Triple Concerto (Convergence)
Rotorua Daily Post 13 Sept 2008
Saturday night's Convention Centre audience for the 'Connections' concert by the Opus Chamber Orchestra, in conjunction with the University of Waikato, was privileged to hear the premier of Michael Williams' Triple Concerto. This rich and ample work, a vivid collage of textures, moods and styles, and so imaginatively conceived and inventively connected, seems destined to become a landmark in New Zealand music. Violin, cello and piano solos, played here magnificently, form a crucial centerpiece for the work, but it is more a concerto for many voices, with woodwind brass, timpani and percussion sections also making substantial contributions to the work's texture. The performance fully lived up to the works name 'Convergence' as conductor Peter Walls sfillfully shepherded soloists and orchestra to integrate disparate parts into a very satisfying whole, and one which connected splendidly with the audience.
Reviewer Hanno Fairburn
Triple Concerto (Convergence)
Waikato Times 14 Sept 2008
Michael Williams Triple Concerto ‘Convergence' proved a very approachable work. The cyclical nature gave the soloists an opportunity to shine; they did in all aspects of this oeuvre with virtuosity. Williams refined sense of orchestral colour with subtle use of percussion and timpani, with intricate rhythmic motifs clearly delineated the underlying energy of the work. The cantilena bassoon passage gave a legato contrasting element. This was a really powerful performance of Convergence which deserves to become part of the standard repertoire.
Reviewer Andrew Buchanan-Smart
The Juniper Passion Prelude
The Waikato Times Saturday 17 May 2008
With the Benedictine text accompanied sparingly by piano trio; the mood evoked by Stephanie Acraman with a rich and intense vocal patina with the focused Williams score enabled immediate engagement by the audience. If this opening scene sets the standard; the remainder is eagerly awaited.
Reviewer Andrew Buchanan-Smart
Piercing the Vault
New Zealand Herald Saturday 18 June 2005
The NZSO came to town with the nicest gift they could bring us – a New Zealand commission.
Michael Williams’ Piercing the Vault coached thought provoking philosophies in an idiom that could be described as approachability without compromise. Its superlative soloist Robert Orr poured out oboe melodies, which sometimes seemed on the Moorish side, while the orchestra came up with harmonies that many in the audience would have found were downright moreish.
Williams has a sure sense of colour and the courage to risk the rumbustious; his lightly scored cadenza, with oboe sliding and bending over whispered lower strings, dealt out a rare and mysterious beauty.
Reviewer William Dart
Behind the Parapet
The Dominion Post 12 July 2005
The newly commissioned piece by Hamilton composer Michael Williams, Behind the Parapet, proved an effective musical evocation of Plato’s notion of our world as flickering images from an “ideal” world from “Behind the Parapet”. It employed subtle amplification and had Austin engaged occasionally plucking strings inside the piano. Its character ranged from extreme ferocity, of orchestral weight, to sinuous gypsy – like violin lines and delicate passages of effervescent magic: arresting and successful.
Reviewer Lindas Taylor
Behind the Parapet
Wanganui Post 1st July 2005
Behind the Parapet by New Zealand composer Michael Williams was commissioned by the trio. It was inspired by Plato’s allegory of the cave in which he describes humankind as existing in a world where truth is merely a shadow. The composition explored the versatility of all three instruments, and the effects were enhance by the carefully controlled use of microphones, giving the impression at times that they were playing in an echoing hall.
This was a fiery intense work, with shadowy, eerie effects.
Reviewer Helen Maclean
Waikato Times - Monday April 7, 2003
Festivals seek Prodigal Child
NBR New Zealand Opera has been approached by four New Zealand festivals for the production of Prodigal Child, an opera composed by Waikato University music composition lecturer Michael Williams.
The Prodigal Child, the first home-grown opera produced by NZ Opera, premiered at the Taranaki Festival in New Plymouth March 4. It will also be performed at the Christchurch Festival in July.
NZ Opera spokesperson Sahra Grinham said the success of the performance prompted inquiries from four other festivals interested in showcasing the work.
"The opera was well patronised and received positive feedback from those intended - including the prime minister on opening night," she said.
The Prodigal Child was a collaboration between Williams, from Morrinsville, and former colleague Alan Riach. It takes place in New Zealand and centres on a young couple and their disturbing encounter with a young woman mourning the loss of her child.
Williams entered the opera in a new project by Creative New Zealand, Wild Opera, at the beginning of last year. Wild Opera gives New Zealand composers and artists a chance to get their work on the national stage.
Prodigal Child, one of eight operas selected for an artist's presentation in Wellington in March last year, was picked up by NZ Opera.
Williams, who attended the opening in New Plymouth, said the huge interest in the production was "wonderful".
"Often with these things you do them once and then they die," he said. "It was a fantastic performance...there were a lot of tears from the audience - it was quite an emotional thing."
NZ Opera also hopes to take the performance to Wellington and Auckland.
Taranaki Festival director Roger King said he was blown away by the production.
"The music was beautiful, and what was created was absolutely magical and looked fantastic."
Christchurch Leader
- Thursday July 31, 2004
Child - a worthy addition
Sponsored and supported by the Friends of the Festival committee, The Prodigal Child by Michael Williams is one of the more distinctive and challenging musical offerings of the fortnight and definitely a worthy addition to the festival.
Set in colonial New Zealand, this chamber opera is the story of loss and grief ultimately redeemed by the hopefulness of life itself. It is an intimate, serious, and moving work that grapples with deep and powerful themes, achieving much in its hour-long duration. It is economical in every respect, from the libretto and musical themes through to the minimal staging and lighting, with the brevity and intensity of the work.
The three main characters each deliver concentrated, pithy performances that are as convincing dramatically as they are musically. Paul Whelan is menacing as the unhappy, guilt-ridden Albert and he is effectively balanced on stage by the anguished, near mad Anna, played by Joanne Cole. Stephanie Acraman as Mary brings serenity and eventual harmony to the trio.
The difficulties of the vocal lines are handled with seeming ease and the first time listener is assisted in appreciating the work by the richness and beauty of each voice.
Theatre News - February/March 2003 The Prodigal Child
The opening is sombre: a solo violin calls out on a falling interval, like a cry of pain; the solo cello echoes the same interval deeply. Throughout the opera the cello seems to represent the sound of the pain itself while the violin represents the human voice responding to it in an inarticulate cry. The falling interval is a motif, repeated again and again until Mary produces the first humane response in the action, moving towards reconciliation. Then the same interval is heard to rise in the accompaniment.
For much of its length, this beautiful opera is dark, even grim, but there is a turn to light and almost, a happy ending, when the three suffering individual s find a bond that is greater than the forces that separate them. for most of the time they sing alone, self-absorbed, barely seeing each other, each revolving around his or her confusion and unhappiness. But at a critical moment in the recognition scene, or anaegnorisis, there is an affecting duet between the parents of the “prodigal child:, who has died but haunts them both.
Neither of the parents has "known" the child. One of several powerful themes contained in the short compass of this opera is the kind of "knowledge", the way one human being can perceive and thrill to the life moving through another. At first these three people have lost all such knowledge and are painfully isolated. Albert speaks at the beginning of remembered love still living in his heart but tries to dismiss it, "to cling to the past can be foolish:, introducing another powerful theme: how humans are to make the best use of time.
By dismissing the love he feels, he drives himself into isolation. Anna, his lover, is seen next, wandering lonely and cold in open countryside. For her, there seems to be nothing behind the surface of things, and nothing in her own spirit, "It is all past tense."
Albert is now married to Mary but there is little contact between them, and what little there is must be filtered through bickering and anger. It is Mary who has preserved love outwardly, but she is frustrated by Albert's despair. The couple is running a small rural pub in early European New Zealand. The setting and atmosphere is, in fact, reminiscent of Katherine Mansfield’s story the woman at the Stone, and in both stories a death is in the background, darkening the present. Anna’s arrival at the pub precipitates the crisis. Mary tries to warm and comfort her but it is Albert who has to recognise that Anna is his lost lover and that she has had and lost his child.
Anna's loss of her child has brought about the loss of meaning in life and her nihilism. As she searches the stage for the child (it is always at the edge of her vision, a dancing figure in white) she is searching for meaningfulness itself. It is Mary who brings about the change. When she learns of the relationship between the other two, she is not angry or jealous, as one might expect, but recognises, knows, the pain the others are suffering. Anna makes her discovery: "I have seen what lies behind/I have seen what lies behind the air / The singing of those who have gone / too far away / For us to love / But close enough to give us dreams."
Alan Riach's libretto is a miracle of concision. It is able to suggest much more than it tells on the surface. It is exquisitely disciplined (I would cut only two words, but I would cut those!) and starkly expressive. The music of Michael Williams adds other dimensions to it, bringing out emotional levels that the words, with immense restraint, leave untold. There are hard rhythmic patterns, barely relieved by contrasting fragments of longer phrases that rise above them. Harsh sevenths and ninths splinter the harmonies. The wonderful resources of a piano quintet are used to the full; at times the strings seem to copy the piano's percussive effects, at others the piano seems to yearn to be as sustained as the strings. At the end, however, as the characters find some tentative bond, the music grows warmer and reflects both the bond and its tentativeness.
At the very time when one of the most luxuriant and resource-heavy operas in the international repertoire, Boris Godunov, was having its first opening night ever in the history of New Zealand, this fine chamber opera pointed in a different direction, more appropriate, perhaps, than the grandness of grand opera. Jerremy Commons, who loves both, has long urged the commonsense of using smaller resources and concentrating the action into a smaller range of space and time. This means no reduction in emotional intensity or spiritual range. In place of a massive orchestra, The Prodigal Child uses a piano quintet, and chamber ensembles of this kind have produced some of the finest music in the Western tradition. The audience in New Plymouth was in a tense, concentrated silence throughout; there can be no doubt of the impact this drama and music made.
The venue could not be bettered. The religious solemnity of the Pro-Cathedral was in keeping with the work's atmosphere, secular though that is, and the designer (Mark McIntyre) made excellent use of the space, especially in terms of the subtle lighting (realised by Michael Keat). Colin McColl's direction was sensitive to the beauties of libretto and music and employed an equivalent restraint. The slow movements of the three characters and the flitting figure of the wraithlike child (Amelia Williams) permitted the music and voices to tell their stories. At times the mere appearance of a character at the back of the stage could tell a strong story of its own.
The cast was equal to the demands of music and action, and that is a high compliment. The low baritone of Paul Whelan provided a powerful contract to the high women's voices, and his comparative lack of vibrato meant that his sound blended with theirs nonetheless. Especially impressive was the singing and acting of Joanne Cole as Anna; her facial expressions and body language were always in keeping with the music she was creating so beautifully with her warm mezzo voice. As Mary, Stephanie Acraman was more statuesque, both physically and vocally, which was in keeping with her role as the person who facilitates the reconciliation and relative peace of the ending.
In short, this is a wonderful opera and it was beautifully performed. It remains to hope that it will be seen in productions as good as this throughout the country and abroad. Theatrically and musically it is not beyond the reach of relatively impoverished companies, but it will reward its performers and audiences no less than more lavish styles.
by Nelson Wattie
New Zealand Herald - March 6, 2003 Trio Weaves a mighty tapestry of emotions
A new work about colonial New Zealand makes its debut in the Taranaki Festival
All has not been well at the inn in New Zealand composer Michael Williams' new opera The Prodigal Child, as singer Paul Whelan's publican character lets us know in his first aria. Against piano and string quartet, alternating between serene harmonies and scattergun rhythms, Whelan sings of the hopelessness of lost, barren pathways and bearing crosses.
Crosses seem appropriate in the venue. Playing to a full church at its Taranaki Festival premiere, the first of NBR New Zealand Opera's 2003 initiatives may well be its bravest. The Prodigal Child is a chamber piece, with Alan Riach's libretto introducing us to three life-beaten characters that fate and geography have thrown together in a colonial pioneer backwater.
Weaving a tapestry of despair from the trio - Albert, his wife Mary and the wandering Anna - the Opera draws its main impetus from a spirit child, borne by Anna and lost at birth. Deceptively simple on the surface, there are emotions and histories snaking away beneath, not all of which were resolved in the libretto. The relationship between the two women in particular remained elusive.
The Prodigal Child could not have been better cast. Whelan used his towering stage presence and dramatic authority to capture the mercurial mood-shifts of his character. Joanne Cole was heart rendering as Anna, catching all the sorrows of the world in a lullaby refrain. Stephanie Acraman, in fine voice, made the most of the wife's role.
The closing Trio, in which all three finally come together, offered a moment of spiritual transfiguration that could well have been extended.
Williams's score, finely crafted and beautifully realised by his singers, did not fare so well with the strings, despite John Rosser's able direction; intonation problems made the minimalist instrumental interludes threaten to outstay their welcome.
Colin McColl’s direction was sharply drawn from within the characters themselves and mark McIntyre’s stylised set, with its beams and beer bottle window, made resourceful use of ecclesiastical fittings when Amelia Williams' phantom child sprang from the pulpit like a ghostly Pre-Raphaelite waif.
The Prodigal Child is a mighty achievement for the festival and the opera company. The only question remaining is why this work is playing only in New Plymouth and (later this year) Christchurch? In the meantime, there may be time to catch its final performance tonight at 8.