Month: June 2023

Youth and experience in successful combination

cliveoconnell

MOZART

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday June 26, 2023

Australian Chamber Orchestra

For this national season outing, the ACO under its artistic director Richard Tognetti enlisted the reinforcement of nine string performers from Melbourne’s Australian National Academy of Music, welcome additions in this Concert Hall’s large space (up, if not sideways) to give some competition to the wind-and-timpani guests also roped in for this all-Mozart night. I heard very few glitches from the combined string corps, which says a lot about the leader’s ability to enlist willing, young colleagues for his individual style of attack on some venerable masterpieces.

In all, we heard three symphonies: the Haffner No. 35 in D Major, the Linz No. 36 in C Major, and the Paris No. 31 in D Major. As a filler/irritant, Tognetti and his forces worked through some of the Idomeneo Ballet Music – the Chaconne and its interludes up to the Piu allegro, leaving out the Passepied, Gavotte and unfinished Passacaille. I don’t know why this suite has enjoyed so much prominence in the last few decades as – like nearly all ballet scores of its time – there’s nothing much of interest going on; apart from the opening bold ritornello (and its welcome reprises), little draws attention. Perhaps it needs to be danced, although it seems that its addition to the score wasn’t performed at the premiere. Still, like much of this program, it featured a lot of D Major.

I had only two carping queries about Tognetti’s Haffner. The first occurred early when the first Allegro‘s opening subject reached its second half and the quaver for all strings (and bassoon) in bars 7 and 9 disappeared. It has been a feature of some previous ACO work that certain phrases are allowed to peak and then die away to nothing; so that, in this case, the tender response to the opening bombast seems to end on an unresolved suspension. In the least best of all possible worlds, the first violins’ C sharp and E in those respective bars has to – at least – sound.

As for the second gripe. it concerns the Menuetto and the hesitations inserted before the second beat of bars 3 and 19. This still puzzles as it breaks the pulse of the dance in half, like a prefiguring of the hesitations in Strauss waltzes that Boskovsky implemented. In the Mozart case, it might give some relief from the tub-thumping insistence of this rustic minuet but it also struck me as an unnecessary preparation for the ensuing violins’ triple-stop chords. Oh, another suspected oddity was that I don’t think Tognetti performed the repeat of the Andante‘s second half.

But, like the other symphonies presented, the performance sounded splendidly clear and poised, capped by a revelatory reading of the final Presto with a laudably energetic response to the quiet opening bars coming in the bar 9 tutti outburst – a delight each time it came up. More praise should be given to the doubled/unison bursts starting at bar 20 where the discipline of the combined string forces impressed with its unflappable accuracy. And the dozen wind were hard to fault, most memorable the Trio‘s oboe/bassoon/horn combination which proved eloquently shaped in its finished phrasing.

Little needs to be added about the Linz reading. Its opening 19-bar Adagio came across with excellent precision and a deft giving-way to the two woodwind lines from bars 10 and 15. As with the preceding work, I’m unsure whether the second movement’s second half enjoyed a repeat but this Andante moved briskly, especially compared to some European orchestral interpretations which can turn these pages into a pretty turgid siciliano. Tognetti allowed some woodwind ornamentation to the oboe and bassoon principals for the Trio; not enough to be distracting but sufficient to infuse some individuality.

Then, this symphony’s Presto conclusion showed the ensemble’s high standards under pressure with a crisp pace set from the start which Tognetti whipped into a near-accelerando during the last ritornello from about bar 383 on, achieving a fine flourish to end this substantial score with controlled ebullience, only a suspicion of horn imperfection to disturb the polished surface.

With flutes and clarinets back into the mix, the Paris matched its companions for verve and execution, particularly the main subject’s syncopations in the concluding Allegro which brought about their usual delight when everything flips back to ‘normal’ in bar 7. As well, the group shone bright lights in the transparent fugato beginning at bar 45 – and we had another near-accelerando to finish the night. But you could find equally brilliant patches in the initial Allegro assai, as in the shapely fluency of the second subject and its statement/response clarity, and the unflustered introduction of triplets at the end of the exposition.

As for the Andante, this gave us an object lesson (if one were needed after what had come before) of the group’s treatment of dynamics, in particular those fp markings. In Tognetti’s realization, neither is treated with emphasis: the initial loud notes aren’t whacked out with emphasis; nor do the following phrases undergo an uncomfortable softness of delivery. In effect, the initial attack is made to stand out from its surroundings but not in a black/white contrast, or like a punch followed by a caress. But this is an instance of the composer at his most whimsically honest, pages where the material is both satisfyingly open-ended and treated with Mozart’s stunning breadth of charity – his gift that keeps on giving, no matter how many times you encounter these pages.

You could find nothing to complain about with the ballet music apart from the fact that it was there. At one stage, I was under the impression that the ensemble was going to preface these pages with the opera’s overture, but that didn’t happen. So we were left to admire the performers’ expertise in handling music that doesn’t demand much in terms of interpretative insight. Still, it expanded your awareness of the sort of work that Mozart undertook across the span of 6 years covered by this program. Still, I would have preferred something like the C Major Symphony No. 34; 5 or 6 minutes longer than the ballet music but welcome for breaking the D Major hegemony.

For all that, when the ACO visits, you have to be grateful, particularly on occasions like this where the ensemble indulges in a guest-less, Classical era program where no distractions stand between performer and listener. I didn’t think that such an event would bring out Brisbane’s music-loving public in significant numbers but, as far as I could tell, the stalls (at least) were well-packed. More to the point, the audience seemed well aware of the high quality of this experience.

Peaceful but predictable

cliveoconnell

ECLIPSE

Concordia Mandolin & Guitar Ensemble

Move Records MCD 612

The latest product by this well-known Melbourne group comprises works by well-known guitar/plucked instrument expert Michelle Nelson who was first guitar with the Melbourne Mandolin Orchestra across this century’s first decade, taking up the same position with Concordia in 2013. In fact, Nelson has been conducting a healthy professional life for 40 years now and has produced several additions to the Concordia repertoire – all of them, as far as one can judge from this CD, traditional in language and instrumental use.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. This composer is given to wondering how modern music composition (20th century) strayed so far from popular taste of the time. Yeah: it’s the same sort of thing I self-divert with when listening to the Gabrielis and Bach, Gesualdo and Chopin. Funnily enough, I tend to come down on the side of the benighted composer who finds little stimulating in the simple-minded. But, if you want to continue finding your inspiration in the folksy and the English bucolic, be my guest; just don’t wait around for praise on your originality.

This small CD (40′ 45″ long) contains four compositions: Bishops Spell, which is a musical portrait of musicians Ida (recorder) and Frank (mandola) Bishop; the title work Eclipse: Concerto for Mandola and Plucked Strings with soloist Darryl Barron; After the Fire, a rearrangement of an earlier construct expanded into two movements; and Jim Greer’s Jig. This recording was due for release in 2020 but universal infections got in the way; hence, its arrival now. So the family portrait was recorded at Move Studios in 2019, the concerto at the same venue in 2018, the two-movement new construct probably put down in 2022, and the jig recorded live during Concordia’s first post-lockdown concert at Christmas, 2021.

The Bishops’ family portrait begins with a jovial, folk-like tune (British Isles). Will Hardy‘s recorder answering the orchestra’s statements with variations, the whole featuring some extensions that seem to work against the four-bar phrase pattern that matters start off with. Still, the trend is to the non-adventurous, although the atmosphere is jaunty. That’s Ida dispatched. Frank begins more soberly – a slow 3/4 rather than Ida’s brisk 6/8, and the more meditative male enjoys a calm depiction from Darryl Barron’s mandola, even though it has to be observed that Ida is well-represented in this movement, having a definite melodic and descant function in turns. Furthermore, Ida has the last word.

The Family Life third movement has a percussive element as underpinning – just your normal hand-beaten drums (bongos?) supporting the two soloists as they work together through a four-square melody and its small-scale elaborations, It all sounds slightly medieval/Renaissance in character, as though the Bishops were early music enthusiasts; and, as I know from bitter experience, the interest in such complexes generally falls to the solitary woodwind line. Things move from the four-square 4/4 a little after the half-way point to a more meditative triple-beat interlude, before the drums return and we come together for a rousing estampie conclusion. As you’d assume Nelson’s language is eminently assimilable with nothing much to astonish anyone born before 1700.

The composer’s Eclipse concerto has three movements: Eclipse: Approach, Eclipse, and Eclipse: Release. I can’t argue for the shape of the first of these. It takes a firm stand at the start with some block chords, a strong melody based on an upward-rising arpeggio; the composer allows both soloist and orchestra to deal with both elements, then stops before moving into more lyrical territory. Nelson has an occasional habit of curtailing or extending her regular phrases but the working out of material is orthodox with a lot of pattern-work where the development section would be. A return to the opening second-inversion chord/arpeggio melody and we’re not long before the home stretch is in sight.

[As a completely oblique observation, I have to report that the strongest impression I have from what I’ve heard so far on this disc recalls nothing so much as Debbie Wiseman’s theme music to the BBC One production Shakespeare & Hathaway. It might be the suggestion of massed lutes that is produced by the Concordias, or the definite if unadventurous bass line, or the optimistic bent of both Wiseman and Nelson. But the aura is reminiscent of Stratford at its cleanest, as we see it in the series, despite the mandolin’s necessity to play tremolando much of the time.]

The middle slow movement starts out in the same key as its predecessor, the threnody melody articulated over a fixed bass note for the opening strophes. The soloist occupies a semi-prominent role before everything halts for a cadenza where the harmony stays pretty constant, apart from a chromatic frisson about the four-minute mark. The slow march recommences, working on three layers (eventually four when a sustained bass note is added) as the rhythmic level sees people playing with Beethoven’s ‘Fate’ motive. This leads to a climactic point, from which apogee the music dies out to an ambiguous conclusion – which is actually an imaginative depiction of the state in which an eclipse’s maturation leaves us.

The Release is very abrupt: we’re immediately back in clear skies with a slightly threatening march that, for much of its initial statement, follows an iambic metrical pattern. The first antistrophe appears to recapitulate a memory from the first movement, before we slow down for a more melancholy stretch that ends interrogatively before we revert to the march/strut. Another cadenza appears which owes something to Rodrigo although lacking that master’s quirkiness and timbral curiosity. Back to the iambic rhythm and a final reference to the first movement’s chord inversion, and this mainly-minor mode concerto ends with a unison/octave emphasis.

A minor quibble: Nelson entitles her first movement to After the Fire – Incinerat – as ‘burnt to ashes’. It’s a bit more specific than that as it means ‘he/she/it had burnt it (to ashes)’, the pluperfect of incinero. Not that it means anything to most people except those of us who sweated through six years of the language in secondary school, back in the days when they taught it. In fact, the afore-mentioned tremolando effect is atmospherically suggestive here, especially at the start where a free-standing flickering comes across very well. I’m not as enamoured of the guitar and bass solos that follow because they bring a touch of interruption, of unexpected voices in a bleak aural landscape.

Harmony Returns, the second movement, begins with a reversion to the expected. The ambience is TV soap comfort with a series of rising adjacent chords spreading the benignity until a tune arrives after a minute of preparation: an amiably swinging 6/8 melody which is well-established before a subsidiary figure enters for some more mercilessly predictable repetitions. Then it’s heigh-ho for the original lightly syncopated melody that has suggestions of something that could have been produced by/for Captain Corelli – a nostalgic Mediterranean travelogue, perhaps. As with much of Nelson’s output, it’s not so much a question of harmony returning but more an iteration of the fact that harmony never left.

It’s probable that the composer’s fire is one of the bush infernos that have swept across the country, but the post-crisis ambience that she has constructed is free from any signs of PTSD or shivers of reminiscence – at least, as far as I can tell. As for the CD’s finale, the jig in memory of Concordia member Jim Greer, it’s a pretty rough affair, compared to the preceding tracks. Attack is not as split-second as the group is capable of and the rhythm is heavy-handed; everyone sounds as though they’re not at ease with the work which, for some reason, ends on a chord inversion. Yes, it’s a live performance after a long epidemic-controlled cessation of activities, but the players’ assurance of address does not satisfy as much as in the three preceding scores.

 

 

Diary July 2023

cliveoconnell

RAY PLAYS TCHAIKOVSKY

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday July 7 at 7:30 pm

Nice to see the QSO administration being so relaxed with this guest artist. Violinist Ray Chen has returned to Brisbane where he spent some youthful and adolescent years learning his craft and sweeping various prize pools. He’s here to take on the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto: one of the most familiar works of its kind in the standard repertoire and a never-failing source of delight to observers as its executants generate rolling lyrical fabric and scintillating technical passages. The little I’ve seen (and heard) of Chen augurs well for this interpretation. Tonight’s conductor, Giancarlo Guerrero, is new to me but not to this city as he appeared here in 2018 to conduct the Shostakovich Symphony No. 10. This time around, he’s directing the same composer’s symphony No 8, nicknamed the Stalingrad in those halcyon days of misplaced trust before the end of World War Two. I don’t know where Guerrero acquired the reputation as a notable interpreter of the Russian master’s works – perhaps the result of too little research from the QSO’s publicity staff – but he’ll have little trouble with this C minor five-movement score that stands out among the composer’s output of 15 symphonies for its stark tension. Tickets range from $90 to $130 with some concessions available, whittled down by a booking fee that could teach the Reserve Bank a thing or two about financial outrage.

This program will be repeated on Saturday July 8 at 1:30 pm

CHOPIN’S PIANO

Musica Viva

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday July 13 at 7 pm

This entertainment centres around the composer’s Op. 28 Preludes, written in Majorca where Chopin, George Sand and her children retreated for health reasons – a disastrous venture, except in terms of Chopin’s creativity. The pianist for this dramatised venture is Aura Go who is complemented by actor Jennifer Vuletic in a staging of a book by Musica Viva’s director Paul Kildea, the exercise directed by Richard Pyros. From what you can make out from publicity shots, the instrument being used is not actually an imitation of the small local piano that Chopin used, but a modern-day grand. You’d have to assume that Go plays all the preludes and Vuletic does – what? Also from the Musica Viva publicity, both artists are dressed the same, so perhaps one represents the artist at work while the other represents his psychological workings. All fine, as far as it goes. Why was the choice made to feature women artists only? Is it an ironic comment on the late 19th century idea that the composer’s music was for females – too feminine, too delicate? Or is it a trendy transgender concept: every woman her own Chopin? This staging was first essayed in 2021, so this seems a bit soon to bring it back. Perhaps it’s very good. Tickets move between $15 and $109 (those cheap ones are Student Rush) and I can’t tell whether or not a booking fee is added on.

SUNSET SOIREE

Southern Cross Soloists

Foyer, Judith Wright Arts Centre, Fortitude Valley

Saturday July 15 at 5 pm

This entry is going to be short: there’s no indication yet as to what is being played here in this hour-long recital. The players are listed: Courtenay Cleary violin, James Wannan viola, Guillaume Wang cello, Tania Frazer oboe, Daniel Le piano. The possibilities are many, of course, although you might hope for Mozart’s Oboe Quartet, and you could pretty much name any piano trio, quartet or violin/viola/cello sonata and it could turn up. What I have observed about these Sunset programs given by the Southern Cross younger set is that they rarely contain a complete work; rather, these ad hoc ensembles offer movements from larger compositions. And the three artists listed for the previous exercise in the series are also playing in this one: Wannan, Wang and Frazer. Tickets fall between $30 and $48 without, as far as I can see, any booking fee/extortion.

DAY IN THE ORCHESTRA 2023

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio South Bank

Saturday July 15 at 7 pm

Here’s the ultimate in popular appeal: an invitation for selected community instrumentalists to play with the state’s leading orchestra in some regular repertoire. The assembled forces begin with The Mastersingers Overture by Wagner, move to Maria Grenfell’s River mountain sky for a touch of (currently) Tasmanian art, switch to the growling nationalism of Sibelius’ Finlandia, finally go for broke with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. Comes the day and the combined ensemble sits down to rehearsal – God knows how long it takes to get these four pieces into assimilable shape, but I’m sure conductor Richard Davis will be able to organize the works into position. Or perhaps there are a series of preliminary runs-through and we’ll wind up with excellent readings. In any case, if you were interested in participating, applications have closed and you’re reduced to the rank of spectator like the rest of us. Tickets range from $20 to $39 but the booking fee remains the same at all levels: $7. 95. To be fair, you’re getting about 50 minutes of music for your dollars.

FISH, CHIPS & WARM BEER

Ensemble Q

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday July 16 at 3 pm

We’re promised a boozy affair here, with running around, mugs clinking and all the frowsty fun of an English pub. Sadly, a lot of the music on offer militates against this nostalgic (for some) scenario. I’m not even sure about the suitability of the night’s first offering: Vaughan Williams Six Studies in English Folk Song which are mostly rather wistful and slow, apart from the last one (‘As I walked over London Bridge’). The set was originally for cello and piano but the composer authorised versions for violin, viola and clarinet. Next comes Vaughan Williams’ pupil Elizabeth Maconchy’s String Quartet No. 3 which some group played here last year; a 10-minute but somehow lavishly coloured work in one movement with five sections. Leaping from 1938 to 1991, we encounter Thomas Ades Catch Op. 4 for violin, cello, piano and errant clarinet which looks more amusing than its music actually sounds. Still, you’d only encounter this sort of thing in a particularly eclectic hotel. Malcolm Arnold’s Three Shanties require a wind quintet and make much more suitable ‘public’ music, in particular the first which makes play of ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor’. Frank Bridge’s Phantasy: Piano Quartet, another one-movement score, builds on the composer’s success in Cobbett’s Phantasie competition to have composers revisit ye olde Englishe methodology. This is matched with a score by Bridge’s most famous pupil: Britten’s Sinfonietta Op. 1, probably in its original scoring for five wind and five strings. Last comes an odd Australian composition in Frederick Septimus Kelly’s Elegy in memoriam Rupert Brooke for harp and strings, possibly in the string quartet version arranged by Richard Divall. This is definitely not pub/beer/chips music despite the composer’s devotion to all things British; its first performance was directed by Bridge and it’s become something of an Australian equivalent to the Barber Adagio. As usual, performer details are non-existent but ticket prices are not: $55 or $75, with a $7.20 fee for daring to book and (compulsorily) use a credit card.

DREAMS AND FANTASIES

Orchestra Corda Spiritus

Old Museum, 480 Gregory Terrace, Bowen Hills

Sunday July 16 at 3 pm

From what I can make out, this is an organization of enthusiasts who set themselves a high bar. For this program, they are following a predictable first-half format but change their pace after the concerto. To begin, we hear Weber’s Oberon Overture, which is a none-too-safe staple but we live in some hope. Guitarist Hamish Strathdee then takes the lead for Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez which asks for a small orchestra – pairs of woodwind, trumpets and horns, and strings (not too many). But the work is scored for transparence and nobody can deviate in pitch or attack. Then the players under Chen Yang take on extracts from Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and again you have very clean writing with nowhere to hide. No singers are involved, so that precludes Ye spotted snakes: my favourite from the whole set of 14 pieces. It will probably be the Overture, Scherzo, Nocturne and Wedding March, with the Intermezzo an optional extra. Tickets cost between $20 for students to $33 for an adult, with a few concessions in between.

FINAL FANTASY

New World Players

Brisbane Powerhouse, New Farm

Wednesday July 19 at 7:30 pm

Not sure about this one, but that’s only because this style/school/genre of music is out of my sphere; more attuned to my grandchildren’s tastes, I’m assuming. Final Fantasy is both a media organization and an apparently endless game, capable of limitless variants in action – and music. It’s hard for the venerable among us to take video games seriously; my one-time computer repairman/technician used to snigger into his Kleenex when he saw the games that I played – Solitaire, Super Granny, Turtix, Roads of Rome – and promise to lend a hand when I got into ‘real’ games like the sado-masochistic murderous futuristic warfare that seems to be the current stock-in-trade. But you can come across music for contemporary games on ABC Classic FM’s Game Show, so this sort of output must have gained some cachet with the powers-that-be. What is promised on this program are ‘classics and surprises’ from the music for Final Fantasy, performed by the New World Players under Eric Roth with ‘visionary contributions’ from writers such as Nobuo Uematsu and Arnie Roth (Any relation? Yes, indeed: father and son). To be honest, I’m not smitten with this soundtrack material; what I’ve heard of Meena Shamaly’s offerings strikes me as derivative beyond the realms of belief although I admire the way the man can pronounce the names and products of game show creators – such a change to the usual ABC announcers who fall to pieces when faced with a Georgian, Icelandic or Vietnamese composition/composer (but then, like Eddie McGuire, they never seem to rehearse their offerings). Seats are available at $85 and there is a ‘service fee’ of $6.90 – which seems a trifle odd as the site claims ‘no additional fee’ for having your ticket(s) delivered by SMS or PDF . . . but clearly, there is!

MUSICAL THEATRE GALA

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday July 22 at 1:30 pm

Yet another in the QSO’s understandable quest to get bums on seats, here with a selection of 21 excerpts from musical theatre. This time around, I’m recognizing more composers, which probably means that the program organizers have erred on the conservative side. Music and lyrics for Guys and Dolls were provided by Frank Loesser and we’re to hear the Overture, If I were a bell and Luck be a lady from that estimable show. Another three products come from Stephen Sondheim in the Night Waltz and Send in the clowns from A Little Night Music, plus Giants in the sky from Into the Woods. Still another treble will appear from Claude-Michel Schonberg: On my own, Bring him home, and Do you hear the people sing?, all from that strange digest, Les Miserables. Bernstein scores two numbers, both from West Side Story: the Cool Fugue from his Symphonic Dances arrangement, and Maria. Single honours are awarded to Jerry Bock for Vanilla icecream from She Loves Me; Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin represented by Corner of the sky; Come what may from David Baerwald and Kevin Gilbert for Moulin Rouge; the classic Anything you can do from Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun; and, from Jekyll and Hyde, Frank Wildhorn’s This is the moment – the solitary memorable item from that work’s score. But the night’s major contributor is Alan Menken with five numbers: Colours of the wind from Pocahontas; the Overture and Take as old as time from Beauty and the Beast (the latter in its ‘pop version’); from Hunchback of Notre Dame, Out there; and Somewhere that’s green from Little Shop of Horrors. The QSO’s direction falls to the evergreen conductor of such events, Guy Noble, and his vocalists are Martha Berhane, Ashleigh Denning, Daniel Belle and Jonathan Hickey. Tickets come between $90 and $130 with concessions as low as $30 for a child. But the surcharge is $7.20, which is a cover-all for multiple tickets.

This performance will be repeated at 7:30 pm

OTTOMAN BAROQUE

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday July 24 at 7 pm

The ABO has a habit of mixing its media. Who can forget its concerts involving groups like the Circa troupe or La Camera delle Lacrime where ambition sometimes met up with reality? On this occasion, the Brandenburgers are venturing where the Australian Chamber Orchestra recently ventured in trying to forge a link between the Baroque and Islam; I don’t think there’s much in it but stand to be corrected. Obviously, the entertainment’s main attractions are members of the Mevlevi Sufi Order from that conservative city Konya in southern Turkey. Pushing the local influence even further, the Brandenburg Choir will sing settings of poems by Konya’s own Rumi. We are promised Ottoman instruments ( the oud? ney? kanun?) and a recreation of the mystic ceremony which is the main purpose of these dervishes who aren’t concerned with display but with Islam. Which could be a problem with the ABO and its flamboyant director, Paul Dyer, who tend to be very concerned with the exercise of personality and that brand of Western music-making where the musician is set somewhere above the music by means of virtuosity or the exercise of craft. I don’t know: you could be transported but, for some of us, the whole thing is bound to be an entertainment more than an enlightenment. Will there be anything else, something to justify the Baroque tag? It’s not clear, nor is the length of this concert/meditation. Definitely worth a look, not least because this is the first appearance by the ABO in Brisbane for some time. Concession tickets start at $39 but the regular prices move between $59 and $102, with the usual QPAC add-on fee (for standing in the middle) of $7.20.

BEETHOVEN AND ELGAR

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday July 28 at 11:30 pm

Only two works on this program: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C and the Elgar Symphony No. 2. Soloist in the concerto is Dalby-born London resident Jayson Gillham whom I’ve heard play with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to fine effect. He’s made quite a name for his Beethoven performances, including an album of the complete concertos with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra under Nicholas Carter which at least got nominated in the 2021 Aria Awards. Elgar in E flat is the one with the Shelley quote on the first page: ‘Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight!’ – which invocation he goes on to substantiate at some length. The work is a too-fine farewell to the Edwardian decade, a generous encomium dedicated to and wasted on a doggedly unpleasant monarch. The night’s conductor will be Joseph Swensen who was (maybe is) a noted violinist, now translated into the Paradise of musical directors. I can’t see that he has any particular affinity with Elgar but he was principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra for ten years, now emeritus with that body. Here’s hoping he has sympathy with the work; otherwise patrons are in for a gruelling hour. But the Beethoven concerto is also substantial: the longest of the five, in fact. Tickets in the normal run of events start at $89 and rise to $130, concessions starting at $30 and the usual gouge of $7.20 still applies for taking your money.

This concert will be repeated on Saturday July 29 at 7:30 pm

A long time coming

cliveoconnell

DAVID JOSEPH: WORKS FOR STRING ORCHESTRA

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Zagreb Soloists, Ripieno Kammerorchester

Move Records MD 3460

This CD is a blast from the past; three blasts, in fact. Australian composer Joseph wrote two of the three works offered here in 1992, the other in 1999. Honourably aged, you may think, if not exactly ancien regime. But the recordings have not been available since their premieres, as I understand it. For instance, tracks 1 and 2 comprise the Chamber Concerto for Piano and Strings, , commissioned by the then-director (1992) of the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, violinist Spiros Rantos. Originally conceived for Rantos’ wife, Brachi Tilles, the first soloist was Michael Kieran Harvey. So far, fine. The score was premiered at Melba Hall in Melbourne University’s Faculty of Music. What we hear on this CD is a performance recorded in the former ABC studios at Waverley, Harvey as soloist with Rantos conducting his MCO. This must have taken place between 1992 and 1995, after which the ABC moved to Southbank.

As for the second work, Scheherezade was written for the Zagreb Soloists, one of Europe’s premier chamber orchestras. I’m assuming that the composition date of 1999 was also the year of the work’s first performance (which is heard on this CD), but it’s hard to be sure. In Joseph’s catalogue, the work appears as Study for strings, ‘Also known as : Scheherezade’, and an undated presentation of this work by the late lamented Academy of Melbourne under Brett Kelly is also documented, as well as appearing on a previous Move Records collection of Joseph’s music which was released in 2006. The remaining composition, Dialogues of 1992, was written for violinist Urs Walker and the Ripieno Kammerorchester of Winterthur. Its first performance under conductor Howard Griffiths took place on September 5, 1993 and what we have here is a recording of that occasion.

Now, the Chamber Concerto is written in three movements, according to the disc booklet: Toccata, followed by Poem of Love/Meditation. In the original, there were no musing moments but you take what you’re given. In the Australian Music Centre documentation, this work was actually written for the Rantos Collegium, which disbanded in 1996 or thereabouts. Somehow, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra was spun out of the Collegium – or did it really emerge from the dying throes of the Pro Arte group? Well, the orchestral group is strings, which could be sourced from any one of the three ensembles.

The Toccata is a hard piece to pin down. It follows an almost moto perpetuo chugging rhythmic pattern which is relieved for only a few seconds at two places. The harmonic language is dissonant, suggesting Bartok and Prokofiev, although the overall texture is reminiscent of Mosolov’s short-lived brutalism, or even the less sloppy moments of Messiaen’s Turangalila. For all that, the movement radiates energy, Harvey’s realization of the solo part both hard-edged and scintillating, the pianist addressing his work with unflappable authority and a determination of output that every so often leaves the strings in his wake.

I think I’ve found the separation between the second part’s two sections. For the Poem, we’re apparently in Messiaen-Land where the strings settle into an ascending or descending motif of two chords, Harvey’s keyboard offering a rhapsodic commentary. The impression is less firm in contour than the French master’s Chant d’amour excursions but much less populist, even if Harvey’s contributions suggest several of those Messiaenic modes of disposable musical income. And these pages are definitely proposing an emotionally benign state; if not the Turangalila garden of Sanskrit delights; rather, a calm and welcoming landscape in which the dissonances mutate with remarkable smoothness, a cleverly achieved absence of surface friction no matter what progressions are quietly taking place.

The Meditation, I suspect, begins when the piano sets off on a sequence of stately chords that pass up and down the keyboard from top to bottom against a shimmer of strings from which a solo violin emerges with a soothing if angular melodic line. The musing is carried out with something of a forced-march mentality behind it, as though the action itself rendered the mind active rather than flooding it with random impressions or metaphysical ephemera. You couldn’t call this section of the work vehement or threatening but the consciousness being exercised has a clear, if repetitive, path to follow. Yet again, the spectre of Messiaen rises up, mainly in the shape of the chord processional, but the uses that Joseph puts this sequence to is less aspirational, less grasping for the ideal.

Joseph’s Scheherezade is not the gorgeous panoply of Rimsky-Korsakov but seems more empathetically related to Ravel’s Asie, even if the colour is monochromatic. The work starts with a unison/octave melody that eventually takes on a mildly astringent harmonic coating, Joseph taking his theme (such as it is) from the slow movement (presumably the first Moderato of the two in the score) to Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 6 in E minor. The atmosphere remains fairly taut and menacing throughout with what seems like closely argued harmonic structures kept well-leashed; Joseph stays well away from sentiment and colour for its own sake.

You can find some Oriental flourishes, but they are pretty rare in a dour landscape. The composer insists on a hefty attack style (or perhaps that’s just the Croatian players’ reading) and the work’s progress enjoys a heavy-handed treatment with semi-tragic undertones; perhaps Joseph is less concerned with the narrator’s flights of fancy and more with the sad, if not downright tragic, extracts from the 1001 Nights. Just on a technical point, the writing is monolithic as far as string technique is concerned: the only pizzicati I heard came in the last minute; maybe there is a slight use of harmonics, although to me it simply sounded like high violin work; you won’t come across any behind-the-bridge or on-the-fingerboard work; the work’s progress is too slow to admit of anything as frivolous as saltando or staccato. In sum, this is a rather grim Oriental fantasy, more illustrative to me of the current situation in Syria, Gaza or Lebanon than in the head-in-the-sand images we have of life in Jordan or the smothering of gross cruelty in Saudi Arabia or the Emirates.

Finally, we come to the Dialogues, contemporary with the Chamber Concerto. This is the shortest work on the CD but not by much, coming in at 19′ 40″ minutes (not 9’04” as the CD booklet states), while Scheherazade stretches to 20′ 48″ and the concerto a few seconds less at 20′ 42″ in total. All one movement as a set of variations on ‘natural sounds – birds etc.’, this is an aggressively punchy work. driving and dramatic from the opening: its avian life is prehistoric, non-stop in its vehemence apart from a few short releases from about the 15 minute mark.

The performance is admirably committed, although you can hear a few discrepant moments that got away from conductor Howard Griffiths – the basses not quite in sync with an upper-string layer at a few dramatic passages. Further, the acoustic of the recording’s venue – St Peter Church, Zurich – is rich in resonance with a pronounced echo; this building’s high ceiling, tiled floor and richly wooded gallery contribute to a sound that can be overwhelmingly clear. Still, the memorable contribution in this reading comes from soloist Walker whose line is dazzling, vital, toweringly virtuosic. In all, Dialogues is the sort of score that should appeal to a body like the Australian Chamber Orchestra with its requirements for split-second discipline, an unyielding ferocity of attack, and a sustained convulsive power.

As matters present themselves on the web, Scheherezade is the most recent composition listed in Joseph’s output, if the Australian Music Centre information is any guide. This composer’s absence (of 24 years?!) from the lists is most regrettable, even if he has shifted his career path from music to law. These three works show a granite-hard assurance in their creative character, as well as a command of form and purpose that impresses mightily. Their re-discovery in the composer’s analogue recordings archives was a happy chance and we are the richer for their airing on this CD.

Command and kindness

cliveoconnell

GARRICK OHLSSON

Musica Viva Australia

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University, South Bank

Thursday June 1, 2023

Garrick Ohlsson

This splendid American pianist was last heard here in 2019, appearing then for Musica Viva and getting his Brisbane recital in just before we all said farewell to live performances for some time. He’s back for another national series, kicking off in this city with an eclectic program of Schubert, Liszt and Scriabin with a new Australian commission adding spice to the mix in Thomas Misson‘s Convocations. Ohlsson is also offering a second program in his alterative nights in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as for Adelaide and Perth; in that figuration he will play Debussy’s Suite bergamasque, Barber’s Piano Sonata, the Misson novelty, and a slab of Chopin – the rarely-heard Variations brillantes, the Piano Sonata No 1, and the B flat minor Scherzo.

Yes, it would be rewarding to hear all that last group from the only American to win the International Chopin Competition (1970), but I don’t think we missed out that much with what we heard on Thursday evening. Ohlsson opened with the Schubert C minor Impromptu – the first of the Op. 90 set and the one that most pianists leave alone. This was followed by the Liszt B minor Sonata. After interval came the Misson and a clutch of Scriabin works: the C sharp minor Etude from the 3 Morceaux Op. 2, the D flat Major Etude from Op. 8, the C sharp minor Etude of Op. 42, the Andante cantabile that heads the Two Poems Op. 32, and the bursting-at-the-seams Piano Sonata No. 5.

Towards which this whole recital was aiming, it seemed to me. Ohlsson entered into the work with a certain sobriety; those odd little gruppetti of 5 with the first note missing that accelerate through bars 7 to 11 were not as brusque as other interpreters make them, although their return at bars 161 to 164 and from bar 451 to the end showed a remarkable ferocity, especially this last which found the performer twisting to face the audience in an unexpected gesture of pianistic braggadocio. Mind you, he was probably elated to get to the end of the composer’s vertiginous acceleration that starts at bar 401 and – for once – doesn’t stop for a meno vivo oasis.

For all its ecstatic intentions, this one-movement sonata (the first in this shape of the composer’s ten) holds itself together with a remarkably clear chain of material gestures and rhythmic shapes. In fact, for all the much-touted dynamic and emotional excess allied with highly demanding pianism, the work is clear in construction as a whole, if you can get past the stretches of chord-rich hysteria. Ohlsson took us on a finely graduated investigation of the score’s stop-start progress, demonstrating an admirable command of the composer’s vagaries and realizing fully the sonata’s flashes of magniloquence, like the thundering rapid left-hand octaves that feature in the Presto tumultuoso esaltato of bars 146 to 156, or the full-bodied peroration that explodes in bar 433.

Overshadowing the performance was the interpreter’s ability to take us along with him through the constantly changing landscape of this construct, where even the jittery off-the-beat right-hand chords that emerge so briskly at the first presto (bar 47) change to a more hectic, driven impulse as at the prestissimo that starts at bar 329. Indeed, Ohlsson captured with excellent skill Scriabin’s vital combination of languid harmonic opulence and urgent neurotic compulsiveness, this schizophrenia keeping us involved in what is still a robustly contemporary language.

Speaking of robust, the night’s first half focused on the big Liszt masterwork. In my tender youth, I was able to pick out the four potential movements that are said to comprise this large canvas but last Thursday’s reading came across all of a piece; you can hear where the materiel changes and is brought back for re-examination (or re-iteration, if you’re feeling unkind) but Ohlsson has the knack of finding some unification in the work’s presentation. It may be his insight owes something to a sublimated virtuosity as this pianist melds the meditative into the stormy with ease, as after the two mini-cadenzas in bars 200 and 204 where he shifted gear into a powerful Allegro energico C Major outburst; or, less obviously, the slow-burn from the F sharp Major repeated chords of bar 363 to a powerful climax across bars 393 to 396.

But it’s exhausting to get through; certainly for the executant, and even for an audience sufficiently primed to endure Liszt’s flamboyance and relentless magniloquence. I thought that there might have been two extra Es in bar 311 as Ohlsson emerged from another recitativo before dealing with a further 16-bar-long superimposition of two melodic elements, but that impression might have been self-generated. There’s no smothering a sense of disappointment in the fugato that starts at bar 460 and follows a resolute path to bar 599 before we get to the last, lengthy agglomeration where the writing becomes more and more complicated. Not that this substantial patch of working-out found the interpretation lacking and, if you grew impatient with the modulatory chains, you had this pianist’s almost flawless security to treasure.

Ohlsson exercised his habitual calm control over the Schubert impromptu, specifically its eventual triplet underpinning which many an interpreter allows undue prominence. For me, the most affecting segment of this reading came with the (only?) theme’s transference to the left hand at bar 60 under gently oscillating right-hand triplets; here was excellent dynamic management and a carefully shaped phrasing ebbing into a C flat Major quiescence. Actually, you could pick out several examples of sterling responsiveness, if the occasional oddity (the right-hand chord of bar 112 which sounded as though it had acquired an extra note) countered by a melting Winterreise conclusion from bar 193 onwards, minor alternating with major in an ideal instance of Schubert having it both ways – despair and consolation fused into each other.

Of the Scriabin studies, little is left in the memory. For many of us, the C sharp minor etude would have been our first encounter with the composer as it appeared in an AMEB list book (List D?) many years ago and proved easy enough to negotiate for its straightforward Chopinism. I didn’t gain much from Ohlsson’s treatment although I suspect it was included as part of the pianist’s way of preparing us for the coming sonata’s keyboard brilliance. You could admire his negotiation of the chains of chromatic thirds in the D flat Major etude, chiefly because the texture remained pretty clear with few over-pedaled washes along the way. Ohlsson’s approach to the C sharp minor piece proved a good deal less sharply defined, but then the harmonic shifts are gradual and closely-argued, so that even the left-hand change of metre to duplet crotchets in the study’s centre and near the end tend to muddy already thick waters.

A clearer texture spoke across the Andante cantabile in F sharp Major with Ohlsson smoothing out the quintuplets that emerge unobtrusively in bar 11 and become a constant element for much of the piece’s remainder. Still, this is whimsical country with a dominant right hand holding all the trumps in a very amiable colloquy that concluded these prefatory gambits which at least served the purpose of demonstrating how reasonable and later-Romantic this composer could be.

Misson’s new work enjoyed an introduction from the composer who pointed us directly towards a religious interpretation of his title, going even more directly to the core by speaking of the aspirational, Heaven-bound nature of his work’s right-hand while the left-hand matter stays firmly terrestrial. The opening strophes to Convocations impressed as rather obvious in both intent and statement, but the following elaborations and episodes proved more intriguing, particularly some moments of liturgical reference – not full-scale chorales but close enough to give a support to the composer’s suggestions of an abstract synod. Both composer and interpreter showed obvious signs of mutual satisfaction at the work’s end, and the composition itself did serve the purpose of suiting Ohlsson’s performance manner of benign, unshakeable confidence.