as she cautiously placed him back in the water, the heaviness dragging her down into the depths. As she floats down into his embrace, blissfully falling to the deepest place, her lips turn blue and she drowns in his arms. When he realises what he’s done, his grief is so great, he wraps her in the turquoise shawl and swims back to the light, laying her body on the surface and, summoning all his magic, changes her into a water lilac where she has bloomed ever since.

Victoria Kelly (NZ; b. 1973): Sono

Victoria is a composer, performer, producer and director of music. Having focused on music for the screen for most of her 30-year long career, she now concentrates on contemporary classical music, as well as creative projects with a small group of artists, including a longstanding collaboration with Neil Finn. She is currently the Director of NZ Member Services at APRA AMCOS.

Victoria has enjoyed a hugely diverse career, working with musicians and artists across the worlds of cinema, dance, theatre, popular and classical music. She’s worked with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Auckland Philharmonia, the New Zealand String Quartet, NZTrio, Stroma, Michael Houstoun, Stephen De Pledge, Neil & Liam Finn, Don McGlashan, Anika Moa, SJD, Shapeshifter, Okareka Dance Company, Jonathan King, Robert Sarkies, Fran Walsh and Sir Peter Jackson, among many others. In 2011 she was the Music Director and principal composer for the Opening Ceremony of the Rugby World Cup at Eden Park.
“The idea for this piece began with the Portuguese word ‘sono’ which describes the desire to sleep in order to rejoin a dream. In my experience, it’s impossible to do this once you have woken.

The trio begins with an impassioned event which soon disappears, leaving the piano alone to dream about it. A repeating piano note emerges and remains, representing the real world lingering in the background. Around this note, the dreams wander in chords and gestures, deep breaths and ascending melodies.”

Sono was commissioned by the Turnovsky Trio in 1999.

Clara Schumann (GER; 1819 – 1896):Piano Trio in G Minor, Op.17

i.        Allegro moderato
ii.        Scherzo and Trio
iii.        Andante
iv.        Allegretto

“Composing gives me great pleasure… there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.”

Clara Schumann was one of the great forces of nature. The most famous pianist in Europe, far more famous than her composer husband, she had been touring the great capital cities since the age of 11 and was received with a sort of mania wherever she went – besought by Chopin and Liszt and Paganini, gifted jewels and fifty gold ducats by the Empress for her Beethoven recitals in Vienna, awarded Austria’s highest musical honour despite being only 18, and a foreigner, and female – all without precedent. The Emperor himself had to make an exception.

She was already engaged to Robert, by that stage, having met him at the age of only 8 – at one of her concerts, of course – and they had begun the arduous process of defying her manager-father’s wishes in order to get married, which they finally accomplished one day before she came of age. Not that she scaled back her career: she always remained the breadwinner for the family, continuing to tour and to teach. She acted as concert agent for herself and for Robert: she single-handedly invented the concept of the modern concert pianist, being the first to perform from memory, and her expressive new style influenced schools as far as Britain and the States; she shaped the tastes of a generation with her preferences, making the careers of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms: she managed Robert’s terrible illnesses, and his musical legacy after he died; and all this time she shepherded a family of seven children (surviving children, she was almost always pregnant). Even that she excelled at. She later took on her grandchildren when her son died and famously, when the children were trapped in the centre of Dresden during the Dresden Uprising of 1849, she calmly walked into the city through the gunfire, straight through the front lines, defied a pack of armed men who confronted her, fetched her children, and walked hand-in-hand straight back out again.

And not only that, she composed. Her works – 23 published opuses, which is only half of her output – include songs, pieces for piano and violin, vocal pieces, and a piano concerto which she performed at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Mendelssohn conducting, at the age of only 14. She never had time to write more, as it might well be imagined; her works suddenly tail off when Robert tried to kill himself and shortly after was committed to the asylum, when she was 36. But at least we have this, her only piano trio, composed when she was 27. It’s a masterpiece by any standards.

A lyrical, passionate, perfectly structured first movement leads into a gutsy, individual, humorous scherzo and trio. The andante is full of a heartfelt love and the allegretto, quickly becoming intensely dramatic, leads to a perfectly paced and confident finale. Many think she was actually a better more natural composer than her husband. If only she’d had more time.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Concert Details

Braid
CLEMENT • MENDELSSOHN • KATS-CHERNIN • KELLY • SCHUMANN
Ashley Brown (cello) with guest musicians Benjamin Baker (violin) and Stephen De Pledge (piano)

In recognition of the 125th anniversary celebration for women’s suffrage in New Zealand, Braid unleashes an all-female cast of composers. These remarkable women are represented in this powerful tribute by a perfect tangle of traits – enigma in the Clement (NZ), protective embrace in the Kelly (NZ), enduring strength in the Kats-Chernin (AUS), compassion in the Schumann (GER) and emotional wisdom in the Mendelssohn (GER).

Programme:

Rachel Clement (NZ): Shifting States – Sabbia (Sand)

Fanny Mendelssohn (GER): Piano Trio in D Minor

Elena Kats-Chernin (AUS): Spirit and the Maiden

~

Victoria Kelly (NZ): Sono

Clara Schumann (GER): Piano Trio in G Minor

TICKETS: $50 Adults / $25 Students

23sep5:00 pmLoft Series 2: BraidAuckland Sunday performance

Rachel Clement (NZ; b. 1972): Shifting States

1. sabbia (sand)

Rachel Clement studied composition with John Rimmer and John Elmsly at the University of Auckland, graduating with a Bachelor of Music (Hons.) in 1995 and a Master of Music (composition) with distinction in 1997. She has composed for a range of contemporary performers and groups, including 175 East and Stroma, lectured part-time in Composition at the University of Canterbury, managed the library of the Christchurch Symphony, and worked as the National Secondary Schools Arts Co-ordinator for Music (on behalf of the Music Educators of NZ, Aotearoa) under contract to the Ministry of Education. In 2005 and 2006 she held the position of Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago.

Sabbia (sand) is from a set of five short pieces inspired by an interest in mid-Twentieth Century art glass. Clement explores the process of changing state, or changing phase (freezing, melting, vaporization, condensation and sublimation) essential to the production of the many types of art glass. Each piece expresses a style of finished effect (e.g. bubbles, flowers, submerged colour) with sand being the first step, and most essential ingredient.

Shifting states was commissioned by NZTrio with funding from Creative New Zealand.

Fanny Mendelssohn (GER; 1805 – 1847): Piano Trio in D Minor, Op.11

i.        Allegro molto vivace
ii.        Andante espressivo
iii.        Lied (Allegretto)
iv.        Allegro moderato

“Music will perhaps become Felix’s profession, while for youit can and must be only an ornament” (Abraham Mendelssohn, father, 1820)

In the mid 1980s, in Berlin, a researcher by the name of Marcia Citron finally gained access to the papers of Fanny Mendelssohn. She had to get past the curator, a fervent admirer of Felix, who called his older sister “just a housewife” and had blocked access to the archives for his entire tenure. She wore him down eventually. And what she found was astonishing – letters and diaries, all written in anOld German that she had to enlist the help of her landlady to decode, some 500 compositions that included a Cholera Cantata, dozens of songs and piano Songs Without Words, and her own wedding music (written while the rest of the family were celebrating the night before). Like Felix she turned out to have been a formidable pianist, so much so (“she plays like a man”) that even the best musicians were terrified of playing for her: like Felix she had been composing since the age of ten; like Felix she was also a fine conductor; and it was not unusual for visitors, apparently, to find her actually the more talented of the pair. Felix saw this very well – they discussed all of their music together, they were inseparable – and he published many of her songs under his own name. Indeed, when he was invited to Buckingham Palace and Queen Victoria announced that she would sing, he had the embarrassment of having to confess that this favourite song of Her Majesty’s was actually by his sister, and not his own.

And yet, Felix was sent off on a Grand Tour of the capitals of Europe to gain musical experience, and Fanny stayed at home to prepare her trousseau. Her husband (Wilhelm Hensel, the court painter) was supportive, luckily, and actually refused to marry her unless she promised to continue to compose: she did, but she never published much, or imagined anything but a private audience at home. This is her last published opus, written for her sister’s birthday on April 11, only a month before her death.

The first movement was called a masterpiece even at the time, with rumbling piano ushering in her gorgeous gift for melody. Two song-like movements follow – she quotes an aria from Felix’s Elijahin the third – and the finale, opening with a stately Bach-like flourish, quickly turns passionately romantic before wrapping up the whole with perfection.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Elena Kats-Chernin (AUS; b. 1957): Spirit and the Maiden

Born in 1957 in Uzbekistan, Elena Kats-Chernin received training at the Gnessin Musical College before immigrating to Australia in 1975. She graduated from the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in 1980 and was awarded a DAAD (German academic exchange) grant to study with Helmut Lachenmann in Hanover. She remained in Germany for 13 years, returning in 1994 to Australia where she now lives in Sydney.

Elena has created works in nearly every genre. Among her many commissions are pieces for Ensemble Modern, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian World Orchestra, the Adelaide, Tasmanian, Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the North Carolina Symphony. In 2000 she collaborated with leading Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard on Deep Sea Dreaming which was broadcast to an audience of millions worldwide as part of the opening ceremonies of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

Elena’s music continues to be heard on TV and at the cinema in the UK with the long-running Lloyds TSB advertising campaign ‘For the journey…’, Meryl Tankard’s Wild Swans, and the theme in claymation film Max & Mary by Adam Elliott. She is one of the subjects of a Creative Minds 6-episode series of artist portraits by Robin Hughes. In 2017 she was composer in residence with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Her music is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.

A work of 3 movements, Spirit and the Maiden is based on a Russian fairy-tale about a young girl whose job it was to carry water back and forth between her village and the well. One summer’s afternoon, as she put down her buckets and rested for a moment on the wall of the well, her turquoise shawl, a gift from her grandmother, rumoured to be a witch, slid from her shoulders and sank into the dark cold waters. When she reached down to grasp it, to her surprise what she felt was not her shawl but a hand.

As she pulled it out, she gasped at the sight of a beautiful young man emerging from the water – the water spirit. She was transfixed with wonder at his pale beauty, his voice deep like a resounding waterfall, and her heart beat so loudly, she thought her chest would burst.
The second movement describes a momentary love affair, dancing, teasing, and twirling in the sunlight which glistened on his steaming skin, his hands running through her hair making it wet and curly as she flirted with him. But soon he began to evaporate in the noon-day sun, until suddenly he was a mere pearlescent drop left on her palm.

The third movement laments as she cautiously placed him back in the water, the heaviness dragging her down into the depths. As she floats down into his embrace, blissfully falling to the deepest place, her lips turn blue and she drowns in his arms. When he realises what he’s done, his grief is so great, he wraps her in the turquoise shawl and swims back to the light, laying her body on the surface and, summoning all his magic, changes her into a water lilac where she has bloomed ever since.

Victoria Kelly (NZ; b. 1973): Sono

Victoria is a composer, performer, producer and director of music. Having focused on music for the screen for most of her 30-year long career, she now concentrates on contemporary classical music, as well as creative projects with a small group of artists, including a longstanding collaboration with Neil Finn. She is currently the Director of NZ Member Services at APRA AMCOS.

Victoria has enjoyed a hugely diverse career, working with musicians and artists across the worlds of cinema, dance, theatre, popular and classical music. She’s worked with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Auckland Philharmonia, the New Zealand String Quartet, NZTrio, Stroma, Michael Houstoun, Stephen De Pledge, Neil & Liam Finn, Don McGlashan, Anika Moa, SJD, Shapeshifter, Okareka Dance Company, Jonathan King, Robert Sarkies, Fran Walsh and Sir Peter Jackson, among many others. In 2011 she was the Music Director and principal composer for the Opening Ceremony of the Rugby World Cup at Eden Park.
“The idea for this piece began with the Portuguese word ‘sono’ which describes the desire to sleep in order to rejoin a dream. In my experience, it’s impossible to do this once you have woken.

The trio begins with an impassioned event which soon disappears, leaving the piano alone to dream about it. A repeating piano note emerges and remains, representing the real world lingering in the background. Around this note, the dreams wander in chords and gestures, deep breaths and ascending melodies.”

Sono was commissioned by the Turnovsky Trio in 1999.

Clara Schumann (GER; 1819 – 1896):Piano Trio in G Minor, Op.17

i.        Allegro moderato
ii.        Scherzo and Trio
iii.        Andante
iv.        Allegretto

“Composing gives me great pleasure… there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.”

Clara Schumann was one of the great forces of nature. The most famous pianist in Europe, far more famous than her composer husband, she had been touring the great capital cities since the age of 11 and was received with a sort of mania wherever she went – besought by Chopin and Liszt and Paganini, gifted jewels and fifty gold ducats by the Empress for her Beethoven recitals in Vienna, awarded Austria’s highest musical honour despite being only 18, and a foreigner, and female – all without precedent. The Emperor himself had to make an exception.

She was already engaged to Robert, by that stage, having met him at the age of only 8 – at one of her concerts, of course – and they had begun the arduous process of defying her manager-father’s wishes in order to get married, which they finally accomplished one day before she came of age. Not that she scaled back her career: she always remained the breadwinner for the family, continuing to tour and to teach. She acted as concert agent for herself and for Robert: she single-handedly invented the concept of the modern concert pianist, being the first to perform from memory, and her expressive new style influenced schools as far as Britain and the States; she shaped the tastes of a generation with her preferences, making the careers of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms: she managed Robert’s terrible illnesses, and his musical legacy after he died; and all this time she shepherded a family of seven children (surviving children, she was almost always pregnant). Even that she excelled at. She later took on her grandchildren when her son died and famously, when the children were trapped in the centre of Dresden during the Dresden Uprising of 1849, she calmly walked into the city through the gunfire, straight through the front lines, defied a pack of armed men who confronted her, fetched her children, and walked hand-in-hand straight back out again.

And not only that, she composed. Her works – 23 published opuses, which is only half of her output – include songs, pieces for piano and violin, vocal pieces, and a piano concerto which she performed at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Mendelssohn conducting, at the age of only 14. She never had time to write more, as it might well be imagined; her works suddenly tail off when Robert tried to kill himself and shortly after was committed to the asylum, when she was 36. But at least we have this, her only piano trio, composed when she was 27. It’s a masterpiece by any standards.

A lyrical, passionate, perfectly structured first movement leads into a gutsy, individual, humorous scherzo and trio. The andante is full of a heartfelt love and the allegretto, quickly becoming intensely dramatic, leads to a perfectly paced and confident finale. Many think she was actually a better more natural composer than her husband. If only she’d had more time.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Concert Details

Braid
CLEMENT • MENDELSSOHN • KATS-CHERNIN • KELLY • SCHUMANN
Ashley Brown (cello) with guest musicians Benjamin Baker (violin) and Stephen De Pledge (piano)

In recognition of the 125th anniversary celebration for women’s suffrage in New Zealand, Braid unleashes an all-female cast of composers. These remarkable women are represented in this powerful tribute by a perfect tangle of traits – enigma in the Clement (NZ), protective embrace in the Kelly (NZ), enduring strength in the Kats-Chernin (AUS), compassion in the Schumann (GER) and emotional wisdom in the Mendelssohn (GER).

Programme:

Rachel Clement (NZ): Shifting States – Sabbia (Sand)

Fanny Mendelssohn (GER): Piano Trio in D Minor

Elena Kats-Chernin (AUS): Spirit and the Maiden

~

Victoria Kelly (NZ): Sono

Clara Schumann (GER): Piano Trio in G Minor

TICKETS: $50 Adults / $25 Students

25aug7:30 am2018 Australia Tour August 25/28Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time with Julian Bliss

Rachel Clement (NZ; b. 1972): Shifting States

1. sabbia (sand)

Rachel Clement studied composition with John Rimmer and John Elmsly at the University of Auckland, graduating with a Bachelor of Music (Hons.) in 1995 and a Master of Music (composition) with distinction in 1997. She has composed for a range of contemporary performers and groups, including 175 East and Stroma, lectured part-time in Composition at the University of Canterbury, managed the library of the Christchurch Symphony, and worked as the National Secondary Schools Arts Co-ordinator for Music (on behalf of the Music Educators of NZ, Aotearoa) under contract to the Ministry of Education. In 2005 and 2006 she held the position of Mozart Fellow at the University of Otago.

Sabbia (sand) is from a set of five short pieces inspired by an interest in mid-Twentieth Century art glass. Clement explores the process of changing state, or changing phase (freezing, melting, vaporization, condensation and sublimation) essential to the production of the many types of art glass. Each piece expresses a style of finished effect (e.g. bubbles, flowers, submerged colour) with sand being the first step, and most essential ingredient.

Shifting states was commissioned by NZTrio with funding from Creative New Zealand.

Fanny Mendelssohn (GER; 1805 – 1847): Piano Trio in D Minor, Op.11

i.        Allegro molto vivace
ii.        Andante espressivo
iii.        Lied (Allegretto)
iv.        Allegro moderato

“Music will perhaps become Felix’s profession, while for youit can and must be only an ornament” (Abraham Mendelssohn, father, 1820)

In the mid 1980s, in Berlin, a researcher by the name of Marcia Citron finally gained access to the papers of Fanny Mendelssohn. She had to get past the curator, a fervent admirer of Felix, who called his older sister “just a housewife” and had blocked access to the archives for his entire tenure. She wore him down eventually. And what she found was astonishing – letters and diaries, all written in anOld German that she had to enlist the help of her landlady to decode, some 500 compositions that included a Cholera Cantata, dozens of songs and piano Songs Without Words, and her own wedding music (written while the rest of the family were celebrating the night before). Like Felix she turned out to have been a formidable pianist, so much so (“she plays like a man”) that even the best musicians were terrified of playing for her: like Felix she had been composing since the age of ten; like Felix she was also a fine conductor; and it was not unusual for visitors, apparently, to find her actually the more talented of the pair. Felix saw this very well – they discussed all of their music together, they were inseparable – and he published many of her songs under his own name. Indeed, when he was invited to Buckingham Palace and Queen Victoria announced that she would sing, he had the embarrassment of having to confess that this favourite song of Her Majesty’s was actually by his sister, and not his own.

And yet, Felix was sent off on a Grand Tour of the capitals of Europe to gain musical experience, and Fanny stayed at home to prepare her trousseau. Her husband (Wilhelm Hensel, the court painter) was supportive, luckily, and actually refused to marry her unless she promised to continue to compose: she did, but she never published much, or imagined anything but a private audience at home. This is her last published opus, written for her sister’s birthday on April 11, only a month before her death.

The first movement was called a masterpiece even at the time, with rumbling piano ushering in her gorgeous gift for melody. Two song-like movements follow – she quotes an aria from Felix’s Elijahin the third – and the finale, opening with a stately Bach-like flourish, quickly turns passionately romantic before wrapping up the whole with perfection.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

Elena Kats-Chernin (AUS; b. 1957): Spirit and the Maiden

Born in 1957 in Uzbekistan, Elena Kats-Chernin received training at the Gnessin Musical College before immigrating to Australia in 1975. She graduated from the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in 1980 and was awarded a DAAD (German academic exchange) grant to study with Helmut Lachenmann in Hanover. She remained in Germany for 13 years, returning in 1994 to Australia where she now lives in Sydney.

Elena has created works in nearly every genre. Among her many commissions are pieces for Ensemble Modern, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian World Orchestra, the Adelaide, Tasmanian, Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the North Carolina Symphony. In 2000 she collaborated with leading Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard on Deep Sea Dreaming which was broadcast to an audience of millions worldwide as part of the opening ceremonies of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

Elena’s music continues to be heard on TV and at the cinema in the UK with the long-running Lloyds TSB advertising campaign ‘For the journey…’, Meryl Tankard’s Wild Swans, and the theme in claymation film Max & Mary by Adam Elliott. She is one of the subjects of a Creative Minds 6-episode series of artist portraits by Robin Hughes. In 2017 she was composer in residence with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Her music is published exclusively by Boosey & Hawkes.

A work of 3 movements, Spirit and the Maiden is based on a Russian fairy-tale about a young girl whose job it was to carry water back and forth between her village and the well. One summer’s afternoon, as she put down her buckets and rested for a moment on the wall of the well, her turquoise shawl, a gift from her grandmother, rumoured to be a witch, slid from her shoulders and sank into the dark cold waters. When she reached down to grasp it, to her surprise what she felt was not her shawl but a hand.

As she pulled it out, she gasped at the sight of a beautiful young man emerging from the water – the water spirit. She was transfixed with wonder at his pale beauty, his voice deep like a resounding waterfall, and her heart beat so loudly, she thought her chest would burst.
The second movement describes a momentary love affair, dancing, teasing, and twirling in the sunlight which glistened on his steaming skin, his hands running through her hair making it wet and curly as she flirted with him. But soon he began to evaporate in the noon-day sun, until suddenly he was a mere pearlescent drop left on her palm.

The third movement laments as she cautiously placed him back in the water, the heaviness dragging her down into the depths. As she floats down into his embrace, blissfully falling to the deepest place, her lips turn blue and she drowns in his arms. When he realises what he’s done, his grief is so great, he wraps her in the turquoise shawl and swims back to the light, laying her body on the surface and, summoning all his magic, changes her into a water lilac where she has bloomed ever since.

Victoria Kelly (NZ; b. 1973): Sono

Victoria is a composer, performer, producer and director of music. Having focused on music for the screen for most of her 30-year long career, she now concentrates on contemporary classical music, as well as creative projects with a small group of artists, including a longstanding collaboration with Neil Finn. She is currently the Director of NZ Member Services at APRA AMCOS.

Victoria has enjoyed a hugely diverse career, working with musicians and artists across the worlds of cinema, dance, theatre, popular and classical music. She’s worked with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Auckland Philharmonia, the New Zealand String Quartet, NZTrio, Stroma, Michael Houstoun, Stephen De Pledge, Neil & Liam Finn, Don McGlashan, Anika Moa, SJD, Shapeshifter, Okareka Dance Company, Jonathan King, Robert Sarkies, Fran Walsh and Sir Peter Jackson, among many others. In 2011 she was the Music Director and principal composer for the Opening Ceremony of the Rugby World Cup at Eden Park.
“The idea for this piece began with the Portuguese word ‘sono’ which describes the desire to sleep in order to rejoin a dream. In my experience, it’s impossible to do this once you have woken.

The trio begins with an impassioned event which soon disappears, leaving the piano alone to dream about it. A repeating piano note emerges and remains, representing the real world lingering in the background. Around this note, the dreams wander in chords and gestures, deep breaths and ascending melodies.”

Sono was commissioned by the Turnovsky Trio in 1999.

Clara Schumann (GER; 1819 – 1896):Piano Trio in G Minor, Op.17

i.        Allegro moderato
ii.        Scherzo and Trio
iii.        Andante
iv.        Allegretto

“Composing gives me great pleasure… there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.”

Clara Schumann was one of the great forces of nature. The most famous pianist in Europe, far more famous than her composer husband, she had been touring the great capital cities since the age of 11 and was received with a sort of mania wherever she went – besought by Chopin and Liszt and Paganini, gifted jewels and fifty gold ducats by the Empress for her Beethoven recitals in Vienna, awarded Austria’s highest musical honour despite being only 18, and a foreigner, and female – all without precedent. The Emperor himself had to make an exception.

She was already engaged to Robert, by that stage, having met him at the age of only 8 – at one of her concerts, of course – and they had begun the arduous process of defying her manager-father’s wishes in order to get married, which they finally accomplished one day before she came of age. Not that she scaled back her career: she always remained the breadwinner for the family, continuing to tour and to teach. She acted as concert agent for herself and for Robert: she single-handedly invented the concept of the modern concert pianist, being the first to perform from memory, and her expressive new style influenced schools as far as Britain and the States; she shaped the tastes of a generation with her preferences, making the careers of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms: she managed Robert’s terrible illnesses, and his musical legacy after he died; and all this time she shepherded a family of seven children (surviving children, she was almost always pregnant). Even that she excelled at. She later took on her grandchildren when her son died and famously, when the children were trapped in the centre of Dresden during the Dresden Uprising of 1849, she calmly walked into the city through the gunfire, straight through the front lines, defied a pack of armed men who confronted her, fetched her children, and walked hand-in-hand straight back out again.

And not only that, she composed. Her works – 23 published opuses, which is only half of her output – include songs, pieces for piano and violin, vocal pieces, and a piano concerto which she performed at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Mendelssohn conducting, at the age of only 14. She never had time to write more, as it might well be imagined; her works suddenly tail off when Robert tried to kill himself and shortly after was committed to the asylum, when she was 36. But at least we have this, her only piano trio, composed when she was 27. It’s a masterpiece by any standards.

A lyrical, passionate, perfectly structured first movement leads into a gutsy, individual, humorous scherzo and trio. The andante is full of a heartfelt love and the allegretto, quickly becoming intensely dramatic, leads to a perfectly paced and confident finale. Many think she was actually a better more natural composer than her husband. If only she’d had more time.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson

26jun7:00 pmLoft Series 1: WeaveAuckland Tuesday performance

Concert Details

Weave
GLASS • MENDELSSOHN • GREENBAUM • BUCHANAN • SCHUMANN
Ashley Brown (cello) with guest musicians Natalie Lin (violin) and Somi Kim (piano)

The first in the 2018 series, Weave introduces an aural tapestry rich in colour and texture. The structuralist sensibility of Philip Glass (USA) and ordered tonality of Felix Mendelssohn (GER) provide a framework for the more fluid and silky sound worlds of Stuart Greenbaum (AUS) and Dorothy Buchanan (NZ), before the flat-out emotional turbulence of Robert Schumann (GER) closes the loop.

Programme:

Philip Glass (USA): Head On

Felix Mendelssohn (GER): Trio No.1 in D minor

Stuart Greenbaum (AUS): Year Without a Summer

~

Dorothy Buchanan (NZ): Trio Sound

Robert Schumann (GER): Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor

TICKETS: $50 Adult / $25 Student / $135 Series Subscription*

* Purchase a series subscription and go in the draw to win a $200 WORLD clothing voucher, or a 75 min. massage from Biodynamic Massage. Prizes drawn following the first performance of Weave, June 24th.

24jun5:00 pmLoft Series 1: WeaveAuckland Sunday performance

Philip GLASS (USA; b. 1937): Head On– c. 3’

It short but it’s classic! This is the first Philip Glass piece that sounds like Philip Glass. You won’t find it recorded, it wasn’t even publicly performed until 2017, and even he describes it as a ‘rarity’. He composed it for a party, specifically an old friend of his from Juilliard, Dorothy Pixley-Rothschild, who played the violin – he played the piano, another friend of theirs the cello.

“It was really obsessive music, some minutes long, which began with the players playing different melodies. With each development of the piece, the differences started to become eliminated, so that by the time we came to the end, everyone was playing together. At the very end of the piece, there was a collision of all this music—that’s why it was called “Head On”—simplifying itself until it became a single melody.”

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Felix MENDELSSOHN (GER; 1809–1847): Trio No.1 in D Minor, c. 28’

Molto allegro ed agitato
Andante con moto tranquillo
Scherzo:Leggiero e vivace
Finale: Allegro assai appassionato

On Aug 17, 1838, Mendelssohn wrote to his friend Ferdinand Hiller: “A very important branch of piano music, of which I am particularly fond – trios, quartets, and other things with accompaniment – is quite forgotten now, and I feel greatly the want of something new in that line. I should like to do a little towards this, and I am thinking of writing a couple of trios.”

It was July, 1839. Mendelssohn was summering in Frankfurt, on leave from his incredibly busy life in Leipzig where he’d just wrapped up a season with the premiere of Schubert’s 9thsymphony. He was director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the finest orchestra in Europe, and was introducing the audience to the totally unknown Franz Schubert as well as his own special discovery, JS Bach; he conducted Bach’s choir, the Thomanchor: he directed the opera, and was basically involved in every large-scale musical institution in Leipzig. Small wonder then that he wanted to go back to his childhood love, chamber music. He hadn’t written a piano trio for almost 20 years (aged only 11, the first no longer survives) and he sent it off to Hiller for comment. Hiller’s only suggestion was to talk up the piano part, since Mendelssohn was a virtuoso pianist, after all: besides, this was the age of Chopin and Liszt and the audience expected it. Mendelssohn did, and the result was a romantic, heartfelt, ‘Song without words’ of such scintillating brilliance that it was instantly hailed as the master trio of the age.

It begins anxiously, with that great opening cello theme underpinned by an agitated, murmuring piano as if a great ocean liner is sweeping through choppy seas. The second movement is the emotional heart of the trio, with one of Mendelssohn’s loveliest tunes led by the piano, echoed by the strings. The fleet-footed scherzo, with its Hungarian gypsy overtones, is the piano showing off for Hiller – Mendelssohn was famous for his lightning fast finger-staccato and wrists! – before we get one of the most glorious finales ever written, a chorale that has been likened to several beloved Lutheran tunes but is purely Mendelssohn’s own.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Stuart GREENBAUM (AUS; B. 1966): Year without a summer– c.15’

The eruption in 1815 of Mt Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa was over four times as big as the eruption of Krakatoa later that century but perhaps not as well known. The ash and dust thrown up in the Earth’s upper atmosphere further resulted in ‘the year without a summer’ in 1816. This was by all accounts a devastating ecological event that caused unseasonal cold temperatures and widespread famine.

The first movement of this trio is short and fast, framing a dark cloud of dust approaching from the distance. Did it seem a premonition? How long did they think it would last? The longer second movement shifts forward to 1816 and contemplates the upheaval of people’s lives – of having their world turned upside-down in one way or another and having to regroup and adjust to new circumstances.

Written for, and dedicated to NZTrio, this work was commissioned by the Trans-Tasman Composer Exchange Programme administered by the AMC and SOUNZ and supported with funding from the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.

Dorothy BUCHANAN (NZ; b. 1945): Trio Sound – c. 17’

One of Dorothy Buchanan’s loveliest chamber works, commissioned in 1980 just after she’d become first woman president of CANZ, and indicative of her great love of New Zealand poetry – her settings range from Katherine Mansfield and Lauris Edmond to Witi Ihimaera and, as here, the future poet laureate, Ian Wedde. He spent much of the 70s travelling in the middle east: and on his return gave her one of his poems inspired by the desert, Shaduf, to set however she pleased. She describes this trio as her interpretation of the poem in musical abstraction.

Shaduf

When that star fell in the desert
the dry socket brimmed with water.
The well looked at the heaven
they entered its dark surface
they shone there.
‘Starwater.
starwater…. Our cup
brims over in the dust!’
Be what you see.
And a tender stubble of green
spread around the crater.
Now this where you pause on your journey.
This is the place you return to
in your rage: to bathe
your eyes in starlight
drink brackish tears
sit in the cool of these outlandish trees
whose names you’ll never know
seeds dropped by some caravan lost in eternity.
They waited for the water to spring here
kissing their husks open.
Hello. Good morning
It was not a dream you dreamt.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Robert SCHUMANN (GER; 1810 – 1856):Piano Trio No. 1 in d Minor, Op.63 – c. 30’

Mit Energie und Leidenschaft
Lebhaft, doch nicht zu rasch
Langsam, mit inniger Empfindung
Mit Feuer

This is Schumann at his most romantic – the creative genius, the composing powerhouse, the Schumann that had swept Clara off her feet exactly 10 years before. He had already begun to show signs of his illness, the mental imbalance that drove him to attempt suicide in 1854 and would eventually kill him. It’s been posited that this was nothing but the mercury treatment for syphilis. But he also had it in his family: fully three of the Schumann children were to succumb to the same thing; and back in 1844, which they spent unhappily in Dresden, he had been plagued by tinnitus, phobias, nervous fits and apprehension of death. The neurasthenic symphony no 2 and piano concerto date from that period and they had cancelled his contract with the orchestra, and hurriedly turned back to Leipzig.

And there, eventually, things began to look up. 1847 began with an extensive concert tour for Clara, the pianist, and they had a wonderful spring in Prague before Schumann himself was received rapturously in Berlin – momentous for him, as for the first time, he was possibly even more famous than his wife. The summer they spent in his beloved Zwickau, where he was born and grew up until leaving for university – this is where the Schumann centre is based now – and that’s where he suddenly began composing again, completing not one but two piano trios in short succession.

No. 1 is the more mysterious of the two, inspired by Mendelssohn’s piano trio in the same key, which Schumann revered. The first movement sets the mood, a surging mix of unrest and euphoria, with mainly the piano set against the violin with wonderful effects. The dotted scherzo and flowing trio centre section drive relentlessly upward. Crises in the melody – is this a clue to Schumann’s recent experience? – lead into a beautiful third-movement duet between violin and cello; and all the uneasy parts of the whole are brilliantly wrapped up in a classic, heroic, fiery finale.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Concert Details

Weave
GLASS • MENDELSSOHN • GREENBAUM • BUCHANAN • SCHUMANN
Ashley Brown (cello) with guest musicians Natalie Lin (violin) and Somi Kim (piano)

The first in the 2018 series, Weave introduces an aural tapestry rich in colour and texture. The structuralist sensibility of Philip Glass (USA) and ordered tonality of Felix Mendelssohn (GER) provide a framework for the more fluid and silky sound worlds of Stuart Greenbaum (AUS) and Dorothy Buchanan (NZ), before the flat-out emotional turbulence of Robert Schumann (GER) closes the loop.

Programme:

Philip Glass (USA): Head On

Felix Mendelssohn (GER): Trio No.1 in D minor

Stuart Greenbaum (AUS): Year Without a Summer

~

Dorothy Buchanan (NZ): Trio Sound

Robert Schumann (GER): Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor

TICKETS: $50 Adult / $25 Student / $135 Series Subscription*

* Purchase a series subscription and go in the draw to win a $200 WORLD clothing voucher, or a 75 min. massage from Biodynamic Massage. Prizes drawn following the first performance of Weave, June 24th.

21jun7:00 pm- 8:30 pmNZTrio Series 1: WeaveCHRISTCHURCH

Philip GLASS (USA; b. 1937): Head On– c. 3’

It short but it’s classic! This is the first Philip Glass piece that sounds like Philip Glass. You won’t find it recorded, it wasn’t even publicly performed until 2017, and even he describes it as a ‘rarity’. He composed it for a party, specifically an old friend of his from Juilliard, Dorothy Pixley-Rothschild, who played the violin – he played the piano, another friend of theirs the cello.

“It was really obsessive music, some minutes long, which began with the players playing different melodies. With each development of the piece, the differences started to become eliminated, so that by the time we came to the end, everyone was playing together. At the very end of the piece, there was a collision of all this music—that’s why it was called “Head On”—simplifying itself until it became a single melody.”

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Felix MENDELSSOHN (GER; 1809–1847): Trio No.1 in D Minor, c. 28’

Molto allegro ed agitato
Andante con moto tranquillo
Scherzo:Leggiero e vivace
Finale: Allegro assai appassionato

On Aug 17, 1838, Mendelssohn wrote to his friend Ferdinand Hiller: “A very important branch of piano music, of which I am particularly fond – trios, quartets, and other things with accompaniment – is quite forgotten now, and I feel greatly the want of something new in that line. I should like to do a little towards this, and I am thinking of writing a couple of trios.”

It was July, 1839. Mendelssohn was summering in Frankfurt, on leave from his incredibly busy life in Leipzig where he’d just wrapped up a season with the premiere of Schubert’s 9thsymphony. He was director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the finest orchestra in Europe, and was introducing the audience to the totally unknown Franz Schubert as well as his own special discovery, JS Bach; he conducted Bach’s choir, the Thomanchor: he directed the opera, and was basically involved in every large-scale musical institution in Leipzig. Small wonder then that he wanted to go back to his childhood love, chamber music. He hadn’t written a piano trio for almost 20 years (aged only 11, the first no longer survives) and he sent it off to Hiller for comment. Hiller’s only suggestion was to talk up the piano part, since Mendelssohn was a virtuoso pianist, after all: besides, this was the age of Chopin and Liszt and the audience expected it. Mendelssohn did, and the result was a romantic, heartfelt, ‘Song without words’ of such scintillating brilliance that it was instantly hailed as the master trio of the age.

It begins anxiously, with that great opening cello theme underpinned by an agitated, murmuring piano as if a great ocean liner is sweeping through choppy seas. The second movement is the emotional heart of the trio, with one of Mendelssohn’s loveliest tunes led by the piano, echoed by the strings. The fleet-footed scherzo, with its Hungarian gypsy overtones, is the piano showing off for Hiller – Mendelssohn was famous for his lightning fast finger-staccato and wrists! – before we get one of the most glorious finales ever written, a chorale that has been likened to several beloved Lutheran tunes but is purely Mendelssohn’s own.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Stuart GREENBAUM (AUS; B. 1966): Year without a summer– c.15’

The eruption in 1815 of Mt Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa was over four times as big as the eruption of Krakatoa later that century but perhaps not as well known. The ash and dust thrown up in the Earth’s upper atmosphere further resulted in ‘the year without a summer’ in 1816. This was by all accounts a devastating ecological event that caused unseasonal cold temperatures and widespread famine.

The first movement of this trio is short and fast, framing a dark cloud of dust approaching from the distance. Did it seem a premonition? How long did they think it would last? The longer second movement shifts forward to 1816 and contemplates the upheaval of people’s lives – of having their world turned upside-down in one way or another and having to regroup and adjust to new circumstances.

Written for, and dedicated to NZTrio, this work was commissioned by the Trans-Tasman Composer Exchange Programme administered by the AMC and SOUNZ and supported with funding from the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.

Dorothy BUCHANAN (NZ; b. 1945): Trio Sound – c. 17’

One of Dorothy Buchanan’s loveliest chamber works, commissioned in 1980 just after she’d become first woman president of CANZ, and indicative of her great love of New Zealand poetry – her settings range from Katherine Mansfield and Lauris Edmond to Witi Ihimaera and, as here, the future poet laureate, Ian Wedde. He spent much of the 70s travelling in the middle east: and on his return gave her one of his poems inspired by the desert, Shaduf, to set however she pleased. She describes this trio as her interpretation of the poem in musical abstraction.

Shaduf

When that star fell in the desert
the dry socket brimmed with water.
The well looked at the heaven
they entered its dark surface
they shone there.
‘Starwater.
starwater…. Our cup
brims over in the dust!’
Be what you see.
And a tender stubble of green
spread around the crater.
Now this where you pause on your journey.
This is the place you return to
in your rage: to bathe
your eyes in starlight
drink brackish tears
sit in the cool of these outlandish trees
whose names you’ll never know
seeds dropped by some caravan lost in eternity.
They waited for the water to spring here
kissing their husks open.
Hello. Good morning
It was not a dream you dreamt.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Robert SCHUMANN (GER; 1810 – 1856):Piano Trio No. 1 in d Minor, Op.63 – c. 30’

Mit Energie und Leidenschaft
Lebhaft, doch nicht zu rasch
Langsam, mit inniger Empfindung
Mit Feuer

This is Schumann at his most romantic – the creative genius, the composing powerhouse, the Schumann that had swept Clara off her feet exactly 10 years before. He had already begun to show signs of his illness, the mental imbalance that drove him to attempt suicide in 1854 and would eventually kill him. It’s been posited that this was nothing but the mercury treatment for syphilis. But he also had it in his family: fully three of the Schumann children were to succumb to the same thing; and back in 1844, which they spent unhappily in Dresden, he had been plagued by tinnitus, phobias, nervous fits and apprehension of death. The neurasthenic symphony no 2 and piano concerto date from that period and they had cancelled his contract with the orchestra, and hurriedly turned back to Leipzig.

And there, eventually, things began to look up. 1847 began with an extensive concert tour for Clara, the pianist, and they had a wonderful spring in Prague before Schumann himself was received rapturously in Berlin – momentous for him, as for the first time, he was possibly even more famous than his wife. The summer they spent in his beloved Zwickau, where he was born and grew up until leaving for university – this is where the Schumann centre is based now – and that’s where he suddenly began composing again, completing not one but two piano trios in short succession.

No. 1 is the more mysterious of the two, inspired by Mendelssohn’s piano trio in the same key, which Schumann revered. The first movement sets the mood, a surging mix of unrest and euphoria, with mainly the piano set against the violin with wonderful effects. The dotted scherzo and flowing trio centre section drive relentlessly upward. Crises in the melody – is this a clue to Schumann’s recent experience? – lead into a beautiful third-movement duet between violin and cello; and all the uneasy parts of the whole are brilliantly wrapped up in a classic, heroic, fiery finale.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Concert Details

Weave
GLASS • MENDELSSOHN • GREENBAUM • BUCHANAN • SCHUMANN
Ashley Brown (cello) with guest musicians Natalie Lin (violin) and Somi Kim (piano)

The first in the 2018 series, Weave introduces an aural tapestry rich in colour and texture. The structuralist sensibility of Philip Glass (USA) and ordered tonality of Felix Mendelssohn (GER) provide a framework for the more fluid and silky sound worlds of Stuart Greenbaum (AUS) and Dorothy Buchanan (NZ), before the flat-out emotional turbulence of Robert Schumann (GER) closes the loop.

Programme:

Philip Glass (USA): Head On

Felix Mendelssohn (GER): Trio No.1 in D minor

Stuart Greenbaum (AUS): Year Without a Summer

~

Dorothy Buchanan (NZ): Trio Sound

Robert Schumann (GER): Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor 30’

TICKETS $40 Adults / $20 Students

BOOK HERE VIA EVENTFINDA

Time

(Thursday) 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm UTC+12:00

Location

The Piano

156 Armagh Street, Christchurch, NZ

20jun7:00 pm- 8:30 pmNZTrio Art3: WeaveWellington

Philip GLASS (USA; b. 1937): Head On– c. 3’

It short but it’s classic! This is the first Philip Glass piece that sounds like Philip Glass. You won’t find it recorded, it wasn’t even publicly performed until 2017, and even he describes it as a ‘rarity’. He composed it for a party, specifically an old friend of his from Juilliard, Dorothy Pixley-Rothschild, who played the violin – he played the piano, another friend of theirs the cello.

“It was really obsessive music, some minutes long, which began with the players playing different melodies. With each development of the piece, the differences started to become eliminated, so that by the time we came to the end, everyone was playing together. At the very end of the piece, there was a collision of all this music—that’s why it was called “Head On”—simplifying itself until it became a single melody.”

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Felix MENDELSSOHN (GER; 1809–1847): Trio No.1 in D Minor, c. 28’

Molto allegro ed agitato
Andante con moto tranquillo
Scherzo:Leggiero e vivace
Finale: Allegro assai appassionato

On Aug 17, 1838, Mendelssohn wrote to his friend Ferdinand Hiller: “A very important branch of piano music, of which I am particularly fond – trios, quartets, and other things with accompaniment – is quite forgotten now, and I feel greatly the want of something new in that line. I should like to do a little towards this, and I am thinking of writing a couple of trios.”

It was July, 1839. Mendelssohn was summering in Frankfurt, on leave from his incredibly busy life in Leipzig where he’d just wrapped up a season with the premiere of Schubert’s 9thsymphony. He was director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the finest orchestra in Europe, and was introducing the audience to the totally unknown Franz Schubert as well as his own special discovery, JS Bach; he conducted Bach’s choir, the Thomanchor: he directed the opera, and was basically involved in every large-scale musical institution in Leipzig. Small wonder then that he wanted to go back to his childhood love, chamber music. He hadn’t written a piano trio for almost 20 years (aged only 11, the first no longer survives) and he sent it off to Hiller for comment. Hiller’s only suggestion was to talk up the piano part, since Mendelssohn was a virtuoso pianist, after all: besides, this was the age of Chopin and Liszt and the audience expected it. Mendelssohn did, and the result was a romantic, heartfelt, ‘Song without words’ of such scintillating brilliance that it was instantly hailed as the master trio of the age.

It begins anxiously, with that great opening cello theme underpinned by an agitated, murmuring piano as if a great ocean liner is sweeping through choppy seas. The second movement is the emotional heart of the trio, with one of Mendelssohn’s loveliest tunes led by the piano, echoed by the strings. The fleet-footed scherzo, with its Hungarian gypsy overtones, is the piano showing off for Hiller – Mendelssohn was famous for his lightning fast finger-staccato and wrists! – before we get one of the most glorious finales ever written, a chorale that has been likened to several beloved Lutheran tunes but is purely Mendelssohn’s own.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Stuart GREENBAUM (AUS; B. 1966): Year without a summer– c.15’

The eruption in 1815 of Mt Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa was over four times as big as the eruption of Krakatoa later that century but perhaps not as well known. The ash and dust thrown up in the Earth’s upper atmosphere further resulted in ‘the year without a summer’ in 1816. This was by all accounts a devastating ecological event that caused unseasonal cold temperatures and widespread famine.

The first movement of this trio is short and fast, framing a dark cloud of dust approaching from the distance. Did it seem a premonition? How long did they think it would last? The longer second movement shifts forward to 1816 and contemplates the upheaval of people’s lives – of having their world turned upside-down in one way or another and having to regroup and adjust to new circumstances.

Written for, and dedicated to NZTrio, this work was commissioned by the Trans-Tasman Composer Exchange Programme administered by the AMC and SOUNZ and supported with funding from the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.

Dorothy BUCHANAN (NZ; b. 1945): Trio Sound – c. 17’

One of Dorothy Buchanan’s loveliest chamber works, commissioned in 1980 just after she’d become first woman president of CANZ, and indicative of her great love of New Zealand poetry – her settings range from Katherine Mansfield and Lauris Edmond to Witi Ihimaera and, as here, the future poet laureate, Ian Wedde. He spent much of the 70s travelling in the middle east: and on his return gave her one of his poems inspired by the desert, Shaduf, to set however she pleased. She describes this trio as her interpretation of the poem in musical abstraction.

Shaduf

When that star fell in the desert
the dry socket brimmed with water.
The well looked at the heaven
they entered its dark surface
they shone there.
‘Starwater.
starwater…. Our cup
brims over in the dust!’
Be what you see.
And a tender stubble of green
spread around the crater.
Now this where you pause on your journey.
This is the place you return to
in your rage: to bathe
your eyes in starlight
drink brackish tears
sit in the cool of these outlandish trees
whose names you’ll never know
seeds dropped by some caravan lost in eternity.
They waited for the water to spring here
kissing their husks open.
Hello. Good morning
It was not a dream you dreamt.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Robert SCHUMANN (GER; 1810 – 1856):Piano Trio No. 1 in d Minor, Op.63 – c. 30’

Mit Energie und Leidenschaft
Lebhaft, doch nicht zu rasch
Langsam, mit inniger Empfindung
Mit Feuer

This is Schumann at his most romantic – the creative genius, the composing powerhouse, the Schumann that had swept Clara off her feet exactly 10 years before. He had already begun to show signs of his illness, the mental imbalance that drove him to attempt suicide in 1854 and would eventually kill him. It’s been posited that this was nothing but the mercury treatment for syphilis. But he also had it in his family: fully three of the Schumann children were to succumb to the same thing; and back in 1844, which they spent unhappily in Dresden, he had been plagued by tinnitus, phobias, nervous fits and apprehension of death. The neurasthenic symphony no 2 and piano concerto date from that period and they had cancelled his contract with the orchestra, and hurriedly turned back to Leipzig.

And there, eventually, things began to look up. 1847 began with an extensive concert tour for Clara, the pianist, and they had a wonderful spring in Prague before Schumann himself was received rapturously in Berlin – momentous for him, as for the first time, he was possibly even more famous than his wife. The summer they spent in his beloved Zwickau, where he was born and grew up until leaving for university – this is where the Schumann centre is based now – and that’s where he suddenly began composing again, completing not one but two piano trios in short succession.

No. 1 is the more mysterious of the two, inspired by Mendelssohn’s piano trio in the same key, which Schumann revered. The first movement sets the mood, a surging mix of unrest and euphoria, with mainly the piano set against the violin with wonderful effects. The dotted scherzo and flowing trio centre section drive relentlessly upward. Crises in the melody – is this a clue to Schumann’s recent experience? – lead into a beautiful third-movement duet between violin and cello; and all the uneasy parts of the whole are brilliantly wrapped up in a classic, heroic, fiery finale.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Concert Details

Weave
GLASS • MENDELSSOHN • GREENBAUM • BUCHANAN • SCHUMANN
Ashley Brown (cello) with guest musicians Natalie Lin (violin) and Somi Kim (piano)

Weave introduces an aural tapestry rich in colour and texture. The structuralist sensibility of Philip Glass (USA) and ordered tonality of Felix Mendelssohn (GER) provide a framework for the more fluid and silky sound worlds of Stuart Greenbaum (AUS) and Dorothy Buchanan (NZ), before the flat-out emotional turbulence of Robert Schumann (GER) closes the loop.

Programme:

Philip Glass (USA): Head On

Felix Mendelssohn (GER): Trio No.1 in D minor

Stuart Greenbaum (AUS): Year Without a Summer

~

Dorothy Buchanan (NZ): Trio Sound

Robert Schumann (GER): Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor

TICKETS: $40 Adult / $20 Student

BOOK HERE VIA EVENTFINDA

Time

(Wednesday) 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm UTC+12:00

Location

City Gallery

101 Wakefield St, Wellington

6jun7:00 pmSayonara(h) 2Second evening added

Philip GLASS (USA; b. 1937): Head On– c. 3’

It short but it’s classic! This is the first Philip Glass piece that sounds like Philip Glass. You won’t find it recorded, it wasn’t even publicly performed until 2017, and even he describes it as a ‘rarity’. He composed it for a party, specifically an old friend of his from Juilliard, Dorothy Pixley-Rothschild, who played the violin – he played the piano, another friend of theirs the cello.

“It was really obsessive music, some minutes long, which began with the players playing different melodies. With each development of the piece, the differences started to become eliminated, so that by the time we came to the end, everyone was playing together. At the very end of the piece, there was a collision of all this music—that’s why it was called “Head On”—simplifying itself until it became a single melody.”

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Felix MENDELSSOHN (GER; 1809–1847): Trio No.1 in D Minor, c. 28’

Molto allegro ed agitato
Andante con moto tranquillo
Scherzo:Leggiero e vivace
Finale: Allegro assai appassionato

On Aug 17, 1838, Mendelssohn wrote to his friend Ferdinand Hiller: “A very important branch of piano music, of which I am particularly fond – trios, quartets, and other things with accompaniment – is quite forgotten now, and I feel greatly the want of something new in that line. I should like to do a little towards this, and I am thinking of writing a couple of trios.”

It was July, 1839. Mendelssohn was summering in Frankfurt, on leave from his incredibly busy life in Leipzig where he’d just wrapped up a season with the premiere of Schubert’s 9thsymphony. He was director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the finest orchestra in Europe, and was introducing the audience to the totally unknown Franz Schubert as well as his own special discovery, JS Bach; he conducted Bach’s choir, the Thomanchor: he directed the opera, and was basically involved in every large-scale musical institution in Leipzig. Small wonder then that he wanted to go back to his childhood love, chamber music. He hadn’t written a piano trio for almost 20 years (aged only 11, the first no longer survives) and he sent it off to Hiller for comment. Hiller’s only suggestion was to talk up the piano part, since Mendelssohn was a virtuoso pianist, after all: besides, this was the age of Chopin and Liszt and the audience expected it. Mendelssohn did, and the result was a romantic, heartfelt, ‘Song without words’ of such scintillating brilliance that it was instantly hailed as the master trio of the age.

It begins anxiously, with that great opening cello theme underpinned by an agitated, murmuring piano as if a great ocean liner is sweeping through choppy seas. The second movement is the emotional heart of the trio, with one of Mendelssohn’s loveliest tunes led by the piano, echoed by the strings. The fleet-footed scherzo, with its Hungarian gypsy overtones, is the piano showing off for Hiller – Mendelssohn was famous for his lightning fast finger-staccato and wrists! – before we get one of the most glorious finales ever written, a chorale that has been likened to several beloved Lutheran tunes but is purely Mendelssohn’s own.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Stuart GREENBAUM (AUS; B. 1966): Year without a summer– c.15’

The eruption in 1815 of Mt Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa was over four times as big as the eruption of Krakatoa later that century but perhaps not as well known. The ash and dust thrown up in the Earth’s upper atmosphere further resulted in ‘the year without a summer’ in 1816. This was by all accounts a devastating ecological event that caused unseasonal cold temperatures and widespread famine.

The first movement of this trio is short and fast, framing a dark cloud of dust approaching from the distance. Did it seem a premonition? How long did they think it would last? The longer second movement shifts forward to 1816 and contemplates the upheaval of people’s lives – of having their world turned upside-down in one way or another and having to regroup and adjust to new circumstances.

Written for, and dedicated to NZTrio, this work was commissioned by the Trans-Tasman Composer Exchange Programme administered by the AMC and SOUNZ and supported with funding from the Music Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.

Dorothy BUCHANAN (NZ; b. 1945): Trio Sound – c. 17’

One of Dorothy Buchanan’s loveliest chamber works, commissioned in 1980 just after she’d become first woman president of CANZ, and indicative of her great love of New Zealand poetry – her settings range from Katherine Mansfield and Lauris Edmond to Witi Ihimaera and, as here, the future poet laureate, Ian Wedde. He spent much of the 70s travelling in the middle east: and on his return gave her one of his poems inspired by the desert, Shaduf, to set however she pleased. She describes this trio as her interpretation of the poem in musical abstraction.

Shaduf

When that star fell in the desert
the dry socket brimmed with water.
The well looked at the heaven
they entered its dark surface
they shone there.
‘Starwater.
starwater…. Our cup
brims over in the dust!’
Be what you see.
And a tender stubble of green
spread around the crater.
Now this where you pause on your journey.
This is the place you return to
in your rage: to bathe
your eyes in starlight
drink brackish tears
sit in the cool of these outlandish trees
whose names you’ll never know
seeds dropped by some caravan lost in eternity.
They waited for the water to spring here
kissing their husks open.
Hello. Good morning
It was not a dream you dreamt.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Robert SCHUMANN (GER; 1810 – 1856):Piano Trio No. 1 in d Minor, Op.63 – c. 30’

Mit Energie und Leidenschaft
Lebhaft, doch nicht zu rasch
Langsam, mit inniger Empfindung
Mit Feuer

This is Schumann at his most romantic – the creative genius, the composing powerhouse, the Schumann that had swept Clara off her feet exactly 10 years before. He had already begun to show signs of his illness, the mental imbalance that drove him to attempt suicide in 1854 and would eventually kill him. It’s been posited that this was nothing but the mercury treatment for syphilis. But he also had it in his family: fully three of the Schumann children were to succumb to the same thing; and back in 1844, which they spent unhappily in Dresden, he had been plagued by tinnitus, phobias, nervous fits and apprehension of death. The neurasthenic symphony no 2 and piano concerto date from that period and they had cancelled his contract with the orchestra, and hurriedly turned back to Leipzig.

And there, eventually, things began to look up. 1847 began with an extensive concert tour for Clara, the pianist, and they had a wonderful spring in Prague before Schumann himself was received rapturously in Berlin – momentous for him, as for the first time, he was possibly even more famous than his wife. The summer they spent in his beloved Zwickau, where he was born and grew up until leaving for university – this is where the Schumann centre is based now – and that’s where he suddenly began composing again, completing not one but two piano trios in short succession.

No. 1 is the more mysterious of the two, inspired by Mendelssohn’s piano trio in the same key, which Schumann revered. The first movement sets the mood, a surging mix of unrest and euphoria, with mainly the piano set against the violin with wonderful effects. The dotted scherzo and flowing trio centre section drive relentlessly upward. Crises in the melody – is this a clue to Schumann’s recent experience? – lead into a beautiful third-movement duet between violin and cello; and all the uneasy parts of the whole are brilliantly wrapped up in a classic, heroic, fiery finale.

Programme note by Charlotte Wilson.

Concert Details

Join NZTrio at the TSB Wallace Art Centre, Pah Homestead on June 6th, 7pm for a second final performance with Sarah as pianist. Yuri Cho is guest violinist, and drinks, nibbles, and toasts will follow.

Programme:

Approx. 75 mins no interval

Brahms: Piano Trio no. 2 in C major op. 87 (I: Allegro)
Jack Body: Fire in the Belly
Ravel: Piano Trio (I: Modéré)
Chen Yi: Tibetan Tunes (II: Dui Xie)
Beethoven: Trio in E flat major op. 1 no. 1 (IV: Finale – Presto)
Claire Cowan: Subtle Dances
Saint-Saëns: Piano Trio no. 2 in e minor op. 82 (V: Allegro)

Tickets $40 Adults / $20 Students
General Admission
BOOK NOW VIA EVENTFINDA

Time

(Wednesday) 7:00 pm UTC+12:00

Location

TSB Wallace Art Centre, The Pah Homestead

72 Hillsborough Rd., Auckland