Chamber Music New Zealand Presents

NIKKI CHOOI and

STEPHEN DE PLEDGE

Welcome

It is a privilege to present the winner of the 2013 Michael Hill International Violin Competition Nikki Chooi with Stephen De Pledge, and joined by cellist Ashley Brown in four centres. Throughout June, audiences will have the opportunity to hear this brilliant young fi ddler in recital for the fi rst time, and in Auckland he also appears as soloist with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. Those of us who experienced Nikki’s sublime winning performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto last June cannot wait to hear him again.

Given the scale of the road trip these musicians are making, it is appropriate that Jack Body’s Caravan will feature in all fourteen centres. This is the new solo work that each violinist in the Competition had to present and, as it happens, Nikki’s performance also won this category.

We are delighted to continue our long association with this prestigious Competition by off ering a Winner’s Recital Tour as part of the prize package, and we continue to follow the stellar careers of all the previous winners. Chamber Music New Zealand has been supporting New Zealanders to create and experience chamber music since 1950. We believe chamber music is a dynamic and essential element of our unique cultural landscape and are delighted that you have joined us for this special occasion!

Euan MurdochChief ExecutiveChamber Music New Zealand

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The Auckland and Wellington concerts are being recorded for broadcast by Radio NZ Concert

Programme

De Falla Suite Populaire Espagnole 4

Gershwin Preludes 5

Ravel Sonata in G for Violin and Piano 6

INTERVAL

Beethoven Sonata No 3 in E fl at Opus 12 7

Jack Body Caravan for solo violin 8

Ravel Tzigane 10

New Plymouth 9 JunePalmerston North 11 JuneBlenheim 23 June Invercargill 24 June

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Nikki Chooiviolin

First Prize Winner of the 2013 Michael Hill International Violin Competition, Nikki Chooi is also a winner of the 2013 Astral Artists’ Auditions, Laureate of the 2012 Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition, and First Prize Winner of the 2009 Irving M. Klein International String Competition in San Francisco.

He has performed as soloist with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, National Orchestra of Belgium, Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie, the Peninsula Symphony Orchestra, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, the Victoria Symphony Orchestra, the Sinfonia Toronto, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, the Santa Cruz Symphony Orchestra, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, and the Highland Park Strings. He has performed in the Vancouver Recital Series, Debut Atlantic Recital Tour, Canadian National Arts Debut Series, Caramoor Rising Stars Series, Dresden Music Festival in Germany, Chamber Music Tulsa, and La Monnai “Concertini” in Belgium.

In 2009 Nikki embarked on a European tour with violist Roberto Diaz and pianist Robert MacDonald as part of ‘Curtis on Tour’. He has performed with members of the Guarneri String Quartet, Juilliard String Quartet, Vermeer String Quartet, Orion String Quartet, Opus One Piano Quartet, Diaz Trio, and Montreal Symphony Orchestra.

Nikki gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council of the Arts, CBC Radio, the Sylva Gelber Foundation and the Victoria Foundation. He uses the 1700 “Taft” Stradivari on generous loan from the Canada Council for the Arts Musical Instrument Bank.

Nikki’s sponsors for the 2013 Competition were Peter Wilson and Gerda McGechan.

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Stephen de Pledge piano

New Zealand pianist Stephen De Pledge began his studies in Auckland with Margaret Crawshaw and Bryan Sayer, then undertook postgraduate studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London with Joan Havill. He was chosen for the NFMS Young Concert Artists’ Award in 1996, and his acclaimed Wigmore Hall debut in 1999 has been followed by regular recitals there. In addition to solo recitals, he has performed with noted musicians including the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet, violinist Viktoria Mullova, violist Rivka Golani and cellist Colin Carr. Stephen de Pledge has a strong interest in contemporary music, and commissioned a suite of works from leading New Zealand composers, entitled Landscape Preludes, which received its fi rst complete performance at the 2008 NZ International Festival of Arts. In 2010 he returned to New Zealand to become Senior Lecturer in Piano at Auckland University.

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Manuel de FallaBorn Cádiz, 23 November 1876Died Alta Gracia, Argentina, 14 November 1946

Suite Populaire EspagnoleEl Pañ o Moruno NanaCanciónPoloAsturiana Jota

Manuel de Falla was born to an Andalusian father and Catalan mother and grew up in Southwestern Spain, where he studied piano and composition with private tutors. After his family moved to Madrid he entered the Real Conservatorio de Música where he completed a seven-year course of study in only a few years. In 1907 he moved to Paris, and resided there until 1915, when World War I forced him to return to Spain. While in Paris, he made friends with leading composers such as Debussy and Ravel, and was infl uenced by their ‘impressionist’ style. He also met the Russian impressario Sergei Diaghilev, for whom he later composed the ballet The Three-Cornered Hat.

De Falla’s output was small – he published just fi fteen pieces. Nearly every one is an acknowledged masterpiece into which he distilled the core of his creative thought as well as the essence of his distinctively Spanish inspiration. His settings of seven popular Spanish songs, Siete canciones populares españolas, were composed in Paris in 1914-15 and are colourful miniatures. Six of them were transcribed for violin and piano by the violinist Paul Kochański, and de Falla dedicated the arrangement to Kochański’s wife in gratitude.

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The fi rst, El Pañ o Moruno [Moorish Cloth] is an allegorical lament over a stained fabric – a warning to young women to be chaste. Two lullabies are included in the set, with Nana hailing from Andalucia in the South, and Asturiana from the province of Asturias in the North. Canción is an angry song about treachery and betrayal, while Polo is written in a fi ery fl amenco style. The fi nal Jota imitates an energetic castanet dance from Aragon.

George GershwinBorn Brooklyn, New York, 26 September 1898Died Hollywood, California, 11 July 1937

Three PreludesAllegro ben ritmato e decisoAndante con moto e poco rubatoAllegro ben ritmato e deciso

George Gershwin was the second son of Russian immigrant parents and grew up in the densely populated area of Lower East Side in New York where he was in close contact with both European immigrants and Afro-Americans, and where young George’s well-developed street skills earned him a reputation of being rather wild.

Around 1910 the Gershwin family acquired a piano, ostensibly for the eldest child, Ira, to learn on. However, George was the fi rst to use the instrument when it arrived, and his parents were amazed to discover that he had learned to play on a friend’s ‘player piano’. George had a variety of teachers during his youth, but it wasn’t until 1917 that he started to take his music studies seriously, leaving his job to study full-time.

By 1920, Gershwin had decided that his aim was to write operettas, and two years later he fi nished the one-act opera Blue Monday Blues. When

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he read the novel ‘Porgy’ by DuBose Heyward in 1926, he suggested to the author that it could be adapted as an opera libretto, though it wasn’t until 1933 that the two men started writing the opera we now know as Porgy and Bess.

1926 was also the year he composed the fi rst of his piano preludes. He initially intended to compose a set of 24, entitled ‘The Melting Pot’, in reference to the diverse people immigrating to America at the time. However, he abandoned that idea and only published three.

One of Gershwin’s good friends was the virtuoso violinist Jascha Heifetz, who enjoyed Gershwin’s music and was keen for him to write a violin concerto. After Gershwin died at the age of 39, Heifetz consoled himself by arranging the popular Preludes for performance by violin and piano. They are typical of Gershwin’s music: full of lively rhythms and syncopation, expressive bluesy melodies and sophisticated harmonies.

Maurice RavelBorn Ciboure, 7 March 1875 | Died Paris, 28 December 1937

Sonata in G for Violin and PianoAllegrettoBlues (Moderato)Perpetuum mobile (Allegro)

Ravel grew up in Paris, learned the piano from the age of seven, and gained entry to the Paris Conservatoire at fourteen. He left there in 1895, but returned two years later to learn from Faure. Despite his obvious originality and talent, however, Ravel was dismissed from Faure’s class, and was also passed over four times for the prestigious Prix de Rome, with the fi nal failure causing public outrage.

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After the end of the First World War, American jazz became popular throughout Europe, and many composers incorporated elements such as ‘blue’ notes and syncopation into their works. Ravel’s Sonata in G was the fi rst of his pieces in which jazz idioms play a major part. He had written an earlier single-movement Violin Sonata in 1897 but it remained unpublished until 1975. The second Violin Sonata was composed between 1923 and 1927, after Ravel had moved from Paris to the countryside. He later described it as “a sonata for piano and violin …. which, far from evening out their contrasts, accentuates their very incompatibility”.

The relaxed opening Allegretto is in sonata form, with four themes introduced in the exposition section and cleverly intertwined in the development section. Jazz infl uences are most obvious in the second movement, with its syncopated rhythms and banjo-like passages. The fi nal Perpetuum mobile is a breathless display from the violin, with the piano taking an accompanying role, though also managing to recall themes from the fi rst movement.

Ludwig van BeethovenBaptised Bonn, 17 December 1770 | Died Vienna, 26 March 1827

Sonata in E fl at Opus 12 No 3 Allegro con spiritoAdagio con molto espressioneRondo: Allegro molto

Beethoven’s skill as a keyboard player is well known, but he also learned the violin from an early age and retained a great fondness for that instrument throughout his life. The “three sonatas for fortepiano with violin accompaniment” of Opus 12 were written 1797-98 and published

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in 1799, and dedicated to Antonio Salieri, with whom Beethoven had studied vocal composition. They seem uncontroversial to listeners today, but were strongly criticised at the time of publication as a “mass of clever material with no system”, and for “a piling up of diffi culty upon diffi culty”.

Sonata No 3 is the most serious of the set, and although the fi rst movement seems straightforward now, Beethoven was helping to move the genre from an ‘accompanied’ piano sonata to one in which the two instruments had a much more equal partnership.

The second movement is an extended song for the violin, tender in mood, and forms the emotional heart of the Sonata. A lively Rondo brings the work to a close in an upbeat mood, with the busy piano part providing a reminder that Beethoven’s instrument at the time needed a very light touch, and produced a brilliant tone quality.

Jack Body Born Te Aroha, 1944

Caravan

Jack Body studied composition at the University of Auckland with Ronald Tremain and Robin Maconie, then undertook further study in Europe with Mauricio Kagel in Cologne and Gottfried Michael Koenig in Utrecht. During 1976-77, he was guest lecturer at the Akademi Musik Indonesia, Yogyakarta, and in 1980 was appointed to the staff of the Music Department at Victoria University of Wellington. Besides numerous works for conventional musical forces, Body has had a continuing interest in tape composition, mixed media works and music-theatre, including new formats for the presentation of contemporary

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music. His contribution to New Zealand music has been recognised with in 2001, and in 2004 he was named as an arts laureate by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand.

Body’s music has been infl uenced by the music and cultures of Asia, particularly Indonesia, where he has carried out several projects documenting traditional music. His work Musik dari Jalan won the Bourges Competition for electro-acoustic music in 1976, and he has been a prize winner there on two subsequent occasions, most recently in 2008. He has been represented numerous times at the UNESCO Rostrum of Composers and at the UNESCO Forum for Asian Music, and has been commissioned by the Kronos Quartet to write several works. During 2013 Body co-curated a collaboration between performers and composers from China and New Zealand, resulting in the presentation of the programme ‘Tales from the Forbidden City’ which was performed in both countries.

Caravan was commissioned for the 2013 Michael Hill International Violin Competition, with funding from Creative New Zealand

The composer writes:

”In 1971 I took a never-to-be-forgotten journey overland from Europe to New Zealand. While traversing Iran by bus, I heard Persian vocal music for the fi rst time, relayed over the sound system. It was intoxicating. In Tehran I bought a 45 rpm disc recording that matched what I had heard on the bus. The music on the disc, entitled CARAVAN, has provided me with material for this composition/transcription.”

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Maurice RavelTzigane

In April 1922, Ravel attended a Parisian concert at which the Hungarian virtuoso violinist Jelly d’Aranyi performed Bartok’s First Violin Sonata, with the composer playing the piano. Guests at the gathering afterwards included fellow composers Stravinsky, Poulenc and Szymanowski, in addition to Bartok and Ravel – a refl ection of the central role that Paris played in the avant-garde musical scene at that time. Later that year in London, after she had performed Ravel’s Duo for Violin and Cello, Ravel asked d’Aranyi to play him some gypsy melodies, which she apparently obliged by doing until about 5 am the following morning.

Ravel’s Violin Sonata, which he had begun writing in 1923, was supposed to be premièred by d’Aranyi early the following year, but he seems to have found the work diffi cult to complete. However, in March 1924 he wrote to d’Aranyi saying he was writing another piece especially for her. “This Tzigane must be a piece of great virtuosity. Certain passages can produce brilliant eff ects, provided that it is possible to perform them – which I’m not always sure of.” The technical diffi culties were clearly overcome, because she premièred Tzigane in London later that year.

The work is written in the form of a Hungarian rhapsody, beginning with a slow introduction for solo violin before launching into a colourful set of variations on a pseudo-gypsy theme.

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Regional Presenters Blenheim, Cromwell, Gisborne, Gore, Hutt Valley, Kaitaia, Kerikeri, Morrinsville, Motueka, Rotorua, Taihape, Tauranga, Te Awamutu, Tokoroa, Upper Hutt, Waikanae, Waimakariri, Waipukurau, Wanaka, Wanganui, Warkworth, Wellington, Whakatane and Whangarei.

Staff Chief Executive, Euan MurdochBusiness Manager, Jenni HallBusiness Support Coordinator, Sue JaneOperations Coordinator, Jessica LightfootOffi ce Administrator, Rachel HardieArtist Development Manager, Catherine GibsonProgramme Coordinator (Contest), Pip WantProgramme Writer, Jane Dawson Audience Development Manager, Victoria DaddMarketing & Communications Coordinator, Candice de VilliersTicketing & Database Coordinator, Laurel BruceDesign & Print, Chris McDonaldEvent Coordinator, Keriata RoyalPublicist, Sally Woodfi eld

BoardChair, Roger King; Peter Walls, Paul Baines, Gretchen La Roche, Sarah Sinclair, Lloyd Williams.

© Chamber Music New Zealand 2014 No part of this programme may be reproduced without the prior permission of Chamber Music New Zealand.

Regional Concerts & Other Events

Antithesis (clarinet quintet)Warkworth, 18 JulyTauranga, 20 JulyWhakatane, 23 July

Ace Brass (brass trio)Tauranga, 17 AugustMotueka, 22 AugustWellington, 24 August

Koru Quintet (wind quintet)Gisborne, 22 AugustWarkworth, 24 August

Stephen de Pledge (piano)Wanaka, 31 AugustWarkworth, 14 September

Faust Quartet (string quartet)Wellington, 31 AugustLower Hutt, 2 SeptemberMotueka, 4 SeptemberBlenheim, 5 SeptemberWanganui, 7 SeptemberRotorua, 10 SeptemberWhangarei, 14 September

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