Author: cliveoconnell

From aspiration to anger

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

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

Miscellany from the archives

cliveoconnell

SHICHISEKI

Michael Kieran Harvey, Miwako Abe, Alister Barker, Martin Niedermair

Move Records MD 3470

As I understand it, this latest release in Move’s Michal Kieran Harvey Collection draws on recordings that have been made over the last 15 years or so, now brought out of the company’s archives and here released for the first time. Harvey is performing works by four contemporary writers – Kanako Okamoto from Japan, as well as Australians Andrian Pertout, Mark Pollard and Gabriella Vici – as well as three songs used in Barrie Kosky’s adaptation of Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart: Bach’s Agnus Dei from the B minor Mass, Purcell’s Music for a while that comes from his stage music for Oedipus, and Wolf’s Verborgenheit which is one of the Morike Lieder.

Harvey contributes to each track, collaborating with violinist Miwako Abe in Okamoto’s Shichiseki of 2008 from which we hear the Romance first movement, and Pollard’s Beating the rusty nail of 2006; later working alongside cellist Alister Barker for Pertout’s 2007 Rishis and saints: for violoncello and prepared pianoforte, as well as accompanying cabaret tenor Martin Niedermair in the three Kosky-invested songs. He is soloist in Pertout’s Cinq petites melodies: for pianoforte of 2008 and Vici’s Piano Sonata written in 2020.

Most of this music saw Harvey participate in its first performance. Pollard’s work was first heard at the Perth International Arts Festival, inaugurated by Abe (its commissioner) and Harvey; ditto, Okamoto’s title track.  Pertout’s little melodies were premiered by Harvey in the Tasmania Conservatorium of Music and he recorded Vici’s sonata on the eve of the COVID pandemic. Barker and Harvey were co-presenters of Pertout’s Rishis and saints on its debut performance at the Resonance Music Series sponsored by the Bayside City Council. And, of course, Niedermair and Harvey worked together on Kosky’s theatre piece during its Malthouse presentation in Melbourne.

The disc begins with Okamoto’s movement: the first of two exemplifying peace, the second illustrative of anger. This is in line with the underpinning legend pf Vega and Altair being allowed to meet once a year by an Emperor angry at their clandestine marriage. So Okamoto is presenting us with (I think) a representation of the stars’ falling in love and being happy in their connubial bliss until the interference of secular authority who wanted to put the female forced (Vega) to work once again. This once-a-year meeting resulted in the (earthly) Shichiseki celebration in Japan held annually on July 7th.

The Romance has Harvey setting the scene high in the piano before Abe enters with a long arc of self-pivoting melody. A sequence of piano chords prefaces some impassioned repeated double-stops before a real duet opens out with the keyboard rumbling continuously under a series of rising violin ejaculations that pause each time on a striking 2nd or 7th that suggests strife and astral discord rather than spherical harmony. A scale-rich piano cadenza leads to a high-pitched petering out, like a satellite signal, followed by another violin solo.

What follows is a reversal of an earlier procedure, Abe supplying a high descending single-note support while Harvey coruscates with his inimitable flair and incisiveness before the violin flies alone to a high-altitude melismatic conclusion. The piece has great appeal for its wide-ranging emotional breadth and a searching-out of each instrument’s sonorous potential, as well as a fair allocation of responsibilities, even if Abe enjoys the more striking performance ambience.

Pertout’s piano bagatelles were created as a homage to Elliott Carter on his 100th birthday.  They use Mayan mythology alongside dance rhythms from Latin and South American cultures, all of which will mean more to the Chilean-born composer than to those of us inextricably bound up with an Anglo-centric transplanted musical culture.  Pertout gives his pieces French titles connecting colours with compass directions, e.g. Noir de l’ouest, Aqua du centre. This, plus the references to specific rhythms – Festejo, Toque de Sao Bento Grande – has the virtue of specificity couched in an alien language. Still, it means something to the writer and the rest of us must make the best of it.

For his first offering, Noir de l’ouest, Pertout uses two rhythms: Lando and Festejo, both distinct in content if not in tempo and, in the best miniature fashion, over before much has registered.  Jaune du sud employs Zamba and Chacarera, and these are very disparate despite sharing the same 6/8 time-signature; as well, the Zamba gets much more space than its companion with a high tessitura before a more solid and racy concluding section. Possibly I picked the turn from Plena to Bomba in the third Aqua du centre when the distribution of labour changed from right hand decoration over a mid-level melodic mass to the reverse; an alteration in texture more than a split.

Something similar came across in Rouge de l’est where the Toque de Sao Bento Grande led by way of a cadenza-like series of rising gruppetti into the Samba Partido Alto which glittered at the piano’s top reaches while the Toque had made much of the instrument’s low-to-middle register. Finally, the Blanc du nord makes a simple rhythmic shift from a 6/8 Bembe to a Guaguanco in 2/2 (albeit a fast and complicated one). Throughout, you hear traces of dance patterns but never anything as blatant as a heavily accented series of consecutive bars. But these short pieces are expertly written and articulated with a ringing clarity.

Pollard takes his impetus from blues and funk, with a rhythmic infusion from Taiko drumming. Well, the first is present in some chords from Abe’s violin, the funk in this case is irregular rock and its manifold repetitions of melodic, harmonic and dynamic patterns, and the Japanese element escapes me because my experiences with this form have been formed by occasional visits to Melbourne from Sydney’s Ian Cleworth and his Taikoz ensemble and those nights featured your normal range of time-signatures, not the jumpy quaver alterations of Pollard’s opening and closing pages – 7/8, 5/8, 3/8. 4/8 – surrounding a soft, placid middle. The composer suggests that he is beating out your usual systems of performance into new (possibly flattened) shapes. It’s vehement enough and the performers seem to be in sync throughout; whether you’re experiencing alternative modes of communication depends on your musical knowledge, I’d guess. Admire the players, sure, but the music-making doesn’t strike me as living up to its aspirations.

Pertout’s second work seems redundant in its title; as far as I recollect, a rishi is a saint. Whatever the definitional problems, Pertout has moved into another cultural world, albeit one closer to this country than the Americas. His one-movement composition was tailored for the talents of Barker and Harvey, who both get off to a frenetic, pattering start in a specific Indian tala before graduating to others. Both instruments begin with a repeated A that slowly moves out semi-tonally, a system that is further complicated by the prepared nature of the keyboard and a percussive rattling that I imagine is not generated inside the instrument but achieved with a stick. 

About a quarter in, and the percussively insistent rhythmic pulse changes to a slower and more meditative ambience, the cello providing the supporting rhythmic one-note pulse while the piano explores its topmost notes.  If you had the patience/energy, you could follow the composer’s employment of three variants to the triputa tala, but I find it hard to separate one grouping’s start from another. Further change brings us to a rapid, descending scale pattern, delivered almost at the pace of the opening, leading to an amalgam of the descending scale-mode and the percussive tapping of the work’s first section. I believe we end with the repeated A that kicked off the score, this time more ‘friendly’ as the players frisk around with interlocking scale patterns.

I appreciate Pertout’s energetic disposition of his material, as well as the vivacity with which Barker and Harvey address their work. Very few Australian composers have attempted to incorporate the intricacies of Carnatic rhythms into their own creativity, many of those extra-national writers from the 1960s on looking to easier fields like the Japanese or Indonesian musical languages – not to the mention Australian Aboriginal sounds which have been confined to the textural rather than the rhythmic. Kudos to Pertout for the incursion, then, and a final observation that his rishis must have effervescent minds and bodies if this piece is intended to depict their physical-philosophic status.

Niedermair takes easy options in Purcell’s well-known aria, mainly with breathing where short phrases feature some unexpected breaks. He and Harvy take their time over the bar 13-14 setting of ‘eas’d’ and bars 35-36 where ‘all, all’ seems to be heading for a full-stop. As well, the last 8-note vocal line is taken over by the piano, possibly for dramatic reasons. The singer’s voice is amiable and breathy, not urging itself to take on too many of the song’s high notes, hence worthy to stand alongside Sting’s readings of Dowland.

When it comes to the Wolf song, we enter new ground. Niedermair starts alone, without the two-bar piano prelude, and with no reference to the original vocal line’s sliding semitones but with a freedom of rhythm that would have surprised the composer.  Harvey joins in at bar 7 and interpolates some extra bars through the central strophes, presumably to give the singer time to collect himself. At the final reprise, Lass. o Welt, the piano moves into its upper reaches and contributes a skeletal support until the final bar which is left to the singer alone. Here again, the approach is cabaret; lieder aficionados get no comfort here.

Oddest of all is the Bach Mass segment where Niedermair moves into falsetto voice, giving a fairly decent representation of the alto solo that opens the Agnus Dei. He abandons the vocal line at one stage to recite some of Poe’s narrative; later, he takes advantage of the mid-movement caesura to give us Poe unaccompanied, then resumes the aria, Harvey filling in the vocal and instrumental lines as he sees fit, and speeding up the pace to disrupt the reverential nature of the original – which would be in the nature of the drama being presented, you’d expect. Niedermair comes across with much more vocal security than anticipated in his artificial production mode – on pitch and generally faithful to Bach’s melodic contours.

Last comes Vici’s three movement sonata, the disc’s longest entity. In her first movement – Fantasie. Adagio misterioso – the greater part is taken up with a powerful flurry in a harmonic vocabulary that suggests Scriabin, even if the material sounds more diffuse than that of the Russian. Harvey is a magniloquent apologist for these powerful, virtuosic pages, staying within the composer’s later Romantic dynamic range and presenting a vibrant interpretation, subduing his attack for the concluding slow segment which reverts to a language that is essentially tonal, if with dissonant accretions. Vici works on a large canvas here, the executant stretched although Harvey sounds as if he’s coping with impressive command.

A short Allegretto con grazia follows, taking the shape of a minuet-and-trio movement with a wry humour underpinning its progress.  These pages are reminiscent of many another reversion to Classical forms, in this case illuminated by a sophisticated harmonic array – loaded with contradictions to its melodic simplicity but made quietly appealing thanks to Harvey’s balanced treatment. 

For this pianist, Vici’s finale – Toccata. Allegro vivace – is an ideal vehicle, reminiscent in some ways of Harvey’s own compositions. The movement is episodic, time taken out for placid oases in between pages of driving energy and insistence. Parts of the more virtuosic pages are engrossing, as at the harnessed freneticism of the opening where the composer seems to be balancing three levels at once. Further, the piece takes on characteristics of every toccata you’ve heard – from Buxtehude’s alternations to Khachaturian’s inexorable drive with a dollop of Bartok’s Allegro barbaro in the mix.  As with the sonata’s other segments, a prime tonality obtains, supporting a wealth of action but Vici’s is an individual voice, if one whose career and characteristics remain elusive.

In the end, it’s all about the children

cliveoconnell

O RADIANT DAWN!

The Melbourne Octet

St. Dominic’s Catholic Church, East Camberwell

Sunday December 17, 2023

In festive celebration/observation, this experienced vocal ensemble presented a 13-item program of varied content, the exercise a simple one that featured minimal interruptions or distractions and – for once - leaving you with considerable thoughts about Christmas . . . well, more searching than those that usually follow attempts at seasonal musical entertainment.  After a week where local shopping centres and even my local library were invaded by groups of female retirees warbling through commercial tripe to general shopper/bibliophile indifference, the Octet exercised a particularly welcome professional skill after some trying exposure to Rudolf’s nose and pre-adolescent drummers.

This Advent sequence of optimistic hymns and motets took place in a Melbourne Dominican parish, so the music began with a processional chant: Veni, veni Emmanuel, arranged by Philip Lawson Very relevant for the time of year, it was graced with a resonant solo from tenor Timothy Reynolds in stanza four, supported by open 5ths from the basses. At the head of the cortege came the friars, with the Octet rationing the labour: stanza 1, males only; stanza 2, females and tenors. When all were ranged around the altar, it seemed clear that the direction (at least for this number) came from mezzo/artistic director Helena Ekins-Daukes; not that there’s much to do, either with the straightforward and familiar melody, or with a choral body as well-versed as this one.

The composition that gave this program its title followed, one of Scot composer James Macmillan’s Strathclyde Motets from 2007. This keeps to a safe tradition, the harmonic landscape a well-traversed one.  The performance enjoyed a pair of scouring high sopranos from Elspeth Bawden and Kristy Biber, soaring above the ruck, which included the splendid timbre of Jerzy Kozlowski‘s bass. For me, the finest moments from this piece came in its plaintive Amen conclusions.

Parish priest Father Paul Rowse welcomed us with a benevolent, brief address-cum-sermon, concluding with an Advent prayer to set us on our proper liturgical path, and the Octet swung into a setting of the Angelus ad virginem carol, here organized by the American composer Carol Barnett. This was distinguished by cleverly organized 9/8 bars to break up the inevitability of the original’s 6/8 scansion.  At the same time, you found no striking harmonic interest here; just a democratic allocation of melodic responsibilities with the introduction of a tambourine towards the end.  For all this, Reynolds seemed to be carrying out some light direction.

Josquin’s Christmas Mass sequence, Praeter rerum seriem, is a hard sing, not only for its motivic concentration but also because of its emotional gravity.  If anything, this run-through impressed me as driven but stilted, punctuated by a splendid rush of colour from bar 178 on, the words Mater, ave finishing the work with grave veneration. Everyone’s favourite, In dulci jubilo, followed in the Pearsall setting with a plangent solo from tenor Anish Nair at the O patris caritas stanza. My only whinge would have been a preference for taking the repeated final line - O that we were there - more slowly, although that seemed a minor deficit in a gentle and warm account of this Christmas gem.

Speaking of precious moments, they don’t come more striking than the sudden modulation in bar 10 of Victoria’s O magnum mysterium: a split-second that encapsulates all the feast’s marvel. Still, this reading sounded lacking in variety – of phrasing, of dynamic – as the motet’s shape was left to its own devices, with an exception for the treatment of in praesepio from bars 36 to 39.  For some reason, I found it hard to detect the alto line throughout much of this finest of settings.

Poulenc’s perky Hodie Christus natus est antiphon enjoyed a lively outing, notable for some excellently contrived communal shakes in the 5th- and 4th-last bars. Rutter’s arrangement of Stille nacht changes the expected opening to the first Schlaf in himmlische Ruh!; not to bruising effect, of course and, for all I know, the English composer is being faithful to Gruber’s original. Bass Oliver Mann articulated a solid solo in the carol’s second stanza, while the soprano duo enjoyed exposure in the melting-moment final verses.

I can’t recall hearing Byrd’s Atollite portas principes vestras before this rendition, either live or recorded. Initially, the most striking feature of this interpretation was the aggressive nature of the bass and tenor lines, possibly because the upper voices each have an individual part. Further, the psalm-motet was taken at a cracking pace, a startling heftiness emerging in both times we encountered the saeculum. Amen conclusion. Most of us know Rachmaninov’s setting of Bogoroditsye dyevo, a Hail, Mary of sorts, from the massive Vespers (All-Night Vigil) of 1915. Arvo Part’s version is a more lively creature, startlingly so for this Estonian writer who specializes in musically mystic stasis.  Not that I timed it, but the piece seemed to be over in less than two minutes, Slavic choral timbre being hurled out or muttered with convincing eloquence.

The only potentially challenging music found in this evening’s entertainment came in British composer Cecilia McDowall‘s Advent antiphon O Oriens where initial concords moved to discordant block chords and back again, although some of the composer’s signature grating 2nds are left dangling. At the second strophe Veni, et illumina, the same process is followed with initial consonance disturbed by upper-layer dissonance, the verses ending in a notably grinding tenebris, particularly in handling the word’s third syllable. Mind you, all is satisfyingly resolved at the work’s ending, even down to finishing in the E Major that began the score, with its Orthodox-sounding basses.

First of the last two traditional numbers on the program was Gaudete! Christus est natus, a Renaissance carol here arranged in six parts by Brian Kay, formerly bass in the King’s Singers. This made a gently spiky end to the Octet’s work with deftly organized harmonizations for both chorus and stanzas, each of the tenors enjoying a solo. In fact, the only singer from the group that I can’t recall having a spot in the sun was countertenor Christopher Roache, whom I’ve heard on previous occasions working to laudable effect.

We ended with Hark! the herald angels sing in the well-known Willcocks version. Twenty-two children from St. Dominic’s Primary School sang the soprano line, taking the second stanza to themselves. This wasn’t the happiest ending as the organ moved too slowly, as did the conductor – certainly not fast enough for the Octet and probably not for the congregation which was invited to join in. And, while I’m all for having children participate in a semi-starring role, it’s probably just as well if all of them can stay on the note. 

Still, if the current Gaza experience has taught us anything, it’s that a little tolerance goes a long way; if only the conflict’s legalized and guerrilla assassins could appreciate that, but then, it’s not their celebration, is it? A little child could lead them and, if this concert’s finale helped to remind us of Isaiah’s profound vision, then intonation matters less than a pinprick.

Caviar to the general

cliveoconnell

CONCORD

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10, 2023

Alex Raineri

Almost missing out completely on Alex Raineri’s excellent enterprise, I managed to get to this final-day recital featuring the artistic director himself performing Charles Ives’ mammoth Concord Piano Sonata No. 2, prefaced by the world premiere of Australian composer Lyle Chan’s Sonata en forme de cri. On this final day/night of the festival, Raineri took part in four of the five recitals on offer, but this was his only ‘solo’ performance (allowing for brief contributions from viola Nicole Greentree and flute Tim Munro in both sonatas).

Not that conditions for this event were ideal. Due to Translink’s decision to close the Gold Coast line on Sunday, I had to drive to South Brisbane, leaving the car at the only parking lot I knew; then travel two train stops, finally negotiating the uphill climb to the top of Queen Street where I joined 19 other enthusiasts in a small studio space (fortunately air-conditioned on this stinking hot day) to experience Raineri’s pianism at close quarters. Then, repeat the travel sequence in reverse post-recital. However, say not the struggle nought availeth because the sweat-inducing wriggles of getting there proved worthwhile.

Chan’s work left (as expected) scattered impressions, prefaced as it was by an address from the composer which informed us of nothing at all about his own composition but concerned itself with the Ives sonata exclusively. As Chan said, the American work is rarely performed here (or anywhere much in live performance); I recall only a few performances in Melbourne from Donna Coleman, neither of which I managed to hear. But the Concord Sonata has several worthy recorded interpretations and the work itself is over a hundred years old, standing firm as one of the bulwarks in American piano music history.

My own experience of the work has been structured through a recording of extraordinary power by Aloys Kontarsky, set down for Time Records in 1962. Quite a few critics disliked this interpretation, chiefly because they thought that the German pianist didn’t get Ives ‘right’. I believe that Kontarsky took what he found and turned it into a splendid tapestry, somehow imposing order on a work that other pianists view as a hotch-potch – and play it as such. To be sure, any other pianist sounds technically inferior to Kontarsky whose mastery of contemporary piano compositions was remarkable, but it’s true that he produced the fastest Concord on record. Which is not to say that it lacks the necessary profundity.

But then, you have to ask whether the sonata and its musical portraits of the New England Transcendentalists are that deep. Perhaps the finest achievement of the work is Ives’ ability to depict each of the four individuals/family – Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, Thoreau – as a creative composite, each movement incorporating the opening Beethoven Symphony No. 5 motif while investing each of them with its own distinctive material. This intellectual spread makes huge demands on the work’s interpreters, if not on a first-time audience, and I sense that some of us on Sunday were Ives neophytes.

What little I retain of Chan’s new sonata (and probably his only one, if he follows his practice of writing only one work in each of the canonic forms) is how much of it seemed to parallel the Ives score. On one hearing, you can’t expect to fathom Chan’s harmonic language, but in the actual moment it sounded very much as being on the older composer’s wavelength with crashing chords, an acerbically dissonant series of powerful climaxes, relieved by quiet interludes as a rhetorical contrast, with flute and viola duets serving in an antiphonal relationship with the keyboard, before all three coalesced in a momentary trio.

But after all the Sturm und Drang explosions and relief, presumably expounding the cry (of anger? grief? horror?) suggested in the score’s title, Chan offers a resolution that presents as a chorale-prelude; if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was based on Aus tiefer Not, but I wasn’t familiar enough with the theme about which was woven a near-traditional complex polyphonic web, couched in tonal language – rather like Ives’ third movement.

To make any sensible comment, you’d have to hear the work again – several times, to be honest. No doubting the composer’s emotional commitment to the task, yet his style of piling on the climaxes and powerful washes makes your involvement subject to numbness. As with the Ives, you can’t predict anything – except that there will be more plosive eruptions just around the corner. And, once again, you have to admire Raineri’s passion for contemporary art, here presenting a score that, whatever its merits, is probably not destined for many future hearings outside of the recording studio.

Taken as a whole, you found many riches in the pianist’s account of the Ives sonata. He took his time over the opening Emerson movement, the argument reaching powerful unremitting blocks before the Slowly and quietly interlude – doubly welcome for its page-long placidity – which again moved into thick, well-pedaled territory before the series of variations that start when the composer introduces a 7/8 8/8 alternating time signature and the passing relief of a vast stretch couched in C Major. While the later pages were treated with fair accuracy, the arrival of Greentree’s quiet viola triplets 12 bars from the end made for a refreshing timbre change – which is just the surprise that Ives would have intended, I suppose, after the fierce piano writing that preceded it.

Kontarsky takes the Hawthorne movement extremely fast, but he gives his right hand prominence when it’s a melody-bearing line. I got lost after Raineri’s first page, up until the E sharp and E natural cross-hands points in the narrative (such as it is). The executant made telling use of his 37 cm wood panel, the famous cluster-chords controlled and subservient to the left-hand melodic material. Later, at the repeated four bars interlude, I’d never heard before what the left hand was doing; not much, admittedly, but interestingly at organized cross-purposes with the upper staff’s content – something I wouldn’t have come across except for Raineri’s measured pace.

Raineri made fine use of the room that Ives leaves for diatonic relief at his G Major and F sharp Major soft harmonizations-extensions of the Beethoven motif. Yet the fast march time that Ives asks for six bars further on struck me as too restrained, over-cautious for its bouncy drive; still, by the time we reached that marvellously manic passage packed with five-note clusters, eventually in both hands, Raineri gave us a most persuasive entry into Ives’ most vehement dynamic landscape. Certainly, the prospect sounded rather thick as the march rhythm enjoyed a thorough exercise, but the last five-and-a-bit pages, starting at the From here on, as fast as possible direction, came over as very hard work. It’s not as though Raineri got all the notes, although I only picked up on exposed high pitches for most of the time, but much of this movement’s ‘developments’ are a trial to penetrate, let alone to articulate; the final flourish, following a faintly discordant echo of the hymn, fell into place most happily.

Not much to report about The Alcotts, even if the pace was very deliberate; even the faster exhortation after the A flat Major key signature is negated could have been accelerated without much exertion. Then again, Raineri invested a fine sentiment into the Stephen Foster melody that arrives with the E flat Major key signature in the movement’s second half. Of course, if you give this executant a triple forte demand, he will exercise a gratifying level of power-in-attack, as shown in the blazing C Major treatment of the movement’s main Beethoven Fifth variant right at the movement’s conclusion.

Of all the sonata’s parts, Thoreau impresses me as an indubitable success, mainly because of its husbandry; the composer keeps his aim focused on the final quiet peroration without straying into ragtime or diatonic harmony or the aggressive panoply employed in the first two movements. The lengthy flute appearance is a sign that the transcendent conclusion is near, and Raineri projected the intransigence of that underpinning, slow A-C-G bass motto with impressive calm. Certainly, these pages aren’t all impressionistic dreaminess or concerned with the upper planes; you can find textural complexity allied to dynamic power throughout, but the lyrical moments take on greater importance and Ives’ use of right-hand echoes leavens the urgent bravura of those technically challenging segments.

Once more, we have to thank Raineri as performer and festival director. I don’t know how he manages to attract the talent that can be seen during these recitals, nor how he contrives to keep the festival’s head above water, particularly when only a score of us turned up for this (to my mind) major event. No, he doesn’t do it all on his own, but his contribution to so many programs across this fortnight ranks as extraordinarily generous by any measurement standard. Perhaps I just happened to pick a program that failed to interest others; well, they missed a singular, engrossing achievement.

Diary January 2024

cliveoconnell

There’s no denying it: nearly everybody goes to sleep in January, as far as serious music is concerned. I’ve written before about Melbourne’s two festivals that brighten up an otherwise lacklustre month: the Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields and the Monington Summer. But these are – for want of a better phrase – out-of-town, and neither brightens the cityscape at all. You could visit Sydney and its outré festival that is souping up Bach, as well as giving Genevieve Lacey the chance to play Telemann recorder fantasias with the support of a dance corps (well, 32 untrained dancers are slated to take part), and Gluck’s Orfeo is on at the Opera House. But that all presupposes money and travel – for what I consider is scant reward.

But Brisbane has one recital-entertainment that should prove very popular, not least because it is a shining light in a pitch-black space.

WORLD TOUR

TwoSet Violin

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Tuesday January 25 at 7:30 pm

Being behind modern trends, I wasn’t aware of this violin duo – Eddy Chen and Brett Yang – until seeing them on YouTube where TwoSet Violin is overwhelmingly present, the pair covering a wide range of material – some of it entertaining, some of it worthwhile, some of it risible. Chen and Yang aim to make serious music accessible, an ambition that they achieve usually with success, mainly because both are engaging personalities with absolutely no pretensions and a respectable swag of knowledge. Most importantly, they enjoy themselves while exercising a humour that manages to be self-deprecating, mocking (each other), neo-undergraduate, and (for musicians) infectious. That they both gave up careers with the Sydney and Queensland Symphony Orchestras to take on the lifestyle of stand-up comedians with musical talent is admirable and I can’t think of anyone in serious competition with them, on their inexorable rise from a crowd-funded world tour to the heady heights of packed, enthusiastic houses wherever they go. In fact, I think this event is already booked out! If you can get in, their accompanist is Sophie Druml (who appears on some of their YouTube videos). Tickets range between $79.05 and $179.10, with the usual QPAC ‘transaction fee’ of $7.20 added on; you have to admire the sheer graft of it.

Working hard to make a Franck

cliveoconnell

WILDSCHUT & BRAUSS

Musica Viva Australia

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University, South Bank

Thursday November 23, 2023

Noa Wildschut and Elisabeth Brauss

Musica Viva’s artistic director, Paul Kildea, heard this duo of Wildschut and Brauss performing the Franck A Major Violin Sonata online in 2019. So impressed was he that they are now here, touring nationally , with the sixth of their nine-stop series in Brisbane. You are confronted by a pair of excellent musicians, working well in their opening bracket of Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor, Messiaen’s Theme et variations of 1932, and the formidable Sonata in G minor for Violin and Piano by Debussy – the composer’s final (1917) major work.

As for the evening’s second part, I wasn’t so impressed. The pair gave an airing to a new work by May Lyon: Forces of Nature, commissioned by Musica Viva for these players. But the Franck Sonata – the big finale – was only moderately successful; not simply because of some odd choices in delivery but mainly for a disconcerting theatricality hanging over the interpretation’s finale.

I’d done the usual preparation by listening to a few tapes and online readings of each item, apart from the Lyon work, and came to the Belgian masterpiece with an impressive student reading still lingering in the memory – violin Nathan Meltzer (19) and piano Evren Ozel (18), recorded at the ChamberFest Cleveland in 2019 – because of its security and refinement.

I’ve known this work well because of a few years’ playing sonatas in earlier times (many thanks, Andrew Lee). So I’m aware of the piano part’s technical problems (disasters, in my case). But the violin line impresses as one of the most luminous and clear-speaking in the repertoire. Franck certainly exercises the performer (he was writing it for Ysaye, after all) and you can see vehement, virtuosic writing thrown up across the two middle movements. But the craft of a superior reading comes, it seems to me, from generating an unaffected, even simple line. Still, of that, more later.

Wildschut made an impression straight away with a splendidly rich G-string melody at the start of the Schumann’s Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck: 8 bars of a mellow viola timbre. Here, the musicians were on steady ground, the piano inclined to reticence which is not that problematic in this score which gains in semiquaver keyboard activity as the movement progresses. More pleasures came in the following Allegretto where the duo struck a nice balance of contrasts between the quiet, perky opening sentence or three and the broader melodic sweeps interspersed between them. The only problem emerged in the ritardandi and fermate that recur across these pages, for the first time at bars 2-3. Most of the way through, these adjustments to speed and address came off simultaneously, but every so often they didn’t – which spoke to me of insufficient awareness of intention between the players.

Still, the final Lebhaft passed by with loads of verve and satisfying virtuosity in the paired semiquaver patterns and the lyrical swathes of passages like the E Major interlude that mutates so deftly back into A minor so that the rhythmic and linear streams sound seamless in the change-over. It was almost enough to ride over the few slips in violin articulation and a tendency to backpedal from Brauss who gave the foreground to Wildschut, at times beyond the bounds of courtesy.

The pianist sounded more assertive in the Messiaen collation; not surprisingly, as the piano enjoys a good deal of exposure throughout, e.g. the first variation’s chord chains; the interlocking lines of the following Un peu moins modere where the violin takes the upper line but has to endure a mobile harmonic support until the 4th-last bar’s double octave piano explosion; a restless sequence of vehement interchanges in Variation 3 with some fierce keyboard outbursts; the bell-like right-hand quavers and left-hand triplets that set the pattern for Variation 4, leading to a powerful final 8 bars of ff to fff trills and tremolando; and the final apotheosis suggesting the end of the Quartet for the End of Time in its slow processional pace and the terrifyingly risky 6 bars of quadruple-forte at the segment’s core.

Compared with other readings, the Wildschut-Brauss interpretation proved individual because of its urgency, neither musician showing any signs of hesitation, no matter how complex the mixture; the work balanced by a clear definition of outline in both outer sections and a shared confidence. But then, this work is less open to idiosyncrasies than the preceding Schumann.

Or the Debussy sonata where Wildschut again impressed for her low register timbre, even if she came close to scraping in some places; a tendency that was not realized in the second movement Intermede. You could not fault Brauss’s control of dynamic and simple touch here – no crass blurts or attention-grabbing staccato insistencies. Certainly, these pages lived up to their Fantasque direction, but the corresponding leger came over fitfully, and the final dying-away of the last six bars was unusually positive for a good part of its length.

However, the finale proved to be a disappointment, beginning with the violin solo at the time-signature quasi-change to 9/16: a rhapsodic throwaway exuberance at its finest but here lacking punch and/or a rationale. Further, the violin’s output became too forceful for the music itself at certain points, so that you were fretful about upcoming forte passages, like the Molto rit. ten bars before Number 3 in the old Durand edition of 1917. And, while the movement is a creature of fits and starts (which you can actually say about the whole sonata), I found that through these pages the interpreters seemed to be grabbing at one technical problem after another. In short, the realization lacked coherence as a steady building unit.

There’s not much to report about Lyon’s new work. It began with a violin cadenza that supposedly suggested water and ice; it closed with a ferment that represented volcanic fire – or at least that’s what I gleaned from Wildschut’s introductory comments. Fine; that’s what I heard, going along with the composer. Of course, every auditor will have a personal response but Lyon lived up to her projections. All the same, you can’t find much that’s novel here – no ‘new’ sounds or singular developmental touches – and the executants seemed to be in command of a score that painted its illustrative colours with a mild-mannered hand.

It was hard to fault the first Allegretto of the Franck work, especially as it gave us a fair sample of Brauss’s output in the movement’s 2/3 piano solo passages, carried out with eloquence and exactitude. Further, Wildschut’s delivery showed fine restraint – right up to the con tutta forza aphorisms before the second piano solo which were over-emphatic, despite the direction. Even that active opening to the second movement Allegro enjoyed expert rapid-fire handling from Brauss, and Wildschut’s G-string entry cut through effectively. The next extended violin entry sounded over-strident but the delivery of the second theme resonated with well-shaped character.

The violin’s soft line 9 bars after the Quasi lento interruption was intended, I think, to be spectral; both instruments are under a pianissimo direction (in my Schirmer 1915 score) but you still have to phrase the lines, not just let them sit there uninflected. On the other hand, when both instruments at last state the main theme in unison, the violin’s carrying power was exactly proportionate to her escort.

Both players took a spacious approach to the Recitativo-Fantasia, Wildschut unhurried in her two cadenzas. As the pair entered the F sharp minor section, you felt that the sonata was unfurling with purpose, right through those sequences of thematic reminiscences and re-statements up to the climactic violin high F, delivered with loads of bite and gusto 13 bars before the hushed ending.

The first appearance of the main theme in the A Major concluding Allegretto was a delight, mainly because of the musicians’ unfussed attack – just following a tune in canon without giving it amplitude or weight. This ease was too good to last, of course, and the later E Major version that turns into a barnstorming that prefigures the final page was something of a slash feast. And you have to have a control of weight and phrase to get through the passage work either side of the key-signature change to B flat minor, and maintain the listener’s interest in following your journey.

Perhaps Wildschut gave out too much intensity too early – not that Brauss was keeping her powder dry – but the build-up to Franck’s explosion into C Major proved overdrawn: a series of efforts that crushed against each other, the resolution not serving as a mighty release but simply another climax in a series of exercises in crescendo. Mind you, that made the final appearance of the first theme very welcome, even if Wildschut’s intonation faltered as she negotiated the highest notes in her part.

My score for the final page reads poco animato but these musicians upped the ante considerably, racing through the work’s last 21 bars at a very quick pace. They’re not alone in this acceleration, for sure, but you have to consider the music’s poise and, by the time Brauss hit the ascending dominant and tonic dyads, sense flew out the window in a meaningless frenzy. This passage is meant to be a triumph, a powerful variant, but here it was reduced to a vulgarism; an unappetizing end to a recital of good quality, if not consistently so.

Touches of sweet harmony

cliveoconnell

NIGHT THOUGHTS

Len Vorster

Move Records MCD 647

As you’d anticipate, a lot of this disc is given to nocturnes: by Tchaikovsky, Clara Schumann, Faure, Charles Tomlinson Griffes, Jillian Rose Tymms, Sculthorpe, Satie, Poulenc, Michael Easton and Leonid Desyatnikov. The other five tracks – by Bloch, Hindemith, Duparc, Peter Klatzow and Copland – use ‘night’ in their titles, not least the American whose work gives this CD its title. Just as importantly, the content has a general tendency to be slow-moving and ruminative, thereby giving rise to a generalization or six about music for the night coming from less joyful reaches of the compositional mind, if not downright depressing ones.

Vorster opens his recital with Bloch’s In the Night – A Love-Poem, an effusion from 1922 which comes in the rare key of A flat minor, even if it ends in the more erotically self-supportive A flat Major. This is a fluent effusion, bearing traces of impressionism, mysticism and a hint of exoticism, all calibrated with care by Vorster who observes every accent and expression marking to produce a gem both brooding and passionate. No 4 in Tchaikovsky’s Op. 19 Six Pieces of 1973 is a gentle C sharp minor Nocturne with a simple ternary shape, its coda based on the middle Piu mosso material; it has the requisite melancholy and enjoys a fluent expounding with plenty of rubato and a fetching recapitulation section where the melody shifts to the left hand and the upper part decorates with that slight intrusiveness typical of this masterful composer.

Clara Schumann produced a notturno as the second of her six Soirees musicales, written and published in 1836. V orster treats this with much the same latitude as he did the preceding Tchaikovsky, and with a similarly lavish use of the sustaining pedal. In this piece’s reprise, the main theme is kept in the right hand but transformed into a more ardent character. As well, the composer’s harmonic progressions intrigue momentarily, even if nowhere near as much as those of her husband. Faure’s Op. 104, composed just before World War I, comprises two pieces: a nocturne in F sharp minor and a barcarolle in A minor; Vorster presents the first, which is probably just as well because the alternative is oddly garrulous. By this stage, the composer’s harmonic language had become very sophisticated and this set of pages offers a wealth of chromatic shifts, carried off with sympathy and clarity by the executant.

At this point, Vorster introduces a work by a former piano pupil, Jillian Rose Tymms. This is Silberstreif and takes its impetus from Melbourne’s lockdowns during the COVID years, the title suggesting a light at the end of the infectious tunnel. The work proposes a general restlessness, despair and a longing for the way out; what we hear is, apart from one short harmonically disjunct segment, a Mendelssohn song without words, loaded with the rippling arpeggios and scales familiar from the German composer’s salon output. I’m sure it’s sincere and Vorster gives it mellifluous address but the music itself is too sweet and lacking in bite to match the times it represents.

Hindemith’s 1922. Suite fur Klavier has at its centre a Nachtstuck which bears the composer’s duality lightly. The harmonic language is tightly organized and sturdily framed; there are clear melodic shapes that are dealt with and revisited; the time signature (non-existent, really) stays at a pretty constant 3/2 (or 6/4, if you like); and the ternary structure features a sparkling central section to contrast with the framing more sombre pages, the dynamic climax reserved until bars 80 to 83 in a piece that lasts for only 97 of them. Vorster works through its three pages with a calm flexibility that belie Hindemith’s reputation for academicism.

Aux etoiles by Duparc either refers to the first part of Poeme nocturne, an orchestral triptych of 1878 of which this first section only survives, or (more likely) it’s the 1910 piano solo, orchestrated in the following year. This is an honest piece of atmospherics which opens and ends in C Major but moves to odd places in its long centre, which involves a not-very-convincing return to the tonic 15 bars from the end. It’s subtitled as an entr’acte pour un drame inedit; a slow-moving hiatus in the projected work, then. A brace of lines from Verlaine about a willow reflected in a pond preface the Notturno of Charles Tomlinson Griffes as we lurch to America for a while. This 1915 composition, the middle one of three Fantasy Pieces, is a cousin to Duparc’s starry vision, albeit one with richer chord structures and a plethora of rhythmic variations. Its rich-textured mixture of languor and virtuosity suits Vorster’s interpretative skills most adroitly.

A little touch of Sculthorpe in the night with the Tasmanian-born composer’s Nocturne – Seascape, a piece of plangent romantic/impressionist charm in E flat Major, all 1′ 57″ of it and with a free-flowing charm from the 19-year-old fledgling composer, still occupied with his European forebears. Satie’s Nocturne No. 1 precedes four others from 1919 and moves past with a reassuring placidity. My only gripe with Vorster’s reading of this slightly curious piece is his tendency to pause before changes in register, e.g. bars, 3,4,5 and 6. I felt more assured during the central Un peu plus lent qu’au debut break. Poulenc follows with his Nocturne No. 4, Bal fantome, from the 1929 set of eight. This also is not long – 1’29” – and stands as a waltz falling into four-bar clauses with muted harmonic spice to ginger up its C Major basis.

Michael Easton, an Australian-British colleague of Vorster who died in 2004 (can it be so long?!), appears next with the second movement of his 1993 Flute Sonata, appropriately entitled Nocturne. Transcribed by Vorster, this begins as a slow waltz, changes to a 2/4 rhythm and ends (more or less) in 6/8. It rambles very pleasantly, but not aimlessly and the arrangement has many picturesque touches to leaven the top-line/bass support that emerges in the piece’s middle pages. The Nocturne from Giselle’s Mania forms part of a film score written by Leonid Desyatnikov, the scenario concerning the ballerina Olga Spessivtseva who suffered mental breakdowns in 1934 and 1937. The music makes much of a cell comprising a rising minor 6th followed by a falling minor 2nd, altered to a Major 2nd near the end. This also meanders in a post-Rachmaninov way with some ardent flashes surging out of a melancholy, if not depressing, soundscape.

One of Vorster’s teachers at the University of Cape Town, Peter Klatzow, composed his four-movement Moments of Night in 1968, revising it in 1982. Vorster presents the last work in the suite which is an intriguing night-scape, gifted with a soft sparkle and following a broad, mobile path through a set of concise melodic cells that emerge and disappear sotto voce.

Last comes the CD’s longest track: Copland’s Night Thoughts (Homage to Ives), the composer adding his sub-title to give no grounds to his friends, neighbours, critics, decriers and the whole profanum volgus of commenting on the piece’s occasional similarities to Ives (and, even then, most of Copland’s cluster-bombs are tame compared to those from the older composer – you don’t need to go further than the second bar of Emerson in the Concord Sonata, let alone bars 6 and 7, to see the difference). Written for an American piano competition in 1973, the entrants were required to read the work at sight.

Not that the task is impossibly hard, as it would be to sight-read an Ives piece, say. The work is slowly paced, loaded with accidentals and rapid arpeggiated ornamentation. Even when the composer moves to four staves, the complex is easy to read and deliver. What the actual thoughts are remains open to each listener, but the work is not programmatic like Central Park in the Dark (particularly the opening); if anything, the suggestions are of long-held resonances (bells?), if discordant ones – albeit this night is full of more surprises than most. For all that, Vorster’s reading is firm and dynamically balanced – far more so, I’d suggest, than anything coming from those 1973 sight-readers, but that’s what you’d expect.

Copland’s work acts as a kind of capstone to this CD. It’s the most contemporary work of the whole 15, expressed in a language that is well removed from the smooth sweetness of many among its companions. If it offers more food for thought than bagatelles like the Duparc, Tchaikovsky or Poulenc pieces, Night Thoughts reminds us of serious music’s potential for spartan, aggressive gravity of utterance. For me, it concludes Vorster’s compendium with a quiet assertiveness – not exactly putting its predecessors on a shelf but relegating them to secondary status, no matter how expressive and circumspect they may be in their emotional and technical content.

Das Ewigweibliche wins again

cliveoconnell

CHOPIN & THE MENDELSSOHNS

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday November 13, 2023

Polina Leschenko

After a presentation in Newcastle and two in Sydney, the ACO presented its fourth rendition of this program here, led by artistic director Richard Tognetti and supporting a well-worked soloist in pianist Polina Leschenko who has appeared with this ensemble several times in the past few decades. For Monday’s exercise, L:eschenko took the solo line in Chopin’s F minor Concerto No. 2 as arranged by the Israeli pianist Ilan Rogoff for string quintet (here amplified to the ACO forces of 5-5-3-3-1); and also partnering Tognetti in Mendelssohn’s early Concerto for Violin and Piano in D minor – the original version for string accompaniment only.

The evening ended, Leschenko-less, with Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s String Quartet in E flat Major and this, for me, proved the most interesting and well-played work on the program. Only part of this success was due to the absence of the pianist; more importantly, the arrangement for all 17 of the ACO’s strings proved effective, particularly in the opening Adagio and the ‘slow’ movement Romanze, both of which gave the body space to exercise a free-flowing amplitude and display a mastery of phrase-shaping that typifies this orchestra’s work at its best.

Technically, Leschenko has always impressed as a thorough technician; it’s hard to think of one measure from her during this night that misfired in articulation or energy. But I’ve always found her performances solo-centric, even in a work like the Mendelssohn where dynamic allowances have to be made to give the violin room to be heard. This last wasn’t the case during the first movement; even as early as bar 83, the piano’s fierce volume was too great – both for the actual language of the piece, and for Tognetti who is no shrinking violet but was later swamped by his fellow-soloist’s output.

But then, Leschenko has a habit of pivoting a performance to herself by main force. She had less competition in the Chopin work, here deprived of its 13 wind and timpanist, as the string ensemble put up little competition and Tognetti was constrained to indicate the beat on only a few occasions (in fact, it was remarkable how often he was able to leave his players to follow their parts without direction). And, contrasting with her self-forefronting in the Mendelssohn concerto, the Chopin Larghetto made a positive impression, at least up to the middle segment’s rhetorical flourishes where the minor scale octaves sounded overcooked in this particular context – no, the keyboard was too prominent anyway because the wind contributions here are small almost to the point of intangibility.

As for the rest of this concerto, the composer was best served in the concluding Allegro vivace where Leschenko’s approach demonstrated a welcome restraint right from its initial 16 bar solo, following the score’s kujawiak impetus. later investing solo interpolations with an unobtrusive rubato. This control proved its worth particularly in the col legno interlude which, in this instance, enjoyed a clutter-free delivery with a successful balance between soloist and strings. I can’t say that the following pages of piano triplets engaged heightened attention but they don’t under the hands of more venerable pianists than Leschenko. At least these longueurs went their ways in an amiable fashion.

I suppose this artist has enjoyed more acquaintance with the F minor Chopin than she has with the Mendelssohn hybrid, yet it strikes me that somebody must have been aware how disjunct her approach was with her surroundings. The contrast in mirror passages, as between bars 157 and 167, proved distracting, if not irritating. Much the same took place in parallel work between piano and violin, e.g. bars 179 to 193, during which Tognetti was clearly playing but close to inaudible. And did the piano tremolo between bars 244 and 268 have to threaten like a Rachmaninov rumble?

However, the second movement Adagio with its exposed unaccompanied duets produced a successful chamber-music combination as the violinist’s piercing, true line was given exemplary exposition with few instances of a grab for attention from his partner. It didn’t last, of course; the following Allegro again piano-dominated in what I think was an interpretative fault-line where the requisite brilliance of this style of writing got confused with hammering. It’s easy to understand that the players might not have grasped how forceful Leschenko’s attack came across into the hall, but anyone who was present at a run-through (assuming there was one at QPAC) must have heard the discrepancies in attack and dynamics.

Having said that, I also have to report that the Brisbane audience responded to both concertos with high enthusiasm. I heard the Chopin after moving to the back stalls and an enthusiastic claque of one greeted the performance with the sort of rabble-rousing hoots that you usually encounter after the distorted vocal catastrophes of The Masked Singer. More to the point, Tognetti displayed every sign of enthusiasm and affection for his guest; so, if it’s good enough for him . . .

It was an unalloyed pleasure to come across the solitary string quartet written by Mendelssohn’s sister. This work speaks a consistently idiosyncratic tongue and follows an individual creative path. For example, the opening Adagio begins with a falling figure that takes an upward trajectory after five bars – and the two are deftly fused/juxtaposed/interwoven over the following 68 bars with an unstudied facility that maintains your interest, not least for the writing’s clarity (which must be even more obvious when this work is played as originally written) as well as the composer’s uncluttered style of development.

Later, you find the same good husbandry of resources informed by imaginative breadth in the Romanze where Hensel’s harmonic shifts surprise not so much for their own sakes but through the fluency with which they are accomplished. Added to the seamless part-writing, you were once again struck by the collegial output of the ACO, each line speaking with admirable authority, particularly the three violas who quietly took over the running in their bars 43-4 exposure: the only point in this movement where one part sings unaccompanied.

Putting a firm seal on this program, the players gave a bracing account of the final Allegro with an enthusiastic delivery that carried off the composer’s tendency to worry at a motive (cf. bars 21 to 33) or extend a theme beyond its expected parameters (bars 57 to 75) or keep two balls aloft simultaneously (as across bars 128 to 138). And then you could enjoy the warm embrace of fresh material at bar 217 and the subtle change of rhythmic pattern in the concluding bars. Of course, the work was welcome for its pedigree and its unfamiliarity compared to its predecessors on this occasion. But making assurance doubly sure was the aural comfort of the work in this orchestral format, a guise it assumed with more ease and success than some of the ensemble’s previous attempts at painting on an oversized canvas.

Diary December 2023

cliveoconnell

FESTIVAL GALA #3

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Monday December 4 at 7:30 pm

This isn’t the start of Alex Raineri‘s annual galaxy of recitals; they began last month but details came too late to be included in November’s Diary. However, there’s plenty to report for this month’s exercises, which have been condensed to a one-week span. We start with this triptych of stage works, opening with Menotti’s venerable The Telephone of 1947 with soprano Katie Stenzel and baritone Jon Maskell in the thankless role of the suitor trying to be heard by his mental rag-tag girlfriend. No orchestra, but two pianists accompanying in Francis Atkins and the omni-present Raineri. Poulenc rears his sixty-years-dead head with Le bal masque, a 1932 song cycle/cantata with a Stravinskyesque chamber accompaniment, here reduced to Raineri’s piano with baritone Jason Barry-Smith taking on the work’s vocal line. And for the third course we enjoy a new work: Staged, by Raineri and Finnian Idriss which involves soprano Ali McGregor, cellist Daniel Shearer, and Idriss manipulating electronics. Pace Poulenc, I think this last may be the most interesting element of the evening even if – as usual – contextual details are completely absent. Admission to all events in the Festival costs $25 a time; don’t know if any concessions are on offer or if a booking fee is added but I suspect this last is a reality because the handling agency, Humantix, is donating all such fees to disadvantaged children’s charities. Is that any excuse for charging such an impost anyway? Not in my book.

SCHUBERT’S LAST SONATA

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Tuesday December 5 at 7:30 pm

This is, of course, the big Sonata in B flat – well, some of it’s in that key. The work is substantial, even without observing the first movement repeat, and its repetitions and elongations can both inspire and irritate. Whatever you think, it’s a beast for any pianist; few of the great can offer a complete fabric in the outer movements but there’s always hope. I don’t know this evening’s executant, Laurence Matheson; at least, I can’t recall any of his Melbourne appearances. He put in his time at the Australian National Academy of Music, studying with the estimable Timothy Young, but whatever he played there passed me by. Still, he’s a young man and you might as well smash your aspirational head against this sonata as anything else. Which he is also doing by prefacing this Schubert with Chopin’s Grande valse brillante: a rather amorphous title, given that it could refer to the Op 18 or any one of the three Op. 34 compositions. As a gender differential, Matheson has inserted the middle one of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Funf Lieder Op. 10, which is called Abendbild and for which the pianist will doubtless incorporate the original’s vocal line to a text by Lenau. Tickets are $25 with a booking fee.

LIGHTS DOWN LOW # 2

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Tuesday December 5 at 9 pm

Put those lights down too low and everybody will go to sleep. At this recital – focused for some, diffuse for others – festival director Alex Raineri will perform Morton Feldman’s For Bunita Marcus of 1985 – all 75 uninterrupted minutes of it. The composer’s penultimate piano composition, the work hymns his pupil/colleague/partner Marcus while also being a tribute to his mother; as an insight into either woman, it serves as a voluminous veil. Nevertheless, these days few of us have the opportunity to hear a Feldman work live. I’ve heard a few from the Australian National Academy of Music performers of which little remains in the memory but gratified surprise that the experiences proved more incident-rich than I’d expected from a brief encounter with this standard-bearer of the American avant-garde in the 1960s. Full marks to Raineri for expounding this work that sounds so simple and yet keeps the performer on the edge of disaster with its constantly moving time-signature changes and seemingly endless transpositions of limited material. To get in, you pay $25 plus the usual extra fee for daring to exercise your state-given right to a credit card.

ANGELUS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Wednesday December 6 at 7:30 pm

Four performers in four works, two of which enjoy their premieres in this country: exactly what you want from a chamber music festival offering a wide range of experiences. First up is the evening’s title work from approaching-Grand-Old-Woman-status Mary Finsterer; written in 2015, it was inspired by Millet’s painting of two field-workers pausing for the mid-day prayer and will involve the talents of clarinet Dario Scalabrini, cello Katherine Philp, and pianist Alex Raineri. An Australian writer working in London, Lisa Illean wrote fevrier to a commission for Radio France (hence, you suppose, the linguistic barrier-crashing title) and it involves the same instrumentation as the Finsterer composition. Next comes a world premiere from local jazz saxophonist Rafael Karlan; no details yet (isn’t that always the way with your true improvisation-wielding performer/composer?) but I’m almost certain it will involve the clarinet and piano. Finally, it’s just a local premiere for Irish writer Judith Ring. Her fine feathers far below the blue floor makes plenty of contemporary sounds and involves Scalabrini, Raineri and viola Nicole Greentree as well as the airing of a supportive tape. Tickets are $25, plus a booking fee of unknown proportions.

MAHLER 4

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Thursday December 7 at 7:30 pm

We’ve become habituated to Erwin Stein’s reduction of this symphony which omits the bassoon and horn lines but introduces piano and harmonium (shades of Herzgewachse). Nothing so flash here. The instrumental forces are reduced to two pianos – Laurence Matheson and Alex Raineri – with Katie Stenzel‘s soprano taking on that theologically glutinous finale. The arrangement is for two separate instruments by Jestin Pieper, an American organist, conductor and arranger who published this version in 2010. At least it’s not another version that I came across written for piano four-hands, which would have condensed the action to the point of claustrophobia. Still, not much is gained by Pieper’s reduction, least of all the variety of timbres that Mahler crafted, especially for his concertmaster in the second movement. But it will make the last movement lied all the more welcome and Stenzel will enjoy minimal dynamic competition. Then there’s the point of mounting this work in the first place, with its hints at the composer’s smaller-scale-than-most technical schemata and instrumental arrays. Anyway, good luck to all concerned with this slightly-less-than-an-hour complex; it will certainly be of interest to those who know the original well. Tickets are $25 each, with the usual handling fee superimposed.

DECLASSIFIED

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Friday December 8 at 7:30 pm

Adam Herd is an Australian musician, originally from Coffs Harbour, who is currently living and studying in Finland. Well, he’s not alone in following that path as the Helsinki-Australia connection seems to get stronger as the years pass. Today he is presenting a piano recital, one that will already have been performed at the Espoo Cultural Centre in Tapiola country on November 12. What do we and the more aesthetically aware Finns get? Herd begins with three of the 1984 Eight Concert Etudes by Russian writer Nikolai Kapustin: Pastorale, Intermezzo and Toccatina. This composer fused classical and jazz, they say, although that was probably a big deal in his country. We move to the politically polar opposite with some Earl Wild versions of Gershwin songs, now become 4 Virtuoso Etudes: Embraceable You, Fascinatin’ Rhythm, The Man I Love, I Got Rhythm. A bit of a Scandinavian detour gives us three pieces (all preludes) from Norwegian composer Trygve Madsen’s 24 Preludes and Fugues Op. 101. Back in Finland, Herd plays two folk-song arrangements by Oskar Merikanto: Jos voisin laulaa kuin lintu voi (If I could sing like a bird can), and Iso lintu merikotka (A big bird, the white-tailed eagle). Finishing off an avian trilogy comes the pianist’s own arrangement of McCartney/Lennon’s Blackbird from the 1968 White Album. All that certainly denotes declassification . . . unless Herd is simply asking us to detour into non-Classical zones. Admission is $25 plus the usual ticket tax.

POULENC TRIBUTE #2

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 10:30 am

Good luck for the French composer who is being celebrated just on his own merits, not for any notable anniversary of birth, death or lifetime achievement. This program comprises works that I’ve never heard live – a situation that I believe may also be the case with other festival patrons. Cellist Daniel Shearer appears tonight in order to play the Cello Sonata with either Alex Raineri or Francis Atkins; the score occupied the composer off and on between 1940 and 1948 and the result is generally considered disappointing. One of the pianists (or perhaps they’ll divide the labour) will play two of the 15 Improvisations: No 7 in C Major and No 13 in A minor. Then one of them will outline the Soirees de Nazelles: eight variations and a cadence, surrounded by a prelude and a finale, all of which occupied Poulenc between 1930 and 1936 and comprise portraits of friends in the best Enigma mode. At night’s end, both pianists will be engaged in the Sonata for four hands of 1918, a three-movement and brief (6 minutes?) product of the composer’s late teens. That’s the point of a tribute, I suppose: you have to take the not-so-good as well as the outstanding – following our national trait of being all-inclusive as witnessed by the recent referendum. Tickets retail for $25 with an additional charge for having the cheek to buy them.

HELLISH CELLIST

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 1 pm

What can we make of this? The cellist in question, Daniel Shearer, is taking, as the basis of his expedition, Bach’s Suite No. 1 in G. He is theatricalizing it, promising us a journey to emulate that of Virgil and Dante, while he himself (presumably: no other performers are cited) takes on an ‘unadulterated character’ – which throws up all sorts of questions, the chief one being: who says you were adulterated in the first place? Whatever shape the dramatic interpretation takes, the musical one is going to give Shearer a big problem in that the suite itself lasts about 20 minutes. As the recital is scheduled to stretch between 1 pm and 2 pm, is he going to work through it three times? Or will there be infernal interludes to illustrate the Nine Circles? That would be a big ask of a composer who was known to be Lutheran conservative, not given to Italianate excess. By the same token, Bach could arrive at gripping depictions of Hell’s menace (Sind Blitze, sind Donner, for instance) and the consequences of sin. All of this speculation does nothing to prepare us for the reality which could be truly disturbing; I hope so. If you want to see this, it will cost you $25, along with a booking fee for your impertinence.

NOTES FOR TOMORROW

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 2:30 pm

In this recital, patrons are treated to three works of some relevance to the program’s title and one definite throwback in Poulenc’s aggressive Bagatelle in D minor of 1932 for violin and piano; in this performance, Courtenay Cleary and Alex Raineri respectively. As for the prospect of tomorrow, we’re greeted by Gerard Brophy‘s new score that gives the evening its title; this also involves Cleary and Raineri. Composed in 1995/6, Olga Neuwirth‘s Quasare/Pulsare also asks for violin and piano (prepared); there’s no hesitation in my mind at nominating Cleary and Raineri for the performance. Now, the odd one out is a song cycle by American writer/guitarist David Leisner. His Confiding for high voice and guitar, written during 1985-1986, sets ten poems ‘mostly Emily Dickinson and Emily Bronte’, that have to do with fluctuating relationships. In fact, Leisner sets four Dickinsons, four Brontes, and one each by Americans Elissa Ely and Gene Scaramellino. To handle this work, we’re to hear Blue Stockings – luckily, a voice-guitar duo comprising Alison Paris and Chloe Hasson. For this partly-futuristic cornucopia, you’ll be charged $25 admission, with an extra fee on top to show that – like the world to come – nothing is as it seems.

THE FIREBIRD

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 4 pm

Plainly, the high-point of this recital should/will be Stravinsky’s ballet suite. Actually, you won’t hear all of it: just the Infernal Dance, Berceuse and Finale in a colossal transcription by Guido Agosti which should test the recital’s executant, pianist/festival director Alex Raineri. Before entering this maelstrom, he’ll perform Rachmaninov’s Sonata No. 2 in one of its various incarnations; no matter which, this is a much-neglected marvel for the instrument that I must have heard only once live in a long span of concert/recital exposure. A few Poulenc gems are embedded as a continuation of the festival’s homage to the French writer; in this case, the Pastourelle of 1927 (the composer’s contribution to the ten-composer ballet, L’eventail de Jeanne), and the 1934 Humoresque in G Major – both brief and illustrative of the composer’s brilliant facility. To open his innings, Raineri will play the Australian premiere of Jakob Bragg‘s latest production for piano solo: Fourteen piano transcriptions from across the plane (plain). This was given its first outing during February of this year by Raineri in Huddersfield where the composer is writing his Ph. D. Bragg describes the work as ‘a surveying of the geography of the piano across a unique x-y axis notational model’; well, you can’t say fairer than that. You want in, it’ll cost you $25, as well as the usual churlish booking fee.

COURTENAY CLEARY IN RECITAL

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 6:30 pm

The young violinist is expending her gifts on a solo program that stretches over a lot of ground. She begins with a formal flourish in Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G minor BWV 1001: all four movements, including that well-used second movement Fuga. Leap forward 300 years and we come to local string teacher Stephen Chin‘s Three Capriccietti which I can’t find in the composer’s voluminous catalogue; perhaps it’s a score confided to Cleary alone. We move to a more senior Australian voice with Ross Edwards and one of the versions of his White Cockatoo Spirit Dance; in Cleary’s version on YouTube, she sets in train an electronic background of high twitters before she starts on the work itself. Anyway, this is familiar Edwards in Maninyas mode, the piece written in 1994. Back a bit to 1947 for Prokofiev’s much-decried Sonata in D Major; actually, I find it remarkably sunny and easy-going, particularly when you consider the constant menace facing the composer at this time. Now come forward two decades for French writer Eric Tanguy‘s Sonata breve in three movements across an 8-minute time-span. In the end, Cleary leaves unexplored the period between 1720 and the end of World War Two; well, it’s performer’s choice and this artist is playing to her strengths. You can hear her for $25, plus a charge for your charging it.

ROMANCE BY THE BOOK

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10 at 10:30 am

Here is one of the festival’s more well-organized song recitals in which soprano Katie Stenzel partners with pianist/festival director Alex Raineri. They are working through eleven songs in total, four from musicals/operetta, Britten’s four Cabaret Songs, and an art song each by Liszt, Debussy and (the inevitable) Poulenc. I know Glitter and be gay from Bernstein’s Candide because of the delight that every aspiring coloratura takes in yodeling through its arpeggiated arabesques. No big deal that I know Kern’s All the things you are which has been assaulted by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Carly Simon; a favourite of jazz combos for all its 7th chords, or so I’m told. As for Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Malloy, it’s clearly a slab of Tolstoy’s novel and No One Else should be sung by Natasha rather than Pierre. Somehow, I’ve seen Into the Woods (Victorian Opera?) but have no memory of On the steps of the palace but, if it’s Sondheim, it’s more challenging than most in the genre. As for the Debussy, it will be C’est l’extase, one of the Ariettes oubliees; the Liszt is Oh! quand je dors; Poulenc’s submission takes the form of a sentimental waltz, Les chemins de l’amour. I’m not as enthusiastic these days about Britten’s Auden settings, probably because they try to hard to be louche and were published well past their relevance date (if there actually was one). But they please popularly – well, a good deal more than the Michelangelo or Donne Sonnets. And they slot in well with the Broadway material. You can have all this for $25, plus the added financial hurdle of a service fee.

CONCORD

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10 at 1 pm

Alex Raineri isn’t presenting a peace-inspiring program, filled with charitable wishes concerning conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine or anywhere more local – like Townsville. His Concord is the Massachusetts town, famous denizens of which place made source material for Ives’ massive Piano Sonata No. 2: Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau. I grew up with the recorded performance by Aloys Kontarsky which for me stands out for its authority and impetus amid a plethora of interpretations, from Ives himself to Phillip Bush. Raineri is serious about living up to the composer’s demands by employing the short-lived services of Tim Munro on flute for the Thoreau finale and a viola from Nicole Greentree for the briefest of appearances in the opening Emerson movement. The entire Concord is a draining experience for any listener, but festival director Raineri has added to our aural burden by giving the world premiere of Australian writer Lyle Chan‘s Sonate en forme de cri, which may also employ the services of Munro and/or Greentree (and/or Raineri, so non-existent is the information about this new composition by a writer who apparently delights in giving nothing away). As with several other programs in this second grouping, Concord is a splendid example of real festival fare. All you need to hear it is $25 and a strongly-exercised forbearance in tolerating the credit-card-use fee.

TEN OF SWORDS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10 at 2:30 pm

The recital’s title puts us in in Tarot territory, this card signifying defeat or resignation to your lot – as well as the more optimistic reading (and there always is at least one) of recovering from disaster by pulling yourself together and striving against the world’s negativity. What any of this has to do with the afternoon’s music-making will become clear, I’m sure, as the program continues. To begin, the Blue Stockings duo of soprano Alison Paris and guitarist Chloe Hasson are presenting songs of their own creation. Whether these connect to the Major or Minor Arcana is anyone’s guess but it’s more probable that the Stockings are linking in with the mystical pack than anything that follows. Which showcases clarinet Dario Scalabrini and pianist Francis Atkins in three duets: Elena Kats-Chernin‘s Grand Rag of 2021 and nobody enters into the ragtime spirit with as much enthusiasm as this composer; Schumann’s Drei Fantastiestucke Op. 73, that multi-varied collection which can also be heard with violin or cello as the non-keyboard element; and a Fantasy on themes from La Traviata, Verdi transmogrified by Donato Lovreglio, a southern Italian flautist who arranged several Verdi-based fantasies – none more flashy than this one which treats Ah! fors e lui, the Libiamo with a Di quell’amor from Un di felice interlude, and a final flashy splurge on Sempre libera. In other words, Lovreglio didn’t get beyond Act 1; still, there’s plenty of lyrical matter there, God knows. To hear this split-level program, you pay $25 along with a ticket tax of still-unknown proportions.

JINGLE FINGERS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10 at 4 pm

A Christmas concert of sorts, to give the festival an emphatically seasonal spirit, this program comprises works for two pianos, with artistic director Alex Raineri and Adam Herd taking us through the late afternoon. They begin with a work by the newly-discovered American composer Amy Beach who has been transformed into a significant figure in that country’s musical development by people who should – and probably do – know better. Here is her 1924 Suite for Two Pianos Founded upon Old Irish Melodies. Four movements – Prelude, Old-Time Peasant Dance, The Ancient Cabin, Finale – give you a virtuosic set of arrangements on some defenceless tunes that get subsumed in the composer’s generously applied decorations/ornamentations. Then comes the festival’s final Poulenc salute: the Sonata for Two Pianos of 1953. This is a solid, sometimes clangorous construction that raises for me the spartan concentration of the Dialogues of the Carmelites, begun in the same year. It certainly makes for a bracing contrast with the ephemeral nature of the other Poulenc pieces we’ve heard in this second tranche of the festival. To end, we are treated to traditional Christmas Carols arranged by pianist Herd; perhaps he’ll confine himself to Finnish ones, including (if the recital’s title is being taken into account) a Scandinavian equivalent to Jingle Bells. On the bright side, you can hope for a sing-along to really get you in the mood for the commercial orgy that is to come. All this is available to you for $25 plus a handling fee to Humanitix for charitable purposes – the only way to do business.

THE SOUND OF CHRISTMAS

The Queensland Choir

The Old Museum, Bowen Hills

Saturday December 16

You can’t purchase tickets for this event until December. I can understand such reticence; who would want to be organized too far ahead? A little more worrying is the lack of decision about a time of day. But, by means of intrepid research, I’ve concluded that this will have to be an afternoon concern because Josh Daveta and the Sequins are taking over the space at 7:30 pm. Also, the organization’s previous two concerts have been presented at 3 in the afternoon and I can read a pattern as closely as the next code analyst. Still in the guessing game, I’d propose that the conductor will be Kevin Power, since he’s one of the two choir personnel noted on the group’s website. By exactly the same token, the accompanist (no organ at the Old Museum, so it’ll most likely be piano) is Mark Connors. There’s no way of predicting what these office-bearers and their forces will consider to be Christmas sounds but the outcome will most likely be the usual collection of British standards with some forays into the American seasonal repertoire. All seems rather vague? Well, what I know, you know – and, at present, that’s all there is to know.

4MBS CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR

Brisbane Chorale

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday December 17 at 3 pm

The Chorale is not alone at this concert but will be in collaboration with the Brisbane Symphony Orchestra under conductor Stefanie Smith. This afternoon’s soloist will be soprano Mirusia Louwerse, familiar to many from Andre Rieu’s extravaganzas. And what will patrons hear? As with The Queensland Choir above, details are lacking. Everything will fall under the generic heading of ‘Christmas Carols and other traditional Christmas fare’, which last seems to be a promise of food appropriate to the feast-day. At least this event has a definite time of day, unlike the concert listed above. But I note that this event isn’t listed online among the concert activities of the orchestra; either their contribution is too slight to bother mentioning, or perhaps their administration is unaware of the ensemble’s participation. However, counterweight that with the booking of the Town Hall – so they’re expected. Once again, I’m predicting the customary stolid British content that prevails during this country’s Christmases: comfortable, Anglican, spiritually numbing. Tickets are available for between $25 and $85; wherever you sit and whatever your concession/status, you attract a $1.25 tax that is just applied without explanation or justification.