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.