New Zealand Elgar, Bartók: New Zealand String Quartet: Peter Clark, Martin Riseley (guest player), (violins), Gillian Ansell (viola), Martin Smith (‘cello); Inbal Megiddo (‘cello). Orchestra Wellington / Marc Taddei (conductor). Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, 27.6.2026. (PM)
Elgar – Introduction and Allegro for String Quartet and String Orchestra, Op.47; Concerto for ‘Cello and Orchestra in E minor, Op.85
Bartók – Concerto for Orchestra, Sz116
Originally a borrowed word from the Italian virtuoso (referring to both ‘virtue’ and ‘skill’) and used as word to denote ‘substantial knowledge and learning’ in an individual, the term ‘virtuosi’ has become wider than its more recent use relating to the arts, and now describes individuals and groups who exhibit skill and proficiency of the highest order in practically any human activity.
This concert featured the music of two ‘similar-but-different’ virtuoso composers – on the face of things the ‘Englishness’ of Edward Elgar (1857-1934) and the Hungarian ‘folkishness’ of Béla Bartók (1881-1945) would seem to have little in common, even if their lifetimes partly coincided. Elgar, unlike his younger native contemporaries Holst and Vaughan Williams, showed little or no interest in ethnomusicology, whereas Bartók immersed himself in the folk music of his native soil, both in his studies of comparative musical folklore in Hungary and his fusion of these elements with his own personal style of expression. Both composers were ‘countrymen’, with the Malvern Hills near Worcester especially beloved of Elgar, while Bartók was at ‘home’ frequently exploring the isolated Carpathian Mountains of Hungary, researching ‘authentic’ Magyar folk music amongst those isolated folk communities while finding inspiration for his own music in doing so.
First up tonight was Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro for String Quartet and String Orchestra, an early work of the composer’s, bold and confident in its opening, proclaiming an almost baroque-like splendour in its exchanges between the full string orchestra and the quartet of solo strings. The New Zealand String Quartet were on hand taking the concertante role of the string quartet in tandem with the strings of Orchestra Wellington under conductor Marc Taddei’s flexible direction, the dialogues resolute and tender (including the famous ‘Welsh tune’ beloved of the composer). The splendid, all-together enunciation of the work’s main theme led to the equally famous ‘devil of a fugue’ (as described by the composer), with hair and resin given no quarter! A reprise of the main theme along with the ‘Welsh tune’ eventually brought a coda that bound all the players up into a compulsive, concerted dash for that amazingly resonant final pizzicato chord!
At the opposite end of things for Elgar was his last major composition, his 1919 Cello Concerto, given here by star soloist Inbal Megiddo, who had the measure of the work’s sombre mood right from the opening, tones and phrasing’s circumspectly coloured so as to convey the emotion without excess throughout the first movement. Soloist and orchestra conveyed greater warmth in the major-key exchanges, though fell back into introspection for the famous cello pizzicato passages which frame the recitative leading to the impish scherzo – here a droll kind of mischief with soloist and orchestra at one in the playful sequences, a slightly untidy chord at the movement’s culmination of little consequence…
Rapt, reverential and superbly controlled though the third movement was, I was disappointed its mood was here ‘book-ended’ with a pause rather than allowed to move inexorably into the finale (there’s no ‘attacca’ in the score, but the movement’s inconclusively ending suggests there should be one!). However, this, my only misgiving regarding the performance, was soon obliterated by the playing’s rumbustious girth and playful ‘hide-and-seek’ routines between soloist and orchestra, a mood that was to ‘drift away’ with the cello’s unashamed weeping, lamenting the passing of the ‘good times’. A brief reiteration of the loveliness of the Adagio and the work’s beginning was suddenly with us, Megiddo seizing the mettle and accepting the inevitable of the final bars with strength and courageous tones! A sterling performance!
Bartók came after the interval with his music’s different world of folk-inspired melodies, colours and trajectories – as with the Elgar works we straightaway ‘felt’ the character of the music’s soundworld, the deep, dark and mysterious opening of his 1943 Concerto for Orchestra growing via insistently-sounded fourths rising in the strings amid the composer’s characteristic ‘night music’ ambiences from the wind and brass. These fourths and their inversions gave us exciting fugal passages which contrasted with gentler, almost lullabic figures echoing through the lyrical sections, everything richly- and sharply detailed by Marc Taddei’s splendid Orchestra Wellington players. The famous second movement Giuoco delle coppie (Game of Couples) with its sequences of folk-oriented melodies for pairs of instruments brought out plenty of the music’s quirky humour in performance, as did the somewhat notorious fourth movement Intermezzo interotto – one whose fame rests on Bartók’s ‘lampooning’ of a theme of Shostakovich’s in his wartime ‘Leningrad’ Symphony. The orchestral winds’ cackling trills and the brass’s vulgar sliding raspberries were among the most gloriously blatant and visceral I have ever witnessed or heard on record!
Two diametrically opposed movements are left to cover, one an Elegia whose ethereal cosmic reach lifted us from out of the ‘night music’ darkness of the opening and into extra-terrestrial regions of both biting intensity and incredible remoteness, Taddei drawing from his players an extraordinary amalgam of incisiveness and eloquence. Afterwards, the finale brought something of a release, the music pulsing with a veritable excitement from all of the players and doing full justice to the composer’s valedictory resurgence of his creative powers. The most sublime moment was the concluding ‘orchestral dishwasher on quiet-rinse’ sequence gradually building up to a ferment of unbridled and joyous energies, with all the musicians heroes at the end! A younger audience would have erupted with more visceral excitement, spilling over into the aisles – this one, less demonstrative, but just as appreciative, signalled its pleasure with strong, firmly-based approval!
Peter Mechen