Distracting visuals
19/05/2010 3:49:00 p.m.
In a New Light – Made in New Zealand, NZSO, Wellington Town Hall 7 May, reviewed by Garth Wilshere.
THE annual Made in New Zealand Concert from the NZSO during New Zealand Music Month had a twist this year, in accompanying visual images prepared by Dnation aka Robert Appiardo, which proved to be irritating, distracting, and an idea better forgotten.
A tone poem, written overseas by an obscure Wellington composer, Arnold Trowell, who found fame in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, The Waters of Peneios had been unearthed after recent research by Martin Griffiths.
With musical images of water, it was derivative with discernable influences suggesting, Debussy, Delius, R. Strauss, and hints of Wagner.
It was innocuous, attractive, pleasant and well constructed and provided a score for the endlessly repetitive video images, as if for a travel advertisement!
Ross Harris’s Violin Concerto, commissioned by Christopher Marshall, was a tour-de-force brilliantly played by English Violinist Anthony Marwood.
Very European in compositional style, reflecting back to the Viennese writing of Mahler and later masters such as Berg, this is an accomplished piece of writing with superb orchestration and Conductor Tecwyn Evans was in total control. Thankfully it was free of images.
Inspired by Marc Chagall paintings, Harris’s Orchestral song cycle The Floating Bride, The Crimson Village with its clever texts by Vincent O’Sullivan, had the advantage of soprano Jenny Wollerman’s clean singing, often quirky settings, and the orchestra’s extra dimension.
Here the projected, moving coloured dots and spheres were a travesty to the music and an insult to Chagall. If we could have seen projections of some of his whimsical and vibrantly coloured paintings (if anything) instead, that might have worked.
Claire Cowan’s “Legends of the Trojan Bird”, accompanied by strange, occasionally, disturbing, overwrought visuals, was interesting and would have been fine without them.
John Psathas’s twelve-year old piece Seikilos was recognisable vintage Psathas, well played and unnecessarily accompanied by more endless water and wafting weed images.
THE annual Made in New Zealand Concert from the NZSO during New Zealand Music Month had a twist this year, in accompanying visual images prepared by Dnation aka Robert Appiardo, which proved to be irritating, distracting, and an idea better forgotten.
A tone poem, written overseas by an obscure Wellington composer, Arnold Trowell, who found fame in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, The Waters of Peneios had been unearthed after recent research by Martin Griffiths.
With musical images of water, it was derivative with discernable influences suggesting, Debussy, Delius, R. Strauss, and hints of Wagner.
It was innocuous, attractive, pleasant and well constructed and provided a score for the endlessly repetitive video images, as if for a travel advertisement!
Ross Harris’s Violin Concerto, commissioned by Christopher Marshall, was a tour-de-force brilliantly played by English Violinist Anthony Marwood.
Very European in compositional style, reflecting back to the Viennese writing of Mahler and later masters such as Berg, this is an accomplished piece of writing with superb orchestration and Conductor Tecwyn Evans was in total control. Thankfully it was free of images.
Inspired by Marc Chagall paintings, Harris’s Orchestral song cycle The Floating Bride, The Crimson Village with its clever texts by Vincent O’Sullivan, had the advantage of soprano Jenny Wollerman’s clean singing, often quirky settings, and the orchestra’s extra dimension.
Here the projected, moving coloured dots and spheres were a travesty to the music and an insult to Chagall. If we could have seen projections of some of his whimsical and vibrantly coloured paintings (if anything) instead, that might have worked.
Claire Cowan’s “Legends of the Trojan Bird”, accompanied by strange, occasionally, disturbing, overwrought visuals, was interesting and would have been fine without them.
John Psathas’s twelve-year old piece Seikilos was recognisable vintage Psathas, well played and unnecessarily accompanied by more endless water and wafting weed images.
