Leith Ensemble

The Leith Ensemble comprises four top New Zealand musicians - Mezzo Soprano Tessa Romano along with Pianist Sanaz Rezai, Cellist Heleen du Plessis and Violinist Tessa Petersen.    

Programme 

  Tessa Romano, mezzo-soprano & Sanaz Rezai, piano    Clairieres dans le ciel (1913-1914)  Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)  • No. 6: Si tout ceci n’est qu’un pauvre rˆeve  • No. 7: Nous nous aimerons tant  • No. 8: Vous m’avez regard ́e avec toute votre ˆame    Tessa Petersen, violin & Sanaz Rezai, piano    Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in A Major, Op. 13 (1875-1876) - Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)  • I. Allegro molto  • II. Andante  • III. Allegro vivo  • IV. Allegro quasi presto    Interval     Tessa Petersen, violin & Heleen du Plessis, cello & Sanaz Rezai, piano    La Valse (1919-1920)  Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)     Trio No. 1, Op. 32 in D Minor (1894)  Anton Arensky (1861-1906)  • I. Allegro moderato  • II. Scherzo: Allegro molto  • III. Elegia: Adagio  • IV. Finale: Allegro non troppo     

Bios 

  Sanaz Rezai    Born in Tehran, Iran, Dr. Sanaz Rezai began studying piano in Vienna, at the age of seven. By the age of ten, she competed at the international level where she was awarded numerous prizes.    After immigrating to the United States, Dr. Rezai completed her Bachelor of Science in Piano Performance at California State University, Fullerton, graduating cum laude and with honors.     At CSU Fullerton, she was awarded the undergraduate pianist award, won first place in the Grossmont Community Concert Association Competition, and received the Fenstermaker Scholarship through the Musical Merits Foundation of Greater San Diego.     Dr. Rezai went on to complete both her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts at UCLA in piano performance. Her dissertation topic was Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit within the context of Orientalism during Impressionism.     While at UCLA, she taught German language courses for the German department, as well as piano instruction for composition and performance students and music appreciation courses in the Music department.     Dr. Rezai has had the privilege to work closely and perform the works of prominent UCLA faculty composers including Mark Carlson and Richard Danielpour. She has taken part in many music festivals, offered solo recitals, and performed as a soloist with orchestras and wind ensembles.     Dr. Rezai worked at UCLA as a collaborative pianist and taught group piano courses. Her areas of interest include piano pedagogy, collaborative piano, and the interdisciplinary studies of art and music history.     Dr. Rezai had the privilege to study with Jane Bastien, Gloria Cheng, Eduardo Delgado, George Katz, Vitaly Margulis, Ingrid Pachner, and Walter Ponce.   Recently Dr. Rezai moved with her family to Dunedin, New Zealand where she is enjoying the lovely music scene, delicious cinnamon scrolls, and beautiful nature.     Heleen Du Plessis    Known as an inspiring and passionate cellist and teacher, Dr du Plessis performs as soloist with orchestras and in duo- or chamber music recitals and CD record- ings with various top instrumentalists.     At the University of Otago, Heleen holds the position of Senior Lecturer of Performance and teaches Cello, Chamber Music, Pedagogy of Music Performance and Performance, Health, and Well-being. She is the principal cellist of the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra and director of Cellists of Otago.     Highlights of her performances include the Saint-Saens Cello concerto with the Dunedin Symphony orchestra and a Chamber Music New Zealand regional tour with marimba virtuoso Yoshiko Tsuruta.     Her CD from the project ‘Cello for Africa’ was nominated for the International Listeners’ Choice Award, and described as “embodying the highest standard of artistry and genuine attempt to build a meaningful cross-cultural dialogue” (Violoncello Foundation, USA). “Earnest emotive string colour with every phrase, always 5 traversing a glorious pathway direct from the heart to the fingers”, has been hailed as the “hallmark of du Plessis’ delivery” (Otago Daily Times).     Tessa Petersen    Tessa Petersen is the Senior Lecturer in Violin at the University of Otago and Concertmaster of the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra. A top graduate of Otago University, she pursued postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Music, London, under a prestigious British Commonwealth Scholarship, following which she went into a career as performer and teacher based in the UK and then the USA, before returning to New Zealand in 2006.     Equally at home performing classical and contemporary repertoire, Tessa actively promotes and collaborates with New Zealand composers.   Her Ode CD Release-The Mozart Fellowship features works by New Zealand composers for solo violin and violin/piano. In the Ode CD Father and Son she featured in works by Anthony Ritchie.     In 2020, Brighter Than Blue (Rattle CD), released by acclaimed NZ guitarist Matthew Marshall, features Tessa in Suite for Violin & Guitar by Kenneth Young.     In 2021 Tessa won the Best Music award in the Dunedin Fringe Festival for her premiere of Entrances for solo violin and tape by Jeremy Mayall, based on the poetry of Cilla McQueen.     Tessa Romano    Dr. Tessa Romano is Senior Lecturer of Voice at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. They hold a DMA from the University of Colorado Boulder, an MM from the University of Michigan, and an AB in Music and Italian from Princeton University.     Dr. Romano has held opera fellowships at Aspen Opera Center and CU New Opera Workshop. They have performed with the Syracuse Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonic and American Handel Society.     Past awards include first place in the Florida Grieg Voice Competition, Winner of the Art of Art Song Competition, and Winner of the Franco-American Vocal Academy’s Grand Concours Prize.     Dr. Romano is Co-Vice President of the New Zealand Association of Teachers of Singing and a Board Member of the New York Singing Teachers’ Association.    

Composers 

  Lili Boulanger (1893-1918)     The music of Lili Boulanger begins our programme tonight. Boulanger forms the center of the network connecting many of the composers this evening. Despite her death at a premature 24 years of age, she experienced many lifetimes of challenges: long-term illness from the age of two, she lost her father at the age of six, and at times, she depended on her sister to notate her music due to chronic illness. Boulanger’s perpetual hardship did not deter her from being a prolific and influential composer. At the age of nineteen, she was the first woman to win the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome composition prize. In doing so, she cemented the lineage of talented musicians in her family (her father, Ernest Boulanger also won this award in 1835), and her sister would become one of the most influential composition teachers of the 20th century (teaching the likes of Elliot Carter, Aaron Copland, Francis Poulenc, Philip Glass, and Walter Piston - who taught John Ritchie, the father of Anthony Ritchie).    The song cycle was written in 1914 shortly after winning the Grand Prix de Rome. Four years later, these works premiered in Lili Boulanger’s absence, as she was too ill to attend the event. The songs are set to poems by French poet Francis Jammes. Boulanger chose 13 out of the 24 poems by Jammes. (13 was a special number to her: 13 letters in her name, 13 also looked like her initials LB). The order of the songs permutes the usual chronological order of falling in love, being in love, dealing with love, and ending love (if there is such a thing). The first song you will hear tonight is the heart break. The sixth of the song cycle opens as a reminiscence of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. The harmonic ambiguity matches the painful and resigned acceptance that love can be fleeting. Lili Boulanger’s pedantic style of giving directions to her performers (similar to her classmate Maurice Ravel) uses words that range from tortueux (tortuous), douloureux (painful), to sombre (dark). The song closes without reprieve: “I don’t know if I will ever recover, my dear friend.”     The second song we chose is the Gemütlichkeit (comfort) of the relationship. Singer Tessa Romano describes the song in terms of the sultry Francis Poulenc song Hôtel. Directions tell the performers: enveloping, at ease, very content. The song concludes with exquisite word painting with trembling arpeggios in the piano part after which Tessa exclaims “That you will be sweet to me and that I will tremble.”    The third song and final song captures the ephemeral moment before the future couple first hold hands. Put simply - it is the feeling of butterflies, anticipation, fleeting novelty and a feeling of infinite excitement. Tessa finishes with a long sentence: “I put your gaze in the shadow of my eyes, that this look was passionate and calm.” Lili Boulanger finishes the song with exquisite voicing in the piano that descends in a pentatonic scale to the tonic E Major. What a whirlwind of emotions.    Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)    Continuing the whirlwind of emotions, we go back now to thirty years before Boulanger won the Grand Prix, when her teacher, Gabriel Fauré was a student. In 1875, Fauré wrote a masterpiece, a work many consider to be one of the greatest violin and piano sonatas. Shockingly, the publisher Breitkopf & Hӓrtel failed to see this – Fauré was asked to renounce his fees. He dedicated his composition to the French violinist Paul Viardot, the brother of Marianne Viardot whom Fauré was in love with and was later briefly engaged to. Marianne was one of two women Fauré was engaged to; he was known to be a “woman magnet.”    Fauré’s monumental sonata is the oldest work on our programme this evening. Each movement is passionate, outwardly expressive, playful, and optimistic. Three of the four movements are in A Major, while the second movement takes a somber turn to D Minor. Characteristic of a turbulent romance, the first movement has peaks after peaks, long lines, and passionate outbursts. In the development of the first movement, the listener is treated to a hopeful conversation between the two voices. This conversation takes a chaotic turn, but really just for a few measures, until it returns to the lighthearted delight of descending melodic lines. The second movement is more contemplative, a metronomic heartbeat throughout, overlaid with long lines to reach the many climaxes contained in a single movement. Although it starts in D Minor, its second theme is forever searching, traveling through various keys nonchalantly and finally settling in D Major, in one of the many tender spots of the piece.     The third movement is playful and scherzo-like, a tongue in cheek banter between violin and piano, with a plethora of cross-rhythms. The playful pizzicato will later be influential in Ravel’s String Quartet (second movement) or Debussy’s Cello Sonata (second movement). When Fauré premiered this sonata, the audience gave such a thunderous applause that they immediately replayed the third movement - please don’t feel obligated to do so, we still have quite a lot of music to get through. The fourth movement opens with a blissful melodic tune on the violin with syncopated piano accompaniment. This melody is then passed on to the piano, creating an exciting tempestuousness. The melodic line in both parts focuses on the third of the scale – the incredibly delicious C-sharp – refusing to break away from this sensual note of the key of A Major. This relation dwells, always resting on the third. The violin part gives stability and drive while the piano part complements unpredictability, glistening in the upper register with sudden bursts of passion.     After four years of pursuing Marianne Viardot, and about a year after writing this sonata, Fauré became engaged to Marianne Viardot. The engagement lasted only a few months, at which time Viardot broke it off, leaving the woman magnet in a deep depression.     Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)    After intermission, Ravel takes us on a sweeping journey from 1850 (a quarter of a century before his birth) to the aftermath of the Great War. The timeline begins with the birth of the Waltz in the decadence of Vienna, followed by an homage to Johann Strauss Jr, the king of the waltz, and concludes with the assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the inevitable WWI.     Ravel began La valse in 1906 with the title Wien (Vienna), but after coming back from his services for the French Army, he changed the title to La Valse. He hoped for a commission by Serge Diaghilev, the Russian ballet impresario, to set the piece for a ballet, but after a piano duo performance of the work, Diaghilev thought that though magnificent, it did not work as a ballet. Ravel was very offended – he left the room without saying anything - and that was the end of their friendship.     Originally written for orchestra, La valse was transcribed for piano duo and later piano solo by Ravel. This was unusual for Ravel as he usually wrote originally for piano and later masterfully orchestrated his works. Perhaps one cannot say that his transcription is perfect; there are many arrangements of his transcription of varying complexity and virtuosity. I chose to stay true to Ravel’s score and did not add a third hand to my interpretation.     Perhaps the opening might conjure the beginning of the film Jaws. Continuing in the vein of cinematic analogies, the rumbling of approaching sharks (tanks?) proceeds the nostalgia of Rose in the opening scene of the Titanic. There are snippets of bombs, hand crank sirens, and a danse macabre (death dance, an homage to Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre perhaps?) for a Coda. This is just a quick summary of this piece.     Having written all this I need to be honest and let the audience know that when Ravel was asked about the dark interpretation of the piece by performers, he replied that this is only a choreographic dance set in 1855. Ravel was also known to say art is above politics and kept his thoughts to himself or his close circle of friends.     But I was a child born in the midst of war, and I do not believe that trauma can be separated from art. Ravel was an ambulance driver during WWI. He lost many friends. And the loss of his mother a year before the composition of La valse demonstrates a far darker mood than that of Jeux d’eu or Sonatine.     Anthony Ritchie (1960 -)    Christchurch born, Dunedin-based Professor Anthony Ritchie arranged two songs for this concert. We are grateful for his hard work and beautiful compositions.     Notes by the composer:    “These two songs have been widely performed, recorded and published. Both have been arranged especially for tonight’s group. He Moemoea was written for the New Zealand Association of Singing Teachers’ annual conference in Dunedin, 1993. The poem relates to Hulme’s Booker Prize winning novel The Bone People. Here is what Hulme wrote about the poem:  “I love the coastal beaches around Dunedin also (and further north, Moeraki-wards where I wrote He Moemoea). Simon is a child, indeed the same Simon who inhabits the The Bone People. One of the small delights of life (for me anyway) is watching people on beaches become unfettered, children particularly, but adults also. We seem peculiarly adapted to dancing by/in/with waves.”    The song captures contrasting moods in the text, with a bright lively first section and a moody, dark second one.    Song is a setting of a poem by James K. Baxter, one of New Zealand’s foremost poets. It tells the story of Jesus of Nazareth and the values of truth, love and mercy he espoused. The gentle regular pulse in the piano suggests the character of Jesus walking into the city. It was originally commissioned by Maureen Smith for the ordination of seven Catholic priests at Holy Cross Chapel, in Mosgiel, accompanied by organ.”    Anton Arensky (1861-1906)    Arensky’s Piano Trio No. 1 is dedicated to the renowned Russian cellist Karl Davidoff. The listener drops into the hefty first movement with a lyrical violin opening that is then passed to the cello. Triplets in the piano serve as a cushion for the melodic cello and violin, creating a free floating imbalance between life and death. The second movement is light-hearted (quite similar to Fauré’s third movement) with playful bantering scale passages passed between the players. The “drunken” middle section feels like being in a parlor with good friends. The third movement blends elegy and funeral procession and is the most heartfelt of the movements. Arensky notated mutes for both violin and cello throughout this movement. It is heartbreaking music: glimmers of hope (heard in the triplet section) are shattered by the reality of loss. The last movement is a smorgasbord of the other movements. Recycled themes, rhythmic similarities, and rigorous movement drive us to the end of the programme. Duration: 26 minutes