Tēnā koutouEpitomising the well-known description of chamber music as “music amongst friends” we are delighted to present international cellist Matthew Barley and one of New Zealand’s favourite pianists, Stephen De Pledge.

Long-time friends and collaborators, they come together to perform a programme that stretches across time - from Bach to Beethoven, to Takemitsu and a new work by one of New Zealand most exciting young composers – Salina Fisher. Salina’s composition ‘Mono no aware’ for cello and piano is generously supported by Prof. Jack C Richards and received its world premiere at the Melbourne Recital Centre ahead of the CMNZ tour. I’m thrilled that Salina’s work has been internationally showcased in this way.

This is a programme of ‘tasty morsels’, beautifully linked and musically connected.

Have a wonderful evening,

Catherine GibsonChief Executive Chamber Music New Zealand

Please kindly remember to switch off all cellphones, pagers and watches. Taking photographs, sound or video recordings during the concert is prohibited unless with the prior approval of Chamber Music New Zealand. Thank you.

1Matthew Barley & Stephen De Pledge

DURATION: 105 minutes including an interval

The Artists reserve the right to make changes to the programme.

Robert Schumann Page 4 Adagio and Allegro, op. 70 Anton Webern Page 4 Three Little Pieces, op. 11 Johann Sebastian Bach Page 5 Andante from Sonata No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1027 Salina Fisher Page 5 Mono no aware ( ) (CMNZ Commission)* Toru Takemitsu Page 6 Orion (1984) Claude Debussy Page 7 Sonata in D Minor -Interval- Arvo Pärt Page 8 Spiegel im Spiegel Ludwig van Beethoven Page 9 Sonata No. 3 in A Major, op. 69

ChiaroscuroNAPIER, PALMERSTON NORTH, NEW PLYMOUTH

物の哀れ

*This commission is generously

supported by Prof. Jack C. Richards.

2 Chamber Music New Zealand

Cello playing is at the centre of Matthew Barley’s career, while his musical world has virtually no geographical, social or stylistic boundaries.

Matthew Barley is passionate about improvisation, education, multi-genre music-making, electronics, and pioneering community programmes. He is also a world-renowned cellist, who has performed in over 50 countries, including concertos with the BBC Philharmonic, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, London Sinfonietta, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Royal Scottish National, Kremerata Baltica, Swedish Chamber, Vienna Radio Symphony, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, Melbourne and New Zealand Symphonies and the Metropole Jazz Orchestra.

Matthew Barley’s collaborations include Matthias Goerne, the Labèque Sisters, Avi Avital, Manu Delago, Martin Fröst, Thomas Larcher, Amjad Ali Khan, Julian Joseph, Nitin Sawhney, and Jon Lord (Deep Purple), appearing in venues ranging from Ronnie Scott’s and the WOMAD festivals to Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Zürich’s Tonhalle. Matthew’s new music group, Between The Notes, has undertaken over 60 creative projects with young musicians and orchestral players around the world.

Matthew has given premieres by James MacMillan, Thomas Larcher,

Detlev Glanert, Dai Fujikura and many other prominent composers, including with some of the finest Indian musicians in a new project with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Matthew’s recordings have been released on Black Box, Signum Classics and Onyx Classics – the latter included a CD with Viktoria Mullova on which Matthew was cellist, arranger, composer and producer, The Peasant Girl, which has gained rave reviews worldwide, and is now also available on DVD.

In 2013 Matthew undertook a 100-event UK tour celebrating Benjamin Britten – the tour was accompanied by a CD release, ‘Around Britten’, described by Sinfini as “a defining statement in modern cello playing”.

After the world premiere performances of a new double concerto by Pascal Dusapin with Viktoria Mullova and with Netherlands Radio, there are further performances with the London Philharmonic, RAI Torino, Paris National, Seattle Symphony and Leipzig Gewandhaus. Next season sees a tour with wind quintet Calefax, a recording of John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil for Signum Classics, the premiere of Matthew’s arrangements of Brazilian jazz for cello and string orchestra in Helsinki, and tours to Australia and New Zealand.

Matthew BarleyCello

3Matthew Barley & Stephen De Pledge

New Zealand pianist Stephen De Pledge performs internationally as a soloist and chamber musician. Following studies in Auckland, London and Paris he made his debuts in the Wigmore Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Barbican Hall in London. He has given concerto performances with the BBC Scottish Symphony, Bournemouth Symphony, New London and Philharmonia Orchestras, amongst others. Solo performances in recent seasons have taken him to

Tokyo, Cologne, Paris, London and Edinburgh, as well as throughout New Zealand. His extensive discography includes works by Bliss, Barber, Messiaen, Shostakovich and Brahms, and premiere recordings of Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki, Ned Rorem and the first piano concerto of Lyell Cresswell. In addition to his performing schedule Stephen De Pledge teaches piano at the School of Music, University of Auckland.

Stephen De PledgePiano

Salina Fisher (b.1993) is a New Zealand composer particularly interested in the musical traditions of New Zealand and Japan. Since recently graduating with a Master of Music in composition from Manhattan School of Music, New York, Salina has been appointed Composer-in-Residence at New Zealand School of Music, 2019-2020. She is the recipient of awards from

Salina FisherComposer

Fulbright, Creative New Zealand and The Arts Foundation, and is the youngest ever winner of the SOUNZ Contemporary Award (2016, 2017). Her music has been performed by ensembles including New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, New Zealand String Quartet, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Albany Symphony, and International Contemporary Ensemble.

4 Chamber Music New Zealand

Our concert opens with Schumann in love-song mode. The tenderness of the Adagio, followed by the ecstatic happiness of the Allegro, shows Schumann at his most romantic. Written in 1849, originally for the recently-developed valved horn, the so-called “ventilhorn,” allowed the production of the complete chromatic scale, and delighted Schumann when he heard Clara rehearse it with Julius Schlitterlau, first horn in the Dresden Orchestra. Her response was even more euphoric: “A magnificent piece, fresh and passionate, and exactly what I like.”

1849 was a year when Schumann was in good health and spirits, and he produced music with greater ease and speed than at almost any other time in his life — some thirty works date from what he referred to as “my most fruitful year.” It is a work of optimism and good cheer whose two contrasting movements achieve a particularly satisfying formal balance. When the score was published in 1849, Schumann allowed that the solo part could also be performed on violin, viola or cello.

Duration: Approx. 7 min

Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856)

Adagio and Allegro, op. 70

Prepare yourself for some concentrated listening. With these 3 miniatures, Webern has presented us with some astonishingly meticulous density in musical craftsmanship and thought. Written in 1914, these pieces developed into important precursors to the twelve-tone method of composition; although Webern’s teacher and mentor Arnold Schoenberg would not “officially” invent this method until 1921, in Three Little Pieces Webern is already using statements of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale as musical ideas.

Unfortunately a performance in Berlin in 1926 by Gregor Piatigorsky aroused laughter from the audience, so in late October 1939 Webern advised his friend and promoter Willi Reich preparing for a concert in Basel: “The violin pieces would be more suitable than the cello pieces. Those preferably not at all! Not because I do not think they are not good. But they would just be totally misunderstood. Players and listeners would find it hard to make anything of them. Nothing experimental!!”

Perhaps only repeated hearings can really bring these miniatures’ minute details into focus. But one characteristic that might be perceivable right away is how the piano and cello, like an old married couple, seem to complete each other’s musical thoughts. When one goes up, the other goes down in response, creating a symmetry in their dialogue.

Duration: Approx. 3 min

Anton Webern (1883 – 1945)

Three Little Pieces, op. 11

5Matthew Barley & Stephen De Pledge

When you head home from this concert, find a recording and have a listen to the opening bars of the first movement. You can hear quite quickly that it is an adaption from another instrumental work by Bach, as the right hand of the harpsichord holds a very long note, far longer than the decay of the harpsichord would allow to be audible. A trill is the only way to extend the note so long. BWV 1027 is in fact an arrangement of the Trio Sonata for two flutes and basso continuo in G major, BWV 1039, a process which resulted in elevating the harpsichord from its usual subordinate basso continuo position to something equal (and sometimes superior), as a fully written out musical partner in the duo sonata style.

Today you will hear the languid Andante movement, whose ever-repeating arpeggios and broken bass octaves cover a wide and chromatic harmonic distance in just 18 bars of music. A wonderful moment, radiant within the movement’s leisurely E minor tonality, is achieved when Bach arrives at D major at the exact midpoint. Bach seems to be thoroughly showing-off his contrapuntal genius here, even in the very first bar, when the opening gesture of the harpsichord right hand is used, in inverted fashion, to initiate the bass line.

Duration: Approx. 3 min

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750)

Andante from Sonata No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1027

Mono no aware ( ) is a Japanese concept that refers to the transience of existence, and a melancholic appreciation that accompanies this. Perhaps most commonly associated with mono no aware is the ephemeral beauty of cherry blossoms, the appeal of which is heightened by an awareness of their fragility and inherent impermanence. Accepting this impermanent and uncertain nature of life helps us to recognise the beauty of fleeting moments, and of change. This piece reflects on my relationship with this concept during a time of significant change in my life. Salina Fisher, 2019

Duration: Approx. 5 min

Salina Fisher (1993 – )

Mono no aware ( ) (CMNZ Commission)*

物の哀れ

物の哀れ

*This commission is generously supported by Prof. Jack C. Richards.

6 Chamber Music New Zealand

The Japanese word “ma” suggests the concept of a void that isn’t empty, an absence that is really a presence, a space between things that is full of energy. It’s a principle that underpins Japanese gardens, with which Takemitsu often compared his music. “My music is like a garden, and I am the gardener. Listening to my music can be compared with walking through a garden and experiencing the changes in light, pattern and texture.” This concept of “ma” can be perceived in the circular, non-hierarchical sense of structure in Orion. Takemitsu stated, “Whereas the modern Western concept of time is linear in nature, that is, its continuance always maintains the same state, in Japan time is perceived as a circulating and repeating entity”.

Toru Takemitsu (1930 – 1996 )

Orion (1984)

Takemitsu’s compositional journey is fascinating because his relationship with western music and his native musical traditions shows just how limiting are the categories of east and west when it comes to thinking about music’s development in the 20th century. “Ma” is by no means exclusive to Takemitsu in contemporary music; it suggests the same circular sense of time that composers from Anton Webern to Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti to Steve Reich have explored.

Duration: Approx. 10 min

7Matthew Barley & Stephen De Pledge

“Try as I may, I can’t regard the sadness of my existence with caustic detachment. Sometimes my days are dark, dull, and soundless like those of a hero from Edgar Allan Poe; and my soul is as romantic as a Chopin ballade.” Demoralised by World War I and faced with his own mortality, Claude Debussy went to work on a series of instrumental sonatas, including one for cello and piano.

Though forward-looking and experimental, it is full of cello effects: lively jazzy pizzicato, ethereal ponticello (playing near the cello’s bridge. The work is in sonata form, with the piece beginning and ending in D minor and includes a recapitulation in the way a sonata by Mozart would. He may have been highly ambivalent

Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918)

Sonata in D Minor

towards the classical masters such as Beethoven and Brahms, but wrote in a letter to his publisher, Jacques Durand, that he regarded highly the “proportions and almost classical form in the best sense of the word” in his freshly composed cello sonata.

The sonata opens with a noble statement in the piano to which the cello offers a highly ornamented response. The second movement is a scherzo, in the Beethovenian sense of a musical joke, and in it piano and cello enjoyed a witty game of musical ‘hide and seek’, the use of particular cello effects creating an infectious sense of the fantastical. Debussy originally called the work ‘Pierrot Angry at the Moon,’ the overall mood of the work is sad and ironic.

Duration: Approx. 12 min

8 Chamber Music New Zealand

“If anybody wishes to understand me, they must listen to my music.” – Arvo Pärt

Spiegel im Spiegel has to be the best-known of all the music by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. It has been used in many film and television soundtracks, and ballet and theatre productions and has become so iconic it is difficult to think that Pärt’s music was relatively unknown in the west until the 1990s. Composed in 1978, just before Pärt left Estonia for Berlin, the piece uses Pärt’s distinctive and unique compositional voice: the music of “little bells”, or “tintinnabuli”, heard for the first time in his piano miniature Für Alina. This piece set the seed from which his most famous music grew, including Spiegel im Spiegel, Fratres, Summa, and Tabula Rasa.

Arvo Pärt (1935 – )

Spiegel im Spiegel

The German title Spiegel im Spiegel means both “mirror in the mirror” as well as “mirrors in the mirror”, referring to the infinity of images produced by parallel mirrors. In the music, this mirroring is achieved through the fragments in the piano, which are endlessly repeated with small variations, as if reflected back and forth. This continuity, simplicity and pure sonorities of the music, with the notes falling like water dropping into water, creates a hypnotic tranquility and a meditative, introspective atmosphere.

Duration: Approx 10 min

9Matthew Barley & Stephen De Pledge

“But what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and I would have ended my life — it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me…” - Ludwig van Beethoven, Heiligenstadt Testament

The Cello Sonata in A op 69 was composed in 1808 when Beethoven was virtually deaf. Beethoven was despondent about losing his hearing. His performing career was doomed. Despite his anguish, Beethoven was very productive in this, his middle period, composing the Violin Concerto, his Trios Op 70 - The “Ghost” and The “Archduke” for piano, violin and cello, and the monumental Fifth Symphony and Sixth Symphony, “The Pastoral.”

The Sonata is a masterpiece and is perhaps the most beloved of his cello works. Musically it is full of symmetry and mirror-images, and while minor-mode turbulence intervenes from

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)

Sonata No. 3 in A Major, op. 69

time to time, notably in the operatic outpourings of the development sections, the piano and cello remain like best buddies in a road movie, always on the same page, never fighting with each other. Here we have true chamber music, the cello and piano as equals. Simply bursting with good humour and bonhomie, the Sonata is a triumph of human spirit in the face of adversity.

“Written between the composition of the 5th and 6th Symphonies, and at a time in his life when he was extremely depressed — everything was going wrong, financial problems, family problems — and it’s one of the happiest pieces of music I know. It is extraordinary that this man, a musician, losing his hearing, could dig inside and find this ecstatically positive, gorgeous piece of music.” — Matthew Barley.

Duration: Approx 27 min

Programme notes written by Anna van der Leij

Founders' Circle MembersAnonymousGraeme EdwardsArnold and Reka SolomonsThe Estate of Jenni CaldwellThe Estate of Aileen ClaridgeThe Estate of Walter FreitagThe Estate of Chisne GunnThe Estate of Warwick Gordon HarrisThe Estate of Joan KerrThe Estate of Monica Taylor Ensemble ($10,000+)Anonymous Robin & Sue HarveyKaye & Maurice ClarkGill and Peter DavenportPeter and Carolyn DiesslProfessor Jack Richards

Octet ($5,000+)M Hirschfeld Children's TrustHylton LeGrice and Angela LindsayThe Lyons Family - in memory of Ian Lyons Murray ShawKerrin and Noel VautierLloyd Williams and Cally McWha

Quintet ($2,500+)Joy ClarkJohn and Trish GribbenAnn HardenJane KominikCollin PostArnold and Reka SolomonsPeter and Kathryn Walls Quartet ($1,000+)Anonymous (2)Donald and Susan BestRoger and Joanna BoothPhilip and Rosalind BurdonMD and MA CarrRick and Lorraine ChristieRoger ChristmasThe Cranfylde Charitable Trust Graeme and Di EdwardsPeter and Rae FehlFinchley TrustDame Jennifer GibbsPatricia GillionDavid and Heather HuttonLinda MacFarlaneElizabeth McLeay

Roger and Jenny MountfortBarbara PeddieRoger ReynoldsMartin and Catherine Spencer Basil & Jenny StantonAlison ThomsonAnn TrotterJudith TrotterAnna WilsonBruce Wilson and Jill WhiteAnn WylieDavid Zwartz

Trio ($500+)Anonymous (6)Diane BaguleyPhilippa BatesHarry and Anne Bonning Sarah BuistJD CullingtonJonathan CweorthHanno FairburnTom and Kay FarrarJohn FarrellAnne French Consulting LtdBelinda GalbraithC & P GibsonLaurie Greig Gary and Helena HawkeDouglas and Barbara HolborowE Prof Les HolborowMichael Houstoun and Mike NicolaidiCaroline ListFiona Macmillan and Briony MacmillanMargaret MalaghanRaymond and Helen MatiasAE McAloon Fiona McAlpineAndrew and Mary McEwen Heather Miller Margaret NielsenPrue Olde Robert and Helen PhilpottMiles RogersSylvia RosevearPeter and Juliet RoweJohn and Kathryn SinclairRoss Steele Mary SmitPriscilla TobinDavid TrippPatricia UngerRichard and Elaine WestlakeTim Wilkinson

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