COLOUR AND VITALITY
Conservatorium Theatre, Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music
Sunday July 23, 2023
Glenn Christensen
To those of us from out-of-state, only one chamber music festival has operated in regional Queensland: Townsville. And each time a message comes through from the Australian Digital Concert Hall people, I’ve been reading ‘Townsville’ for ‘Mackay’. This latter celebration is only five years old, the brain child of Glenn Christensen whom I know mainly as a one-time violinist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. He has moved on since those days to be deputy concertmaster with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and one of his other post-Tognetti moves has been to set up this small-scale festival in his home town.
It’s small because it lasts barely three days with much of its activity pushed onto the last day, which was Sunday where guest artists Arcadia Winds and two-thirds of the resident artists Lyrebird Trio combined for two significant ensemble scores that you rarely hear worked through successfully because of the odd personnel required: Martinu’s Nonet No. 2 which fits the Arcadias but asks for one each of the standard string section – and it’s a rare string quartet that substitutes a double bass for the usual second violin; and Beethoven’s Septet Op. 20, which asks for the same string combination as the Martinu but cuts out the top two woodwind lines.
Beginning the program (after artistic director Christensen’s multiple thank-you messages to his festival helpers) was a duo for violin and double bass by Pekka Kuusisto’s older brother and fellow violinist/composer, Jaako, who died in 2022 from brain cancer. This short piece, Minio (meaning ‘minion’?), exercised violinist Doretta Balkizas (a Bremen colleague of Christensen: same city, different orchestra) and bass Jaan Pallandi from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It begins with an insistent pulse/scrape from the bass instrument followed by repeated semiquaver groups from the violin. The delivery is vehement and rough, even when the roles reverse and the bass opts for pizzicato while the violin exercises its own capacity for full-bodied scrapings which eventually accelerate. This far, you won’t hear much melodic content – not even of an angular type; it’s all rhythmic jumps and alterations, punctuated by some high, top-of-the-fingerboard notes from the bass.
But then comes a kind of relieving trio with open A and E string alternations from the top voice with harmonics produced by the bass, before both instruments opt for this harmonics by-play. Some inter-relationship follows where one note for Pallandi underpins three for Balkizas before we return to the opening aggression, more growling before a reminiscence of happier times with a violin tremolando above the bass’s high, aspiring series of 2nd intervals; the whole, finishing with a mutual assault on four semiquavers and a farewell belt. Despite its theatricality, I enjoyed this work but I suspect mainly for the energy and breezy enthusiasm of its executants.
For Martinu’s nonet, the full Arcadia group emerged: flute Eliza Shephard, oboe Rachel Bullen, clarinet Philip Arkinstall, horn Rachel Shaw, bassoon Matthew Kneale. Mind you, that’s a pretty different formation to the one I’m used to with Kiran Phatak on flute, oboist David Reichelt, and clarinet Lloyd Van’t Hoff. Balkizas returned as top string, with Meagan Turner viola, Simon Cobcroft (from the Lyrebirds) on cello, and Pallandi representing the most hard-worked unit of the afternoon. For all that, not much took me by surprise across this sample of neo-classical bounce. All players handled the opening Poco allegro well enough, somehow emphasizing the composer’s stolid use of timbral blocks as exemplified in the wind hymn 3 bars after Number 3 in the Statni Nakladatelstvi/Barenreiter edition of 1959. But the only dubious moment came in the violin line about Number 12 where the tedious soprano-level ostinato wavered momentarily.
It’s always hard to gauge operating conditions from a broadcast but both cello (and later, bass) came across as over-confident in the opening pages of the middle Andante. Yes, I know the cello has the melody from this movement’s opening and for some time after but Cobcroft’s idea of mf put the surrounding string piano well into the background. As the movement progressed, the ensemble displayed a sense of carefully applied rubato and an awareness of dynamic contrasts, even if this latter proved close to overbearing at climaxes as at Number 3, two bars before Number 5, and the explosion a bar before Number 8 where Pallandi’s tremolando F somehow dominated proceedings. Not the most fluent performance but the pieces fell into place properly.
It was a pleasure to encounter the concluding Allegretto with its clever-clever changes in pulse which gave the four strings no problems in the scene-setting opening pages. While the shade of Stravinsky is present in both outer movements, you also come across suggestions of Copland in this finale; for instance, at the Poco meno 6 bars before Number 10. You also encountered some passages of splendidly rich scoring, certain tutti stretches of powerful warmth, pointing to Martinu’s open-minded acceptance of his own emotional stance and compositional vocabulary in his last, very fruitful year.
For the Beethoven Op. 20 Septet, Christensen (also a Lyrebird) replaced Balkizas in the taxing violin part, and both Shephard and Bullen were not required. This work began impressively enough with an excellent communal attack on the Adagio‘s communal chords, loud and soft. With the jump to Allegro con brio, Turner’s viola Alberti accompaniment proved too loud for Christensen’s finely contoured opening subject, if more restrained in the exposition’s repeat. But then, the violinist kept to an appropriate dynamic level throughout these pages, regardless of the curt self-promotions of some colleagues, both wind and strings. However, the movement showed all ensemble members cleanly articulating and eager to engage with the score.
I came across only two problems with the Adagio cantabile: one of the repeated bassoon Fs across bars 22 and 23 went missing in action; and Cobcroft with Pallandi pushed themselves too far forward in Arkinstall’s solo about 36 bars from the movement’s ending. These apart, the players did fine service to this one slow movement of the six in this score. The group’s Tempo di Menuetto enjoyed brisk treatment – more a bucolic stamp than usual – with some welcome rubato at the woodwind’s octave rise and fall at the second half’s centre. Icing on the cake, Shaw’s arpeggios during the Trio proved faultless.
All strings showed to better effect in terms of dynamic responsibility during the first variation of the next movement; but then, the winds are silent here – no competition. Christensen made short work of Variation 2’s demi-semiquaver-packed line, while Arkinstall and Kneale exercised some individuality in the concluding bars to Variation 3’s first half. It’s not that difficult, but what a relief to have Shaw’s accurate horn in play for Variation 4’s opening and closing four bars; it added to the high quality of delivery from all in this segment. And the troupe almost carried off an ideal final variation-plus-coda except for some glitch between violin and viola in the third/second-last bar.
Similarly, something odd happened to the cello line in the latter-stages duet with Christensen in the final stages of the Scherzo‘s Trio. But full marks to the violinist for his E flat arpeggios starting at bar 47 of the movement’s main part; a cleverly understated buzz that enriched his colleagues’ outline of the melody. And the Presto of the finale was the violin concerto that Christensen indicated in his pre-performance talk. All attention here focused on the top string and its interwoven solo exposures, the performer showing a firm, steady style at critical moments like the three-bar solo that leads into the second subject’s reappearance, not to mention the taxing, if ludicrous cadenza that brings this helter-skelter progress to a standstill before the final stanzas, complete with chains of increasingly hectic triplets for the violin.
This Beethoven made a benign conclusion to the Mackay festival which slightly overlapped with the Townsville event that began on this Sunday and lasts till Sunday August 6. I went as a guest to one of the earliest of these latter celebrations in the more northern city but I’m tempted to visit next year’s Mackay gathering because it’s easier to imbibe, less time-consuming, and the quality of performances – on this showing – could proved very satisfying. At the same time, I’m finding it hard to get over the fact that Queensland hosts two such exercises in close succession annually – and not in the state’s capital; a great boon to both regional cities’ residents.
O'Connell the Music 