RIVER
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Monday February 12, 2024
It is both probable and possible that all of us assembled in QPAC’s Concert Hall to experience River were in sympathy with the message of the film and its commentary (indeed, it would be hard to distinguish between them). After showing us a lavish variety of rivers in slow flow or full spate, the visual images change to face us with what humans have done to these essential resources and the truth gives plenty of cause for alarm. Set against this, the producers then turn to rivers of cloud, which are apparently immune to pollution (oh?) and we end with a message of hope: rivers are resilient and all we have to do is pull our fingers out and their chances of betterment multiply.
You can see that this scenario is possibly unpalatable but essentially true: we have polluted and restructured rivers, to their detriment and ours. Perhaps the only new insight I gained from this night was that dams are distorters, not huge achievements; in fact, the documentary reaches a kind of climax when we are treated to the sight of a dam being exploded and waters return to their original course, complete with the life that left or disappeared after their construction. Goodbye, Snowy 2: that undertaking was clearly an optimistic revisiting based on bad biology. Bob Brown and his confederates were absolutely right from the word go: dam the Franklin and you kill the river.
The River experience lasts over an hour but less than 90 minutes; split the difference and say 75 because it didn’t start on time and I had no idea when it finished until I was on the station at an unusually early hour. Despite that not-particularly-draining dimension, I was left thinking that the whole thing could have been cut to its own profit. Put simply, the pictorial element made its points well enough in each segment, in particular those ones that showed the beauty of ‘natural’ rivers and a variety of epic shots that bordered on abstract art. The visual array came close to wearing out its welcome as those later redemptive stages proved tedious, like a sermon familiar in its tropes and bringing little new to the converted.
A good many people are associated with the creation and performance of River: a wealth of cinematographers and a trio of writers, including producer Jennifer Peedom, Robert Macfarlane and Joseph Nizeti. Prime responsibility for the music fell to the ACO’s artistic director Richard Tognetti, who also composed parts of the content, aided by Piers Burbrook de Vere and William Barton. The taped narration came from William Dafoe who gave the exercise a certain gravitas - when he could be heard. Was it a peculiarity of the QPAC Concert Hall’s amplification system that rendered parts of Dafoe’s narration close to inaudible – or better, impenetrable? In patches, you could hear the murmur of the actor’s quiet delivery but the actual text could not be deciphered.
This generally took place when the ACO strings were active and the sound mix favoured the instruments. It would be helpful to point to specific moments when this problem took place but the hall was in darkness and taking notes was impossible. I suspect that one of these indistinct stretches coincided with a stage where four contemporary works followed each other: Wildness by Tognetti/Burbrook de Vere/Barton, Intervention by Tognetti/Burbrook de Vere, and Magic and Active by Tognetti.
Speaking of the musical content, we heard a bewildering array of works, mainly scraps or revisions. Matters began crisply with the B minor Largo from Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in D Major RV 232 (all 29 bars?). A pair of inter-changeable pieces by Tognetti and Burbrook de Vere followed before a string orchestra arrangement of tracts gleaned from Bach’s D minor Violin Partita’s Chaconne. Well, it made for some effective fluttering to accompany visual images of surging waterscapes. Part of Sibelius’ Voces Intimae quartet arrived, arranged for the full string body, before another collation of modern pieces came over in a complex, from the three previously mentioned writers, also involving the first appearance of Jonny Greenwood’s Water, which enjoyed two later rinsings.
Another Vivaldi fragment interrupted the flow of these cinematographically apt compositions: the abruptly distracting Allegro e spiccato – Allegro pages from the G minor Concerto RV 578. But from here on, the current proved rapid and thick, part of Vask’s Vox amoris sinking in the flood, although Ades’ O Albion bobbed a momentary head out of the torrent, and the second movement of Ravel’s String Quartet enjoyed a fair (complete?) airing.
River came to rest with the Ruhevoll from Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 – a limited part of it, in fact, but bars that melded into the final stills and credits with quiet ease; the sort of music intended to send you off in a contentedly contemplative frame of mind. At certain points, Barton sang/vocalised but I had no idea why or what he was expressing. As well, principal violin Satu Vanska sang two songs, as I recall, but – as is so often the case with popular music – I couldn’t make out a word. So, while admiring the work of ACO regulars and extra-numeraries Brian Dixon on timpani and Nicholas Meredith on assorted percussion, the vocal component added little but confusion or over-obvious atmospherics to the proceedings.
But I think that deficiency may be part of the problems that remain after a River performance. In spreading the musical web so widely, Tognetti and his collaborators are attempting to broaden the potential audience for this polemic and demonstrate the universality of a massive natural disaster-in-the-making. Where the visuals present a wide vista of water in the world, the musical complement calls on a variety of sources to underline this problematic breadth. As far as I can tell, the aptness of Tognetti & Co.’s more conservative choices – Vivaldi, Bach, Sibelius, Mahler, Ravel, Vasks, Ades – is mitigated by the emotionally illustrative character of the modern pieces. In other words, the intended unanimity of purpose doesn’t come off because the older works inhabit different, more culturally distinct spaces than their more soundtrack-like companions.
Further, you encounter moments where these musics present as counteractive agents; for instance, when Barton’s didgeridoo enters the texture and suggests an indigenous landscape at odds with what we are seeing, or the sudden intrusion of Ravel’s ultra-sophisticated Assex vif cuts a salonesque caper across scenes of nature’s power. To be blunt, the musical events make up something of a dog’s breakfast, albeit one with some fine mouthfuls.
In the end, I suppose the principal question is: would I want to witness River again? To which the only answer is a tentative ‘maybe’. You can’t want for more variety, visual and aural. But I feel that the message is not mounted with sufficient starkness to have more impact than a mild, querying call to arms. In this large Brisbane audience,and judging by its ringing applause, you’d be going to find anyone unsympathetic to the fate of the world’s wild rivers. We can all see and agree on their parlous situation, but where does this awareness lead us?
Towards its end, River becomes optimistic. Dry riverbeds are re-irrigated, water is re-directed across barren landscapes, fish return to dart through a rejuvenated medium. How is this achieved? I can’t remember much about the details; stop damming, don’t divert, conserve. Of course, we’re to take River as a wake-up call before our resources run dry, but at the end any action appears to be lacking in focus. I’m all for employing music towards an admirable social end but it’s hard to find much beyond hand-wringing and vague good intentions in this exercise. Mind you, I can’t remember seeing the ACO’s Mountain film/music collaboration where any environmental aspirations might have been more apparent (if there were any). But this latest in the series (including The Reef, The Crowd and I, Luminous) failed to engage this listener, despite flashes of abstract and natural grandeur.
O'Connell the Music 