RODRIGO: Fantasia para un gentilhombre
BACALOV: Misa Tango
Guitar: Barkin Sertkaya
Accordion: Stephanie Poole
Soprano: Felicity Tomkins
Baritone: Andrew Conley
Director of Music & Conductor: Rita Paczian
REVIEW
Latin Music-inspired Bach Musica NZ Concert,
A stunning opening to the new Concert-Season!
Bach Musica NZ launched their 2025 concert season with a renewed statement of artistic supremacy, their first concert this year, demonstrating remarkable artistic diversity by moving from its signature baroque repertoire into the world of Spanish romance, passion and melancholy.
The first concert-item, Joaquin Rodrigo’s Fantasia para un gentilhombre, immediately captured the audience’s attention with its gentle and penetratingly sad, but beautiful entrance movement Villano y ricercar. Its theme is widely recognisable. It repeatedly recurs in ever-changing orchestral configurations and led by the exemplary guitar-soloist of the evening, Barkin Setkaya.
With his highly effective and sensibly formulated playing, Setkaya enters into a beguiling dialogue with the orchestra’s haunting strings and a core of orchestral soloists comprising the flute of Agnes Harmath, the piccolo of Anna Copper, the oboe of Alison Dunlop, the bassoon of Phillip Sumner and the trumpet of Orson Paine. The resulting, spell-binding and minor-key characterization of a country, which soulfully and permanently seems to be in search of love and passion, must be considered as a concert highlight. This entire movement was intensely and beautifully sculptured by Paczian.
Berkin Sertkaya’s ended his performance with his skilfully played, enchanting guitar-encore, Francsisco Tarrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra, further exemplifying those virtues. His quiet, virtuosic bravado most certainly transported the audience into momentary fascination.
Never losing sight of new artistic territories, Rita Paczian scheduled Argentinian composer Luis Bacalov’s demanding mass, Misa Tango, as a New Zealand premiere, performed in the second half of the concert.
The evening’s second instrumental soloist, the poignant accordionist Stephanie Poole, was part of an impressive instrumental line-up, which also included a large set of percussion-instruments. The presence of Stephanie Poole’s accordion was also a testimony for the composer’s Spanish roots – Misa Tango, a choral mass, based on the traditional catholic Latin liturgy, where the composer daringly blends its strict musical structure with the tango rhythms of his native Argentina.
Now, with the participation of Bach Musica NZ’s chorus, the work’s initial Kyrie is set in a peaceful pianissimo and in a slow movement, which is hauntingly penetrated by Stephanie Poole’s soulful accordion. The music accelerates abruptly to an unexpected, broad choral sound in the work’s Gloria movement, to fortissimo-staccatos and sensual tango-rhythms in the Credo
movement, and finally contrasting the orchestra’s and chorus’ powerful emotional expressions with the reverent and peaceful pianissimo-interpretation of Creo, Creo en un unico Dios, Amen.
The dialogue between the accordion and Paul Mitchel’s cello in the work’s Sanctus movement was as outright captivating, as it was demanding and mysterious.
Misa Tango’s syncopated turbulence, skilfully accentuated by the Bach Musica NZ orchestra and chorus, finally finds its restful conclusion in the work’s final Agnus Dei movement and in the reverent pianissimo-rendition of Cordero de Dios, ending with the powerful statement Da nos la Paz (Give us peace)!
Soprano Felicity Tomkins and Baritone Andrew Conley perfectly ‘assimilated’ an appropriately elevated mindset to deliver excellent solo-performances of a difficult work with Latin-music-infusions with their admirable technique and strong voices.
The excellent Bach Musica NZ orchestra, again under the masterful guidance of concertmaster Yanghe Yu, demonstrated convincing versatility – especially in the Misa Tango. It
engrossed the audience with their impeccable and sensitive rendition of a difficult work.
Bach Musica NZ’s chorus successfully and skilfully delivered their part in the rendition of passionate and contrast-rich music, successfully navigating the many passages of syncopated rhythmic unrest, and once again convincingly demonstrating their choral excellence and musical intelligence!
In the Misa Tango Rita Paczian demonstrated comprehensive knowledge of the work and once again invested total immersion and energy in leading her orchestra and chorus impeccably through a seldomly heard work, through difficult rhythmic passages and enduring off-beat accentuations, whilst at the same time producing a most rewarding orchestral and choral sound.
This was a stunning first Bach Mucica NZ concert in the 2025 concert-season –
upon its conclusion being met by an arresting audience-silence, which seemed to last forever, an obvious sign of reverence to the composers, the conductor and all her remarkable artists.
Rainer W. Buhmann