Telemann: Water Music “Hamburger Ebb und Fluth” (TWV 55:C3)
Händel: Water Music (HWV 348–350)
St. Paul’s Cathedral, Wellington
Friday 1 Feb 2019

Interior of St. Pauls, looking down the nave toward the rear window. The orchestra's chairs and stands are empty as the audience waits for the concert to begin.
St. Paul’s Cathed­ral, Wel­ling­ton

Listen­ing to the two “Water Music” suites by Tele­mann and Han­del fill the echo­ing expanse of St. Paul’s, I wondered how it is we find rever­ber­a­tion so attract­ive. Is it a cul­tur­al asso­ci­ation with the inef­fable? These vast cathed­rals, built to the glory of God, and to inspire (or cow) con­greg­a­tions, have also been filled with sac­red music, usu­ally the human voice. The open­ing notes of the Telemann—the first piece of the evening—reach your ears dir­ectly first, but a moment later reflect back from the dis­tant sur­faces of the church, and you are in the pres­ence of some­thing sub­lime.

We tend to think of baroque music as some­how pure, math­em­at­ic­al, even pla­ton­ic, for­get­ting there are pro­gram­mat­ic and descript­ive works from that peri­od, and ones that are the product of all-too-worldly roy­al, mil­it­ary or eco­nom­ic feal­ties. Telemann’s suite was writ­ten to cel­eb­rate the 100th anniversary of the Ham­burg Admir­alty, and con­sists of 10 pieces vari­ously ref­er­en­cing aquat­ic deit­ies (“The sleep­ing Thet­is”), mari­time weath­er (“The pleas­ant Zephir”) and nav­al life, includ­ing a Har­le­quinade to the god Tri­ton, played here in a bril­liantly off-kil­ter dance rhythm. The play­ers stomp­ing their feet in the clos­ing bars of the final piece, in imit­a­tion of the “Die Lust­i­gen Boots Leute” (the Merry Boat People), was a great touch.

Behind a harpsichord, a bassoonist talks to a colleague, with Händel scores on music stands.
Dur­ing the inter­val, pre­par­ing for the Händel.

The first per­form­ance of Händel’s Water Music was fam­ously played by 50 musi­cians on a barge float­ing up the Thames. Con­cert dir­ect­or Vesa-Matti Lep­pän­en explained that, while there were only 30 NZSO play­ers, “we have more skill”. Here’s the curi­ous thing about play­ing this suite in a cathed­ral. In the open air, the sound would have almost noth­ing to bounce off—a dead acous­tic. Did Händel score his Water Music with this in mind? At St. Paul’s, sounds can take sev­er­al seconds to decay to noth­ing.

Anoth­er explan­a­tion for why we like long-decay reverb could be that it smooths out mis­takes. Not neces­sary this even­ing. The play­ing through­out, by a band mostly on their feet, was mas­ter­ful and effort­less. (Is it harder to per­form in such a rever­ber­ant space?) There was no prin­ted pro­gramme, but in his intro­duc­tion, Vesa-Matti apo­lo­gised for this, say­ing it was just as well, because they would be play­ing around 40 sep­ar­ate move­ments, and without know­ing where you were in the piece, you could clap whenev­er you felt like it. Which we did.

Vesa-Matti Leppänen and the orchestra prepare to take a bow, while a round boy holding a toy airliner has climbed the stage in appreciation.
A young con­cert-goer shows his appre­ci­ation as the NZSO pre­pare to take a bow.

There’s anoth­er NZSO Shed Series con­cert this Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 8, with more baroque music by Bach; also Duke Elling­ton, Jack Body and Arvo Pärt. And the next in the Baroque Series, fea­tur­ing more Tele­mann, is on June 8.