cliveoconnell

Diary May 2024

April 20, 2024April 25, 2024 cliveoconnell

MY HOMELAND

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday May 3 at 7:30 pm

I’ve seen this done once before, in Melbourne, but for the life of me I can’t remember who put that city’s symphony orchestra through the whole cycle. The homeland is that of Smetana, the Bohemian master, who wrote six tone poems depicting various scenes or characters from his country. He starts with Vysehrad, the castle in Prague where the country’s kings had their seat; then Vltava, better known as The Moldau, referring to the river that eventually flows through Prague – the only well-known entity in the cycle and refreshingly picturesque; Sarka comes next, depicting the career of a female warrior with a penchant for killing men; followed by Z ceskych luhu a haju which is usually translated as From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields, gifted with an arresting opening and the only other one of the group that some of us might know; Tabor is fifth, referring to the stronghold of the Hussites which is still thriving; finally, Blanik is a mountain in which King Wenceslas and his knights sleep and will awaken when the country faces its gravest peril. Leading this nationalistic excursion will be Czech conductor Tomas Netopil, so at least you know the performances should be suitably coloured. The QSO’s normal range of full-price tickets falls between $95 and $135, with plenty of fruitful concessions available, but never forgetting the unreasonable $7.20 ‘transaction fee’ or grift.

MATTHEW RIGBY & ALEX RAINERI

FourthWall 2024 Concert Series

540 Queen St., Brisbane

Friday May 3 at 7:30 pm

Part of the ongoing FourthWall series of presentations that have been popping up as the year progresses, this duo recital from violinist Matthew Rigby and pianist Alex Raineri is well-stacked with material. The players open with Beethoven, the Sonata No. 2 in A Major, which is rarely heard compared to the Spring, Kreutzer or the C minor that Brahms is said to have transposed at sight because Remenyi refused to adjust his instrument’s strings for a semitone-flat piano. Then we hear Szymanowski’s solitary Violin Sonata in D minor from 1904 which lasts about as long as the Beethoven. A few touches of Australiana arrive, first in the world premiere of Michael Bakmcev‘s Nocturne; as you can understand, no details are available about this piece anywhere. Another nocturne appears, this one a 1944 miniature by Margaret Sutherland in a deft remembrance of an older native composer. And the duo finishes its entertainment with the Ravel Sonata No. 2 – which is the one we all know and love with its Blues middle movement; yet again, the No. 1 of 1897 is left unexplored. Well, that’s an amiable program, substantial enough to have an interval (you get wine at the break) and the whole thing lasts 90 minutes only. Admission is a straight $35, with a niggling $2.63 booking fee added on by Humanitix.

This program will be repeated on Saturday May 4 at 1 pm.

MOZART REQUIEM

Brisbane Chorale

Old Museum Concert Hall, Bowen Hills

Sunday May 5 at 3 pm

If memory serves correctly, this hall space is a small one; judging by the Chorale’s website, few seats are still available and most of those are at the rear or on the side, well out of the full-blast zone. But prices range from $20 to $60 and, as far as I can tell, there’s no surcharge for taking your money. For this reading, the Chorale is associated with the Brisbane Symphony Orchestra which I hope is rich in trombones to follow those agile choral lines. And some basset horns would go down nicely, as well, particularly for those magnificently evocative opening bars to the Introit. The choir’s regular director, Emily Cox, has charge of proceedings and her soloists are soprano Sarah Crane, alto Beth Allen, tenor Connor Willmore, and bass Shaun Brown. On the assumption that the group will use the Sussmayr completion, the experience should last about an hour, give or take five minutes, Everybody who has suffered through the Amadeus film knows that Mozart stopped at the Lacrimosa and a drop in inspiration that hits at the Offertory is remarkable. But the work ends with a recapitulation of the composer’s earlier material that sends us home slightly purified. It’s a great experience but the best Requiem I ever heard was as part of a real funeral in Austria. Even for free-thinking Mozart, appropriateness was the name of the game.

MOZART’S MASS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Elizabeth St.

Friday May 10 at 7:30 pm

The QSO moves out of the concert hall and studio to help celebrate the 150th anniversary of the city’s Catholic cathedral. Chief conductor Umberto Clerici directs the Mass in C minor; well, what there is of it. Most of the Credo‘s latter verses are missing after the Et incarnatus, and the Agnus Dei has disappeared completely (if it was ever written). Still, the score makes a formidable composition and fleshes out your big Mozart choral experiences after the Requiem of five days previous. The composer asks for two soprano soloists (Sara Macliver and Sofia Troncoso), a tenor (Andrew Goodwin) and a bass (David Greco) as well as a double choir (Brisbane Chamber Choir and St. Stephen’s Cathedral Schola). As a happy prologue to this swelling act comes Lili Boulanger’s 5-minute setting of Psalm 24 (Psaume XXIV) which uses four horns, three trumpets, four trombones, a tuba, harp, organ, and timbales – as well as an SATB choir. The piece lasts about five minutes but all sorts of preconceptions could surge up when the choir breaks into the French composer’s version of Lift up your heads, o ye gates. Seats are going for between $35 and $135, with a bracket-creeping booking fee gouge of $7.95 per order – and this for an event scheduled to last for 1 hour 20 minutes interval-less; obviously lots of scene-changing and altar rearranging will take up the extra time.

This program will be repeated on Saturday May 11 at 1:30 pm and at 7:30 pm.

ESME QUARTET

Musica Viva Australia

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Monday May 13 at 7 pm

This group’s composition presents a puzzle from the start. The original Esmes found each other in 2016 when all members were studying in Cologne. Further, all of them were Korean – and female. At this current point in time, three of them have survived: violins Wonhee Bae and Yuna Ha, and cello Ye-Eun Heo. Jiwon Kim was the original viola, but her place has been taken by a musician with the nationally ambivalent name of Dimitri Murrath (born in Brussels, of course), who also labours under the added distraction of being the ‘wrong’ gender. Still, what can you do but swallow the inevitable incursion of the male? The program that they are presenting begins with Webern’s Langsamer Satz of 1905 that kicks off in C minor and ends in E flat Major, without a trace of the major works in its passage. Continuing this early days strain, we hear Mendelssohn No 2 in A minor from the composer’s 18th year and notable for its Beethoven references. Expanding the Esmes’ horizons comes young Australian (but is the poor fellow still an expatriate academic working in Miami?) Jack Frerer‘s Spiral Sequences from 2018, written when he was 22/3. To end, the ensemble plays the solitary quartet by a 31-year-old Debussy: the night’s only well-known offering. Seats range from $15 to $115, and I can’t find details of any booking fee.

SYMPHONY FANTASTIC

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday May 17 at 7:30 pm

The name just doesn’t ring true, does it? Translated directly from the French, this concert’s title is correct, but stupid, particularly when you consider the modern-day degeneration of the adjective’s meaning. Berlioz was dealing with phantasm more than fantasy, as shown by the final two movements, if nowhere else. Nevertheless, the QSO PR team is possibly hoping to drag in the unsuspecting who, given their attention span, will nod off Trump-style in the Scene aux champs, then come to life for those bracing snarls on the way to the scaffold. The rest of us can just marvel at the brilliance of this work’s scale and orchestration while coping with some scene-setting from actor Robert Hofmann; for one glorious moment, when I saw Hofmann’s name, I thought the program might have included Lelio! Chief conductor Umberto Clerici leads the way through Berlioz’s revelations, preceding which we hear two short works. First comes Saint-Saens’ Danse macabre, followed by Ravel’s Tzigane featuring (for about ten minutes) a visitor, Jozsef Lendvay, who happens to be stopping by for this Hungarian/Gypsy compendium. I assume that the visitor won’t be leading the Danse, which may have its prominent violin solo taken by concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto. Anyway, the orchestra will be enjoying an early interval (after about 17 minutes’ playing) before the symphony in this all-French program which you can hear for between $95 and $135 with various concessions, escorted by the customary $7.20 fee per order (has anybody thought of promoting a Senate inquiry into this unjustifiable variable tax?)

This program will be repeated on Saturday May 18 at 1:30 pm

MAHLER’S SONG OF THE EARTH

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday May 20 at 7 pm

What is on offer here is not the original version of Das Lied von der Erde but a scaled-down orchestration started by Schoenberg and finished by Rainer Riehn 60+ years later. The ACO will present string and wind quintets, three percussionists, piano, celesta and harmonium. Richard Tognetti and his agglomerated forces will accompany mezzo Catherine Carby and tenor Stuart Skelton as they alternate the score’s six components, from Skelton’s Trinklied to Carby’s Abschied. Before the big song-cycle, the ACO performs Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll – wasted flattery on that unpleasant wife but then he himself was not much in the extra-musical personality stakes. The program’s oddity appears in three songs by Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel in world premiere arrangements by David Matthews. commissioned by the ACO. The titles are Laue Sommernacht, Die stille Stadt, and Bei dir ist es traut. – all from a set of five songs published in 1910 and edited by Mahler who, in his post-Freudian analysis phase, changed a prohibitory attitude to his wife’s composing. A little too late, as it turned out. You can hear this program for $59 up to $166 full adult price; concessions are available but don’t forget the usual QPAC add-on of $7.20 booking fee for your aspirational impudence.

LYREBIRD TRIO

Ian Hanger Recital Hall

Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University

Wednesday May 22 at 7:30 pm

The Lyrebird Trio swept the boards during the 2013 Asia Pacific Chamber Music Competition and its members have maintained their partnership during the intervening years, despite violin Glenn Christensen being occupied in a major role with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and cellist Simon Cobcroft playing principal cello with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Only pianist Angela Turner is a determined Brisbane resident, on the staff of the Queensland Conservatorium and the University of Queensland. Of the three works programmed for this recital, Smetana’s Piano Trio of 1855 is the most substantial, weltering in tragedy from its solo violin first bars. The group will also play Josef Suk’s Elegy Op. 23, one of the most earnest of the Czech composer/violinist’s compositions, if a brief one (coming in at about six-and-a-half minutes long). Moving a little east, the Lyrebirds will play a work by Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov, who escaped from his home country in 2022 at the Russian invasion. His Fugitive Visions of Mozart was composed about 17 years ago, so well before Putin’s army forced its way into Silvestrov’s homeland. Your normal ticket costs $22 but pensioner and alumni concessions reduce this amount. I don’t think there’s a booking fee.

BEETHOVEN 7

Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Friday May 24 at 7:30 pm

To take these young players through Beethoven’s A Major Symphony, here comes Johannes Fritzsch, a welcome and familiar face in this city’s serious music world. Commentators talk about this score’s vivacity, its innate energy, then rabbit on about Wagner’s overblown description of it as the Apotheosis of the Dance; ridiculous, especially when considering the even numbered movements. But it’s both exhilarating and exhausting for any band of musicians to reach a reasonably coherent standard of realization, on top of which you need a very committed body of upper strings. Prefacing the concert will be Margaret Sutherland’s Haunted Hills of 1950, a memorial to this country’s first peoples and their despair at an encroaching, unsympathetic colonial civilization. In the centre of this program stands the usual concerto; in this case, Elgar’s masterpiece for cello of 1919, his last completed major work and still towering over its competition because of its strong-minded, often grim despair coupled with emotional warmth. Soloist on this night is Stirling Hall who is a student at the Con, as far as I can tell. Tickets for students are $25, for concessionaires $35, and for adults $45 with no extra fees or charges.

CHORAL SPECTACULAR

Brisbane Chorale, The Queensland Choir, Brisbane Symphony Orchestra

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday May 26 at 3 pm

Part of the 4MBS Festival of Classics, this event doesn’t really have a program – so far. The Chorale’s websites are taken up with performances of Mozart’s Requiem (see above). The Choir mentions some composers’ names that could lead you down the fruitless path of guessing what choruses could be classed as spectacular. For instance, Brahms: part of the German Requiem, maybe? Or some of the motets, lieder or Song of Destiny/Alto Rhapsody (for the males) excerpts? None of it really spectacular. Then there’s Bach, and some of the unaccompanied motets; or the Jauchzet, frohlocket chorus might qualify, this last-mentioned with the potential to knock your sockettes off. Gounod I don’t know much about in the choral sense except the operas (Soldiers’ Chorus); maybe one of the unspectacular masses (St. Cecilia?) could feature, or that endless list of motets. Wagner can be entertaining according to gender (The Flying Dutchman) or he can fake bourgeois jubilation (Lohengrin and Tannhauser). As for Verdi, well, there’s the Anvil or Aida‘s Act 2, and you can always fall back on the trite Va, pensiero. Mozart has the masses and some marvellous motets but it’s all pretty restrained in resources and content (if they’re not the same thing). Also, there will be a soloist in soprano Mirusia, which distracts somewhat from the choral nomenclature. The combined (are they?) choral forces will be conducted by their musical directors: Emily Cox and Kevin Power; of the orchestra’s new conductor, Paul Dean, I can’t find any mention. Tickets are available from $15 to $60, with a booking fee of $1.25 – which is almost reasonable compared to the outrageous extras charged by other organizations/venues.

Fine effort from a new talent

April 11, 2024 cliveoconnell

REUBEN TSANG

Piano+

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Brisbane

Sunday April 7, 2024

Reuben Tsang

This young (20-year-old) pianist comes from Cairns and so has a special connection to Queensland audiences. He is currently finishing a small tour taking in the three eastern mainland states, sponsored by Piano+. This organization runs the Sydney International Piano Competition, in which Tsang participated last year; to some effect as he was the second-youngest entrant to reach semi-final status, and he won the Nancy Weir Best Australian Pianist Prize. His success rate with the 2023 jurors seems to have been with his Romantic era repertoire interpretations, but he showed laudable facility with the Baroque and Classical pieces presented on Sunday afternoon’s program.

Mind you, the most ringing applause from his audience came after his account of Liszt’s Rhapsodie espagnole: a virtuoso’s warhorse that I haven’t heard for many years and, after this encounter, I’m not surprised. The piece offers variants on La Folia and a jota aragonesa but encases both mild tunes in a dazzling carapace of virtuosity that, in these moderate days, tends to generate chortles rather than admiration. Tsang made a brave sound in the opening nine bars, including a measured account of the cadenza, and he gave the Folia a grave statement, keeping fine control right through the splendid polonaise breaks in bars 66, 68, 70 and 73, then later from bar 118 to bar 131 – to my mind, the most inspired moments in these early stages.

The arrival of the jota lightens the atmosphere most effectively and Tsang gave a graceful realization of the third-laden early dissertations on the theme. He might have retained some dynamic force before the sempre animando explosions of bar 446 onward before the armageddon at bar 506. But the rush to a Folia restatement at bar 633 enjoyed brisk handling, even if the climactic arrival proved rather underwhelming; which is to say, I’ve heard it done better. But then, as noted above, you rarely hear it live and, for many of us, the recorded performances (Cziffra!) can be astonishing. The wonder is that Tsang got through it pretty unscathed with only a few palpable hits.

The recital’s other ‘big’ work was Brahms’ Sonata No. 1, which I encountered in student days as a favourite work in the repertoire of Ronald Farren-Price. Unlike the Liszt, this work asks for an imparting of weight or power. I’m not convinced that Tsang has the measure of the work’s first movement and its stentorian declamation, especially on its first page, in the guts of the development, and the harmonically altered recapitulation of the principal theme. You could not fault Tsang’s skill in outlining the composer’s changes in texture and his dynamic subtlety, but the movement failed to capture the composer’s from-the-shoulder heft. Yes, you walk a fine line between majesty and ponderousness but Tsang could improve his treatment of these pages if he took his time over them.

Nevertheless, the executant gave us an exemplary reading of the second movement variations, informed by a light attack in that striking passage of textural contrasts where the time signature moves between 4/16 and 3/16 in the lied‘s last lines. Further, his dynamic actualizations preserved the subdued emotional range of the score where the language is sparsely coloured, rarely rising above a quiet monologue. As Tsang communicated it, the change-ringing on this folksong moved around harmonically but its contours shone through to admirable effect.

This sonata’s scherzo-plus-trio would probably be better orchestrated, I think. As it stands, its pages are active but exhaustingly repetitive, the executant producing wide leaps and clattering groups of six descending quaver double octave chords in a row, to the point where the stepwise ascending Trio melody is warmly welcome. Tsang made a well-controlled creature of this awkwardly imbalanced opposition; his phrase initial leaps proved accurate and his broadly rolling C Major middle section made for some excellent Brahms. Added to which, it seemed to me that, in this movement more than the first, he was exerting more physical strength, infusing these pages with welcome bounce.

As with the scherzo and trio, Brahms’ finale might be better off orchestrated, although then the sforzandi at certain points in the main theme would be diluted in impact. I thought that Tsang took this Allegro con fuoco too rapidly for comfortable delivery so that the abrupt accents that pepper the score came over as something of a smash-and-grab affair, the executant dazzling us with his rapidity rather than making each chord count. Still, what was lost in unbuttoned humour/well-being was compensated for by a nervous energy – which is another way of portraying these pages, if an unexpected one.

As well as this sonata, Tsang also gave us an early Mozart: No 3 in B flat Major. It’s one of this pianist’s favourites – ditto for me. – and he worked through it with an appropriate infusion of elegance. The opening Allegro‘s juxtaposition of elements became one fabric, thanks to a restrained dynamic palette and a clever weaving of separated phrases by an appealing, easy articulation that looked for similarities rather than opposites. As well, both hands enjoyed their moments in the sun but rarely at the expense of each other, e.g. the development opening at bar 41 where the left-hand Alberti demi-semiquavers remained audible rather than reduced to a mushy susurrus.

I’m pretty sure that the repeats in the Andante amoroso were omitted, but then this has always struck me as the weakest of the sonata’s three movements; a touch over-studied, perhaps, and definitely predictable in its later stages. Still, you could say much the same about the concluding Rondo, even if the jaunty prime melody shows us Mozart relishing his own creativity, as in bars 22 to 25 where the bridge work triplets show us simple high spirits; and the following F Major tune starting at bar 28 has its first phrase repeated but minimally altered as the composer delights in his own frivolity. The score is loaded with happy, unaffected wit and Tsang sailed through with few errors.

Still, you could point to a few digital misplacements, as you could in the pianist’s opening bracket of Scarlatti sonatas: D Major K. 119, C Major K 132, and G Major K 427. The first of these, yet another hunting-horn exploiter, did not enjoy any repeats, although such an absence was understandable given the piece’s unusual internal structure. Tsang handled its opening leap-bounds and the later clashing syncopated right-hand chords (bars 61 to 65) with a fresh recitalist’s enthusiasm. I think he secured accurately the cross-hand action near the end of each half. With the C Major (the only one of the three that I knew well), the inward-collapsing arpeggios came off deftly and also the quaver tremolo bars (29, 31, 69, 71) sounded well-calibrated in this nearly symmetrical composition. Once again, I don’t believe Tsang repeated either half.

But he did for the presto G Major; just as well because there’s not much to it. In fact, the attack was probably too brisk for this instrument, even if the mordents in bars 22 to 24 travelled well. Tsang’s speed was reminiscent of Puyana, even if the Colombian harpsichordist hit the notes with much more ferocity in similar sonatas. Here, I believe for the first time, you heard some miscalculations in note delivery. These might have been ignored in much other music, but not with these transparent pieces where the sine qua non is responsible articulation.

Tsang followed his Scarlatti bracket with the large-framed Brahms. After interval, between the Mozart and Liszt, he gave informed accounts of three of Faure’s five Impromptus: No 1 in E flat Major, No 3 in A flat Major, and No 5 in F sharp minor. Here was the recital’s most fluent playing, which showed once again how the composer’s accidental-rich scores sound so equable in confident hands. These interpretations kept to a refined emotional level with no excess evident even in the climactic moments of each. Mind you, the impromptus are rarely performed, compared to Faure’s nocturnes or barcarolles; yet they hold an attraction and facility under the fingers that argue against their neglect, even though the only one I’ve heard live is the A flat Major gem.

It’s not immediately apparent, but Tsang appears to have an empathy with the French composer. Indeed, I would have welcomed a run-through of all the Faure impromptus from him, if the three presented are any indication of his interpretative skill in this regard. And I found it significant that his choice for an encore after the flashy Liszt finale was yet another Faure: the Romance sans paroles No. 3 – a reminder at the end of Tsang’s musicianship, exercised in just the right quarter.

The end of the line

April 6, 2024April 6, 2024 cliveoconnell

A BEETHOVEN ODYSSEY VOLUME 9

James Brawn

MSR Classics MS 1473

So here we are at the grand finale of Brawn’s exposition of the 32 Beethoven sonatas, having left two of the most demanding scores till this climactic point. It’s a late period pairing: No. 28 in A Major (1816), and No. 29 in B flat Major (1818). Both make great demands on executants, the latter Hammerklavier a pianistic high-water mark of concentrated expression and formal skill. While the appearance of this particular A Major work on a recital program is not common, you can wait from one decade to the next to hear a pianist of stature presenting the big B flat score, most musicians happy to follow the usual round of Pathetique (No. 8), Moonlight (No 14), Waldstein (No. 21), and Appassionata (No. 23).

I believe that the last time I heard the Hammerklavier attempted was by Michael Kieran Harvey who participated in one of Stephen McIntyre’s Piano Landmarks days at the then Congregational Church (now St. Michael’s Uniting) in Melbourne’s Collins St. eastern heights. From memory, the first two movements passed along successfully, but then matters became directionless in the lengthy Adagio sostenuto; at all events, Harvey left the platform with the work incomplete. Mind you, he’d done this before when tackling Elliott Carter’s Piano Sonata for the Astra people; he lost his way but returned to finish the monster off. As did Carl Vine with the same work some years later, I seem to recall.

Since that truncated Hammerklavier, I don’t think the work has come my way in live performance; perhaps once. But you can see why, right from the first full bar with its right-hand minor 9th stretch – impossible for those of us with Dupuytren’s contracture without an arpeggiation. And there’s worse to follow in bar 3 with a full Major 9th. The left hand isn’t left unscathed; see bars 193-4. This first movement Allegro is necessarily peppered with these first theme statements in full (or even half) cry, before we even consider the intervening fluctuations in attack and digital negotiation across the pages.

As you’d expect, Brawn has no problems in handling these stretches. Following his customary path, he takes time to give breathing space to phrase changes as the exposition’s setting-out moves past and observes his own dynamic markings in the first outline and again in its repetition; the former straight after the change to G Major across the sequences in bars 47-62, while the latter is observable in the restrained sforzandi (in my Henle edition)) of bars 28-30 (actually, I think they’re ignored). Later, this pianist takes considerable pains to give a focus to the movement’s eccentric development with its taut fugato stretch and focus on cells (e.g. bars 189 to 200), even if the material come across as intractably dogged – which in other readings can result in plenty of hammering.

As shown throughout this odyssey, Brawn has a rare sensitivity to Beethoven’s apparent baldness of statement, pitching his responsiveness to a simple acceptance of the score and handling the work as a product of its time; which is preferable to turning a rhetorical movement such as this one into a hurtling monument to virtuosity and sheer heft. The following scherzo is handled with dispatch, its central motive in occasional danger of blurring the central repeated note/interval/chord that gives the movement its rhythmic interest and urgency. Even the central trio, with its going-nowhere arpeggio statements, passes in a blur before the oddities arrive with a disorienting presto, cadenza, and brief temperamental flurry in bar 113.

The conclusion to these pages with their double octave insistence on near stasis serves to unnerve the listener because, although Brawn conveys lightness and impetuosity in combination, you may be left uncertain as to the intention of the entire movement. Is it meant to be a throwaway bit of badinage with irritated outbursts, or should we prospect for deeper veins of impatience and dissatisfaction? Whatever your finding, Brawn inclines to the mercurial, which comes as a welcome intermission before the sonata’s great challenge. This Adagio is 187 bars long and often strikes me as interminable because, while its shape is apprehensible (eventually), the process of reaching a resolution is hyper-extended. Not that this reading is as wearisome as you can find in other recordings; it’s just that Brawn is ultra-sensitive to Beethoven’s tonality fluctuations and also inserts pauses that may point up phrase shapes but also substitute emotional sympathy for momentum.

Where you can see why the executant pauses before the move to G Major at bar 14, I can’t see why there is a hesitation before the totally anticipatable A Major opening to bar 39. Or the arrival at D Major in bar 53 where a comma breaks up an already inevitable sentence. A little further on, the written note values are treated pretty cavalierly (e.g. bar 62), but the handling of that ornate batch of demi-semiquavers from bar 87 to bar 103 shows a high degree of empathetic responsiveness to some awkward writing. Just as well-placed realizations come at the two points where a main motive is shared between bass and treble (bars 45 to 52, again at bars 130 to 137, with an after-taste at bars 134-138).

Also, as at the work’s opening, you can admire the even accomplishment of those frequent hand stretches (here, of various 10ths) that come across with remarkable facility; the last bars in particular indicative of the interpreter’s mastery of technique and sustained atmosphere. Nevertheless, it’s always a relief to leave these morose pages for the work’s finale which – after some more eccentric fantasia-like interludes – eventually arrives with the Allegro risoluto/yes-very-determined three-part fugue. There’s no way any executant can make this sound orderly and a post-Baroque example of the form; it’s neither. What marks Brawn’s effort is its clarity.

In part this comes from a modest employment of the sustaining pedal, notable right from the opening entries where the aim is linear probity which verges on the percussive. In my book, that’s fine and infinitely preferable to washes of fabric, no matter how imposing the sonorous output produced. What is significant is the way this player continues as he began with a welcome transparence in harmonic conflicts like those chromatic clashes (well, semitonal juxtaposition clashes) that begin with the change of key signature at bar 53). As well, you have to give credit to the deft treatment of Beethoven’s increasingly manic trills that reach their apogee of frequency between bars 235 and 246 before the overwhelming bass one on B flat that lasts between bars 373 and 380.

As a capping stone to this solid sonata, these pages stand as an extraordinary achievement, informed by an unstoppable vehemence and drive which simmers even during the D Major episode across bars 250 to 278. Brawn is able to sustain your involvement through his vivid approach that gives proper value to each line in what can become some of the thickest piano writing produced by this composer. I won’t say it’s not a relief to get to the end – it always is – but Brawn carries you along with a clear mastery of form and a confident delivery that eschews flashiness and pomp for plain-speaking and (God help us) bonhomie.

As for the Op. 101, the interpretation on offer has an attractive honesty, its character well established across the initial Etwas lebhaft – only a bit over a hundred bars of generally peaceful melodic arches with some unforgettably graceful, syncopated chord punctuation. Brawn is handy in implementing the empfindung that Beethoven asks for, but he has a keen eye for finding a phrase’s point – exactly where it should aspire and decline, reserving his heftiest dynamic until the climactic fulcrum at bar 86 before that lean digest of material in the last seven measures.

More formidable problems emerge in the ensuing march where the hand/finger shifts can prove ungainly. But you have to strain to fault the player’s contained impetuosity, which is only slightly decreased in bar 37, a scrap that comes across as hard-won for no apparent reason. Later, the canonic interplay that constitutes the main part of this movement’s trio flows with excellent precision, the lines lucid and carefully mirroring each other. Then Brawn lingers over the brief Langsam, stretching note-lengths liberally to make as much emotional hay as possible across this interlude.

Before he breaks into the sonata’s longest segment, the Geschwinde finale with its generally happy fugue centring the movement, the player has the welcome task of referring us back to the work’s opening phrases: one of the most felicitous of reminiscences in all Beethoven, a delight to encounter. The Allegro‘s enunciation comes across as slightly awkward in some passages with parallel thirds, sixths or fourths in one hand, but much of this conclusion is closely argued by Brawn, particularly in the more complex segments of the fugal development, e.g. bars 149 to 156 and bars 201 to 206. Moreover, the rest is negotiated with the attention to detail that is one of this pianist’s most consistent characteristics, including a finely achieved account of the fugue’s glowering pedal-point conclusion between bars 223 and 227.

These two sonatas provide a fine ending to Brawn’s readings of all the Beethoven sonatas. To my ears, he has given us interpretations of sincerity and security, packed with felicities that argue for a direct confrontation with the composer’s prodigious output. My generation grew up with compendiums by Kempff, Brendel, and Schnabel, encountering later complete sonatas sets from Barenboim, Pollini and Badura-Skoda. These days, pianists I’ve heard, like Fazil Say and Paul Lewis, have produced complete sets; as well, a plethora of performers I’ve not heard (or sometimes not heard of) have put forward their versions. Fortunately, Brawn is a high achiever in this company: if not as intellectually challenging as some more senior names, then just as pianistically gifted and insightful as his contemporaries.

A solid celebration

March 19, 2024 cliveoconnell

SWEET AND LOW

Australian Boys Choral Institute

Wesley Church, Lonsdale St., Melbourne

Sunday March 17, 2024

Nicholas Dinopoulos

Oh to be in Melbourne, now that Easter’s near. One delight of living in the Victorian capital is being bathed in choices where choral music is concerned at this time of year. My sense of nostalgia was heightened when the Institute’s director Nicholas Dinopoulos mentioned, in a throwaway line that the Australian Boys Choir would be taking part in a reading of the St. Matthew Passion next Sunday at Monash University (modestly not indicating that he himself would be singing the Christus role). Will we hear the St. Matthew or the St John Passion on the Gold Coast in the next few weeks? Or anything in Brisbane along the Bachian line? I don’t think so.

It came as an unexpected surprise to realize that, in over four decades of reviewing in Melbourne, I’d been inside Lonsdale Street’s Wesley Church only once and the experience had left absolutely no memory. As a venue for this choral recital, the space proved very comfortable for the singers in transmitting dynamic changes successfully and having just enough resonance not to be intrusive. But it was mainly due to the organizational skills of the ABCI’s backing staff that the program moved forward as steadily as it did, what with the organization’s various bodies and sub-groups entering and exiting with near-seamless facility.

I watched this event thanks to the good graces of that invaluable resource, the Australian Digital Concert Hall, but missed the opening number, Australian writer Dan Walker‘s The Wanderer, thanks to a connection glitch in my machinery. Nonetheless, as ADCH patrons know, you have online access to any event you’ve paid for up to seven days after the initial transmission. Both this opening number and the conclusion – Bob Chilcott‘s The Invention of Printing and The Abolition of Slavery from the cycle Five Days that Changed the World – called upon all the young men and boys enrolled in the Institute’s various bodies. For all that, a major part of this afternoon’s program was taken on by the organization’s senior members, the Vocal Consort.

This is an expert ensemble with a full-bodied sound and an admirable security of pitch; just as well as much of their work was unaccompanied and it was a true test of these 17 singers that you could rarely point to an enunciative flaw. They began with Robert Shaw and Alice Parker’s arrangement for TTBB of the English sea shanty Swansea Town and straightaway produced an attractive combined timbre of high definition with an even dynamic attack. The top tenor descant sounded rather reticent from bar 29 to bar 32 but you had to appreciate the rhythmical drive and the crisp observation of the dotted-quaver-semiquaver patterns in the opening and closing phrases of each stanza.

Barnby’s setting of Tennyson’s touching lullaby gave this recital its title and here the Consort showed its ability in a much less punchy piece with the original SATB setting preserved comfortably and some passages of particularly elegant phrasing, especially the second stanza’s pianissimo opening at bar 19. About now, you became aware of the group’s possession of an excellent top tenor line – ringing and plangent in turn.

You could find the same restrained eloquence in the group’s reading of Kurt Bestor‘s Prayer of the Children, one of the richest I’ve come across in terms of choral timbre. I don’t know who did the arrangement but it proved highly suitable for this choir’s personnel; the versions I’ve come across online have a certain amount of metrical fluency but here you came across some moments of mensural originality, climaxing in a long pause before the final powerful ‘help me’ appeal at bar 40 (in my edition); not to mention the brief Croatian murmured ejaculation starting at bar 45 blending into the sombre resignation of the piece’s last moments – a splendidly accomplished sequence.

This group finished their first half offerings with a deft arrangement, again by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker of Vive l’amour/la compagnie which the program refers to as American traditional. Apparently it’s not a product of the republic but of England. Still, in the best USA puritan tradition, the words in this version were a tad bowdlerized and, from what I can make out, the American university glee clubs have taken it over. I can’t find a performance online that’s as clean-cut or deftly outlined as this one from the Consort (with a one-line interpolated solo from Dinopoulos) which sounded bracing throughout and avoided the off-putting tweeness that other bodies bring to the piece.

Onstage came the Australian Boys Choir – I think; these were the singers who wear the military-looking red jackets, but I think Dinopoulos referred to them as ‘the performing squad’. This group sang Paul Stanhope‘s Losing the Plot, a four-part suite to texts by Michael Leunig: Talking to My Shoe, Underpants anthem, La-La Land, and Lost the Plot. Piano accompanist Zachary Hamilton-Russell was put to gainful employment through this work, too enthusiastic in the first section for comfort although his part was active compared to the vocal lines which tended to be easily overpowered. I caught little comprehensible from the second chorus apart from the opening statement because the young singers were exercised staying in rhythm and on pitch so that little effort was put into projecting the words successfully. A similar fate befell the La-La Land section; the title recurred often, which was a kind of anchor, but the text retained its secrets even though the group sounded more comfortable with these pages.

The finale to Stanhope’s composition is a tango and the singers were quite crisp in their observation of the dance’s accents, their vocal lines sounding lucid for the most part. But I had no idea of their verbal content until I went back and listened to the piece again with the great cartoonist’s whimsical poems at my side. The whole exercise would benefit from a few more rehearsals, it seems to me, with an accent on enunciation.

After interval, the Consort returned with a highly charged version of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s setting of Christina Rossetti brief Summer is gone lament, in an arrangement for TTBB by (I think) John Bateson. This is not as easy as it looks with some none-too-subtle chromatic slides and a dependence on that feature for individuality. These singers made a fair fist of this mild, unsophisticated sample of Victoriana which is a few salons away from the melodic simplicity and appeal of Onaway! Awake, beloved. But there’s about 12 years between the vibrant generation of Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast and this madrigal with a dying fall.

More assertive Britishness came next with the Vaughan WIlliams arrangement for TTBB of the English folksong Bushes and briars. Yet again, the reading was exemplary for its dynamic fluency and solid probity of line. My only doubts came with some of the top tenor line’s high Gs, e.g. in bars 17 and 18, which sounded a few millimetres short of going flat. This was followed by a difficult if dramatic work, Romanian composer Gyorgy Orban’s Daemon irrepit callidus in a TTBB version that gains in menace when compared to the online interpretations involving SATB forces. This work is a neat example of post-Orff rhythmic hammering in Latin; unlike Carmina Burana, it doesn’t last long – not quite cracking two minutes – and these men knew their work and delivered it with high confidence.

Finally, the Consort entered fully into the American collegiate stream with a groovy outing for Van Morrison’s Moondance, complete with doo-wahs and be-bops while the tenors played havoc with the original tune. But the syncopations were spot-on and the production values slick, such as you only get when real musicians bother to exert their skills on easy-listening material. Staying in character, the group then sang an interpolated encore with Julius Dixson and Beverly Ross’s 1958 hit Lollipop, complete with the original’s mouth pop punctuation. This bagatelle fell into the expected USA groove, carried off with ready skill, the whole accomplished without Dinopoulos’ direction.

Finally, the combined forces of the Institute – from the Consort, through the red-jackets up to the large group of primary-school-age tyros – came together for Chilcott’s two choruses, the first of which proved challenging for the youngest performers, probably because of its pace. As with The Wanderer at the recital’s start, it was difficult to decipher the texts, a bit easier to do so in the slower-paced anthem on Lincoln’s declaration abolishing slavery. Nevertheless, this last made a rousing sound, a call to arms over a righteous cause and an elevating conclusion to an impressive demonstration from this now-venerable institution, currently celebrating its 85th birthday.

Diary April 2024

March 10, 2024March 10, 2024 cliveoconnell

EASTER CONCERT

The Queensland Choir

St. Stephen’s Cathedral, 249 Elizabeth St.

Friday April 5 at 7:30 pm

To observe the liturgical season, this choir has chosen two formidable works. First up comes Bach’s Christ lag in Todes Banden cantata, one of the earliest in the catalogue and a splendid instance of the composer’s emotional compression, the whole seven movements being in E minor and the choral lines direct and focused. Then we get to enjoy a true rarity: Beethoven’s oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, in which the composer and librettist proposed the idea of Christ as Man more than God, with a lot of emphasis on letting the chalice pass, as outlined in the Passion parts of the Gospels. I don’t know this work at all; wasn’t even tempted to listen to it as a curiosity in those halcyon days when most of Beethoven was a well-thumbed book. Full marks to the Choir for working through it. The three soloists are soprano Leanne Kenneally as an angel, tenor Sebastian Maclaine singing the title role, and bass Leon Warnock playing Peter. Kevin Power conducts the choral forces and the Sinfonia of St. Andrew’s. Tickets fall between $20 for a child or full-time student and $65 for an adult full price. You also have to stump up $1.25 that falls under the generic heading of ‘fees and charges’; this is a reasonably piddling amount but you still have to ask: for what?

HOPELESSLY DEVOTED: A CELEBRATION OF OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday April 6 at 1:30 pm

The country has spoken and Newton-John has been elevated to the status of national saint, mainly because of her work for cancer research rather than for her contributions to music and singing. Helping this popular canonization was her relatively early death, relative to many another senior citizen as she passed away aged 73 in 2022. I can’t explain why this tribute has been so long in the making but here it is with the QSO conducted by energetic young arranger/composer Nicholas Buc. Hosting the evening will be Courtenay Act (Shane Jenek) who has well-established pop credentials and seems to turn up when you most expect it on ABC TV or at public events that favour drag artists – which is just about everything in this country. Patrons will hear 22 numbers from the Newton-John catalogue, some of them familiar even to a distant observer like me: I Honestly Love You. the night’s title number, and Physical. Re-creating the singer’s sound – or not – will be David Campbell, Jess Hitchcock, Georgina Hopson and Christie Whelan Browne, all of whom will share in the programmatic spoils, maybe even splitting some of them in various combinations. Tickets can be obtained for $95, $115, or $135 full price; concessions are available and the usual QSO transaction fee of $7.20 applies, regardless of the concession you claim.

This program will be repeated at 7: 30 pm

FOR THE LOVE OF MUSIC

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday April 8 at 7 pm

It’s difficult to determine the provenance of this event. It is absent from the ACO’s own brochure for this year, so I suspect the origin is the ABC which here presents two of its journalist stars in a 90-minute chat punctuated by music. The speakers/conversationalists are Leigh Sales and Annabel Crabb who will be interviewing members of the orchestra, asking them a battery of searching questions about matters that have little to do with aesthetics and everything to do with personal revelations and gossip. I’ve come across similar ventures some decades ago when Mairi Nicholson and Emma Ayres put on a duo act in front of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra which was meant to entertain with its wit but quickly turned into excruciating silliness. Apparently, the Sales-Crabb combo has presented a previous incarnation of this gabfest, and the two journalists have attested to their enjoyment of the experience: hence, its repetition. Sketchy details only have come through of what Richard Tognetti and his musicians will perform: Tchaikovsky’s Andante cantabile from the String Quartet No. 1 in an arrangement for cello and strings, presumably fronted by principal Timo-Veikko Valve; a suite from Sufjan Stevens‘ Enjoy Your Rabbit 2001 album, reworked by Michael Atkinson (among others) for the Osso String Quartet as Run Rabbit Run. The only other prescribed work is Piazzolla’s wretched Libertango which revisits an ACO phase when accordionist James Crabb collaborated with members of the ensemble in a swatch of the Argentinian composer’s monocular output. Tickets can be purchased for $49, $89, $109, and $129 full price with some concessions available, and the usual $7.20 QPAC impost applies to whatever you choose.

JURIS ZVIKOVS AND SANITA GLAZENBURGA

University of Queensland School of Music

Nickson Room, Zelman Cowen Building, St. Lucia

Thursday April 11 at 1 pm

Little escapes this institution’s musical walls, and you have to look hard to find out what the faculty is offering the public within its own grounds. Most of the time, the recitals/concerts on offer can be visited on a livestream website, so you don’t have to trek out to St. Lucia for your experience. This coupling is Latvian in origin; duo pianists with ‘a penchant for adventurous collaboration’, they find material in contemporary fields (naturally) and the Baroque (do they indeed?). Surprisingly enough, the university’s website has no details about what Zvikovs and Glazenburga will play in this hour-long recital; I can’t even find any details about CDs that the pair may have generated. You would have thought something on disc might have come from the collaboration which has apparently lasted over two decades. Still, the great thing about these events is that they’re free. You have to register if you’re attending in person, but no such requirement is needed if you’re content to watch/hear the livestream.

TRIUMPHANT TCHAIKOVSKY

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday April 12 at 11:30 am

No soloist at this event, unless you count the conductor. Andrew Gourlay is a young (well, early 40s: nobody seems to know his birth date – a retiring celebrity, then) British musician who has been around the English, European, American and Australian traps for some years since winning the 2010 Cadaques Orchestra International Conducting Competition. He has enjoyed a solid relationship with the Britten Sinfonia, which might explain his first offering on this program: the 1940 Sinfonia da Requiem, written for a Japanese government commission and rejected by that country’s official voices because of its Latin movement titles and its sombre mood, although God knows they had need of it in the following five years. The composer’s longest purely orchestral composition, it is rarely heard here; you can trace familiar prefigurations in it of much from Peter Grimes to the War Requiem. As a companion to this comes the Symphony No. 5 by Tchaikovsky which is an audience favourite and rightly so: packed to the gills with brilliant melodies, concentrated in its dramatic framework, directly orchestrated with a splendid sense of showmanship. But nothing gets to me quite as much as the bar 128 D Major woodwind tune in the finale, cutting through the portentous grit and grime with dazzling simplicity. There are few tickets available online for this matinee, but the range is from $76 to $135 with the usual concessions and, yet again that invidious $7.20 booking fee.

This program will be repeated on Saturday April 13 at 7:30 pm.

THE TROUT

Ensemble Q

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday April 14 at 3 pm

No problem with guessing the main event at this particular event. The ensemble will present five quintets, climaxing with the great Schubert construct which features a double bass (Phoebe Russell?) in the string quartet combination alongside that treble-happy piano part (Daniel de Borah, maybe). Before this reading, we get to hear Reicha’s buoyant Variations for bassoon and string quartet (seven of them with a framing introduction and coda), presumably featuring David Mitchell from the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Then comes everyone’s favourite newly discovered female American composer, Amy Beach, and her Theme and variations for flute and string quartet (only six in this composition) of 1916; the focus line will probably be played by Alison Mitchell, QSO principal. We nod to national spirit with Lachlan Skipworth‘s concise Clarinet Quintet of 2016 (featuring Ensemble foundation guru Paul Dean, I’d guess) before Glazunov’s Idyll which I can’t trace. There’s a work by that name for solo piano and YouTube has a performance of a completely different composition for horn and string quartet, as well as another video which brings in a flute as well. This afternoon. we’re promised a horn – probably Q regular Peter Luff, formerly from the QSO – and the accompaniment will almost certainly be a string quartet, following the program’s pattern. Anyway, things wind up with the happy, long Schubert masterpiece. For this ‘intimate’ recital, the Concert Hall is restricted to only a few rows front and back of the stage and tickets are $75 with a $55 for concession holders, accompanied by the usual $7.20 surcharge which is rich as it constitutes nearly 10% of a full ticket and more than 8% of a concession admission.

LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR

Opera Queensland

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday April 20 at 7 pm

As you can tell from the venue, this is not a fully staged presentation of Donizetti’s most popular opera; well, popular in this country, thanks to the epoch-making performances of Joan Sutherland starting in 1959. What we have is a concert presentation, directed by Patrick Nolan. Not that you’re missing much by way of scenery which only takes on importance when the heroine emerges from her mariticidal bedroom for the opera’s stupendous climax. The Queensland Symphony Orchestra and the company’s chorus will be under the control of Richard Mills, who must be the country’s most experienced opera conductor left standing. Jessica Pratt sings Lucia and will doubtless do credit to the role. I heard her sing the part in Opera Victoria’s 2016 presentation at Her Majesty’s Theatre, also conducted by Mills. On that night, she was a bright light in a vocally penumbral space. As was the case eight years ago, she’s partnered by Carlos E. Barcenas as Edgardo, along with Sam Dundas (Enrico), David Parkin (Raimondo), Virgilio Marino (Arturo), Hayley Sugars (Alisa) and Iain Henderson (Normanno . . . or will it be Rosario La Spina, as some of the advertising states?). You can expect a finely honed night’s singing, thanks to the absence of theatrical distractions, although costumes by Karen Cochet and Bianca Bulley are threatened. Admission ranges from $75 to $149 with concessions available, starting from $65 for a child. It doesn’t matter: every order attracts the usual QPAC $7.20 fee/penalty. Also, this enterprise comes under the Brisbane Bel Canto umbrella, a company that promises ‘a new festival for the Brisbane stage.’

This performance will be repeated on Saturday April 27 at 2 pm.

DANIEL DE BORAH IN RECITAL

Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University

Ian Hanger Recital Hall

Friday April 26 at 6 pm

This pianist is Head of Chamber Music at Queensland Con and has managed to elevate himself above the ruck of Australian pianists by being exemplary in his work, particularly on the few occasions I’ve heard him in live performance. This recital forms part of the university’s piano series and, as usual, you labour in vain to find out exactly what de Borah will present. All you find on the man’s own website is ‘Program: TBC’. In the interests of sanity, you’d probably take that as “To Be Confirmed’, rather than the cryptic title of some contemporary score. Oddly enough, this appears to be the only solo recital that de Borah is mounting this year; the rest of his activities involve other groups, like Ensemble Q (see above) or colleague duettists. Mind you, his online diary does contain information that was lacking from the Ensemble’s program: the identity of the string quartet personnel in the April 14 program: violins Sophie Rowell and Anne Horton, viola Christopher Moore, cello Trish Dean. Tickets are $22, with a concession price available of $17; not bad for 90 minutes’ worth of music-making – and no handling charge!

ROSSINI STABAT MATER

Queensland Conservatorium Orchestra and Chorus

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Friday April 26 at 7:30 pm

Straight after Daniel de Borah’s recital (see above), the Conservatorium is presenting this major sacred work by the great Italian opera master. As you’d expect, this setting of the medieval hymn has all the bells and whistles that made the revival of Gregorian chant in the last century so welcome: double woodwind, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings, with four vocal soloists and an SATB choir that is hardly exercised until the last two numbers – actually, the last one would be more accurate. Executants find several hurdles along the way, none of them over-taxing but the work relies on operatic overstatement – just like Verdi’s Requiem – and a flexible approach to phrasing and metre. Richard Mills, in the middle of conducting two nights of Lucia for Opera Queensland, is to direct the Queensland Conservatorium Orchestra and a choir of sixty vocal students, all fronted by an as-yet-unknown quartet of soloists who will be put through their paces cruelly in two numbers that have no orchestral support. As well, the tenor will enjoy expounding the well-known, bracing Cujus animam solo early in the work’s progress. By the way, I don’t think this venue is sufficiently resonant for such a drama-laden composition, but you can’t have everything – not even a convenient local church, apparently. Top ticket price is $65 but concessions are available. Best of all, you don’t have to countenance a booking fee.

He’s really not that hard

February 25, 2024February 26, 2024 cliveoconnell

UMBERTO’S MAHLER

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centrre

Saturday February 24, 2024

Umberto Clerici

I was fully intending to go to this matinee performance, if only for the purposes of re-acquainting myself physically with the QSO personnel and character after many years of absence. But a bout of COVID (my first) interfered with these optimistic plans and, if you’re getting on for senior status, you move into any public space with caution. So, thanks to the Australian Digital Concert Hall, which broadcast the second of two Mahler 7 readings on offer, I managed to get through the experience in extreme comfort; more so than taking the trip into the capital and negotiating the architectural brutalism that houses many of this orchestra’s events.

Last year, Umberto Clerici directed his musicians in the Mahler Symphony No. 6 and seemed to think that its successor presented listeners with a more substantial challenge. Well, it could be so if your diet is Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven; but the joy connected with this composer is that intellectual depth is not his forte. If you like, you can take in all of the symphonies as instrumental (sometimes vocal) feasts and not worry about anything else; looking for the eternal verities is as useless an exercise as it is when engaging with Strauss’s more pretentious tone-poems.

There was a time, as many of us remember, when a Mahler symphony meant a packed house; not just for the first and second or the fourth, but even big, purely orchestral frameworks like this No. 7. Such a phenomenon was in part due to the rarity of live performances, the composer not yet reaching the status of programmatic cliche and his scores still hefty struggles for even the best local players. The recent Maestro film culminates in an Ely Cathedral display of Bernstein/Bradley Cooper conducting the Mahler Resurrection No. 2 finale with massive freneticism from the podium, no matter what was happening around it. And there’s no doubt that a finely calculated interpretation of the complete score can rivet your attention like little other music – from start to end.

Mind you, this delight at experiencing live experience arose in me because a performance of any of these symphonies came like a bolt from the blue; even Iwaki’s early reading of No. 2 was a one-off revelation in 1970s Melbourne, Still, such a work’s sheen has worn after the complete Mahler cycles in that city of Markus Stenz (he presented it twice during his reign, I think) and Sir Andrew Davis (almost a complete cycle), not to mention Simone Young’s recent over-hyped production to celebrate the re-opening of the Sydney Opera House’s concert hall. The work might even have come to take the place of Beethoven’s 9th as far as a musical motif for popular celebrations, if it weren’t for the long build-up to the choral finale; not to mention the descent into textual incoherence after the composer has finished with Klopstock.

On this afternoon, seven-and-a-half minutes after the starting time, one of the double basses, Justin Bullock, took a microphone in hand and gave us an amiable welcome full of pretty gauche, if well-intentioned matter. Mind you, he did provide some information that I couldn’t find in the program: the names of the guitarist (Jeremy Stafford) and mandolinist (Joel Woods). Thanks a lot, but I’m still in the dark about the second harpist, the fourth trumpet, some of the horns, and other supernumeraries like the extra double bass and some percussionists. Not to tell the QSO its business but these people deserve printed recognition, and space should be found for them in program notes, especially when a page is wasted on a guide for the young! Which parent or school would be misguided enough to expect a pre-adolescent to sit through this mammoth composition?

Then we had a general tuning 12 minutes in, before Clerici arrived and also gave us the benefit of his insights. Much of this struck me as a preparation for mystification, as though Mahler is still a musical wizard yet hard to fathom. From the first, I’ve found it hard to go along with this concept of ‘difficult’ Mahler: hard to listen to, hard to interpret, problem-laden all the way. Suffice to say that in my view these symphonies are dream-jobs for conductors. You have to marshal your forces and exercise a degree of dynamic balance, but they can play themselves (as evident from Gilbert Kaplan’s readings of the Symphony No. 2 worldwide). Further, I’d suggest that interpretation is largely inbuilt, thanks to the composer’s specificity of scoring. Especially in this Symphony No. 7, Mahler’s detailed directions make it easy for an observant musician to achieve a result, the only variables dependent on the individual or group timbres of the orchestra, e.g. the quadruple/quintuple woodwind choirs.

At all events, I found it difficult to swallow Clerici’s populist description of Mahler’s music in this work as ‘mad’ or ‘cuckoo’. Such epithets might have struck sympathy with the Berlin, Liege and Viennese audiences at the symphony’s first performances, but come on: these took place about 125 years ago and even Brisbane has moved a long way forward since, to the extent that local listeners don’t have to be patronised with such simplistic characterizations. Even at his most frantic, Mahler is in complete command of what he is expressing and how he does so. The only dislodgement of sensibilities comes with his change of atmosphere, at which he is a master (if occasionally long-winded).

Anyway, we enjoyed our first downbeat on the Langsam-Allegro about 20 minutes after the scheduled start. Those opening tattoos impressed for their congruity but by bar 14’s climax the combined effort seemed lethargic, as though the musicians were recovering energy from the previous night’s run-through of the work. Matters improved by bar 19’s Etwas weniger langsam which is a less compelling point in the narrative but here impressed for its decisiveness. Further down the track, the upper strings lacked crispness at their multi-stopped chords in bar 58 and beyond; but you could be taken aback by their dynamic discipline when sweeping their way through the diaeresis at bar 128.

At about this point, it struck me (slow off the mark, as usual) that the violin groups were underpowered. You could see the players following their scores, headed with enthusiasm by concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto, but few of them were as involved in the task or, for that matter, putting themselves and their instruments under a similar pressure as exercised by their leader. Time and again, the powerful climaxes lacked sufficient bite so that points like the fortissimo to piano leap at bars 248 to 249 were over-reliant for their incisiveness on the piccolo+flutes doubling. By contrast, the brass choir proved to be well on top of their demands, solo or collegial, with no obvious broken notes.

But the reading was occasionally marred by obvious discrepancies, like a late flute entry at bar 305; actually, more of a miscalculation than an error here. Which you have to balance against the excellent collapse into gloom at the Adagio resumption of bar 338. But then you can’t ignore the weak string output at a wrenching point like the Fliessend of bar 499 with a solid clarinet reinforcement. And so it continued through this lengthy first movement with moments of accomplishment weighted against sudden lapses in either technique or individual insight.

The first Nachtmusik surged into flight with a splendid collapse across bars 28-9 that presented as deftly accomplished, as did some character-filled playing from contrabassoon and basses at bar 48’s Nicht eilen, from which point we were immersed in a real Mahler sound-world for some time with a satisfying weighting of activity, thanks to Clerici’s management. Later, I was very taken with the jubilant return to Nachtwacht-land at bars 222-3 and eventually satiated by the composer’s Come-to-the-cookhouse-door calls (reminiscent of the Symphony No. 1) emerging into prominence at bar 245 from the trumpets and haunting the landscape from that point on. Impressive also was the bassoon ensemble’s coherence a little after the Sehr gemessen of bar 295. Finally, one of the few woodwind problems I came across in these pages was a note-swallow from the clarinet at bar 228.

Proceeding to the mid-point Scherzo, the QSO’s attack sounded secure enough from all quarters, the strings getting the macabre waltz under way successfully, with only a passing blip of intonational unhappiness at the Straussian leaps across bars 68-72 to distract from a cogent bout of playing. Still, the Trio presented as a lucid delight, only the pesante chords at bar 243 momentarily off-kilter.

As if to disprove the complaint and reservation I had/made about the lack of body in the upper strings, the second Nachtmusik was enriched by a persuasive generosity of timbre from the first violins at bars 27-8 and on to bar 35. Both guitar and mandolin continued audible across this movement’s admittedly placid expanse, but their colours had been deftly inserted by this master who reached his pointillist apogee in Das Lied von der Erde four years after this symphony. The exposed oboe and harp at bar 256 proved slightly discrepant but the movement’s conclusion from about bar 372 was irresistible in its restraint: the ideal aural realization of a disappointed serenade.

I have to confess that, a little way into the Rondo-Finale, the score was set aside, chiefly because of previous experience where you can either get increasingly frustrated and angry, or you can simply bob along with the flow. Of course, there are moments that are a sheer delight, like the Elgarian swagger that kicks off in bar 23, while certain interludes weave an optimism-generating magic away from the tuckets and the trumpets. But this large canvas works as a patchy construct where Mahler achieves a sort of musical coitus interruptus, leading you on and then letting you down – or, if you like, taking you into sudden oases that are a break from tension but essentially enervating.

Perhaps the players were relieved to be on the home stretch; certainly, the enthusiasm with which they weltered out climactic points like bars 193-6 proved remarkable, especially as they were in the middle of this composer’s push-me-pull-you complex of jollification. Of course, the great advantage of holding fire and delaying the final crunch is that you heighten the general relief that breaks out after the final Drangend six bars.

As I’ve observed before, Mahler symphonies’ audiences tend to break out into standing ovations after the last bar. This could be due either to heartfelt enthusiasm for a great composer, or as a salute to the performers’ stamina. Or it might be just a general desire to get up after 90-to-100 minutes of sitting down. Whatever the case, people in the front stalls of the Concert Hall were obviously enthusiastic after Clerici’s final downbeat and the acclaim persisted long enough for the conductor to acknowledge plenty of individuals and groups among his forces. To be sure, the interpretation was on-and-off gripping, sometimes powerfully pointed. That it maintained your attention throughout was a creditable achievement. Yet, as an entity, the work remained on a competent level, rather than an exercise that moved the spirit.

But it did reinforce the point that I made earlier about Mahler’s approachability. You are faced here by a music of great power and a startlingly honest emotional range, if not depth. The composer’s personality is immediately perceptible and approachable and nothing he writes stands in the way of comprehension or is couched in obscurity; that came later, through his Second Viennese School admirers. If you have even a basic knowledge of the progress of 20th century serious music, Mahler is an open book who stands in no need of simplifications or exaggerations.

Admirable intentions, but . . .

February 15, 2024February 15, 2024 cliveoconnell

RIVER

Australian Chamber Orchestra

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.

Diary March 2024

February 10, 2024 cliveoconnell

MOZART’S JUPITER

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Friday March 1 at 7:30 pm

This is the first of a pair of concerts, sharing one constituent only in the last Mozart symphony. Great to see this work serving as a program fulcrum, even if questions, doubts and disappointments arise whenever you hear it live. Tonight (and tomorrow) Umberto Clerici directs his players in this magnificent tribute to musical conservatism, and I estimate that the whole exercise will be fine up to the finale. At about bar 53, the texture will thicken as the whole crowd forces the forte into something more power-driven as the brass push their whole-bar chords forward and the strings are made to feel line-heavy: I must urge out to make my mark. Worse follows, of course, as the polyphony strengthens, so that the essential strophes of light fade into weighty timbral output. Sorry, but I’ve heard it from too many eminent bodies and conductors who become engrossed in the skill rather than the composer’s vivacity. Pianist Andrea Lam begins the night with Beethoven’s Op. 27 No. 2, which is then followed by the same composer’s Moonlight Sonata, but only the first movement. This presents a bit of a problem because the Op. 27 No. 2 is the Moonlight; so Lam plays the whole sonata and then repeats the Adagio sostentuto? Whatever she does, the follow-up will be Kurtag‘s . . . quasi una fantasia . . . for piano and orchestral groups. Why, you ask? Maybe because Beethoven’s sonata was marked Quasi una fantasia and some happy spirit decided to juxtapose the well-known with a wispy piece of post-Webern touch-me-not. Further adding to a listener’s experience comes Mark-Anthony Turnage‘s Set To for brass dectet; another problem here is that I’ve not seen a score but the performances you can see online all have 11 players. There will be an interval, although the Kurtag and Turnage works are brief. Full-price tickets go from $95 to $135; I can’t see any concessions but you can print out your tickets for free and there are np signs of the usual handling-fee extortion.

MOZART’S JUPITER

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Saturday March 2 at 7:30 pm

So here we are, enjoying the same Mozart in C Major: the best output the poor fellow could manage at the time, given his home-life and monetary circumstances. We’re the winners. Take the Symphony No. 41 as a supreme gift; there’s not much of such substance in the whole late Classical to cling to as a comparable pinnacle. Or am I being too soft? Perhaps it’s coloured by an aversion to the nickname which is ridiculously inappropriate, considering both the god and the work’s content as a matched pair. At all events, Clerici and his band have another chance to achieve something passable. Prior to this, Andrea Lam fronts the Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor which is a traditionalist’s delight these days, even if the concluding vivace enjoys a good many weltering modulations without changing the music’s tenor. As makeweight overture-substitute, we’re to hear Takemitsu’s Rain Tree - or are we? The original 1981 work was written for three percussionists; a year later came Rain Tree Sketch I for solo piano. Ten years later, Takemitsu wrote an in memoriam for Messiaen, which is Rain Tree Sketch II, also for piano. Given Lam’s activity in the alternate program, I suspect that patrons are likely to hear her in one of these Sketches. Ticket prices are the same as for last night’s event; forget that nonsense about it always being cheaper to attend the matinee.

DIVINE ALCHEMY

Southern Cross Soloists

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday March 3 at 3 pm

I don’t understand these Soloists’ concerts; there’s too much, it’s all programatically fractured, and the forces required to carry off the programs boggle the unprepared mind. The afternoon ends with Konstantin Shamray as soloist in Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto K. 491, for which the support required is the biggest that Mozart wanted for any of his works in this genre: flute, pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, along with the usual string group. A little before this, more Mozart comes with the Kyrie and Lacrimosa from the Requiem: pairs of basset horns, bassoons and trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, strings and organ. Fortunately, neither of these excerpts requires soloists – only an SATB choir. Then you have to put these alongside Debussy’s Violin Sonata - but in a new chamber transcription. Why? What’s wrong with having Shamray accompany guest-colleague violinist Amalia Hall? The program opens with Bach’s G minor Oboe Concerto which only asks for strings to back the soloist (artistic director Tania Frazer?). We experience the Australian premiere of Elegie by Thibaut Vuillermet, which features Hall’s solo line and a string (I think) orchestral accompaniment to its Bloch-like sentimentality. Then, to cap it all, the Soloists’ Didgeridoo Commissioning Project comes to the fore with a freshly minted composition, The Wise Woman, by Sean O’Boyle and the organization’s fountainhead for these pieces, didgeridoo expert Chris Williams. You can get in for $88, with the QPAC booking charge of $7.20 to spoil the experience.

ALEX RAINERI: SPEECHLESS

Opera Queensland

Opera Queensland Studio, 140 Grey St. South Brisbane

Friday March 8 at 7 pm

Brisbane’s most active music personality, Raineri will present an hour-long program for the state’s opera company which will probably involve transcriptions of operas in the best 19th century tradition. Well, when I say ‘transcriptions’, I really mean fantasias on themes from certain operas. It’s fair to say that Liszt is the most well-known originator of these works, what with his thematic elaborations of Norma, Lucia, La Juive, Les Huguenots, Don Juan, Rigoletto, and a welter of Wagner. Raineri is due to play re-visitings of Verdi, Wagner and Mozart. He’s also scheduled to give us some Richard Strauss, and he has certainly performed the Dance of the Seven Veils and its consequents from Salome in what I vaguely remember was his own transcription. But there’s also Puccini in the list of offerings and here we enter a land that I don’t know at all. Of course, Raineri may play his own fantasias, reminiscences or musical tours of Turandot or Tosca but I believe that today’s practice is simply to isolate a piece and elaborate it in the best Lisztian manner. God knows there’s plenty to choose from, like O mio babbino caro, Un bel di, or O soave fanciulla. Still, it’s a healthy employment of this pianist’s considerable gifts. Entry costs between $59 and $65 and I can’t trace a booking fee.

This program will be repeated on Saturday March 9 at 2 pm.

OPERA GALA

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday March 8 at 7:30 pm

Yes, it’s a night of opera but it’s confined to one composer: Puccini. We have no indication as to which specific arias or duets will be essayed (bar one), but educated guesses indicate some possibilities. Tonight’s conductor will be Giordano Bellincampi, a notable figure in Danish opera houses and currently music director of the Auckland Philharmonia. He’s in charge of the QSO’s efforts supporting soprano Sae-Kyung Rim, tenor Kang Wang, and baritone Phillip Rhodes, with the Voices of Birralee working through some choruses. There’s Tosca, where Wang has two big arias, Rim will probably work at Vissi d’arte, and even Rhodes could give us Va, Tosca! We have La Boheme (which the QSO puff-writers seem to think is set in 1930s Bohemia) and here the soprano and tenor have all of Act 1’s second half at their disposal, or Rim could take on Musetta’s Act 2 delight. Madama Butterfly isn’t only Un bel di; we might also get the Act 1 duet Viene la sera, or the Humming Chorus, or possibly those sweeping final pages as Butterfly says goodbye to her child. In the best of worlds, the organizers could offer us that wrenching scene between Butterfly and Sharpless in Act 2. As far as Manon Lescaut is concerned, nobody knows much beyond Sola, perduta, abbandonata and Donna non vidi mai; perhaps patrons will be offered that final tragic duet, Fra le tue braccia, amore. The solitary program certainty is Wang in Nessun dorma: the only excerpt from Turandot, which also holds two glorious soprano arias and a wealth of chorus work. Tickets are at their lowest for a child ($35) and move to top adult of $150, with the inevitable $7.20 surcharge.

This event will be repeated on Saturday March 9 at 1:30 pm

CASINO ROYALE IN CONCERT

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre

Friday March 15 at 7:30 pm

Are people that enamoured of Daniel Craig’s attempts to play James Bond that they’ll come out to see his first film in the role, even if he does his best to give us a male Ursula Andress at the opening? Perhaps I’m out of touch with the Fleming-conscious zeitgeist but I doubt if the new characterization’s sulky somnolence would drag me out on a humid Friday night. What makes the experience even more questionable is the ridiculous storyline that deviates monstrously from the author’s original novel, right up to that cataclysmic Venetian conclusion. Anyway, you could go along ‘for the music’ which was assembled by David Arnold and formed part of his considerable Bond oeuvre. Fair enough, although John Barry had the best lines in that branch of the film composer’s art, identificatory tropes that his successors have recycled over and over. The exercise recalls nothing as much as the current Nemesis betrayals occurring on ABC TV; you’re getting nothing new after the first half-hour. Tonight’s conductor is Vanessa Scammell, an aficionado of these sound-track efforts across the country. Entry rates range from $79 to $135 with Ticketek’s service fee of $7.40 added to every order; that’s even more than QPAC and I thought that rip-off was over the top. Oh, the event runs for 2 hours and 35 minutes with an interval interpolated which will last only 11 minutes as the film itself takes 144 minutes.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre

Saturday March 16 at 1:30 pm

A day after its 007 excursion, the QSO hops back onto the Potter bandwagon with this live soundtrack concert playing under the film. To demonstrate the relative popularities of the two exercises, this one involves a second performance for more mature (are there any?) Potter fans in the evening. By this stage in the epic, the films have turned to an overall grey-to-black colour palette and – as with the Bond films – the soundtrack elements that remain present like a second language are those already familiar; in this instance, from John Williams’ scores for the first three of the series. Of Alexandre Desplat‘s new music and themes for the last two films, nothing comes surging out of my memory. Mind you, I haven’t watched The Deathly Hallows for some years; I’ve been particularly ignoring the first one because the death of Dobby makes me laugh inordinately and that tends to upset the grandchildren. Vanessa Scammell is back to lead the QSO through these same-day readings; fine, but I could have sworn that Desplat’s score involved a chorus. Tickets cost the same as for the Bond film above, but there’s something odd about the timing – again. The original lasts for 146 minutes; this concert’s two parts (either side of a 20-minute interval, run for a combined 139 minutes. Don’t tell me: the Potterverse has been censored to fit in with Queensland’s prevailing cultural ethos. Egad, we could be in Florida.

This concert/film will be repeated at 7:30 pm

AYESHA GOUGH IN RECITAL

Griffith University Queensland Conservatorium

Ian Hanger Recital Hall

Thursday March 21 at 7:30 pm

As the city’s music-conscious universities lurch into gear, this event struck me as one of the few interesting exercises on the Griffith calendar. I haven’t heard Gough live, even though she has been a feature of Brisbane’s musical life for some years. But she has skin in the game, having won the 2015 Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition, and she carried off the Michael Kieran Harvey Scholarship in 2022. Tonight, her program is an individualistic wander around the repertoire, involving works by Mozart, Chopin and Liszt to satisfy the elderly, or those of us who want to see what novelty she can bring to well-trodden paths. On the contemporary side, she is presenting works by Harvey and French writer Yann Tiersen (of Amelie soundtrack fame). The odd man out is Rossini, who is usually represented on piano programs by a peche de vieillesse. Tickets are going for $22 but discounts are available for the elderly and Griffith alumni.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio

Friday March 22 at 7 pm

Umberto Clerici, the QSO chief conductor, takes his players into the organization’s studio to give us a program that will display the clarity of intonation to be found in the various ranks. Or so we hope. The night begins with Rossini at his most transparent: the Overture La scala di seta which will set up the strings pretty nicely. Then comes the aberrative Symphony No. 8 by Beethoven, sitting between those bully-boys, Nos. 7 and 9. Here is a more mellow mind at work with some humorous passages, although nothing as light as Haydn being quaint or even Rossini keeping himself entertained. To end this 80-minute pleasure party, Clerici & Co. perform a suite from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream music. In fact, given the time available, the executants could get through the entire incidental music if they felt like it. But that’s not likely as you need two vocal soloists and a choir, as well as a speaker, and none of these are mentioned. I’ve seen it done by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (after a fashion) featuring Joel Edgerton. But it’ll probably just involve the Overture, Scherzo, Nocturne and Wedding March, as usual. Tickets range between $79 and $35 and, on its own ground, the QSO charges top dollar for its services, adding $7.95 to your purchase as an over-priced ‘transaction fee’. Or perhaps the fiscal branch of this organization takes longer to do the ‘job’ than its professional counterparts.

This program will be repeated on Saturday March 23 at 3 pm

MESSIAH

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday March 28 at 7:30 pm

There was a time when you could count on three performances of Handel’s great oratorio at Christmas time from some of the nation’s state orchestras. We have a different generation doing the patronage these days and so Brisbane is mounting a single Messiah. Mind you, it’s being presented at the right time of year, temporally related to its premiere in Dublin on April 13, 1742 and following the work’s main thrust towards the Resurrection, not the Nativity. By the way, I love the subtitle attached to this occasion – An Easter Passion; as if you could have a Pentecost Passion or an Advent Passion. Tonight’s conductor is Brett Weymark, long-time director pf the Sydney Phlharmonia Choirs. His soloists are soprano Celeste Lazarenko, mezzo Stephanie Dillon, tenor Alexander Lewis, bass Christopher Richardson with the Brisbane Chamber Choir taking on the brunt of the work with those wonderful tub-thumping choruses. The night’s operations will be completed in 2 hours 30 minutes, including an interval – and that tells me that we’re going to be missing about half an hour’s music as some time-honoured cuts will obtain, particularly in Part the Third. You want to get in? It costs $35 for a child and $135 for a full adult with the usual fee of $7.20 for bothering to be present at this sometimes-uplifting annual ritual.

From aspiration to anger

January 30, 2024 cliveoconnell

THE SPARROW AND THE MEAD HALL

Michael Kieran Harvey

Move Records MD 3471

The latest in Move Records’ collection of Michael Kieran Harvey’s products – as a performer and composer, often enough both – covers some of the ground covered in the COVID year of 2021. First come Four Ballades for piano; then Sonata, No. 7, called The Sparrow and the Mead Hall, which takes its impetus from an Epictetus dictum; another personal piece, Lawyers are Lovely Misunderstood People and We Should All Be Much Kinder to Them, which honours Hobart advocate/barrister/solicitor Craig Mackie; and an anti-opera, Death Cap Mushrooms, to a text by Harvey’s long-time collaborator Arjun von Caemmerer which takes its brief flight from the 2020 George Floyd murder in Minneapolis.

It’s not accurate to see the ballades as an extended entity rather than discrete pieces, but the composer points to a pair of links between them all. One is the use of Bach’s B flat-A-C-B natural musical signature; the other is the prevalence of a free-wheeling 12-tone series that enjoys exposure at the octave-rich start to Ballad No. 1, Stark. This row is announced in octaves and the first thing that struck me was the significance of the intervals between the initial notes, just as it obsesses number-crunchers in a transparent and willfully eccentric score like Berg’s Violin Concerto. Yet, before you have gone far in this movement, the composer-pianist’s flights have once again carried you off into his realm of ornate imagination where you can (after a few listenings) trace the intervallic sequence – or, more properly, fragments of it. That’s before you take on Harvey’s ambience which embraces so much.

He himself points to Liszt, Szymanowski, Bartok and Herbie Hancock as jumping-off points for these ballades, the investigation of any of which could take months. For example, I don’t know the Liszt ballades (all two of them) but am pretty au fait with some of the Legends with which the former have been linked by performers and editors. And, while boasting a fair acquaintance with Bartok’s piano output, the Elegies (again, both of them) have not crossed my path, at the keyboard or in the hands of anybody else. Ditto Szymanowski’s Masques (three in number) and Hancock’s 1973 album. All of which is more of a salute to Harvey’s catholicity of interest than anything else.

In spite of the two common attributes that permeate all four of these pieces, you will do your head in trying to work out the compositional processes at play. For instance, the following Implacable ballade opens with a solid 5/4 bass sequence of chords which goes through a slight alteration in tessitura before a slight change in tempo, while all around the firm opening motivic construction disintegrates into patterns of angular quavers and clotting triplets that move into a whirlwind landscape occasionally broken up by semi-impressionist oases.

You can’t pass off Chopin’s four ballades as a sequence, like elements in a sonata. Each is emotionally discrete and - as far as I’m aware - there are no common elements shared between them; unlike Harvey’s compositions which might come under a communal umbrella. But this embrace won’t really wash because the differences between them all are vast and the shared elements are often near-impossible to find, let alone hear. When it comes to the third in the set, Quasi fantasia, the pages pass as a kind of phantasmagoria, images that rustle or thunder with even the delineation of the B-A-C-H motif in transposition hard to pick out, although the nature of the writing tells you that it must be there.

Matters are a bit clearer in the final Fast manic bop which lives up to its name with a good deal of insistent double octaves and syncopations to invest a typically urgent energy into this finale which reminds us of Harvey’s earlier works (I’m talking of at least 20 years ago) where the impetus proved irresistible. Even in this ballade, the hectic nature of the musical progress is anchored in recognizable elements that pile up in dynamic terms before a gripping conclusion. Here again, the fecundity of this composer’s imagination is on display in a technical display that shows no breaks, no cracks in development.

With his new sonata, Harvey is in an abstract world of something between self-consciousness and good old-fashioned existentialism. He takes the Greek philosopher’s reported dictum – Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo – and uses each clause as a heading for his four movements. As you can imagine, the results are peculiar to the composer and I doubt that listeners will find easy engagement with the work’s intellectual underpinnings. For all that, the music is startlingly clear in its statement-chains as life’s progress follows the simple progress of a bird from darkness to darkness; there is no beginning and no end, is the message, and we are given the short life-flight only.

The assertion of past existence is both opulent and muted in Harvey’s first movement where high decorated lines contrast with emphatic bass plosives. The tentative string-plucked opening light-pricks give place to dramatic rhetoric, which could represent our individual striving to enter the world, the effort bringing on a formidable series of pre-creative efforts that come to nothing in the end, the initial texture coming back as a commentary on Epictetus’ sober evaluation of non-being: you have a sort of gestation, prodigal in its output, but finally coming round full circle, as the Buddha tells us. For all that, the pages are laced with vitality rather than navel-gazing and the main impression is of the pianist operating at two distinct levels of action; what they represent is left up to you to solve (or leave alone).

Moving to actually being in the world, Harvey labels his second movement ansioso, or eager.If you like, this is the composer in full spate, the notes pouring out in rapid virtuosic hammer-blows right across the keyboard. It’s as if the executant wants to operate his life’s potential to full capacity, restlessly urging us to the next experience or sensation in page after page of exertion. Then, suddenly, it stops and we have returned to the opening movement’s initial stasis: single notes plucked out of the ether, as though the self is returning to its pre-conscious state. As changes of pace go, this one is hard to beat: the tumult and the shouting die and you’re left with an all-too-familiar plane of non-activity.

When it reaches the abnegation of existence, the music becomes appropriately disembodied with a sequence of tamped trills, sustained notes and a few abrupt Boulez-type stark four-member gruppetti before Harvey returns to the opening of Non fui – note-for-note, the first 9 bars. It’s a rounding out of sorts: we start out in the abstract, and so we end. This third movement is as long as its predecessor but here the style of communication is on resonances, a fermata dangling over the ending of each bar in the main body of the relevant two pages.

To end, we are faced with another movement that divides into two parts. Harvey uses the term distaccato to direct the requisite attack mode and the implied difference is essential: the right hand plays a set of three-note chords, the top note always E flat, the bottom note initially F and then moving to D flat while the inner part proposes a sort of melody. Still, the chords are repeated in a 5/4 pattern of three crotchets and a minim, occasionally leavened by a 2/4 bar of two crotchets. These aren’t brusque or classic staccato, but they are detached. Eventually, the left hand produces the by-now-familiar bass thunders and this briefest of the four movements crosses halfway through its length into the detached plucked strings mode that has run across this sonata as a dialectic connector. To my mind, this conclusion serves that creditable purpose of illustrating the indifference claimed by Epictetus (and probably by Harvey) to the passing of life: filled with light under the mead hall’s roof, but empty at both ends.

Coming to the lawyer-lauding piece, the listener is moved into a regular Harvey compositional world where the furious speed is well-matched with brusque syncopations that show what can be done with rock-jazz materials when the composer has a mind. It’s a headlong rush, something along the lines of the preceding sonata’s second movement but more aggressively jaunty, even menacing in its several frenetic moments. Harvey wrote this as a payment for lawyer Garvie’s professional services, along the lines of the post-impressionists and Cubist masters settling their cafe bills with art works now more valuable than the establishments that claimed them. It’s a genial concept but one that I can’t see being pursued in these nasty times of economic depression. All the same, it has to be said that Harvey’s piece shows the composer at his most coruscatingly brilliant.

I’ve not much to report about the anti-opera, written for the Australian National Academy of Music’s ANAM Set (2021). Its initial direction reads Muscular arrogant swaggering and the propulsive piano pulse that starts it off is eventually joined by a drum kit, vocalist Benjamin Cannings growling out von Cammaerer’s punk-poet text in one fell swoop, while Theo Pike alternates between piano and toy piano with Alex Bull generating the percussion contribution. The afore-mentioned Cannings also provides a guitar line in the work’s later stages.

The work is a satirical slap in the face of Canberra’s politicians (with a side-kick at Trump) and the group mindlessness of American law and order when seen at its worst. For Harvey, this serves as a protest that takes on the mindless head-banger violence reinforcing prejudice and stupidity in this country (see Artarmon) and throughout the territories run by our great ally. While full of justifiable rage, the track makes an unnerving finale to what has been, up to this point, remarkable music-making of high quality.

Death-Cap Mushrooms is dedicated in its score to Hannah Pike; in the CD leaflet, the dedication is to Theo Pike. According to the Australian Music Centre’s site, Hannah and Bull played the premiere performance at ANAM on October 26, 2021; Theo is credited in the leaflet. It’s all rather confusing, but not a vital distraction to any auditor who enjoys the slightly outrageous.

Diary February 2024

January 14, 2024 cliveoconnell

OLIVER SCOTT & ALEX RAINERI

FourthWall Arts

540 Queen St. Brisbane

Friday February 9 at 7:30 pm

As Brisbane’s serious music year slowly grinds into action after an interval of almost two months of torpor, the path back is led by the individual who saw us into the Christmas season: Alex Raineri. who turned 30 last year and has put in more useful organizational work than most of his peers accomplish in their lifetimes. FourthWall Arts is the venue for the Brisbane Music Festival and is starting its own recital series with this event in a little under a month; I’m assuming its genesis comes from Raineri who is not one to let the months slip by as passively as others. Not that he’s going out on a limb with this evening’s program. He and cellist Oliver Scott (a BMF performer) will work through Beethoven’s Sonata No. 2 in G minor, with the happy G Major rondo second movement to finish; then Brahms No. 2 in F Major, the less appealing of the two but a mighty example of what a difference 20 years makes; and Arvo Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel which I’ve heard in performances that last 4, 10 and 45 minutes. As this event is scheduled to last for 90 minutes, and there’s an interval with a free glass of wine thrown in, I’d think that its duration will be somewhere between the last two lengths. But all bets are off: it’s Estonian minmalism, and slow-moving at that. Tickets cost $35 each, with an add-on or two: a $2.39 booking fee, with a GST of 24 cents on the booking fee! It’s a bleak new fiscal year we’re facing: God bless us, every one!

This recital will be repeated on Saturday February 10 at 1 pm.

AN ITALIAN VISTA

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, SouthBank

Saturday February 10 at 7:30 pm

This program will be repeated on Sunday February 11 at 3 pm.

A lot of this evening’s content is Italian of a kind. The only solidly national work comes with Puccini’s Crisantemi. the composer’s last essay in string quartet writing and a lament for his pal, the Duke of Aosta. You’d have to think it will be given in a string orchestra version, as in its once-frequent presentations by the Australian Chamber Orchestra. The QSO’s major offering will be Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, known to us all as the Italian and representing a youngish German’s reactions to his pilgrimages in that country. To my mind, the finest moments come at the start with that breathless introduction and the hurtlingly infectious first subject. Mind you, it’s all a bit chocolate-box for me, especially after exposure to the seediness of the country from north to south; a better set of images comes from Berlioz’s Harold. But the odd man out appears at the start when concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto takes her forces through Grieg’s Holberg Suite, written to celebrate the prominent Danish-Norwegian playwright whose work I’ve never seen, heard or read. Doesn’t matter: the Suite is a generous masterwork, packed with brio and sentiment and a delight as long as the performers are disciplined. The whole thing lasts an hour and tickets cost between $79 and $35, with the usual outrageous booking fee of $7.95. How can any organization justify that flagrant over-charging?

RIVER

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday February 12 at 7 pm

Here’s another of this organization’s visual-aural extravaganzas. The last one I witnessed was here in Brisbane: The Crowd and I, some time in August 2022. ACO artistic director Richard Tognetti and Jennifer Peedom follow their collaboration on Mountain with this look at the world’s waterways, natural and manipulated, with plenty of aural/visual meshes of which I’m sure that some will startle and surprise. What is the music to go along with the pictures? It’s an even more eclectic hodge-podge than usual, with some scraps to satisfy the conservative ACO patrons, along with some boppy numbers to entertain the great unwashed. Bach and Vivaldi will sound: the former’s Chaconne, the latter’s slow movement from RV 232 and opening pages of RV 578. Add to these the Vivace in Sibelius’ Voces Intimae D minor String Quartet, the Ruhevoll that occupies centre stalls in Mahler’s G Major Symphony, Ravel’s String Quartet’s Assez vif, the retrospective O Albion from Ades’ Arcadiana, with a mellifluous gob-stopper in Peters Vasks’ Vox Amoris (please God, not the whole thing). Tognetti scores himself in as a writer, but I can’t pick out which tracks belong to him and those that come from adjunct composer Piers Burbrook de Vere. Didjeridu player William Barton participates as soloist and composer of Wildness, Ritual, and Spirit Voice of the Enchanted Waters. Radiohead takes up space with their Harry Partch (In Memory Of) which has the benefit of lasting between 5 and 6 minutes and might be sung by the ACO’s Satu Vanska. Jonny Greenwood from that group is also listed as a composer but of what, I’m not aware, apart from his string-arrangement support for the Harry Partch song. Tickets range from $25 to $166, with a huge booking fee of $8.50 - for a $25 ticket??!!

WORLDS COLLIDE

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday February 18 at 11:30 am

This program launches the QSO’s Music on Sundays series and is billed as something of a travelogue. All right, then. Conductor Douglas Boyd opens with Australian composer Harry Sdraulig‘s Torrent from 2021 which has been played by both Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras; based on previous experience, I’d say that here is a voice worth attention. After this fanfare, four of the QSO principals come forward for Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for wind soloists: oboe Huw Jones, clarinet Irit Silver, bassoon Nicole Tait, horn Tim Allen-Ankins. Not the whole work, sadly; only the middle Adagio. Moving a little sideways geographically, the focus changes to Dvorak’s New World Symphony (only the boisterous movements 3 and 4). Cross the Channel for Welsh writer Grace Williams’ Penillion, but only the first movement of the four will be heard. Dart back across Europe for Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from the opera Prince Igor that we’re never going to see on these shores; very colourful and spilling over with great tunes but it’s a pity that the excitement won’t be ramped up by including the original’s chorus. Running time is 80 minutes, without an interval, and there’s the usual $7. 20 booking fee-for-bugger-all added on to ticket prices which range from $76 to $109; concessions are available.

LONG LOST LOVES (AND GREY SUEDE GLOVES)

Anna Dowsley & Michael Curtain

Brisbane Powerhouse

Thursday February 22 at 7 pm

In a departure from usual practice, Musica Viva is presenting this display case at the city’s Powerhouse, which is hard to get to for those of us over-challenged by Brisbane’s night traffic. Still, I’m sure there are many good reasons - acoustic and environmental - why mezzo Anna Dowsley and pianist Michael Curtain have been assigned this venue to present some of the Cabaret Songs by veteran American composer William Bolcom. Like a select few, I’ve had no exposure to Bolcom’s music – neither the light, nor the heavy – but am intrigued by his life-long ambition to bridge the divide between popular and serious music. On this occasion, however, it seems that the one will preponderate over the other. Mind you, it’s hardly the American writer’s fault that Britten has predisposed me to discount this genre; added to which, the high reputation of Weill has always left me at a loss. But then, ‘cabaret’ covers a multitude of sins and, where the definition is so wide, the hope must also be generous. If you can negotiate your way to New Farm, this night’s Bolcom celebration might be just what the entertainment doctor ordered. Tickets range from $40 to $115 and even this ultra-trendy venue doesn’t stint on the service fee (what service?) - here, $7.20.

UMBERTO’S MAHLER

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday February 23 at 7:30 pm

The orchestra’s chief conductor, Umberto Clerici, pursues his ambition to drag us through another Mahler odyssey. This addiction to present all nine of the symphonies has recently taken on renewed interest with the arrival of the Maestro film that sort of chronicles the life of Leonard Bernstein, its musical climax being a heaving rendition of the final pages to the Symphony No. 2 with Bradley Cooper giving a pretty good impersonation of the fabled conductor’s histrionic look-at-me style (admittedly, I only saw him once live). As far as I know, the only successful complete cycle achieved here was that of Markus Stenz during his Melbourne Symphony Orchestra suzerainty. I don’t think Sir Andrew Davis was able to conduct his finale, a projected No. 8 at Rod Laver Arena. And I’m pretty much in the dark as to other attempts. Good luck to Clerici who’s setting up his own artistic hijrah, here reaching a major milestone with No. 7 that sprawls in its outer movements which surround a pair of Nachtmusiken and a scherzo, the whole eventually optimistic (but you could say that about most Mahler finales). Tickets range from $95 to $135 with concessions available (a child gets in for $35, if she/he wants to), with the inevitable $7.20 sting. Fortunately, nothing else is programmed (I vividly recall Stenz partnering No. 2 with Ives’ The Unanswered Question; what a pairing was there, my countrymen).

This program will be repeated on Saturday February 24 at 1:30 pm