Author: cliveoconnell

Testing times

cliveoconnell

BEGINNINGS

Australian String Quartet

Melbourne Recital Centre

Monday November 20,  2017

                                       (L to R) Dale Barltrop, Francesca Hiew, Stephen King, Sharon Grigoryan

Among the good things coming to an end at this time of year was this last appearance for 2017 in the Recital Centre by an excellent ensemble, now steady on its eight feet after some years of disruption.   Three composers featured at this event, one of them something of a ring-in; despite the best efforts of violist Stephen King in tying the writers’ works to the night’s title, you were hard pressed to see how much of a beginning is represented by Beethoven’s first Razumovsky.

The ASQ went back as far as it could for its first instance of a beginning, although the possibility that Alessandro Scarlatti wrote the first string quartets and set the form’s ball rolling sounded like a bit of a stretch, unless you define the form as simply involving the four formally accepted instruments – in which case Scarlatti is all the go.  But the D minor Sonata a quattro, No. 4 in the set of six, presents more like a slightly unhinged sonata da chiesa: a Largo, followed by a brief Grave, an Allegro at the centre (really a presto on one figure), followed by a slighter Allegro and a rather disconsolate Minuet to finish.  There’s not much to get excited about in this brief work, although these players demonstrated their well-directed intonation by working with precious little vibrato to hand, the process at its most interesting in the initial fugue.

Moving from the beginnings of the string quartet personnel format, the ensemble changed direction to the start of a 20th century giant’s grappling with the form in the Bartok String Quartet No. 1.   Like the little Scarlatti, this thrilling score begins with canonic interplay but the atmosphere generated in this Lento is hardly Wagnerian or even Brahmsian as Sharon Grigoryan suggested in her prefatory remarks but more the Schoenberg of Verklarte Nacht which was written almost a decade before this work.  As with so much of Bartok’s chamber work, the material being manipulated is cellular more than thematic and the players had put in the hard yards to give the movement a convincing advancing- and-receding dynamic mesh, honestly direct in their treatment of the composer’s gritty dissonance.  An oddity I’d not noticed before came in the premonitions of Janacek that break out at bar 38 in a driving duet between second violin and viola – or possibly such a throw-forward impression came from the compelling work of Francesca Hiew and King at this point.

The musicians’ account of the following Allegretto came close to being the recital’s high-point, in large part for the passionate, no-holds-barred handling of the movement’s taut material and argument.  The inter-instrumental dialogue is very striking here, to my mind because you have few distractions – none of the violent snapping pizzicati or other  sound-production techniques that pepper the later quartets.  Further, Bartok holds his performers to a common task for much of the time – everyone moving to the same pulse, if not in the same direction – but he also introduces passages where individuality is paramount and the counterpoint at work is a four-line melange, as at bar 84 where the dynamic is moderate but the parts go their individual ways.

Bartok’s Allegro vivace finale brings folk-song into prominence, although its presence is more in shape than actuality.  Here, the ASQ kept to rational, sensible speeds, driving through the asymmetric dance rhythms, then prepared to dedicate space to interludes like the Adagio at bar 94 with its luminous, unexpected C Major concluding chord.  Later, the group revealed a fine line in communal restraint when confronted with the ppp sotto voce passage at bar 330 – momentary linear wisps before the leap towards the fifth-rich finish line.  Yes, the movement is long-winded, the restatements can border on hectoring, but this interpretation was carefully spelled out, elegant in its vehemence and negotiated with minimal scraping.

This work showed once again what a splendid space the Murdoch Hall is for chamber music, the quartet’s sound during the Bartok clear even to the back of the stalls.  This aid to focus proved even more useful in Beethoven’s Op. 56 in F Major which, more than the Hungarian master’s score, is prolix.  Nevertheless, even the sprawling first Allegro slipped by smoothly, animated by first violin Dale Barltrop‘s polished upper line; what I like about this player’s chamber music work is his lack of fluster – everything seems to fly into place and phrases are properly finished, given their full weight.

Beethoven’s scherzo juxtaposes sledgehammer force with featherweight passages as in the last 22 bars or so.  It’s about at this point that the composer’s insistence on pounding the message home starts to test your tolerance.  The problem is that, no matter how expert the players, not much can be done to alleviate the fact that Beethoven is beating you around the ears while he nails his matter home.  The assault is less aggressive in the following Adagio (which thankfully was taken at a mobile pace rather than dead slow) but again the work is garrulous and the players showed occasional indications of fatigue.

Many commentators find this quartet’s second half fails to live up to the majestic assurance of its first movements but I can’t find any decrease in inspiration, even in the jaunty theme that Beethoven employs as the basis for his finale.  Yes, it kicks off yet another long sequence of paragraphs but the pressure on an audience is more benign.  Not so for the performers and they were stretched by the movement’s sheer doggedness, as in passages like that beginning at bar 141 which doesn’t loosen its rhythmic grip for some time; the trouble is that the harmonic motion is often close to sedentary and the concluding Presto rush always comes as a relief.

In a certain sense, this quartet was a beginning.  It signified a break with the style of Beethoven’s preceding Op. 18 set of six works; his new field of endeavour in this form was more daring in form and emotional challenge.  As well, the demands on executants are greater, not just in stamina but in individual mastery and responsibility to the ensemble itself.  You had to be favourably impressed by the ASQ’s outlining of the score and their engagement with its challenges but I came away with more respect for the workers than enjoyment of the experience.

Russia all the way

cliveoconnell

LETTERS FROM TCHAIKOVSKY

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre

Sunday November 19,  2017

                                                                      Shane Chen

Bringing its year to a comfortable ending, the MCO finished Sunday afternoon’s offerings with Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings.  Nothing wrong with that; it’s a true string orchestra classic with page after page of superb writing for the instruments and graced with an unending flow of surging, full-proportioned melodies.  It’s also a score with which William Hennessy and his forces are comfortable, as evident by their bracing assault on the opening declamation, on the right side of aggressive and refreshingly free of hysteria, the temptation to overkill a feature of less emotionally disciplined music-warriors who try to turn each of the composer’s susceptible scores into escapees from Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers.  Just the same measured assurance recurred when the initial Andante re-appeared at the first movement’s conclusion.

The following Valse also proved to be a model of cutting grace, although the ensemble took its time over some of the pauses, as at bar 33 and later at bar 146.  But the movement left a pleasant taste thanks to the warm propositions put by the body’s viola pair near the shapely conclusion, taking over the proposition/response interplay with the first violins at about bar 210.   Once again at the Elegie, you could become mildly astonished at how much Tchaikovsky could extract from a simple rising scale with a few hooks at the top; despite the excellent reliability of the violins in soft passages, the main memory I carried off from this reading was the solid underpinning offered by the MCO’s small bottom-lines contingent – two cellos and Emma Sullivan‘s double bass – near the conclusion where the three instruments persist with a pedal D in throbbing triplets before breaking off to join with the others for the last high harmonics that bring optimism to an often dark, plangent passage of play.

The Serenade‘s finale proved notable for those potent moments where violas and cellos acted in unison, as in the E flat interlude at bar 108 where the violins have pride of place with the segment’s broad theme but the work’s propulsion lies below them, the same effect in the home key at bar 320.  Thanks to the director’s pragmatic approach, this movement sustained its tension without descending into the atmosphere of ‘brutal and wretched jollity’, as Hanslick greeted the Viennese premiere of the composer’s violin concerto.

This concert’s other main Tchaikovsky element came with violinist Shane Chen‘s firmly considered outline of Souvenir d’un lieu cher, the original piano part orchestrated for strings by Nicholas Buc, who was occupied over the previous three days directing the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in live-soundtrack versions of the first two Harry Potter films at the Plenary and doing so with admirable expertise.  The Souvenir, in three movements, I’ve not heard live before except for the third of its three movements, Melodie, which made a well-thumbed encore at violin recitals some decades ago.  Chen’s production is full-bodied and well-framed without being encumbered by superfluous biceps and his line in the opening Meditation made its points with a quiet passion, set up in a warm breadth across the first solo bars where most of the notes lie below the E string.

Mind you, Tchaikovsky more than makes up for this sombre opening as the work unfolds with some dazzling pyrotechnics that interpose themselves with brilliant effectiveness, pulling back to a touching sequence of solo violin trills that dominate proceedings about 27 or 28 bars before the end.  The work’s central Scherzo gave Chen plenty of scope for rapid staccato/detached bowing, offset by a glowing rendition of the intervening Con molto espressione in A flat; it’s the least inspired group of pages in the whole score but this violinist gave it an appealing Bruch-like breadth that forced you to ignore its structural shortcomings.

Hennessy and his colleagues began with Arensky’s Variations on a theme of Tchaikovsky, one of the composer’s better-known pieces and giving fine service to the older composer and the four-square tune adopted for treatment.   The MCO made an enjoyable creature of this amiable series of change-ringings, the composer’s inner voices very clear because not smothered by too much violin weight.   Not that Arensky does startling things with his tune and reminiscences and shadings come to mind distractingly often, like the Borodinesque Variation VII and the suggestions of Orthodox chant in the score’s coda.  Yet the composition’s transparency makes for an agreeable listening experience and this proved to be an honest, well-judged outing for a piece of singular charm.

Hennessy filled out his program with arrangements.  Rostislav Dubinsky from the original Borodin String Quartet carried out a string quartet arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Children’s Album  and the MCO performed seven of these miniatures, written in readily-admitted homage to Schumann.  Little remains in the memory some hours later, particularly as few of the pieces last long enough to do more than make a fleeting impression.  The Morning Prayer brings up comparisons with a Mendelssohn Song Without Words rather than implying a Schumann influence; Dubinsky’s sul ponticello scoring in Baba Yaga is a clever touch; Tchaikovsky’s Polka produced from the expert arranger a deft use of harmonics and in its language is startlingly suggestive of the Strauss family; The Organ-Grinder Sings has Dubinsky creating a brilliant squeeze-box imitation which is hard to divine from the original piano score; and the German Song, one of a series of nationalist miniatures in the collection, is almost a satire, occupying a middle ground between a heavy-footed landler and one of Schubert’s slighter fripperies.

None of this gave the players much of a challenge except in the interpolated effects and even these were more a question of synchronicity than production.   Keith Crellin‘s orchestration for strings of the early Three Fantastic Dances by Shostakovich presented more difficult material, not least for the arranger.  The opening March is a stop-start affair but the young composer did maintain an underlying pulse which disappears in this revision, as does the buoyancy of the right-hand flights of fancy at the keyboard’s top.  The players had more success with the tricky – well, more tricksy, as Gollum would say – Polka with its off-hand cleverness.   Cleanly accomplished in the main, you still have to wonder why this triptych – not related in any way to Tchaikovsky, unlike everything else played this afternoon – was included.

December Diary

cliveoconnell

Sunday December 3

SOUTHERN CANTATA

St. John’s Bach Choir and Orchestra

St. John’s Lutheran Church, Southgate at 9 am.

To celebrate 500 years since Luther allegedly nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church, and to mark 20 years since the Bach cantata program started in Southgate, St. John’s has commissioned a new work from Sydney composer Andrew Schultz to a text by Melbourne poet Katherine Firth.  This four-movement construct will be performed, as have a slew of Bach cantatas over the past two decades, at the centre of the Sunday 9 am service in St. John’s.  Southern Cantata is scored for two soloists, chorus and period instrument orchestra, all conducted by Graham Lieschke, and, in a compositional device familiar from Bach’s 200-plus examples, Schultz’s score incorporates a chorale; in this case, Luther’s own Advent melody, Nun komm der Heiden Heiland.

 

Sunday December 3

BACH’S CHRISTMAS ORATORIO

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Hamer Hall at 2:30 pm

Four years ago, the ACO and an imported Choir of London with a wealth of top-notch soloists presented this collation of six seasonal cantatas to excellent effect in this same venue, rounding out 2013 with a bang.  Here is a revisiting, even down to having the same Evangelist-tenor, Nicholas Mulroy, who impressed mightily in those years of benevolent reception before the flowering of local talent in Andrew Goodwin and the Thomson brothers, Daniel and Matthew  –  remarkable and reliable Bach exponents all.  You live in high expectation that Richard Tognetti and his musicians will bring off something like the same joyous experience tonight.  Whatever happens, you can always relish the delights of the first two elements in the sequence: Jauchzet, frohlocket and Und es waren Hirten, both of which encapsulate my Christmas ideal more than any other music.

This program will be repeated on Monday December 4 at 6:30 pm.

 

Monday December 4

Paul Lewis

Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm

Not one to sidestep obsessions, British pianist Paul Lewis has found a set of new foci for investigation.   In this typically chaste program, he confines himself to a brace of Haydn sonatas, the late Six Bagatelles Op. 126 by Beethoven, and the just-as-late Six Pieces Op. 118 of Brahms.   Even the Haydn works feature fairly late in the composer’s output in this form: the last of the G majors, Hob. XVI. 40 from 1784, and the third-last of the lot in C Major Hob. XVI: 50 which dates from 1794.  Although this composer has enjoyed something of a resurgence in the past decade, he is still an irregular recital presence.  Not so with the Beethoven block which are unique in their intimate starkness.  And the Brahms collection of four intermezzi, a ballade and romanze are often heard as single items, not so often en masse.

 

Saturday December 9

NOEL! NOEL!

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre at 5 pm and 7:30 pm

Pail Dyer and his spirited players begin their Christmas celebrations in the Murdoch Hall with another program of odds and sods.  You’ve got the Brandenburg Choir leading the way with some seasonal regulars  – Deck the Halls, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, O Come, All Ye Faithful  –  as well as works by Palestrina, Gibbons, Rutter and Faure.  The night displays a young talent in tenor Joel Parnis, fresh from Sydney’s My Fair Lady production, who has been entrusted with Bring Him Home from Les Miserables  – that Christmas-centric musical  – O Holy Night, Irving Berlin’s tooth-numbingly saccharine White Christmas, Silent Night, Once in Royal David’s City and an updated Twelve Days of Christmas.  And from the slips comes a choral piece out of the first of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows films: My Love Is Always Here by Alexandre Desplat.  It’s all unabashed populism, just like Carols by Candlelight but without the inbuilt ads.

 

Saturday December 9

HANDEL’S MESSIAH

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall at 7 pm

Anything new here?  Conductor for the performances is Rinaldo Alessandrini, a Baroque keyboard authority; perhaps he’ll direct this performance from a harpsichord or chamber organ . . . we can but hope.  His soloists include soprano Sara Macliver and mezzo Joslyn Rechter, both well-known Australian-born singers. The male principals are British tenor Ed Lyon and Catania-born bass Salvo Vitale who boasts a wealth of Baroque opera experience.  The MSO Chorus could probably sing this score in their sleep and the orchestra will hardly be pressed, although Alessandrini will certainly have an individual take on how to tackle this venerable masterpiece that has almost a third of its content either directly or laterally relevant to the Christmas season.

This program will be repeated on Sunday December 10 at 5 pm.

 

Saturday December 9

CHRISTMAS TO CANDLEMAS: AROUND 1600

Ensemble Gombert

Xavier College Chapel at 8 pm

Once again, John O’Donnell and his formidable choir are presenting a programs of Renaissance glories for the season, in collaboration with Danny Lucin’s La Compania of period instruments.  The night opens with two settings of Resonet in laudibus: the 7-voice one by Praetorius and Lassus’ 5-voice version, both seeming to share a common opening shape of a falling common chord.   Andrea Gabrieli is represented by a Hodie Christus natus est but his nephew Andrea bears the burden of much of the night’s music-making: two glorious canzone – a primi toni and a duodecimi toni – as well as O magnum mysterium for double choir and the night’s concluding Nunc dimittis in 14 parts from the Sacrae symphoniae.   Lassus reappears with his creamy-rich Omnes de Saba and Adorna thalamum, the latter quite unknown to me.  And O’Donnell includes a moving early four-part motet by Victoria in Senex puerum portabat.  The combination of this choral body and the cornetti, sackbuts and dulcians of the Renaissance band – from past experience – is both impressive and moving.

 

Saturday December 16

MSO CHRISTMAS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall at 7:30 pm

This is a celebration with definite Christmas elements and other parts that can be stretched to fit the framework; a more well-judged operating principle of supplying something for everyone than underpins the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s Noel! Noel! program above (see Saturday December 9).  The main point of difference is that this one-off night sticks to its last pretty much throughout.  Guest conductor Christopher Seaman begins with some seasonal arcana: the Polonaise from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Christmas Eve in which the MSO Chorus should play a major role.   Some extracts from Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel follow: the Prelude and the Dream Pantomime where the moving Abendsegen is given luxurious post-Wagnerian treatment.   Naturally, the MSO will play some scraps from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet, the MSO Chorus returning for the opening to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio  –  that bouncy sample of triumphant Christianity, Jauchzet, frohlocket  –  juxtaposed with Berlioz’s chromatic pastorale, the Shepherds’ Farewell from L’enfance du Christ.  Not wasting last week’s work, Messiah extracts follow (I’d guess the Nativity section, Scene 4 from Part the First, but will the organizers be able to resist a Hallelujah! reprise?), the night ending in O Come, All Ye Faithful

 

Sunday December 17

A MIGHTY WONDER: CHRISTMAS WITH THE AUSTRALIAN BOYS CHOIR

Melbourne Recital Centre at 3 pm

This year’s concert from Noel Ancell’s choirs – the ABC itself, its graduate-enfolding Vocal Consort, and its tyro singers – is based around the chant O magnum mysterium although I don’t think the young musicians will be demonstrating their prowess with the Andrea Gabrieli construct featured in the Ensemble Gombert program of a week previous (see  Saturday December 9 above).   We are promised settings by Byrd, Victoria, Poulenc and Norwegian/American Ola Gjeilo’s slow-moving Scandi-mystic version with an obbligato cello line; don’t know why I’m being sniffy about the Gombert’s Gabrieli as this one splits into 11 vocal parts at two stages.   And, of course, there will be lacunae for mass participation when the ABC parents show with unbridled gusto the origin of their sons’ lung power.

 

 

 

 

Refined yet insipid

cliveoconnell

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment & Rachel Podger

Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday November 14 and Saturday November 18,  2017

This democratically operating band has achieved a high reputation in the ranks of period performance if mainly, it seems to me, through the undisguised puffery of British critics and music writers.   Much has been made of the ensemble’s improbable survival, endless self-examination, penchant for various guest directors (albeit ones with top-notch reputations) and catholicity of style.   Not much of this made any difference to Tuesday’s first Melbourne concert from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment which, fronted by guest violinist Podger, performed two symphonies – Haydn’s Lamentatione No. 26 in D minor and J.C. Bach’s G minor Op. 6 No. 6 – and the bookends of Mozart’s violin concerto output: all four compositions written within a decade of each other and coming from a cosy trio of mutually admiring master-writers.

An Australian composer once asked me to make no comparisons between his work and that of other composers whenever I reviewed his work and, although it’s a difficult omission to endure, I’ve tried to keep to it, apart from harmless generalizations that seem unarguable.  The temptation to compare ensembles and orchestras is more difficult to carry out, even on the local scene; performance differences between the Goldner, Flinders and Australian String Quartets are there to be noted, I suppose, but seem to recede in importance when you consider each group’s specific interpretative powers on a particular occasion.

But I couldn’t help thinking of the Australian Chamber Orchestra while listening to the OAE.   The points of difference are clear; Richard Tognetti doesn’t go in for the real period touches, usually because he presents programs more historically diffuse than this one from Tuesday and what’s good for your Bach is not necessarily worth persevering with in your Bartok.   For all their historical exactitude, the British players worked with a kind of diffidence, a temperamental restraint that might have been in operation during the second half of the 18th century – who can tell? – but which resulted in some passages of tedium.  While the ACO takes up every challenge with overt enthusiasm – everything becomes vital, if not confrontational – these Musica Viva guests kept themselves nice, observing a calm style of presentation which often proved admirable if also distancing.

Podger and her supporters were frugal with vibrato, but you’d be unwise to cavil at this practice because it speaks to a lucidity and freshness of texture that you can hardly hope to reach if you let your left hand wobble on the spot at every opportunity.  As a corollary, your intonation has to be spot-on because every note in a sequence takes on a quality tantamount to musical nudity; there is no leeway, no place to hide if you miscalculate. While the Enlightened outlined the Haydn symphony with a discipline of emotional content, you missed decisiveness from the string body, especially the bass elements which throughout the program showed a spread of focus, as though the absence of a conductor’s decisive beat meant that the bottom line could indulge in a bit of a spread.

This lack of bite showed up all the more sharply because the body’s pairs of oboes and horns took on extraordinary prominence, simply as timbre contributors even at obvious moments like bar 58 of the central Adagio where they set the running for the movement’s second half.  In fact, the strings’ delivery during the latter two movements showed more authority than had been obvious in the opening Allegro assai where the occasional intonative crack emerged from the violins.

You never hear the Mozart Violin Concerto No. 1, violinists opting for the melodic eloquence of the final three in the set, more often than not No. 5 which Podger also performed to wind up the night.  To a certain degree, this violinist’s historically obedient use of gut strings only gave her reading an unstressed edge, the violin line primus inter pares; nevertheless, the lack of steel in timbre, coupled with  the sparing vibrato made each deviation evident and small slips emerged even as early as the soloist’s first exposure.  More than the preceding symphony, this score made for involving music-making, although I have to admit that interest levels drooped during the three cadenzas.  Also, this was the only part of the night where the horns – well, one of them – dropped a note; when I think of the error-laden experiences endured at the hands of local period instrument players .  .  .

The Bach symphony produced the program’s most lively engagement in its outer Allegro movements but the central Andante was something of a trial.  At two points for strings alone, the players appeared to concentrate on generating a continuously static communal output, situations where the work’s forward motion stopped, as though the participants were putting their trust in the composer’s orchestration colours to generate attention – which is fine when you have actual colours to deal with.

The one unalloyed high-point of the evening came in the Mozart A Major Violin Concerto’s adagio.  Yes, the music itself is some streets ahead of anything else this concert offered, but it also suited the soloist’s mellow sound flavour in the middle of the composer’s eloquent orchestra loaded with refined detail at every corner.  Again, Podger gave vent to her ability to insert substantial cadenzas; I must admit to wishing for something a tad less prolix by the time the rondeau had reached the usual spot for an interpolation; after all, you don’t have to play a cadenza, particularly in this movement which has enough internal interest to keep you on the qui vive.

The forces at work for this concert made an interesting study.  With Podger at first desk for the symphonies, the first violins numbered five, the seconds four; three violas, two cellos and one double-bass completed the group.   As well as the horn and oboe pairs, the bass line boasted Sally Jackson‘s bassoon which I was hard pressed to discern anywhere during the program.  Perhaps the lack of drive from the upper strings was due to half their number not appearing on the body’s current playing list.  With the ACO, you get the occasional ring-in but most of the time each face is a very familiar one; the which faces will become more familiar to London audiences when Tognetti and his people take up their position for a three-year term as an International Associate ensemble at the Barbican during the 2018/19 season, bringing novelties like steel strings and, more importantly, biting unanimity of attack and a fusion of intellectual and emotional rigour to the London chamber orchestral scene.

Still, it was certainly entertaining being in attendance – with a highly enthusiastic audience – on this night where the OAE indulged us with some enjoyable pages of refined, delectable doodling.

Reductio ad absurdum

cliveoconnell

ROBERTO DEVEREUX

Melbourne Opera

Athenaeum Theatre

November 11, 14, 16 and 18,  2017

                                                                   Helena Dix and Danielle Calder

I suppose that it’s some centuries too late to rail about Donizetti’s asinine Tudor operas which pervert history for the sake of improbable, rudimentary if not execrably written dramatic situations.   And it’s undeniable that, compared to the Maria Stuarda plot-line compiled for the composer by Bardari, the Cammarano book for Roberto Devereux cannot come as a shock to anyone used to bel canto pot-boiler libretti.  But experiencing this conclusion to the Melbourne Opera‘s  sequence of Donizetti’s Henry VIII/Elizabeth I operas did not make for a particularly happy night in the Athenaeum.

Soprano Helena Dix returned to the company to sing the role of Elizabeth and her vocal display was one of the opening night’s highlights from her opening Duchessa . . Alle fervide preci up to the ridiculous self-indulgence of the opera’s finale, Quel sangue versato where the queen’s egocentricity spills over into bathos.  You could relish the precision of Dix’s fioriture alongside the control on display in her ensemble work, all without finding much to fault.

But, from the beginning, the  characterization of Elizabeth offered little beyond amusement and not-to-be-suppressed memories of Bette Davis in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.  This queen, brought down to the groundlings’ level, is a figure of fun, pettish and slightly ridiculous, certainly the biggest entity on this stage and encased in an unflattering farthingale.  The malevolent turn that penetrates her first duet with Devereux, In sembianza di reo, presents as almost childishly spiteful and both Dix and director Suzanne Chaundy seemed unable to give the character a personality with which you might find some sympathy.

Matters hardly improve in the queen’s confrontation of Devereux with Sara’s scarf, the proof (somehow) of his infidelity to her.  You can see that all the running is left to Elizabeth but her display of the incriminating object is schoolgirl-spiteful at best, as is her intransigence with Nottingham’s requests for mercy.  The best recourse here was to ignore the staging and focus on the vocal interplay which, on Dix’s part – once you set aside the overdrawn malice – remained consistently impressive.

Henry Choo gave us a well-rounded Devereux, although it was easier to take to the ardour of his Una volta, crudel interchange and consequent duet with Danielle Calder‘s Sara than to his initial appearance in front of Elizabeth where the tenor over-stressed the guilty asides both with the Queen and in the pendant scene with Nottingham.  Still, Choo made a fine feast of his focal scene Ed ancor, la tremenda porta where Devereux resolves to keep his secrets and endure execution; here was an excellent sample of lyrical and persuasive bel canto, determined and not over-supple but clear-speaking and consistent across its demanding range.

Phillip Calcagno, one of the company’s stalwarts, worked hard as Nottingham., the friend turned enemy who serves as the all-too-predictable fulcrum around whom the tragedy turns.   His baritone is accurate enough but it lacks pliancy; a single-minded insistence on correct delivery worked in the baritone’s favour during his reassurance of Devereux but proved wearing in his pleadings with Elizabeth, Non venni mai si mesto, probably because of the sharp contrast brought into play with Dix’s fluid phrasing.  However, the angrier Nottingham became, the more convincing Calcagno’s efforts.

It’s no fault of any singer that he has to indulge in a rapid, hardly credible conversion from dedicated confidante to moustache-twirling vengeful cuckold (or so he believes) in an instant; Cammarano’s dialogue sets up this change and Donizetti was in too much of a hurry for any subtlety.  When the penny starts to drop, Calcagno does his best from Orrenda luce balena onward but the transformation is unavoidably melodramatic. The confrontation with his wife that begins Sara, vederlo io voglio gave us the singer’s finest moments where the emotional intensity of this character’s abrupt change in situation almost brought about a commensurate flexibility in Nottingham’s vocal line.

Calder’s Sara opened the opera, fittingly enough with a plaint:  All’afflitto e dolce il pianto – a marvellous gift from the composer – but the soprano was directed in such a manner that the lines made little impression, coming across as more petulant than tinted with tragedy. Things improved markedly in Calder’s ensemble work, her deliberation a worthy match for Choo in the couple’s renunciation scene and an attention-grabbing counterweight to Calcagno’s vicious recriminations in the husband-and-wife confrontation.

Jason Wasley played Lord Cecil without stress, but then there’s not much for the character to do.  Eddie Muliaumaseali’i enjoyed the part of Raleigh, who has a scene of conspiracy with Elizabeth, Assente egli era, where he produces the scarf he has found on Devereux.  It isn’t much to play with but the bass made each phrase count; his delight in ruining a rival almost made you feel some pleasure in knowing that this knight was to meet his comeuppance under James I some 17 years after the opera’s action.

As for the company’s chorus, the general effusions sounded enthusiastic, but the night began in pretty ordinary fashion with the court ladies’ Gemer!   Pallor funesto coming across the footlights to scrappy effect.   As is customary in these 19th century Italian pre-Verdi works, the male chorus tended to bellow when given the opportunity.

Greg Hocking conducted a pit that every so often found it hard to agree on the beat.  The overture’s tutti exclamation chords sounded effective but the following reading of God save the king suffered from an uneven woodwind trio where the oboe drowned out the melody-bearing flute.  Hocking did little to keep the brass restrained which was a pity as his strings worked hard and efficiently while the horns were not always as reliable.  As Hocking knows better than most, the Athenaeum is a small space where the orchestral output sounds acoustically dry with little-to-no resonance.   Duets and trios worked effectively in stage-pit combination but the hurly-burly full choruses, enthusiastically essayed, sounded too hefty for the air volume available.

In a bid to aid communication, the work was sung in English: a practice that works well when the libretto is worth understanding in detail but not so fortunate on this occasion where the audience found plenty to laugh at in Act 1.  This comprehensibility factor favoured recitatives but arias and more complex structures did not always succeed as well as they might have if all singers had been coached in shaping their words.

But is there a point in laying bare the bones of this opera?  Much of the time, it flies in the face of sense, nowhere more so than in the essential plot element involving a ring that the queen gives to Devereux, to be used by him as a court of last appeal if he gets caught up in trouble.   Even at the final curtain, Elizabeth is brandishing this infantile talisman of intrigue, as though the tragedy can be attributed to its misuse, rather than the fact that Devereux was a compleat traitor with a long history, for such a young man, of disobedience and intemperate behaviour.

On top of this, Cammarano and Donizetti portray the queen herself as a venal, uncontrolled personage; her last words in the opera are an apparently splenetic act of abdication, although in reality she had another two – almost three – years to live and reign after Devereux’s execution.   The legend of the Virgin Queen comes in for a belting as well since her physical infatuation comes pulsing though all too clearly in her musing that begins L’amor suo mi fe’ beata.

So, at the night’s end, after the audience’s full expression of pleasure in Dix and Choo’s realizations of difficult roles, the over-riding impression that I took away was one of vulgarity; not just because the creators had played ducks and drakes with the facts but more so that they had demeaned the story, working to an operatic lowest common denominator.   I’m one of very few patrons of this mind, for sure, but I’m glad the Donizetti/Tudor experience is over.  Here’s hoping the company doesn’t attempt to round out the enterprise with a staging of Il castello di Kenilworth.

One for the true specialists

cliveoconnell

THE DEW GATHERERS

Amanda Cole, Janet Brewer. Neil Heymink

Move Records MCD 565

It’s not every day that you come across music by Johann Philipp Krieger; his younger brother Johann, yes – familiar to most organists and harpsichordists as a name to reckon with when entering the early Baroque.  But J.P. is an historical enigma and this CD deals with a significant part of his oeuvre about which details are sketchy and, even after enjoying the disc several times over, I’m uncertain whether or not I have a grip of its content.

The performers are mezzo Amanda Cole, bassoon Neil Heymink and harpsichord Janet Brewer.  Alongside the 20 arias and songs that the players work through, Brewer concludes the album with Krieger’s Aria con variazioni in B, one of the three remaining keyboard works of the composer that I can find.  As for the vocal numbers, not all of them employ Cole’s voice.   For instance, the first track, An den wilden Aeolus from the opera Flora, Ceres und Pomona, sees the vocal line entrusted to the bassoon.  Much the same happens further along with Jagerlust from Cephalus und Procris, and finally the two instruments take on the challenges of Die beue Bauernstube, also from the Procris work.

According to these musicologically informed musicians, you will only find 24 arias still extant from Krieger’s 34 (or thereabouts) operas and singspiels.  So this compendium forms the greater part of his stage work to survive, although it hasn’t done so very well.  The allocation of particular arias to specific characters presents problems – necessarily so when all you have to work with are fragments.  And the trio has engaged in further forensic work by stripping back the detail inserted by editor Hans Joachim Moser for his 1930 Nagels Verlag publication of German songs.  Throughout, the dominant orchestral input – the top string line, I suppose –  is mainly entrusted to the bassoon: a process that leaves Amanda Cole very exposed.

This represents admirable, scouring treatment of the composer’s work, taking it back to a bare-bones stage.  My problem is a simple one: the arias often lack any context.  For example, the single extract from Der wiederkehrende Phoebus, a song about agility not just being witchcraft, is a spirited construct but without any trace of the opera’s libretto or cast of characters, it presents as an enigmatic operatic orphan.

Further, quite a few of the tracks are brief; three come in under a minute and the average length is a touch over two minutes.  In fact, the most substantial offering – Liebespein from Cecrops mit seinen drei Tochtern – lasts 6 minutes and yet what you learn through its duration amounts to very little in terms of insight into Krieger’s compositional technique.  Still, these musicians do good service for the Flora work with nine arias; the Cecrops and Procris works are represented by five numbers each.

Of course, the actual sound of these arias is circumscribed with few signs of inserted fanciful flights from any of the performing trio.  But the general effect is – almost necessarily – reminiscent of Bach,  mainly in the melodic movement, not in the underpinning craft where Krieger is less concerned with inventiveness but more with felicity of utterance, as in An die Sonnengott from the Flora opera: an address to Titan/Apollo which is fluent and engaging but straight out of the salon.  Then, by contrast, Verliebtes Weinen und Lachen holds a few moments that remind you of Monteverdi’s operatic declamations.

More often, the composer’s bent turns to simple lyrics that don’t make many chromatic waves, like the assertively plaintive Der Heissverliebte where, as in several other arias, the bassoon takes over the vocal line for a verse or two; although you can’t rely on this textural relief as in Coridon in Geldnoten where Cole sings the same rather uninspired material four times.  The first opportunity in these Flora extracts where you’d hope to get a hold on the composer in slightly extended format is the concluding Sommerfreuden, a 6/8 pastorale of some charm; but this is simply an aria with more verses than its predecessors.

The Cecrops group begins with that long Liebespein.  Again, this is an amiable plaint but its melodic shape is predictable and, while the players’ efforts to deck it with some ornamentation are welcome, they’re not enough to compensate for its pedestrian inspiration.  Ach! Pandrose, more concise, is brisk, almost a march and, without decrying Cole’s interpretation, might have benefited from being sung by a sturdy baritone.  The lack of harmonic variety emerges pretty plainly in Die holde Nacht where the tonal centre – D minor? – hardly moves throughout the aria.  Similarly, in Schmilz, hartes Herz!, a feint to the dominant is the only variety offered in a deft but unadventurous little lyric.

By the time you reach the Cephalus und Procris bracket, you have settled into the Krieger ethos: there will be no surprises and the melodies will be well-crafted but unexceptional.  An die Einsamkeit opens interestingly enough with a set of two phrases beginning with a sustained vocal note, but moves into near-orthodoxy although the  later unexpectedly high-ranging stages put a strain on Cole’s production and pitching.  Du ungluckseliger Morgenstern is more interesting for its steady pace and its momentary forays into the relative major and melodic minor territories, even if the vocal range seems more constricted than usual.

Brewer deals efficiently with the B flat Variations.  They offer few interpretative challenges and the harpsichordist observes all repeats.  Early on, Krieger indulges us in a touch of chromaticism, but not enough to lead us too far away from the home key at any stage.  The usual suspects turn up: triplets, running semiquavers in the left hand, pseudo-canons between the hands, registral statement and response, melodic mock-angularity, two-part inventions, paring-back to a bare outline, time-signature changes, widely-spaced parallel motion: the whole box of tricks more familiar to us from Handel’s harpsichord suites.

Finally, where do the dew gatherers come into it?  It has to do with Cecrops’ daughters.  One of them, Pandrose, was goddess of the dew; one of her other sisters is named Herse, which is Greek for ‘dew’.  Interesting to know but most of this CD’s content is more earth-bound in nature than this ephemeral title suggests.

Early opera, sort of

cliveoconnell

BITTERSWEET OBSESSIONS

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre

November 4-5,  2017

                                                                               Karim Sulayman

Paul Dyer and his ABO brought a split personality of a show to Murdoch Hall over the weekend; on one side of interval came stately tragedy, on the other, the closest thing the High Baroque gets to a joke.  You could make a case that the two parts didn’t gel, but you are faced with the same situation on many an orchestral and chamber music program where juxtapositions of unlikely material occur regularly.  However, this program succeeded chiefly through the dedication of all involved and the absence of presentation irritations that have marred previous ABO events.

The MRC audience was faced with three scenes, two by Monteverdi and one from Bach. New Zealand soprano Natasha Wilson sang in all three, as did American tenor Karim Sulayman and Danish baritone Jakob Bloch Jespersen.  Local tenor Spencer Darby sang in the opening Lamento della ninfa while actors Melanie Lindenthal and Andrew Sunter took on mute roles in the more substantial works.

Dyer and his instrumentalists – three violins, viola, cello, violone, two recorders, a lirone/viola da gamba. Tommie Andersson‘s theorbo/guitar/gallichon set, harp and single percussionist – worked from an open pit on the same level as the front stalls while the usual performers’ working platform became a well-spaced arena for Charlotte Montgomery’s mutable sets: a stylized landscape for the mournful nymph, a large scaffold apparatus for Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and a cafe for Bach’s Coffee Cantata, Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht.

A three-section madrigal, the Lamento is hard to present theatrically because nothing happens.  The four  voices outline the situation of a girl left abandoned by her lover; the lady takes centre-spot for the lament with the males offering subterranean commentary, finally come  a few observations about the power of love to round out a 6-minute piece centred on an inexorable ground-bass.  With a large backdrop of a stylized landscape and some cardboard clumps of bushes, the four singers spread themselves around: fine for Wilson’s penetrating, clear voice, not so hot for the males who needed to be positioned in a solid group, if only as a solid source of complementary colour.

For Il combattimento, most of the emphasis fell on Sulayman’s Narrator who surged through Tasso’s lines with requisite fire and dramatic emphasis – in line with the composer’s directions and his music’s illustrative character.  Every so often, the tenor sacrificed precision of pitch for dramatic delivery, which might have made more sense to more people if the surtitles had translated the entire libretto.  But the single-voice experience didn’t pall, thanks to this singer’s vocal vim and textual assurance.  As in the one other staged performance I’ve seen from the national company, the two paladins remained static figures, their combat acted out at ground level by Lindenthal and Sunter in aikido costumes and equipped with staves.

Dyer’s band showed a vital flexibility in this reading, taking every chance to find and deliver the revolutionary score’s flashes of illustrative colour.  Constantine Costi‘s direction had Wilson and Jespersen proceed up the scaffolding, become blindfolded as a substitute for the helmets that disguise identities in the original poem, then deliver their few lines from static postures..  In this non-naturalistic mise-en-scene, armour was nowhere to be found on the nominal protagonists  –  just bland everyday clothes, while Sulayman sported a striking red thobe and the aikido fighters wore their usual white, all-enveloping bandage-uniform.

Costi was understandably sparing with his directorial bolts from the blue but noteworthy were the collapse of  the backdrop for the Lamento to reveal the confronting scaffold set, and the dropping of a long red cloth from the top level when Clorinda is mortally wounded by her lover.  Still, like its predecessor on this program, the work is short – about 20 minutes – and, apart from the absurdity of the story and the instrumentation novelties, the presentation’s chief interest lay in Sulayman’s feat of memory and stage dominance.

Framing the two madrigals, Dyer interspersed some fragments by Monteverdi’s contemporaries.  Andersson opened with Kapsberger’s Toccata arpeggiata, curdled by percussion support that featured a wind machine, the action spreading to the lower strings before a gusty transition to the Lamento.  Between the Monteverdi pieces came a Falconieri ciacona of refreshing exuberance but sitting completely at odds with the two tragic stories, and Monteverdi’s own overture to Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria that occupies eight bars and can be (and was) elongated at will.  To round off the night’s first half, Dyer and his players moved immediately from Clorinda’s dying sentence to a Consonanze stravaganti by Trabaci which also took on more timbres than merely its keyboard original.

For the program’s second part, we vaulted forward a century to Bach’s cantata, prefaced by the first movement of his Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 with the two recorders and violin solo lines. Nobody wasted any time relishing the counterpoint in this marvellous construct, top billing going to Shaun Lee-Chen‘s flight of demi-semiquavers from bar 187 to bar 208; the two recorders were sadly swamped.

There isn’t much to be done with the Coffee Cantata.  It’s just four recitatives with pendant arias, then a final recitative and concluding trio.  The Narrator (Sulayman) introduces the story; father and daughter Sclendrian (Jespersen) and Lieschen (Wilson) share three recitatives, enjoy two arias each; finally, the Narrator folds it all up and all three collaborate for the summation.  As you’d expect, the girl gets to enjoy her obsession – coffee – and the father once again copes with the inevitable.  But the score holds two splendid numbers: the soprano’s lilting last aria, Heute noch; and that last ensemble, Die Katze lasst das Mausen nicht, which is so full of sturdy bonhomie that it makes you forget – almost – the affected and pretentious industry that has grown up around the simple practice of drinking coffee.                                         (L to R)     Karima Sulayman, Natasha Wilson, Jakob Bloch Jespersen

Wilson played the spoiled rich girl with convincing flair, her sprightly vocal colour suited to this transparent score.  Jespersen enjoyed his only moments of extended solo work in the night, best exercised in his Madchen, die von Harten sinnen aria where he kept exasperation and self-pity deftly harnessed.  Sulayman occupied himself with the fiddly tasks that typify your born barista – a hard ask, doing nothing for a good stretch of time – but came into his own with a light ringing sound for the concluding trio.

Yes, the company asked you to jump from deep medieval gloom to pre-Enlightenment burlesque across the night but something about Bach’s assurance and innate kindness made the transition come to a softer landing.  Finally, it is hard to speak highly enough of the ABO’s flawless support, although, if pressed, you’d have to single out Melissa Farrow‘s delectable flute and its supple ornamentation as a particular delight.

Celebration of the displaced

cliveoconnell

JACOBEAN COMPOSERS IN THE LOW COUNTRIES

Ensemble Gombert

Xavier College Chapel

Saturday October 28, 2017

The old order changeth – or so it seems with this excellent ensemble.  For many comfortable years  –  comfortable for us admirers  –  this choir has maintained its own timbre, such that you can usually pick the group out from the ruck: piercingly true sopranos, a steady and prominent alto line, a resonant quartet of basses, and tenors that negotiate the notes, even if diffidently.  Further, the Gomberts’ control of material extended across the centuries, well past the time of their namesake and well into the last century; John O’Donnell could take his 18 singers into any landscape and make them sound content and secure.

Much of this had to do with longevity; a solid core remained in the organization’s line-up, no matter what individuals went or returned, and this continuity of service ensured that the ensemble’s calibre of performance suffered minimally, whether a program comprised Flemish masters of the early-to-mid Renaissance or moved into the realms occupied by  contemporary static Scandinavians.  On top of this, the choir began as it continued, making no compromises for the sake of attracting a wider audience but sticking to its communal last of taking up challenges and producing readings of high musicianship without the slightest trace of populism.

This single-mindedness hasn’t changed,. evident from this most recent program given on Saturday night.  O’Donnell and his singers – the number increased slightly to 19 – worked through a focused series of works by recusant composers (well, two of them were; the other used Catholicism as the public justification for his exile) who left England for the more tolerant climate of the Netherlands and Belgium.  Mind you, two of the three composers programmed got short shrift.  O’Donnell played John Bull’s Praeludium voor Laet ons met herten reijne on a chamber organ which emphasized the piece’s progress into angularity and abruptness.  But the piece lasts only about three minutes.  Peter Philips enjoyed a longer hearing with four motets, but the recital’s main emphasis fell on works by Richard Dering – 20 of them.

Right from the opening bars of Philips’ Ave verum corpus setting, you could tell that the Gomberts’ sound had changed; in this work, the suspicion turned to certainty on the word praegustatum where the advent of at least three new sopranos – new to my experience – had altered the line’s timbre, to the point where you wondered about the possibility of someone operating slightly below the set pitch. The effect was hard to pin down because, in this piece for five voices, there are two soprano lines.  Something of the same uncertainty occurred in the following Christus resurgens where the final high notes of the sopranos’ overlapping Alleluia – Fs in my music – missed out on true congruence.

Media vita, set in a more sombre, lower tessitura, made a more favourable impression, possibly because of a calmer dynamic in operation, but the last offering from this composer, Ascendit Deus, held some more flashes of rough delivery, so that the customary smoothness and consistency of product was not sustained.

For the two brackets of Dering motets, O’Donnell accompanied the choir with the provided continuo, occasionally giving his singers a brief respite with an interlude. In the first, pre-interval group, an opening brace of O bone Jesu and O nomen Jesu made a favourable impression with several passages of quietly assertive declamation.  The sopranos didn’t pick out their opening to Jesu dulcis memoria carefully enough; the tenor lines in Quando cor nostrum sounded unusually thin, then pretty tired in the second line of Desidero te millies although the chromatic slipping at the end of that motet came across with fine accomplishment.

The composer’s works proved full of surprises in word-setting, rarely lingering over a phrase and all too happy to get past an awkwardness like incompraehensaque bonitas with some dispatch.   But even a bucketful of compositional felicities could not disguise a dominance of the choir’s texture by the top line/s with an agreable murmuring from the bass quartet but no commensurately prominent counterweight; it made you long for the presence of old-time regulars like Jerzy Kozlowski and Tim Daly.

The second group of Dering motets began with a fine reading of Anima Christi which alternated solo voices with the full choir, the sudden emergence of individuals a welcome change, although something odd happened in the final speravi in te where the combined texture appeared to undergo a dynamic gap.  The same technique worked to more confident effect in the following Vox in Rama and the women’s voices carried the burden for Dixit Agnes with as much assurance and directness of address as in years past.  A fine emotional flare informed the horticultural rhapsody of rubicunda plusquam rosa, Lilio canbdidior that concluded the deceptive Ave virgo gloriosa where the singers dipped into a sequence based on the Song of Songs.

Approaching the end, the well-exercised singers found sufficient energy to outline the suspension chain in Contristatus est Rex David where the king mourns his faithless son. But the central O sanctum signum Cruce, adoramus te in Omnem super quem returned us to the opening qualms about the upper line’s pitch, a problem that continued into the final Ave Maria.

This year is the 400th anniversary of the publication of Dering’s five-voice Cantiones sacrae and I can’t imagine that another celebration of this event would be as carefully researched and prepared as this program was.  Certainly, the night shone a battery of lights in a dark place as Dering is not a name that emerges often in Catholic choral ceremonies, although he is  –  somewhat perversely  –  not so much of a stranger in the Anglican church.

The Gomberts have cut down on their Xavier College Chapel appearances in recent times; this year, they are presenting only three nights there, and mounting more programs in the Melbourne Recital Centre’s Salon.  You can only hope that the new choir members settle more firmly into the body’s long-time high level of performance, even though the opportunities for such acclimatization in the rich Xavier acoustic are becoming more rare.

Tension squared

cliveoconnell

THE END OF TIME

Ensemble Liaison

Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday October 24,  2017

                                                                               Ensemble Liaison

For their last Melbourne appearance this year, the Liaisoners – clarinet David Griffiths, cello Svetlana Bogosavljevic, piano Timothy Young – hosted Dene Olding, recently retired concertmaster of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and lead desk in the Goldner String Quartet.  Another guest reserved his talents until the night’s second half: lighting designer Paul Jackson who exerted an optical influence over the Messiaen quartet that gave this night its title . . .  sort of.  Fellow lighting-man Danny Pettingill contributed significantly to the visual scheme as well.

Opening Tuesday night’s bill, Bogosavljevic and Young collaborated in Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro Op. 70, originally written for horn and piano but authorised by the composer for violin, viola or cello consumption.  Simply put, the two movements sound most convincing in the original formulation, although you could not fault this cellist’s delineation of the slow opening, especially in the plangent tenor-clef higher passages where the player’s pitching proved pretty exact.  The Allegro poses a bigger problem in audibility, especially as its bold opening descending gambit is swamped even by a considerate pianist, so that the flourish tends to fade into a secondary role unless the player is capable of urging out volume commensurate with the keyboard’s three reinforcing forte chords.  Still, the players worked their interpretation into the pages’ irresistible verve and maintained our interest through the movement’s intervening episodes.

Australian writer Samantha Wolf wrote There Is Only Now specifically for the ensemble’s forces,  Griffiths being asked to play a bass instrument as well as the regulation clarinet (B flat or A? I still find it hard to tell).  A pale, limpid texture from the cello and clarinet began the piece’s premiere hearing with some piano chords for atmospheric support, but it soon became clear that Wolf’s vocabulary offered not just impressionistic dreaming but a definite alternation between straight tonal material and passages of not-too-grating bitonality.

The work seemed to fall into three segments, the last a revisiting of the opening scene after an optimistic, rapid-moving central core.  At the end, an unexpectedly elegiac solo from Young, you realized too late (for ‘you’, read ‘I’) that Wolf had been dealing chiefly in motivic cells, not melodic arches, and the piece’s progress had featured expanded and compressed versions of these note groups.  Underlying the composition itself is a statement of faith expressed in the title but I can’t recall whether the emphasis is placed on living for the present because that’s all there is to your life, or whether each moment should be relished as a testament to one’s joy in life as it is, no matter how rough or smooth your particular situation happens to be.  Down at ground level, I admired the performers’ zeal, even though some synchronicity errors emerged in a duet of abrupt explosions between Griffiths and Young.

Olding took the lead role in the trio concert suite from Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, put together by the composer as a thank-you for the affluent amateur clarinetist Werner Reinhart who financed the staged work’s premiere.  This began well enough with a suitably jaunty inflection to The Soldier’s March.  But tension arose in the following The Soldier’s Violin when Olding’s instrument suffered a malfunction; I’m not sure what it was but it looked like his D string lost its tension and the movement had to be re-started after a considerable break.

And this had the inevitable result of making you (me) fearful of the problem recurring so that attention during The Little Concert went out the window while you  (I) kept on expecting the worst; stupidly so, as matters turned out because the violin-forefronting Tango-Waltz-Ragtime was carried off with fine flourish and dextrous responsiveness to Stravinsky’s time-signature changes and abrupt side-steps. Young realised the challenging piano part with diplomacy, Griffiths enjoying the role that the composer gave – a none-too-taxing one, even in the concluding The Devil’s Dance – to his financial backer.

We came back after interval to a Murdoch Hall filled with smoke – which had almost cleared by the time all four musicians came on stage for the Quartet for the End of Time, Messiaen’s most popular and accessible statement of faith.  The lumiere contribution to this experience was pretty bland when compared to the overwhelming son canvas but a few movements made simple dramatic points, most significantly Griffiths’ solo on Abime des oiseaux, delivered from memory and in a dark blue spot which only suggested the player’s shape.  To be honest, I’ve heard Griffiths articulate this movement with more intensity, and one of the very soft echo passages failed to travel  to my seat.

Still, Bogoisvljevic’s account of the Louange a l’Eternite de Jesus impressed for its consistency, barely a tremor noticeable in its long, stately progress.  Later, you had to be exhilarated by that dangerous Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes where all four players vault in unison across Messiaen’s irregular patterns of melody and rhythm.  And Olding with Young produced a moving timbral ascension for the concluding Louange a l’Immortalite de Jesus where the composer looks towards the eternal and finds a kind of static ecstasy.

Despite the moderate colour scheme – reds mainly, with an appealing white-and-cream for the excellent violin and cello octave duet in the Vocalise, pour l’Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps – this performance worked at its best in dialectically extreme moments: long essays in stasis or pithy and controlled explosions of action.  What was surprising on this occasion was how quickly the score was completed.  Many of us would have experienced readings that seemed to stretch out till the crack of doom, but this version from the Liaisons and guest Olding seemed almost brisk.   Or possibly we’ve become inured over the years to Messiaen’s penchant for longueurs when delineating his own soul’s theological odyssey.

November Diary

cliveoconnell

Wednesday November 1

QUATTRO

Selby & Friends

Tatoulis Auditorium, Methodist Ladies College at  7:30 pm

Last Melbourne appearance for the year from Kathy Selby and her kaleidoscope of cobbers and she has moved operations from Deakin Edge in Federation Square to MLC.  Suits me: it’s a five-minute walk away.  I wonder how many of the group’s loyal followers will be trekking out to Hawthorn/Kew; here’s hoping there’s no fall-off, but an increase.  For this inaugural Tatoulis Auditorium recital, it’s piano quartets all the way: Turina’s solitary effort in A minor, the G minor first of Mozart’s two, and the E flat second of Dvorak’s brace.  Guests tonight are all Sydney Symphony Orchestra members: violinist Andrew Haveron from the concertmaster’s desk, principal viola Tobias Breider, and principal cellist Umberto Clerici.   Now that’s an imposing set of visitors, all used to dominant roles.  Should be a powerful end to an always enjoyable, illuminating and – in this new ambience – plushly comfortable experience.

‘

Thursday November 2

BEETHOVEN 9: ODE TO JOY

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall at 8 pm

There’s nothing like the Symphony No. 9 for warming the communal heart cockles; its choral finale has been used and abused by modern-day advertisers and a hideous gaggle of sports promoters over recent decades but nothing beats the stop-start excitement of the work’s final strophes.   Not forgetting – although most do – the superb drama of the preceding three movements.   This is billed as the Season Finale Gala, which it almost is, if you leave out about half-a-dozen later programs.   Benjamin Northey gets his chance at this big canvas, the MSO Chorus on hand for the fireworks, and a cast of all-Australian soloists: a wonder these days and not the case with the MSO’s real season end –  Handel’s Messiah in December.  Tonight, we’ll hear soprano Jacqueline Porter, mezzo Liane Keegan, tenor Henry Choo (good luck with the Alla marcia, sport), and bass Shane Lowrencev.  For starters, Northey conducts John Adams’ Absolute Jest where the Australian String Quartet and the MSO indulge in the American composer’s take on Beethoven scherzos and other non-funny works; rib-tickling it ain’t but a 25-minute construct that keeps referring to Beethoven and winding up in a game of Guess The Movement.

This program will be repeated on Friday November 3.

 

Saturday November 4

BITTERSWEET OBSESSIONS: MONTEVERDI & BACH

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre at 7 pm

I don’t know about Monteverdi and the bittersweet, let alone if such an emotionally catholic composer was ever obsessed.  Nor does the idea of over-centric preoccupation come to mind when thinking of Bach, although you could have cause to re-think when considering A Musical Offering and Art of Fugue.  But this assorted program from the Brandenburgers could throw some new light on both composers’ psyches.  The night opens with the Italian composer’s Lamento della ninfa, a four-part madrigal from Book VIII of Monteverdi’s output.  It requires a soprano, especially for the exposed central section where the poor nymph carries out her plaint – in this case, Natasha Wilson – with a choir of two tenors and a bass.  Well, we have one tenor scheduled in Karim Sulayman from the US, and another in our own Spencer Darby, with Denmark’s Jakob Bloch Jespersen giving bass support.  Then the ABO gets involved with Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda: a scena, also from Book VIII and requiring two tenors and soprano to tell this Tasso-inspired story of Christian murder.   Finally, Bach provides some light in his Coffee Cantata, which is really a one-act opera in ten parts asking for Wilson to sing the addicted Lieschen,  Jespersen to take on the part of her grumpy father Schlendrian, and one of the tenors to fill in as the Narrator who tops and helps tail the work.

This program will be repeated on Sunday November 5 at 5 pm

 

Sunday November 12

THE OUTSIDERS

Trio Anima Mundi

Holy Trinity Anglican Church, East Melbourne at 3 pm

I’ve neglected these people shamefully but, if you miss one of their recitals, it’s a long time between drinks because they only give two programs a year: first in Geelong, then, after a few weeks’ break, repeating it in this East Melbourne church.  The personnel – pianist Kenji Fujimura, violinist Rochelle Ughetti, cellist Noella Yan – are ranging pretty widely in their definition of what constitutes an outsider.  They include Haydn, here represented by his Piano Trio No. 10 in A Major, because he lived a fair part of his life in the geographically situated Hungarian wilds of Esterhaza . . . which was true for 25 years but didn’t stop him being the most celebrated composer in Europe.   Rutland Boughton’s Celtic Prelude represents – briefly – a composer of high integrity who had considerable success founding an opera festival at Glastonbury but eventually became suspect because of his Communist sympathies; surprising he stood out at all for this political disposition in post-World War I Britain.  Also being played is Alfred Schnittke’s Trio – originally for strings but later arranged for the piano trio combination; like pretty much every Soviet-era composer, Schnittke fell foul of the authorities, eventually migrating to Hamburg, although the Russian state re-claimed him after his death.  The Trio Anima Mundi’s 2017  Composition Prize-winning work will also be performed on this full-program.

 

Tuesday November 14

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Rachel Podger

Musica Viva

Melbourne Recital Centre at 7 pm

Podger is actually directing this well-credentialled period music band which operates without a regular conductor in full democratic mode; atypical for this genre of organization, although not unheard of.   This will be the fourth in a series of eight concerts across the country under the MV umbrella, all of which comprise the same program: Podger as soloist/leader in Mozart’s first and last violin concertos, Haydn’s three-movement Lamentatione Symphony in D minor, and a J. C. Bach Symphony in G minor (presumably the Op. 6 No. 6).  Is this the OAL’s first Australian visit?  Whatever the case, the body has a long pedigree packed with notable guest directors and soloists and it will be interesting to see how large a body fronts up to the Recital Centre.

This program will be repeated on Saturday November 18

 

Wednesday November 15

Emma Kirkby with Jakob Lindberg

Great Performers

Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm

Kirkby seems to have been around for years.  She is certainly a senior citizen among the ranks of British singers and her fame rests mainly in the early music field; among her collaborators have been the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, appearing a night before her in the Recital Centre.   Tonight she is sponsored by the MRC itself, one of their Great Performers for the year.   Accompanied by lutenist Jakob Lindberg, she will be amplifying on their 2007 CD collaboration with a program of English, French, Spanish and Italian works of the Renaissance, leaching into the early Baroque.  But then, Kirkby can’t help retracing her steps, as she has sung pretty much everything in the repertoire at some time or other, not least with her former partner, Anthony Rooley.   For purity of intonation and clarity of articulation, you have to look far and wide to find her equal.

 

Thursday November 16

HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Plenary Hall at 7:30 pm

Dealing with one of the most recognizable film scores of modern times, the MSO is moving out of Hamer Hall to cope with the hordes who want to re-experience the Harry Potter films with a live soundtrack underpinning.   Is this the city’s biggest performance space with a decent acoustic?   I reckon so, although there’ll be the usual amplification chicanery going on.   I don’t know why I’m bothering with this entry, though: both performances are sold out.  You can put your name down on a wait list, apparently.

This program will be repeated on Saturday November 18 at 1 pm

 

Friday November 17

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Plenary Hall at 7:30 pm

On the other hand, you can still book seats to this, the second in the Harry Potter experience where you get to see Voldemort in the personage of Tom Riddle and you also witness the incomparable Dumbledore of Richard Harris for the last time.  Needless to say, the score is largely a reprise of the first film’s content, although the basilisk sequence has some exhilarating novelties.   Moreover, a large part of the arrangement was carried out by William Ross as John Williams was swamped with work at the time.   What is the attraction of these live soundtrack experiences?   You’ll never know until you try but I suspect part of it comes down to the communal experience of sitting in a theatre with several thousand other people and watching a total familiarity where all the jokes are still worth a laugh and the thrills are somehow more compelling when seen on the big screen. Or it could be the sensation of watching expert musicians at work for once.

This program will be repeated on Saturday November 18 at 7:30 pm

 

Sunday November 19

LETTERS FROM TCHAIKOVSKY

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre at 2:30 pm

It’s Peter Ilyich till you’ve had an ample sufficiency.  The main  and unadulterated element is the Serenade for Strings where the melodies run rampant throughout its four irreplaceable movements; always a joy to hear from a devoted band, and they don’t come more ready-for-purpose than William Hennessy’s ensemble.   And, of course, we have the arrangements: MCO favourite composer/orchestrator Nicholas Buc’s version of the three-movement Souvenir d’un lieu cher set for violin solo and strings replacing the original’s piano, then some of Rostislav Dubinsky’s string settings of the Album for the Young Op. 39 – your guess is as good as mine about which ones will emerge because Dubinsky certainly arranged all 24 of these miniatures for string quartet.   Hennessy kicks off his afternoon with Arensky’s Variations on a theme by Tchaikovsky: seven of them plus a coda based around the fifth of the composer’s Sixteen Children’s Songs.   Deviating from the main motif, the MCO will play another arrangement for strings of Shostakovich’s early Three Fantastic Dances, the composer’s first piano pieces.  Shane Chen, first violin in the Flinders Quartet, will be soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir.

This program will be repeated on Thursday November 23 in the Deakin Edge, Federation Square at 7:30 pm.

 

Thursday November 23

MSO PLAYS RACHMANINOV 2

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall at 8 pm

Returning to a well-tilled field, the MSO will race through a work they have made a specialty in their repertoire since the days of Hiroyuki Iwaki.   Something about its spacious lyricism and harnessed nervousness brings out the best in these players when they launch into Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 in E minor.   Tonight they are conducted by Stanislav Kochanovsky, a native of St. Petersburg in his mid-thirties and already well-established as a notable opera conductor – to the extent that the poor fellow comes to us fresh from directing a Barrie Kosky production of Eugene Onegin in Zurich.  Kochanovsky opens his Melbourne debut with Schumann’s Manfred Overture, then the night’s soloist, Swedish soprano Lisa Larsson, expounds music by one of her countrymen and regular collaborator, Rolf Martinsson: Ich denke dein . . . , settings of five poems by Goethe, Rilke and Eichendorff, written expressly for Larsson in 2014

This program will be repeated on Saturday November 25 at 2 pm.

 

Friday November 24

MARWOOD PLAYS CHAMBER MUSIC

Australian National Academy of Music

South Melbourne Town Hall at 7:30 pm

Back for his annual stint in the halls of ANAM, British violinist Anthony Harwood is heading an evening of chamber works that begin with Mozart’s Piano Trio in G Major  – one of the five definites and two possibles in the composer’s catalogue (this is the K. 496 with the six-variations finale).  Marwood and his as-yet-unknown colleagues end with Dvorak’s third – and last – String Quintet, that in E flat which asks for a second viola; a requirement that might prove attractive for the ensemble’s versatile leader.   In the centre comes Erwin Schulhoff’s String Sextet, finished in 1924 after a long gestation and one of the ill-fated composer’s most impressive if sombre works.

 

Friday November 30

SOUNDS OF SPRING

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre at 8 pm

It’s great to see the MSO break out of its overture/concerto/symphony straitjacket for these events at the MRC which seem to be left in the hands of the body’s two concertmasters.  Tonight is Eoin Andersen’s turn at the helm and he starts with a great seasonal opening; no, not Vivaldi, but Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in F Major in which he will be accompanied by Stefan Cassomenos, last heard at September’s Music in the Round Festival thundering through Liszt’s arrangement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.  Expanding the timbre field a tad will be Copland’s Appalachian Spring in the original version for 13 instruments: an American voice speaking in firm and resonant notes with a humanity and emotional truth that give promise of better times to come, a national harbinger of a resurgence in robust ethics out of the present sewer.  Finally, Andersen takes the solo spot in an arrangement for violin and strings of Piazzolla’s Four Seasons in Buenos Aires where I defy you to point to any significant difference between the movements in any parameter that counts.

This program will be repeated in Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University on Saturday December 1 at 8 pm