Month: June 2024

Reticence in a big space

cliveoconnell

KIRILL GERSTEIN

Musica Viva Australia

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Wednesday June 19, 2024

Kirill Gerstein

I found this to be a very laid-back affair, even while I could see the effort that Kirill Gerstein was putting in. It might have been caused by my having experienced the Australian Chamber Orchestra two nights previous in the same hall, and they bask fully in this space. By contrast, Gerstein often sounded muffled, as though normally thunderous torrents were being produced with the soft pedal on. Or it might be that this room just doesn’t suit piano recitals, much as I found the Melbourne Recital Centre’s main theatre to be a non-carrier for many players.

As for Gerstein’s program, you could point to plenty of occasions for potential pounding. For instance, he presented two substantial Chopin works in the Op. 61 Polonaise-Fantaisie and the F minor Fantaisie. Even more prominent for its relentless virtuosity was Liszt’s Polonaise No. 2 in E Major and only a few steps behind this in the powerhouse stakes was Schumann’s restless Carnival of Vienna. A little less insistent but packed with skittering good spirits in its outer reaches were Poulenc’s Three Intermezzi which were produced across a nine-year interval. It might have been due to the nature of the piece but the most resonant of this ‘old’ set was Faure’s final Nocturne in B minor: a vehement last gasp from the French veteran.

The Musica Viva guest also paid obeisance to his jazz-playing efforts and alternative musical life with a piece by his pal, American Brad Mehldau: the Nocturne, which comes third in a four-part homage called Apres Faure. More relevant to us was the premiere of a freshly written Transcendental Etude by Liza Lim which was commissioned by Musica Viva for this tour and makes a solid addition to the ever-growing number of locally-written piano compositions, a differentiating factor being that this one sits among the few worth hearing.

Gerstein handled the improvisatory nature of the Polonaise-Fantaisie opening with care but not elongating the four flights of ascending crotchets as several pianists do to emphasize the piece’s fancifully wayward nature (it’s not that, but it can seem so if its constituents are sufficiently disjointed), By the same token, he didn’t give vent to a musical gasp of relief when the polonaise first stretch arrived (bars 22 to 143) but treated it with restraint and deliberation, allowing the melodic contours to trace their paths without spicing up the delivery, even at the climacteric across bars 132-137. Perhaps the inner workings of the central section’s chorale theme got more attention than they merited but the return to arms came off with lashings of brio, even that awkward series of rushing triplets stretching from bar 254 to bar 281.

Gerstein began his evening’s second half with the Chopin F minor Fantaisie which is prodigious in its inventiveness and mixture of fireworks and quiescence. The pianist gave us a spectral march before the real fantasy began at bar 43 and didn’t let up. This includes that brilliant outburst of ultra-lyrical right-hand writing between bars 77 and 84 (and later at bars 164-171, then bars 244-251), and the two further march brackets between the undulating arpeggio figures that spark off nearly all of this score’s discrete components.

Parts of this interpretation grabbed your interest, mainly for the alteration in attack that germinated from the player’s fluency rather than an abrupt gear shift or six. It’s true that, as with the Polonaise-Fantaisie, certain passages sounded understrength, the melodic definition not as clear as from other interpreters with more brittle instruments and more percussiveness in their key-striking. But at certain moments, the warmth of Gerstein’s timbre proved irresistible and you had to admire the precision of his realization throughout which I could only pick up two or three errors.

He finished both halves with resonant samples of Romantic accomplishment. We went out to interval with the Liszt Polonaise giving proof of this musician’s interpretative power and high spirits: indispensable elements for this tour de force. For all that, the score labours under an initial deficiency in bar 8’s initial demi-semiquaver group which interrupts the main melody’s bounding energy. Still, the output remained firm and impressively true in its details, like the right-hand accelerando at bar 43 and the chain of sixths and contrary motion scale across bars 43 to 48.

Gerstein’s general restraint paid dividends when the central Trio turned gangbusters after those remorseless double octaves across bars 113 to 119 where the initial A minor theme enjoys a triple forte restatement before the welcome relief of Liszt’s interpolated cadenza. These virtuosic excesses profited from the sparkling delicacy of the first theme’s recapitulation (harmonic, if not linear) that found an able treatment under Gerstein’s hands. Later, he made full-bodied work of the ranting final pages after the first theme returned in its original form. It all made a sentimental return to the past for this listener and, I suspect, several others among the Concert Hall’s patrons.

Schumann provided the printed program’s finale with the Carnival of Vienna rarity. I think I’ve heard this collection twice in live performance: once from a professional, once in a student’s program. Again, I was grateful for the performer’s versatility of choice, avoiding the temptation to treat us to yet another Carnaval, Symphonic Studies or the colossal Fantasie in C. Even so, I heard some errors in the opening Sehr lebhaft, possibly due to fatigue – and each repetition of that initial ritornello began to grate after the first three. As compensation, you hear some intriguing interludes in this rondo, not least the totally syncopated passage when the key signature moves for the first time to E flat Major, and again in the first 26 bars of the movement’s coda.

Gerstein treated the one-page Romanze with high sensitivity, keeping his dynamic muted and allowing plenty of variation in the tempo. It’s hard not to like the following Scherzino with its simple common chord jumps and surprising variety in content, and this reading emphasized a light buoyancy, the piece retaining its agility of articulation to the end. Which made an eloquent contrast with the broad sweep of phrase in the following Intermezzo where the relentless chains of subordinate triplets were (for the most part) kept subordinate to the soprano melody. Schumann’s finale seems boisterously rushed after these precedents but Gernstein retained his energy through its much-ado-about-very-little pages. Still, there’s always a chortle or two to be enjoyed when hearing players cope with the awkward Coda with its crossed triplets and duple quavers.

As for the fill-in-the-middle pieces, there’s little to report. Mehldau’s tribute was distinguished for its inner part-writing yet, despite its brevity, wound up sounding cluttered. The Faure work can take your breath away for the spartan ferocity of its central G sharp minor pages which share a gravity of outlook with a few stark pieces like Tapiola; you do come to a sort of resolution but find precious little optimism – just a well of gloom. I expected more fire from this player across that urgent central stretch but was grateful for his realization of the nocturne’s deliberate resignation.

Poulenc’s trilogy took us away instantly from the sepulchral atmosphere of Faure’s work. The first intermezzo, a Presto con fuoco, is a briskly clattering, chattering effusion that is completely lacking in depth of sentiment. The following Assez modere intrigues for its melody statement in the alto, then bass registers, even if the soprano wins out in the end of what is a congenial brevity. You might mistake the last Tres allant for a waltz, although its time signature is 6/8. This piece rings several harmonic changes – most obviously in the juxtaposed common chords six bars from the end – and Gerstein realized its supple rhythm interlocks and ingenious part-writing with excellent results.

Lim’s new study is not really an adjunct to Liszt’s famous dozen products, of which I know about half pretty well. It is couched in a language completely outside the range of anything else heard on this program with nothing remarkable about its sound production methods: no reach-inside-the-piano or mallets on the strings or arms-instead-of-fingers smashes or preparing/stuffing the instrument. It exploits the instrument’s power to produce quick bursts of repeated notes and move rapidly between dynamic extremes. As far as its emotional content goes, it struck me as menacing because the score’s progress is packed with shivers, frissons that unsettle the listener’s expectations and equilibrium; quite an accomplishment in these days of predictable pap.

And it sat comfortably in this set of offerings that impressed for its variety bordering on the recherche but at the same time gave us some former repertoire stalwarts in a mini-refresher course. Gerstein’s reputation as a premier artist is supported by this recital, which was greeted with emphatic enthusiasm. But I think we would have been even more impressed if the venue had not been the city’s cavernous main concert hall. Still, it’s the old problem about where to put your suddenly increased numbers – a difficulty that Musica Viva will face again with the church-acoustic-loving King’s College, Cambridge Choir appearing in this venue same time next month.

Formidable cellist in patchy program

cliveoconnell

ALTSTAEDT PLAYS HAYDN & TCHAIKOVSKY

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centr

Monday June 17, 2024

Nicolas Altstaedt

Taking over for this national round from the ACO’s artistic director Richard Tognetti, cellist Nicolas Altstaedt offered two of the major constituents in his instrument’s repertoire: Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations without the original’s ten wind players, and Haydn’s C Major Concerto with a first movement cadenza that I’ve never heard (I suspect, probably unjustifiably, that it was Altstaedt’s own.

So the night’s title was expertly realized by an expert and gifted performer. Of course, the rest of the entertainment was taken up with other musical scraps that seemed to me to have no congruence with the two soloist-highlighting works. We heard the first and last movements from Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ – Introduzione and Il terremoto. The orchestra revisited an old favourite in Sandor Veress’ Four Transylvanian Dances with its boot-stomping finale. More fragments emerged with three movement’s from Kurtag’s aphoristic Officium breve in memoriam Andrae Szervanszky, and just before Haydn’s urbane concerto, Altstaedt conducted Aroura by Xenakis, written in 1971 and packed with those compositional and sound-production devices so beloved of the last real avant-garde that flourished in Europe before the advent of our current conservative vapidity.

As you can see, this program was an inexplicable mixture involving juxtapositions and blendings that brought to mind several of Tognetti’s own melanges. Added to this, I’m not a fan of scraps – a few movements of Haydn, a selection from Kurtag; the whole intended to be a kind of mutually fertilizing garden of doubtful delights. All right: you can’t expect an interwoven tapestry all the time, but I was struggling to see how one fragment led to another . . . I was going to say ‘in the first half of the evening’, but the neighbourliness of Xenakis and Haydn didn’t come through.

Which is not to deny that Altstaedt is an exciting cellist to hear, striking at the outset for his expansive dynamic which we first met in the Tchaikovsky variations. Here was a display of clean technique coupled with the soloist’s ability to disappear into the ACO blend and then emerge effortlessly from the ruck. He pulled a few impressive flights of legerdemain in the improbably fast Allegro vivo Variation 4, then wove a generous cantabile line in the following Andante grazioso.

He surprised by giving the whole fabric a purpose, almost a continuous forward-thrusting impetus that made the cadenzas and solo links a good deal more sensible than usual – probably because he showed an unflustered mastery of them, without having to strain after effects. Just as importantly, Alstaedt found the underlying good humour in the score and gave it free rein, including a swagger to his line’s more orotund moments. For all that, I missed the wind timbres, particularly in their contributions to those pleasant rounding-out phrases, e.g. bars 16 to 21 of the theme statement and Variation 1, bars 20 to 25 of Variation 2. bars 23 to 25 of Variation 3, etc. Not to mention their support as a group and in individual complementary solos in Variations 4 and 6.

With the Haydn concerto, Altstaedt showed a similar mastery, mainly in his line-shaping where he was able to impose/insert subtle tempo discrepancies to give the slightest pause on a particular note. Just as remarkable was the ACO’s communal consciousness of these hesitations and rubato interpolations, allowing room for them each time. The cellist generated an appealing vocal quality in his account of the central adagio, reserving the power of his opening C until bar 18, then infusing his demisemiquaver written-out ornaments with splendid contralto character. In fact, this almost compensated for the feisty presto pace of the final Allegro molto where the accent fell heavily on an improbably brisk account of the soloist’s semiquaver-rich line like the patch between bars 87 and 94, and later the massive stretch from bar 118 to bar 146.

Not as prominently as in the Tchaikovsky, the missing four wind lines here proved less debilitating; well, they don’t appear at all in the central slow movement. Nevertheless, you missed the oboes’ bite and the horn pair’s binding texture in the first movement. Still, it’s a big ask for the orchestra to bring along ten extra musicians to supplement the core ACO of 17.

Apart from his concerto appearances and the Xenakis conundrum, Altstaedt took Timo-Veikko Valve’s position as principal cello for the evening’s concerted works, appearing to share chairing honours with long-time second violin principal Helena Rathbone standing in at Tognetti’s usual spot.

The opening pages to Haydn’s meditations on the Passion found the ACO in fair form with some remarkably soft passages, the texture feather-light when compared with the determination of the opening two strophes and their reappearance through these concentrated 51 bars. Immediately, we moved to Kurtag’s three brief aphorisms, starting with a fierce bite in his Grave, molto sostenuto fourth movement before the just-as-aggressive Disperato, vivo and the Webern-suggestive (but only partly: that final threnody is much too hearts-on-sleeve for the master of the subtle inflection) Arioso interrotto which are the work’s final two sections.

This last moved straight into the Earthquake of Haydn’s string quartet: a finely ordered seismic eruption, here given at a striking presto pace and with a wealth of dynamic interest. With the Transylvanian Dances, we are in all-too-familiar country, a land superbly tilled by Bartok and Kodaly, here enjoying a kind of mild regrafting. It’s not that these pieces are lacking in colour or vitality; the simple observation is that, when it comes to rebooting folk tunes and dances, Veress’ senior colleagues were more able. Of course, this performance proved to be convincing and adroit, those cursive melodies delivered with the ACO’s trademark gusto and poise. Still, these dances have been in the ensemble’s repertoire for many years, so you’d expect expertise in spades.

Not necessarily the case with the Xenakis score which asks for 4 first violins, 3 seconds, pairs of violas and cellos and a single double bass. Altstaedt oversaw a slightly expanded set of upper strings and encouraged all participants to take to their work with heightened ferocity – more starkly so than in any recorded version I’ve come across. I’m not one to find fault with the Greek composer’s mathematical allocation of responsibilities and devotion to minutiae but this particular construct lacks that shock element and staggering force that strikes me as typical of the best Xenakis.

Of course, all the technical tricks are there, including an arresting mesh of glissandi right at the start, harmonics galore, playing on or above the bridge, dynamic levels from gratingly loud to scarcely audible, quasi-aleatoric stretches of bars – and, above all, dissonance intended to scour the ear. It’s an impressive sound-scape and a nice palate-cleanser in the middle of a staid sequence of events. Yet, while (as always) admiring the performance elegance of this ensemble, I couldn’t help thinking, at the end of Aroura, ‘Is that it? Is that all?’

Following well-furrowed tracks

cliveoconnell

BY THE WINDING RIVER

Lachlan Brown

Move Records MCD 652

I think this is the shortest of the three CDs of Lachlan Brown’s music issued recently in one fell swoop by Move Records; By the Winding River comes in at about 44 minutes. The 13 settings are of Chinese poets: six by Tu (Du) Fu, three by Ou Yang Hsiu (Xiu), two by Su Tung P’O (Su Shi) and one each from Li Ch’ing Chao (Qingzhao) and Mai (Mei) Yao Ch’en. As for participant musicians, these have appeared on one or both of the preceding Brown CDs: tenor Lyndon Green, soprano Jenna Roubos, pianist Len Vorster, and violinist George Vi.

Kenneth Rexroth’s translations are used, with no Mahler-like interpolations from the composer, even if the promotional material for this CD mentions Mahler and Das Lied von der Erde – the go-to score for a fusion of Chinese poetry and Western music. Indeed, Brown’s first song, Chang’s Hermitage by Tu Fu, the second-longest track on the album, speaks a kind of pentatonic language in both piano and vocal lines for long stretches, the piece a steadily pulsing commentary on self-isolation and its benefits as seen by an envying visitor. The song is dynamically restrained to match the quietly angular accompaniment and a vocal part full of repeated notes. It could be likened to Ravel’s La flute enchantee except for the absence of harmonic adventure.

Both this work and the following Green Jade Plum Trees in Spring (Ou Yang Hsiu) involve Green’s plangent tenor with Vorster accompanying, opening the second track with a one-hand (right, I suspect) outlining another pentatonic-suggestive melody that meanders pleasantly before the vocal entry, signalled by a more conventional underpinning. This song falls into two parts: the first a calm observation of the season’s fruitfulness; the second, a quieter evening scene where the human (tempting girls) appear and tint the landscape with warmer, more bass-heavy textures. This split personality of content is mildly mirrored in Brown’s harmonic vocabulary which enjoys the best of both worlds – suggestive Orientalism and French harmonic richness.

With the next song, Su Tung P’O’s Spring Festival, Green and Vorster come to a more straightforward compositional landscape where, for much of the time, three strands weave around each other, the keyboard being more mobile and steady in its regular quaver progress, the harmonic language firmly major key-centric. There’s a brusque shift of tonality in the last two lines, while the last itself – a kind of envoi – is unexpectedly passionate after an otherwise staid series of observations. The tenor’s output is framed by substantial prelude and postlude excursions.

Fisherman by Ou Yang Hsiu evokes a bleak scene, Green employing a small range while Vorster sets up a chain of drooping chords in a setting that attempts to depict a vague picture of a lone fisherman who can be faintly discerned in a landscape of high reeds, shrouding rain and secreting mist. This piece has a surprising effect: clear in every respect but emotionally veiled.

Apart from a short hymn-like passage near its conclusion, Farewell once more to my friend (Tu Fu) maintains the same pattern across its length of a left-hand rising arpeggio in pentatonic mode which works as a kind of binding cord for a lyric which is essentially nostalgic and regretful, the poet/singer happy for the meeting but almost in despair now that the good times have come to an end, probably never to be repeated. Brown doesn’t wallow in these depressing observations, although his low-pitched setting of the final line mirrors the poet’s pointed nihilism.

A change of pace now as soprano Roubos sings We Are Apart by Li Ch’ing Chao, the only female poet to grace the disc but her lines generate the composer’s longest response, albeit the concluding postlude is remarkably long. Here is an art song with no nationalistic colourations which might have been produced by a Delius aficionado if not for the chains of thirds that occur in Vorster’s right hand. Here you notice a peculiarity of Brown’s vocal line – repeated notes as the syllables glide past. You hear flickers of movement at some lines’ endings but you also come across a single note used for an entire line of these touching verses. The piano enjoys an extended solo before the final quatrain which finishes off the poet’s juxtaposition of nature and longing with luminous grief – and that, I suppose, is the rationale behind the lengthy concluding piano solo which offers its own harmonic ambiguity.

After this, naturally, we hear the CD’s shortest track in a playful Mai Yao Ch’en frippery, An excuse for not returning the visit of a friend. The reason for this social embarrassment is that the poet’s children are clinging to him – apparently not in fear but from that perverse affection which insists that a parent keep his focus where it belongs. Brown gives Vorster a lightly tripping accompaniment while Roubos vaults through her apology which at the end sounds ever so slightly manic.

Another Tu Fu meditation follows, this time Snow Storm which is unrelievedly negative, a series of observations of the natural world’s harshness and the futility of human contact. Brown’s piano accompaniment presents as a chain of ascending and sometimes descending arpeggio-type figures while Green’s tenor sets out a pretty dreary monologue with an odd attempt at word-painting on the word ‘coiling’. Its unfinished conclusion is echoed in the following The Spring will never reach me (Ou Yang Hsiu again) where Vorster’s piano ends the song with a kind of half-close. Here, Vi’s violin sounds as though it is being played at some distance from the central participants, oscillating between offering a linear support to piano,. then singer, then back again, etc. The harmonic vocabulary is bare but liable to resolve into concordances across this lyric of regretful nostalgia and longing for home in a bleak, unfriendly environment.

That delight in postludes becomes even more clear in Brown’s setting of another Tu Fu poem, By the winding river in which the instrumental post-lied commentary takes up almost half the track. Yet again, you are conscious of the composer’s preference for delivering whole lines on a single note; indeed, there are few requirements of Green to leap about his compass – just a spaced-out common chord or the shift of a 2nd but nothing to disturb the temperate self-questioning of the text which contrasts the universal quest for happiness with the writer’s own sacrifices for the sake of a career. As for the vocabulary, you can detect traces of Delius and Faure but the harmonic structures are simple when set alongside the chromatic slurries of these two formidable masters.

Nothing new arises with the setting of Su Tung P’O’s A walk in the Country. The piano provides a quaver support that stays in the same major key for much of the song while Green follows a (by now) predictable path with plenty of repeated notes and small excursions like the last two lines that involve two notes. The song moves pretty rapidly through the set lines and sets no problems for either executant. Much the same can be noted about the penultimate track, The House by the River (Tu Fu), in which the main interest comes from the initial rising tetrachord figure in Vorster’s part, across which Green sets out another quasi-recitative with few moments of linear curvature; see the last two lines (again) which phase out in a near-monotone before a postlude with one (possibly two) moments of harmonic interest, the merest frissons of change from the predictable.

Finally, Tu Fu’s South Wind involves both singers. Green sings the 8-line text, then Roubos joins him for a repeat, omitting one line for reasons that I can’t quite fathom. Suddenly we are translated to an atmosphere that is packed with Mendelssohnian sweetness, including some melting linear vocal 6ths and a fluent barcarolle-like accompaniment to this rather saccharine Spring scene complete with blossoms and coupling birdlife. It’s an amiable enough song and comes to me straight from the 1840s, making an odd conclusion to this collection that has veered most of the time to modal and pentatonic frugality.

What does all this amount to, once the 13 songs are over? Brown lives up to his claim of writing music in Romantic and Impressionist styles, and his take on Chinese poetry fits in with his chosen vocabularies. But the music is not original, despite some attempts to summon up your Oriental taste-buds. He is content to follow his masters – Mahler, Debussy, Delius – but he isn’t offering much else beyond imitation and faint reflection. As with the two preceding CDs recently issued of Brown’s music, you’ll find nothing to offend and not much to excite – just pleasant music performed with sympathy by under-stretched interpreters.

 

 

 

 

Diary July 2024

cliveoconnell

FEMALE COMPOSER CONCERT

School of Music, University of Queensland

Level 4, Zelman Cowen Building, University of Queensland

Monday July 1 at 6 pm

As usual with events that feature student participants (and initiatives like this one that are student-led), information amounting to specifics is vague, the project well-meant if amorphous. Some names are inevitable – Clara Schumann and Amy Beach, who has recently rocketed to stardom as one of the few American women music writers of any note since the country gained its independence. Others are known but generally not honoured, like Ethel Smyth and Louise Farrenc. Of course, we will explore the Australian repertoire as well, even if the only named writer is Sally Greenaway, while the others number current and rising composers from within the UQ School of Music – which is fair enough although you have to worry about gender-centric occasions like this one where today’s commentators and critics are expected to praise without stint, regardless of quality. As far as I can tell, this event is free but you have to register on the school’s/university’s website.

DIDO AND AENEAS

Opera Queensland/Circa

Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday July 11 at 7: 30 pm

When I first moved to the Gold Coast, I came into the capital to watch the opening night of a collaboration between these two organizations that centred on Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. The Circa troupe has been a notable contributor to the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s entertainments and one of these has been brilliant in mining a link between athleticism and musical performance, but the Gluck exercise failed to convince – basically – that the acrobats/gymnasts were informing the opera. Mind you, I had the same reaction to an effort by director Stephen Page working for the Victoria State Opera and investing his efforts into giving this opera a new Bangarra context. The trouble is a disconnect between what you hear and what you see. Will this be the case for Purcell’s small-scale work? Probably. As with Gluck’s revolutionary masterpiece, the cast for Dido and Aeneas is small: Anna Dowsley sings the Queen of Carthage, Katie Stenzel her handmaiden Belinda, the casual Trojan refugee is Sebastian Maclaine, and the Sailor who gets to lead that wonderful bounding chorus is Lachlann Lawton. No mention of who is handling the supernatural roles – yet. Conducting the hour will be Benjamin Bayl with Yaron Lifschitz from Circa directing and stage designing. For all that, the best reading I’ve heard of this opera came in a concert by ‘Les Arts Florissants’ in Melbourne’s Hamer Hall over 20 years ago: a luminous and unforgettable night. Tickets cost between $65 and $129, with the usual overcharge of $7.20 as a transaction fee.

Further performances will be presented on Saturday July 13 at 1:30 pm, Tuesday July 16 at 6:30 pm, Thursday July 18 at 7:30 pm, Saturday July 20 at 7:30 pm, Tuesday July 23 at 6:30 pm, Thursday July 25 at 7:30 pm, and Saturday July 27 at 1:30 pm.

LEV VLASSENKO PIANO COMPETITION AND FESTIVAL – GRAND FINAL

Conservatorium of Music, Griffith University

Conservatorium Theatre

Saturday July 13 at 6 pm

It strikes me that not many people in the country’s general public outside of Queensland know much about this competition which is one of the major piano events in our music competitive calendar. Slightly longer than the big Sydney marathon, it runs from its first rounds starting in Sydney on Wednesday June 19 to the grand final on this date. There’s room for some stabs at contemporary work but the main fare is solidly traditional; just look at the list of prescribed concertos. More than a little bemusing is the list of finalists which includes some names from previous Vlassenko competitions. Still, unlike Sydney, the Brisbane exercise seems to involve only locals (including, for some strange reason, New Zealanders), and it’s held every two years rather than Sydney’s usual rate of every four years (recently disrupted: thanks again, COVID). Tonight, I assume that it’s concerto night because the Queensland Symphony Orchestra is involved, although the conductor isn’t mentioned. It costs $90 for the right-hand side of the hall, $110 for the left – which makes no sense, but such a distinction never has. Fortunately, this event has managed to escape the bad publicity and overt recriminations that the Sydney event enjoyed in earlier times; probity, thy name is Queensland.

XANADU SKY

Ensemble Offspring

Nickson Room, Zelman Cowen Building, University of Queensland

Thursday July 25 at 1 pm

This group is (on paper) a sextet, founded and headed by percussionist Claire Edwardes. The group is a touring one and this particular program involves three musicians: Edwardes, double bass Benjamin Ward (unlisted in the ensemble’s website but a 15-year-long member of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra), and piano Alex Raineri (without whom no chamber music recital in Brisbane is complete but who isn’t an Offspring member as such). Anyway, the program is impressively eclectic, starting with American writer Caroline Shaw‘s 2012 Gustave Le Gray for solo piano, which takes Chopin’s Op. 17 A minor Mazurka as its kicking-off point. Next is a two-year-old double bass solo by First Nations writer Brenda Gifford called Walimbaya (Return) that was given its Canberra premiere two years ago by Ward. We move to Andrian Pertout‘s Musica Battuta of 2016 which exists in nine versions; possibly this one will most likely be the percussion one as Edwardes is slated to play a solo, and good luck with what promises to be mathematical dynamite. Last and longest will be an Australian premiere: (another American) Sarah Hennies‘ Spectral Malsconcities from 2018 which involves all three of these instrumentalists (Edwardes on 4-piece drum-kit, with appurtenances). This score lasts for about about half an hour and consists of repeated sequences of bars – anywhere from 30 times to 8 – and is a splendid example of superimposed rhythms that don’t settle into anything solid but wear you down by simple aural intrusion. Offspring’s recital is free but you have to register on the University’s website, just as for the ‘Female Composer Concert’ on July 1.

THE CHOIR OF KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

Musica Viva Australia

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday July 25 at 7 pm

Back again for another Musica Viva appearance or nine, this famous choral group is presenting two programs which will be heard only in Sydney. The rest of us – Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane – will not be treated to the Stravinsky Mass or Tallis’ Videte miraculum but will have to make do with Zadok the Priest and Durufle’s Requiem. Also being sung is Bainton’s And I saw a new Heaven which is splendid Anglican affirmation but only brings resentful thoughts to my mind about how Bainton refused to employ Schoenberg at the New South Wales Con where he was director because he was scared of the contemporary, preferring to bore Sydney witless with works by his fellow Brits. Still, he was blinkered enough to have ignored Bartok and Stravinsky as well, evident from his concert programs and puffery for conservative languages, keeping Sydney in the serious music backblocks for decades. As well, we get to hear a new commission in Australian composer Damian Barbeler‘s Charlotte; that’s a compulsory part of both programs for maximum exposure but the positive thing is that the composer is well-known for his multimedia efforts, so there’s a chance that the singers will branch out from their usual style of presentation. But probably not. Daniel Hyde has been the choir’s director since 2019, but is this his first time on an Australian tour? I think it might be. Tickets are currently only available in the rear stalls ($55 to $102) and the balcony ($55 to $130) and I don’t know about any excessive scrounging fee.

A HEAVENLY VIEW

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Bank

Friday July 26 at 7:30 pm

To be frank, I’m almost longing for a performance of the Mahler Symphony No. 4 as the composer wrote it. Over the past few years, we’ve become very familiar with Erwin Stein’s reduction for Schonberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances. On this night, we get to hear Klaus Simon’s re-working of 2007 for the Holst Sinfonietta playing in Freiburg. The woodwind are one each (flute/piccolo, oboe/cor anglais, clarinet/bass clarinet, bassoon), one horn, two percussionists, piano, harmonium or accordion, and a single member of the five string sections, with a maximum allowable of 6-5-4-3-2. This is the composer’s most approachable symphony with a form in each movement that is easy to assimilate, as well as some brilliantly pointillist orchestration, the score ending in a lied: The Heavenly Life, extracted from Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection. Soprano soloist in this will be Alexandra Flood, while the QSO concertmaster, Natsuko Yoshimoto, is directing the work which is scheduled to last for 1 hour 20 minutes without an interval. This last factor takes me by surprise because I’ve not come across an interpretation that can stretch to an hour. Tickets cost $79 for an adult, the usual laughable reduction to $71 for concession card holders, and $35 for students and children. Don’t forget the intrepid QSO overcharge of $7.95 for handling your business.

This program will be repeated on Saturday July 27 at 3 pm.

MASS IN BLUE

The Queensland Choir

Old Museum, Bowen Hills

Saturday July 27 at 7:30 pm

A jazz quartet – piano, sax, bass, drum-kit – appears to be the only backing needed for this program that centres around English composer Will Todd‘s mass written in 2003 and which asks for a soprano soloist as well as your usual SATB choral body. I’ve listened to parts of it and its sound-world is moderately groovy if more than a bit self-conscious, as I’ve found be the case whenever jazz is used as the basis for liturgical music of any kind. The whole business of jazz-in-church also reeks of patronizing your audiences if they’re believers because, to put it mildly, that sound-world isn’t compatible with the transcendent properties of the church’s rituals and ceremonies. Still, it’s worth a try, isn’t it? I’d say no but that’s no reason not to experience this performance which is taking place in a wholly secular environment. As well, the Choir and a pianist and double bass will present George Shearing‘s Songs and Sonnets from Shakespeare, premiered in 1999 and made up of the following: [Come] Live with me and be my love (which I always thought was Marlowe), When daffodils begin to peer from The Winter’s Tale, It was a lover and his lass from As You Like It, When daisies pied and violets blue from Love’s Labours Lost, Who is Silvia? from Two Gentlemen of Verona, Fie on sinful fantasy from The Merry Wives of Windsor, and When that I was and a little tiny boy from Twelfth Night. In other words, no sonnets at all. Tickets range from $20 to $60, but don’t expect much of a reduction for your concession card; they’re available for $55. For all that, there’s no handling fee.

FAREWELL TOUR

David Helfgott

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday July 28 at 2 pm

At the age of 77, this well-loved Australian pianist, given temporary immortality in the 1996 film Shine for which Geoffrey Rush won the Best Actor Academy Award, is leaving the concert-giving platform. I’ve seen Helfgott play two or three times, the first with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 which was given to a packed house and greeted with inordinately ardent applause. But it struck me then that people were reacting to the man rather than his interpretation, admiring him for coping with his condition and actually getting through the concerto, even if the journey was not without exaggerations and distortions. But over the past 50 years or so Helfgott has managed to follow a career of sorts, emerging every so often to show his oddly touching personality and stage mannerisms. The big attraction this afternoon will be the afore-mentioned Rachmaninov concerto in a two-piano arrangement made by the composer in 1910. Helfgott’s partner in this exercise is British pianist Rhodri Clarke – good luck to both, but they actually recorded this work in 2017. Also, the program contains favourite pieces by Chopin (Helfgott’s recorded all the populars like the Raindrop Prelude, Fantasie-Impromptu, A flat Polonaise) and Liszt (could be La Campanella, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Funerailles, Un sospiro, the B minor Sonata). If you want to see a legend (not flawless by any means) for the final time, you can get in for between $69 and $109, plus the add-on of $7.20 imposed by QPAC for inexplicable reasons.