Music Review
From Garden to Grave, Hunter Concert Chamber, Victoria University 11 July, reviewed by Garth Wilshere.
Capital Times
24 July 2010
A good benefit.
If we ever needed evidence of what consummate artists Margaret Medlyn and Bruce Greenfield are, then their recital on Sunday afternoon for the Professor Jack C Richards Scholarship was surely it.
Eight songs by Rachmaninov, three by Korngold, the first performance of a new song cycle (commissioned by Prof Richards) by Stephan Prock a lecturer at the NZSM, and the first public performance of a song cycle by Jenny McLeod, also originally commissioned by Prof Richards, made up the ambitious programme.
It made huge demands of the two performers, and they not only coped they excelled.
The romantic songs of Rachmaninov and Korngold need a singer and pianist to really inhabit them. They are technically demanding, the Korngold in particular needing a signer who can spin long lines, and the Rachmaninov needing a pianist who can cope with the virtuosic piano part. All challenges were met.
We rarely get to hear these songs, which is a shame, but it is understandable why. They not only need technically secure performers but also singers with the maturity to project the complex emotional states behind the words. More please.
I was privileged to have heard the premiere of the McLeod From Garden To Grave cycle 18 months ago. Written for Greenfield’s 60th birthday they were then performed by Medlyn with Rosemary Barnes accompanying. This concert was the first time Greenfield had performed them. The performance was perhaps more nuanced than the previous one and the songs seemed less dense and lighter. Medlyn was obviously more relaxed second time around, and Greenfield’s playing seemed more mercurial.
In this long concert the humour shone through more and the cycle seemed to fly by.
Having also heard the recent performance of another of her Song Cycles with tenor Keith Lewis, at the International Festival of the Arts, I would have to say that I find this cycle the more successful. Both use Janet Frame poems.
The new piece was Cages for the Wind, a setting of five poems by Alastair Te Ariki Campbell, by Stephan Prock. There were some effective moments, particularly in the piano writing, but, as a whole the cycle suffers from a sameness of texture and pace. It was only the last song that offered variation and emotional connection between music and poem.
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