Author: cliveoconnell

July Diary

cliveoconnell

Saturday July 2

Schubert, Schumann & Mendelssohn, Australian National Academy of Music at 7 pm

It wouldn’t be Mendelssohn without the  A Midsummer Night’s Dream music.  Well, yes, it would but, if you want to hear what a young genius is capable of, it’s hard to go past the overture to that delectable set of musical illustrations which set the scene for this play with impeccable brilliance.  This concert from the ANAM personnel under Howard Penny promises excerpts.   The ANAM brass are presenting arrangements of Schubert male choruses; there are over a hundred to pick from but we could be lucky and score the Gesang der Geister uber den Wassern, still fresh in the memory from a recent MSO Proms night. Then the musicians take on Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony No. 3, generally decried for its awkwardnesses but always welcome for its warm-spirited geniality, if not quite enough to persuade you to take on a river cruise.

 

Sunday July 3

Sollima, Satu & Max: Sequenza Italiana, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Hamer Hall at 2:30 pm

The ACO welcomes back their guest maverick cello guest from 2014, Giovanni Sollima.  As the title makes clear (eventually), it’s going to be an all-Italian affair, beginning with Monteverdi and concluding with – bless my soul! – a piece by Sollima himself.   Satu Vanska will be leader in Richard Tognetti’s absence and the ensemble’s principal double bass, Maxime Bibeau, will feature in Berio’s Sequenza (we also get to hear the ones for violin and viola) and Giacinto Sclesi’s C’est bien la nuit, one of the composer’s two pieces for double bass from 1972.   Vanska will vault through Paganini’s Introduction and Variations on Rossini’s Dal tuo stellate soglio prayer from Moses in Egypt.  Sollima himself directs and fronts Leo’s D minor Concerto No. 3, his father Eliodoro Sollima’s arrangement of Rossini’s Une larme variations – one of those endless Old Age Sins  –  and his own composition, Fecit Neap 17 . . .   Well, at least the Italian theme is consistent; the only question is: who is going to play that Berio viola Sequenza?

This program will be repeated on Monday July 5 at 8 pm.

 

Monday July 4

Tempesta, Australian String Quartet, Melbourne Recital Centre at 7 pm

This now-settled (let’s hope) group brings out its chest of Guadagninis for the middle one of three subscription series recitals here.  The musicians begin with that evergreen of the atonal repertoire, Webern’s Five Movements for String Quartet, written before the composer had perfected his compressed craft to its ultimate point.  Following this, Haydn in C Major from the Opus 20 set, the one with the finale fugue on four subjects.   Mendelssohn in F minor, his last major work, concludes the night in sombre vein while the program takes its title from the two-year-old String Quartet No. 1 by Joe Chindamo which I think is yet to enjoy its Melbourne premiere; it’s in good company here.

 

Thursday July 7

Fuoco, Ensemble Liaison & Nemanja Radulovic, Melbourne Recital Centre at 7 pm

For the third time, the French/Serbian violinist joins up with this fine ensemble for a night packed with incident.  The guest joins with Liaison members Svetlana Bogosavljevic (cello) and Timothy Young (piano) for Rachmaninov’s Trio elegaique, the one-movement work not written in memory of Tchaikovsky.   Furthering the occasion’s Slavic tenor, the same musicians will perform Shostakovich’s E minor Trio, often an intensely moving experience if the executants can shape the work intelligently, not overdoing the passion or the dour whimsy.   Radulovic has a virtuoso turn with Ravel’s Tzigane, the composer’s sophisticated take on Gypsy flourishes, and that old chestnut, the Handel/Halvorsen Passacaglia duo, emerges like a programmed encore, although what remains unclear is who will provide the viola line.

 

Friday July 15

Cirque de la Symphonie, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall at 7 pm

This night hosts a company which has the lot – aerial artists, jugglers, contortionists, strongmen, dancers, acrobats – and it will mount its turns in front of the MSO under Benjamin Northey.   The musical content ranges from strong circus links (sort of) to pieces with no trace of the sawdust rings about them, you’d think.   Dvorak’s Carnival Overture is razzle-dazzle enough in its outer pages but what to do in that languorous middle nocturne?   Both the Carmen Suites from Bizet’s opera have a certain amount of bustle in them, but quite a few placid stretches as well.  Smetana’s Dance of the Comedians fits the bill; many excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake also have potential.  But Sibelius’ Finlandia?  Could suit the strongmen, I suppose.  From experiencing the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s collaboration with Circa last year, I think it’s obvious that the music will be cast into second-row status, anyway.

The program is repeated in Hamer Hall on Saturday July 16 at 7 pm.

 

Saturday July 16

L’air parfume, La Compania, Deakin Edge Federation Square at 6 pm

With guest soprano Jacqueline Porter, this fine period music ensemble ventures into the cultural life of France under Louis XIII, showcasing that court’s musical entertainment. The Palais du Louvre was a prolific site for music; Louis himself was a lutenist and wrote music – for at least one ballet.   But the composers active in his time are mainly unknown these days, their efforts dwarfed by the following giant figures of Lully, Couperin and Rameau.    Against these, the names of Louis Constantin, Pierre Guedron, Antoine Boesset, Jean de Cambefort and Etienne Moulinie ring few bells.   But making the acquaintance of neglected music is part of the experience that La Compania offers; in this case, breathing new life into the precious and ornate atmosphere of the period’s flamboyant aristocratic world as well as unveiling the ornate and richly-scented fabric of the court’s music-making.

 

Sunday July 17

Mid-Winter Brilliance – Beethoven and Mozart, The Melbourne Musicians, Methodist Ladies’ College at 3 pm

As well as essaying some brilliant music, the Musicians are having a mid-winter change of venue, moving east of their usual Southgate home to MLC’s Kew campus.  Whether to the Flockhart Hall or the Tatoulis Auditorium, I’m not sure; the latter is a new and hitherto unknown space in my experience.   The afternoon’s Beethoven element comprises two works: the F Major Romance with soloist Mi Yang negotiating its ornate melodies and wide leaps, and the Piano Concerto No. 4, Argentina-born Canberra resident Marcela Fiorillo taking up that benign work’s subtle challenges.   As for Mozart, Mi Yang fronts the Violin Concerto No. 4, and Rosemary Ball will sing two soprano arias from The Marriage of Figaro; she’s spoiled for choice with the Countess, Susanna and Cherubino responsible for some of the opera’s most famous segments.   Needless to say, for these Classical period works, the ensemble will be expanded beyond its normal string complement to include pairs of woodwinds, trumpets and horns as well as a timpanist.

 

Classic and French – or a lot of hot air in E flat!, Team of Pianists, Rippon Lea at 6:30 pm

Brightening up these bitingly cold nights, the Team’s Darryl Coote welcomes us and four wind artists to a recital of Mozart, Beethoven and Poulenc.  The Classic is represented by Mozart’s Quintet for piano and winds in E flat, and Beethoven’s early work in the same key.  Three MSO artists participate in these amiable works: oboe Ann Blackburn, principal bassoon Jack Schiller and French horn Jenna Breen.  The essential ‘other’ is Alex Morris, newly appointed  bass clarinet with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.  As for the French component, both works were aired in mid-May at an ANAM Poulenc-celebrating evening featuring Paavali Jumppanen.   Breen and Coote are presenting the Elegy tribute of 1957, written in memory of Dennis Brain, followed by Blackburn, Schiller and Coote performing the youthful, brio-rich 1926 Trio.

 

Tuesday July 19

Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, Melbourne Recital Centre at 7 pm

Under Musica Viva’s aegis, this famous choral group returns, still enjoying the direction of Stephen Layton who currently is celebrating his 11th year of incumbency as Trinity’s controller.  The two programs being toured nationally centre around Frank Martin’s Mass for unaccompanied double choir which has grown in accessibility over the past 20 years or so. Without an organ in the MRC, Layton has omitted Elgar’s Psalm 29 setting Give Unto the Lord and Howells’ Te Deum from the Melbourne line-up, substituting Pawel Lukaszewski’s Nunc dimittis and American choral expert Eric Whitacre’s popular interpretation of e e cummings’ i thank You God for most this amazing day verses.  The common elements include Byrd, Tallis and Purcell motets, some Baltic gestures with pieces by Rautavaara and Esenvalds, American writer Steven Stucky’s O sacrum convivium, a commission piece by the choir’s own Organ Scholar, Owain Park, as well as an Australian commission in Joe Twist’s Hymn of Ancient Lands.   It’s a pleasure to hear a solid, highly reputable Anglican choir at work, especially one that casts its repertoire net pretty wide, but the Murdoch Hall strikes me as a disquieting space to hear the Trinity singers; everything carries, certainly, but the choral mesh lacks resonance in these immediate-response surroundings.

The program will be repeated on Saturday July 23 at 7 pm.

 

Wednesday July 20

Sparks of Conflict, Quartz, Melbourne Recital Centre at 6 pm

This ensemble – a string quartet, of course, comprising violins Kathryn Taylor and Rachael Beesley, viola Matt Laing and cello Zoe Wallace – is appearing as part of the Recital Centre’s Local Heroes series.   In an ambitious move, the group will play the Shostakovich String Quartet No. 9, five movements played without a pause; Carl Vine’s String Quartet No. 4, two movements played as one, commissioned to celebrate the composer’s 50th birthday in 2004; and Samuel Barber’s excellent setting of Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach, here calling on the rich bass-baritone of Nicholas Dinopoulos.  Plenty of conflict in these scores although the most arresting sparks come in the Russian master’s extended essay.

 

Thursday July 21

Shakespeare Classics, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall at 8 pm

Enough with the Shakespeare quatercentenary observations, you say?  Be patient and treat it like the current Federal election, even if this last is as welcome an activity as passing stones: only five more months of sporadic celebrations to go.  The latest festive concert is conducted by youngish Briton Alexander Shelley who has gone a long way in a short time. He begins with – would you believe? – Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture. Korngold’s Much Ado About Nothing Suite, five illustrative pieces, is distinguished for its lyrical Scene in the Garden.  The home country is represented by some of Walton’s music to Olivier’s film of Henry V: the Death of Falstaff and Touch Her Soft Lips and Part.  That arch-musical-illustrator Richard Strauss finishes off the night with his first tone-poem, Macbeth.   The soloist is German pianist Lars Vogt who takes us completely out of the night’s intellectual arena through Mozart’s last concerto, No. 27 in B flat;  music of this supreme quality is to be treasured in live performance but it rather undermines the night’s thematic intentions.

This program is repeated on Friday July 22 in Monash University’s Robert Blackwood Hall at 8 pm.

 

Monday July 25

Beethoven, Bach and Beyond, Lars Vogt, Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm

Having taken the weekend off after his two MSO spots,  the Mozart expert appears in the Murdoch Hall for the Recital Centre’s  Great Performers series,  The night promises to be short, the content exhausting – for him, if not for us as well.  Vogt begins with Bach’s Goldberg Variations – which is excellent recital fare.  I wonder if he’ll play all the repeats or will he follow the practice of many another interpreter and leave most of them out.  After interval, Vogt plays the last Beethoven sonata, No. 32 in C minor/Major, one of the composer’s greatest challenges to an interpreter’s level of insight and interpretative sensibility.  Given a combination like this, perhaps Vogt could think of nothing else to perform that wouldn’t sound either distracting or irrelevant.

 

Tuesday July 26

Melodies & Visions, Daniel de Borah plus One, Melbourne Recital Centre at 6 pm

Another in the Centre’s Local Heroes string, this recital has pianist Daniel de Borah hosting Dale Barltrop, concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.  The recital’s title couldn’t be more apt as the first work will be Prokofiev’s Cinq melodies, originally vocalises for piano-accompanied soprano, the vocal line later transcribed for violin; followed by Prokofiev’s early Visions fugitives for piano solo.   No, not all 20 of them but selections from the set.  Finally, for a change, the performers will work through some Prokofiev: the Violin Sonata in F minor – the real one, since the very popular D Major work was a by-blow, transcribed at Oistrakh’s request from the eloquent Flute Sonata.  Full marks to de Borah for this program that gives a rapid but engaging tour of some less-performed pieces from the  Russian composer’s oeuvre.

 

Wednesday July 27

Lost Landscapes, Sutherland Trio, Melbourne Recital Centre at 6:30 pm

And still they come: another in the Local Heroes series.  Where would this city’s chamber music scene be without initiatives like this?  The Sutherland ensemble – violin Elizabeth Sellars, cello Molly Kadarauch, piano Caroline Almonte – begins and ends in orthodox style with Mozart’s second-last and puzzlingly simple piano trio in C, K. 548, and with Schumann’s substantial No. 3 in G minor.  Two novelties are framed by these familiar works. Russian-born American pianist/composer Lera Auerbach wrote 24 Preludes for cello/piano duet, then revamped No. 12 in G sharp minor (there’s an unusual key for you) as a postlude, which Kadarauch and Almonte will expound; the only recorded performance I’ve heard seems to have part of the piano slightly ‘prepared’.   And Sellars and Almonte will play West 23rd Street NY, the last of Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s 2005  suite of four pieces that gives this recital its name;  reminiscences of significant places where the composer resided in his earlier years.

 

Friday July 29

Beethoven’s Fifth, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Town Hall at 7:30 pm

Benjamin Northey conducts the most famous symphony of all, Beethoven in C minor.  Is there anything new to be dragged from this always-invigorating score?   We’ll see, especially in the frantic, jubilant finale.  The night begins with Weber’s Der Freischutz Overture and Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 is fronted by Grace Clifford who won the 2014 Young Performer’s Award aged 16.   There you have it: a perfectly shaped, old-fashioned concert program of overture-concerto-symphony format and you could hardly ask for anything more comfortably familiar in its content.

And here’s one for the books.  This program has proven so popular that the MSO has organized a repeat of it the following night, Saturday July 30  –  again in the Town Hall and again at 7:30 pm.   When you’re on a good thing . . .

 

 

 

 

Clarity and elegance

cliveoconnell

MUSICAL OFFERING

Selby & Friends

Deakin Edge, Federation Square

Wednesday June 15, 2016

Selby & Friends

                                                     (L to R) Nikki Chooi, Timo-Veikko Valve, Kathryn Selby

For this month’s subscription series recital, Kathryn Selby welcomed back to her piano trio the principal cellist of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Timo-Veikko Valve.  As for a violin, a newcomer made a positive first impression; Canadian artist Nikki Chooi took the night’s opening, Julian Yu‘s Prelude and Not-a-Fugue trio, and contributed substantially to an assertive reading of the Australian composer’s Bach tribute.  In fact, Chooi set the pace by stressing the vigour in the Prelude’s initial rising chromatic arpeggio flourish, setting up a rougher communal texture than expected.

Not that the piece makes too many challenges in terms of dealing with a wealth of material; this Prelude follows a Bachian pattern in its motoric repetition.  With the non-fugue second part, Yu makes use of the main theme from the Bach work that gives this program its title.  While the strict rules of fugal establishment and sequencing are not followed, the contrapuntal interweavings in these pages impose a sort of order that suggests fugue.  As a homage, both parts are appealing, updating a format that can stand up to imitation, both satirical and flattering.   As an initial gambit, this piece proved amiable, not too taxing for the executants, and just long enough.

Chooi and Selby collaborated in Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor, a work that you can go for years without coming across in chamber music programs; the only other time I’ve heard it live, I believe, was at an Australian National Academy of Music program several years ago.   These performers made an effective case for the work, which is not that substantial in terms of developmental length.  But it did give Chooi room for his powerful projection, right from the opening G-string statement.  This is not a violinist who holds back and this Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck movement gave him scope to construct some drivingly urgent melodic chains, alternating with resonant octaves and passionate semiquaver sequences, particularly nearing the final bars.  His ability to articulate rapidly and with some humour informed the succeeding Allegretto and the concluding Lebhaft was taken at a reasonable pace, adding to the pleasure of the  E and A Major interludes that brighten up a rather dour landscape, Selby giving the violinist plenty of space but not holding back with her double-hand full chords.

Valve was apparently indisposed but still managed to give a sterling reading of the Brahms E minor Sonata.  Both he and Selby took the first movement’s Allegro non troppo at face value and erred on the stately side for its initial pages. Right on top of the piece’s challenges, both musicians gave each paragraph full weight, notably in the first movement’s shift to (nominally) F Major where Brahms soars into magnificent polemic. Selby made light work of the testing figuration in the Trio of the Allegretto, Valve keeping the circuitous melody line of this segment fluent and placid.  The pianist’s control of touch in the finale showed as securely as ever, both performers keeping the texture lucid, refraining from dynamic over-kill even in the helter-skelter of the last page’s Piu presto.

The three musicians came together again for the night’s concluding gem, Schubert in B flat.  For once, this well-worn masterpiece came over with few signs of Biedermeier cosiness or self-satisfaction, Chooi making a firm and generously voiced statement from the outset, in fine collaboration with Valve during the second movement’s imitative duet that stretches the cello to the treble clef for most of its length.   Later, the Trio to the third movement substantiated this reading’s lack of sentimentality with an unexaggerated vibrato from the strings while Selby’s keyboard chords on the off-beats remained recessed.  In sum, the trio came across with its clarity intact, if also having a touch of the scouring cloth with the dynamic levels a tad strident in places like the finale’s octave/unisons preceding Letter A, this feature balanced by a spotless delivery of the movement’s first 3/2 interlude in D flat –  an inspired sideways shift on paper and realized with agility and sustained elegance by these executants.

The best came last

cliveoconnell

ENSO STRING QUARTET

Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday June 7 & Saturday June 18, 2016

Enso String Quartet

                                                                                Enso String Quartet

The latest visitors appearing under the Musica Viva banner have made it to Melbourne; their only previous appearance, as far as I can tell, has been at the Huntington Estate Music Festival.  For this first intra-capital (and Newcastle) tour, the ensemble is presenting two programs; well, one-and-a-half, actually as two works remain constant across the board.

The Ensor are an expert group, well versed in their craft since their foundation at Yale in 1999, although the actual personnel has changed since the ensemble’s well-received recordings of the complete Pleyel quartets.  Since those days, second violin Tereza Stanislav has been replaced, first by John Marcus, then by Ken Hamao; at the viola desk, Melissa Reardon has taken over from Robert Brophy.   But the current formation has a homogeneity and balance you’d expect from a body with that temporal pedigree and history of accomplishment.

One of the constants throughout the Ensos’ Australian sojourn is a freshly composed work by Brenton Broadstock, commissioned (like so many other pieces) by Musica Viva.  Safe Haven celebrates the escape from and survival of the 1956 Hungarian uprising of a young child, Marianne.  In three movements, the work delineates the situation from which Marianne and her family fled, the first inklings of freedom, and the reassurance offered by their coming to rest in Australia.    Broadstock uses a nursery song, Boci, boci tarka, as the basis for a set of variations.   In the first, the melody is discernible under some intimations of unrest represented by rapid gruppetti and plenty of loud outbursts, but the task of expressing in musical terms the national tragedy that was taking place is a daunting, probably impossible one.

With the resources of four strings only, any composer would blanch at the idea of conveying the distressing images that remain in the memory of those days – a year when the term ‘Molotov cocktail’ came to mean something to my generation.   The rebellion’s brutal repression eventually resulted in the sequestration of Cardinal Mindszenty in Budapest’s American Embassy and later the infamous execution of Premier Imre Nagy.     Closer to home, the year 1956 still reverberates in this city for the infamous Hungary/Russia water-polo match during the Melbourne Olympics. Broadstock takes a sensible path and hints at tragedy rather than attempting a full-blown dramatic musical panorama.

In the second movement, the theme emerges en clair and the expressive language turns more congenial; the third lullaby variation is a long stretch of placidity which is determined to hammer home the message of harmonious security at extraordinary length. Safe Haven wears its emotions openly and is quite accessible; pleasant enough but its interest is limited by a perplexing veneer of simplicity.

The other fixed touring repertoire component is the earlier Beethoven in E flat Major, the Harp,  with its mildly suggestive first movement pizzicati.  Here was a satisfying performance, full of energy and a powerful impulse from opening Poco adagio to the finale’s set of variations.   You could have asked for more subtlety in the third movement where the players’ emphasis fell on the dramatic potential of the central declamatory Piu presto rather than the surrounding pages’ dour legerdemain.   But, at the work’s conclusion came the question that presents itself with a worrying regularity these days: what differentiated this reading from any other in terms of insight?   While admiring the players’ dedication, the answer had to be: not much.   Like most of their peers, the Ensos perform standards like this with technical security and a communication of the work’s developmental progress.   But I found it hard to recall any section that impressed for its intellectual incisiveness, or even a detail that offered some new aspect to these familiar movements.

The night’s second part offered two related pieces in Turina’s Serenata and Ginastera’s Quartet No. 2.   The first, a one-movement construct, lays on the Iberian colour with a will at the start before its substantial central Andante where the instrumental interplay takes more prominence.   The spirit of Falla rises every so often but the composer’s individuality is continuously asserted with a deft manipulation of the framing segments’ 3/8 rhythmic pulse and a masterful control of the string fabric’s possibilities.

With the Ginastera, the Ensos are playing to a particular strength, as they have recorded the Argentinian composer’s complete output in this genre.  Much has been made of the twelve-tone elements in this piece but, while Ginastera clearly uses Schoenbergian rows, he does so with a freedom from any doctrinaire application; repetitions abound, the immediate repetition of fragments is just as common, and no attempt is made to avoid consonances.   The score gave the performers plenty of individual exposure; first, in the second movement Adagio angoscioso with some brief shining moments for Melissa Reardon’s well-projected viola and Richard Belcher‘s eloquent cello; later, in the fourth movement Tema libero e rapsodico where each instrument enjoyed a cadenza, first violin Maureen Nelson having the opening and closing words, with second violin Hamao making a stentorian meal of his Allegro variation.

For all its dodecaphonic referents, this work gave Tuesday’s Musica Viva patrons few problems, its 1958 progressiveness a modest challenge alongside other contemporaneous works like Boulez’s Improvisations sur Mallarme, Stockhausen’s Zyklus, or Cage’s Concert for Piano and Orchestra.   But it showed these visiting players at their best on this occasion, their performance definite, full-blooded and persuasive.

The Enso program on June 18 replaces the Turina and Ginastera with Ravel in F and a Renaissance medley, compiled and arranged by first violin Nelson.

Softly, softly

cliveoconnell

CONTINENTAL DRIFT

Judy Diez d’Aux & Peter Sheridan bass flutes, Lachlan Dent cello

MOVE MD 3403

Continental Drift - Copy

No matter how obscure you think a particular combination of instruments may be, or how much you wonder if anyone could possibly be interested in it, when you express your reservations, you can be stunned by the chorus of enthusiastic affirmation that rises from the throats of a host of aficionados and fans, demanding to know how you can possibly question the appeal of said combination.   Here is a CD from the innovative Melbourne label that features, for the most part, original compositions for the bass flute – or, better still, two of them; in this instance, the duet is sometimes supported by a cello underpinning and, for good measure, all three participants enjoy solos.

I’ve known (and worked with) a few flautists and, while they have all been happiest with the normal Middle C-based instrument and can enjoy for limited periods a stint on the alto species, not one of them made much of a case for the bass.   Not surprising, really, when you compare the repertoire available across the three-level spectrum; while the alto has been put to striking use by 20th century masters, the lower-pitched instrument is a rare sight in orchestral ranks and never emerges from the shadows for a solo, except during a Master’s all-in recital, perhaps.

Peter Sheridan, the American flautist now resident in Australia, has done more than most performers to commission and promote music for the bass flute.   Here, in collaboration with fellow-countrywoman Judy Diez d’Aux and Melbourne cellist Lachlan Dent, Sheridan presents a series of works, some of them slight while others are fairly substantial, most of them written in the last few years.   As bookends, the musicians play some Haydn: the outer movements of the first London Trio in C as an ice-breaker, and the opening to the G Major Trio No. 3 to finish.   The benefit of these transcriptions, at the start in particular, is to give some context for the timbral interplay at work, acclimatising the listener to the breathy wind texture, initially reminiscent of some of the less assertive flute organ stops.

A fair amount of what is enclosed by these brisk, mildly spirited Haydn pieces comes from America, starting with Gary Schocker‘s Underwater Flowers of 2014: an impressionistic triptych for bass flute duet suggestive of Debussy in chamber aquatic mode, at its most original in the middle Flower Hat Jelly which inserts some jauntiness to animate the work’s undulating fluidity.   From Quebec’s Ella Louise Allaire/Martin Lord Ferguson partnership comes a 2015 diptych, Spring Awaking, which employs the cello as well.   It was hard to see much difference between the initial awaking and the pendant awakened segments, mainly because the writing style remained uniform; easy listening, certainly, with a penchant for unison and octave work but leavened with some sequences that bordered on the banal.

Sheridan’s solo, Doggerel by New Zealand writer Eve de Castro-Robinson, brought to the fore some interest in terms of sound production with plenty of initial plosives, a few passages that featured harmonics, some bent-note mini-glissandi, and what sounded like a dash or two of multiphonics.    As the piece progressed, a jig-type rhythm became more and more clear, helping to reinforce the relevance of the work’s title, I suppose.   Still, it made a fine vehicle for Sheridan’s skill, particularly an impressive breath-recovery rate. Madelyn Byrne, the computer music expert from California’s Palomar College, produced Suite in Sea three years ago and it presented as the most harmonically daring work so far on this CD.   Suggestive of the marine, but not as predictable as Schocker’s  Flowers, the middle Soliloquy for solo flute and the following Sea Spirits for flute duet revealed a well-harnessed lyricism and atmospheric eloquence, although the concluding Argentinian Ghost Tango for all three musicians intrigued for its out-of-left-field context and its use of Dent’s cello as a rhythm bass that eventually moved into an independent line of its own.

Dent makes a fine case for Stuart Greenbaum‘s Lunar Orbit, a solo that depicts simultaneously two aspects of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission: Armstrong and Aldrin sleeping in the landing module while Collins has to orbit the Moon by himself.  The composer makes uncomplicated pictorial suggestions with deliberately limited material but this was, so far, the most sustained piece of composition on the disc; not that at 5 1/2 minutes you are being intellectually stretched, but it makes its case with cogency and comes to an ardent and persuasive conclusion.

Peter Senchuk, Canadian/American in background, wrote the CD’s title piece last year. Another triptych, this score employs the flutes only and is very agreably constructed for them in a kind of fast-slow-fast format, both Diez d’Aux and Sheridan revealing a fine responsiveness to its emotional climate.   Not that the work over-stretches these players and the rhythmic interplay in its opening Divergent movement holds no terrors.  The central Slipping segment involves a good deal of luxuriant paired work where the lines move uniformly rather than showing much disjunction; the final Convergent pages offer a tad more complexity but not the ‘flutes frantically dance’ activity level proposed in the cover-notes.

Australian composer Brennan Keats‘ Fantasies and Wilderness, yet another triptych, also employs all three executants.   Its inspiration is Ireland: a nostalgia for the land itself, the sadness caused by young men leaving for war, and the sublimated depression generated by migration, in this case to the United States.   Keats uses a conservative harmonic language, which is effective enough in the opening section with its mournful summoning-up of some Celtic twilight.   In the middle pages, he quotes Danny Boy in an unabashedly euphonious arrangement, although the context calls out for something less humdrum; possibly the folksong Fil, fil o run o?   The last part also uses a well-worn quote – When Irish Eyes Are Smiling – which turns minor to suggest migrant struggles in America and the widespread social disharmony that prevailed, but then returns in full sentimental strength, although the work ends in something approaching depression.

Yuko Uebayashi‘s Le vent a travers les ruines is Diez d’Aux’s solo.   Full of pauses and couched in an aphoristic, slow-moving limited language, the composer’s ruins are not menacing – just deserted, offering little opposition or challenge to the placid wind that blows through them.   Its later stages offer a fine exploration of the instrument’s lower register as its moves to a calm, understated conclusion.  Stanley M. Hoffman‘s Arirang Variations began as a piano solo, the composer arranging it last year for Sheridan’s use.  Another work for the two flutes, it takes a Korean melody and offers four variations on it, the original tune announced at either end of the work.  This is intended for young players, to give them some intellectual impetus and to improve their skills; needless to say, these players handle it with aplomb and the sort of polish that would be the admiration of any player at any age.

Oddly enough, the more you hear of these pieces, the more intriguing the combination sounds.   At moments, Dent’s cello is unexpectedly dominant; at others, the variety of attack makes the organ-flute stop comparison invalid, chiefly because in this situation we are dealing with two distinct lines played by well-matched but not identical individuals. Still, at the end, you feel that the mysteries of the bass flute have been well-expounded, if not exactly exhausted.

Concordis by name . . .

cliveoconnell

SERENITY

Concordis Chamber Choir

Ian Roach Hall, Scotch College

Sunday May 29, 2016

This group enjoys plenty of advantages: an able and inspiring director, a generally pleasing spread of colour, plenty of fire in the belly and security in their work to go with it, an enthusiastic band of supporters, and access to a fine performance space with acoustic properties that suit the character of  a medium-sized body like this mixed choir.

As far as I can make out, Concordis is a Scotch College-inspired group.  Conductor Andrew Hunter is a senior faculty member; accompanist Jason Ha is a distinguished old boy of the school; the two additional musicians appearing on this program also have recently graduated from the Glenferrie Road campus.  Still, this source of talent cannot account for the 18 sopranos and altos currently at work in the choir’s ranks, both lines solid contributors to the group’s distinctive sound.

And it is individual in character.  The output is assertive, each line clear and resonant; while there are clearly no shrinking violets, it’s rare that a singer breaks ranks and pushes his/her sound uncomfortably.  It did happen last Sunday afternoon, pretty obviously from an over-enthusiastic alto in the spiritual triptych that began the program’s second part where a few sforzando blasts punctuated the typically snappy Moses Hogan/Stacey Gibbs arrangements. But moments like that were unusual and the young singers observed a discipline that made their collegial sound a pleasure to experience.

Hunter’s program ended in a wealth of Australiana, six pieces in all, while the rich world of contemporary American vocal music was represented by the previously-mentioned spirituals as well as individual pieces by Jake Runestad, Rene Clausen, Blake Henson and the trans-national Norwegian/US writer Ola Gjeilo who is clearly a Concordis favourite, three of his works punctuating the recital’s first half.  The British tradition came in for unexpectedly light treatment through two Eric Whitacre settings, Oculi omnium and Lux nova, and Philip Stopford‘s pleasant if orthodox Ave verum corpus essay.  An adventurous aspect of these offerings was that the nine elements in the program’s first half were all written in this century.

In fact, I found that several of these more contemporary works showed a staid approach to choral composition. Runestad’s I will lift mine eyes made a sterling introduction to Concordis’s work: well-ordered, full-bodied with some tellingly resonant bass singers, the approach informed by an earnest expressiveness.  These pages made for one of the best passages of play from the choir in its wide-ranging journey around the repertoire, but you looked in vain here or elsewhere in the British or American compositions for an adventurous voice.  Gjeilo’s Ubi caritas II setting plays with the original chant and Durufle’s moving arrangement but somehow misses out on breaking new ground.

Whitacre’s Oculi omnium seemed more of a challenge, particularly through the composer’s use of massed chromatic chords that demonstrated the careful preparation that Hunter and his singers had invested in a fairly challenging construct.  After the mild acerbities in this motet, Clausen’s O nata lux, the setting of two-thirds of Herrick’s To Music, to becalm his Fever by Henson, and Gjeilo’s vision of O magnum mysterium with obbligato cello all made their points pretty quickly, the last of these beginning with an interesting exercise in syllabification that dissipated into a standard setting by the text’s third line.   No fault of the executants, of course, but several later items also began with promise – like Whitacre’s Lux nova, which made an aggressive opening, only to sink into emotional soppiness at its extended ending which played with an imperfect cadence sequence under a soprano inverted pedal-note.

Gjeilo’s meditation on St. Augustine’s Watch, O Lord brought a saxophone/piano duo into play as a kind of commentary on the choral action.  This gave the instrumentalists room to improvise, a freedom of action that was undertaken cautiously by Joshua Tram’s tenor and Jason Ha’s keyboard.   Not wishing to sound too chauvinistic, I found Albury-raised Daniel Brinsmead‘s version of Hildegard’s Spiritus Sanctus vivicans vita packed with incident and sparks; if not strikingly original, it showed a fine responsiveness to the visionary’s mobile text.   Later came Dan Walker‘s interpretation of the first four stanzas in James McAuley’s The Blue Horses which also employed a suitably urgent vocabulary to illustrate the Australian poet’s early depiction of social restlessness.  Concordis made a fine case for this unsettling work, the sopranos and tenors in particular lending a brand of benign urgency to Walker’s multi-faceted choral tapestry.

A menu of eighteen numbers is lavish, certainly, and the Concordis choir worked with no little expertise through this program.  Nevertheless, many of these scores seemed interchangeable – not surprisingly, given the provenance of the US and British works.  The choir is fortunate in its members and their consistency; only a few signs of wavering pitch outweighed by the singers’ laudable attention to Hunter’s gestures.  This young group’s professionalism might be increased if it put a stop to the inane practice by some audience members of taking photos mid-performance; I don’t know of any other choir which allows this, not even when done by the most doting of parents or relatives, let alone the unstoppable manic maenads who marred this particular presentation.

Cup half full

cliveoconnell

SAX AND SENSITIVITY

The Melbourne Musicians

St John’s Southgate

Sunday May 22, 2016

Things were fair enough in this latest subscription series concert from Frank Pam and his string chamber orchestra, as long as the body kept within its means, as the Federal Treasurer is currently encouraging us to do.   The afternoon opened with an arrangement of Begli occhi, merce, the most (only?) popular aria by Antonio Tenaglia.   Pretty well known in arrangement form, this F minor slow-mover gave the Musicians no troubles, but then it is the sort of thing a competent player could handle at sight, included here as a warm-up to prepare the ground for harder matter.

Molly Kadarauch

                                                                                 Molly Kadarauch

Molly Kadarauch gave a driving account of the solo in C.P.E. Bach’s first Cello Concerto in A minor, the only one of the composer’s three that seems to get much ventilation.   The Musicians began with plenty of punch, although the tempo could have been quickened with benefit, notably to relieve the impression of stolidity rather than mobility.  Kadarauch was on the same wave-length, however, and urged her line with high intensity, using the busily Romantic double-stopped and chord-packed cadenzas of Friedrich Grutzmacher to transfer us momentarily into the world of Dvorak’s cello.  Even the central Andante sounded stormy and stressed rather than a C Major haven.  Some of the orchestral detail went walkabout, particularly a tendency to read the finale’s dotted-quaver-semiquaver patterns as triplet-based.  Still, the reading held interest through its bravado and lack of affectation.

I wasn’t sure that much was gained by an encore, in this case Bloch’s Prayer, the first section of the popular From Jewish Life suite.  It gave Kadarauch a chance to orate a slow-moving melody line full of melting melismata and a line-up of the composer’s expected tropes reminiscent of the Schelomo Hebraic Rhapsody, but it sat oddly alongside the discipline of the concerto’s framework.

After interval, another guest appeared: Justin Kenealy, leading the Glazunov Saxophone Concerto of 1934.   All in one movement, the work has no trace of jazz suggestions or the seedy world of Weill and the contemporarily composed Berg’s Lulu; indeed, the composer treats his soloist like any other woodwind, although one with a dominant voice. What strikes you, in fact, is that the soloist has so few moments of rest, as though Glazunov wants the interpreter kept busily at work in such a short-framed construct, and so the saxophone makes all the running, apart from some obvious interpolations during the last movement’s progress when the soloist takes a few bars break while the strings articulate the themes’ basic elements.

This solo-domination was just as well as the ensemble laboured in the faster-moving tuttis, some of the violins not quite getting on top of their notes and the texture liable to thin out as things got tricky.  However, Kenealy made a fine exponent of this rarity – well, rare in local exposure terms although it features large in the instrument’s repertoire – with a cogent outline of the central cadenza and a pretty jaunty approach to the outer sections of this free-flowing last flower of the composer’s solidly Tory talent.

To finish, conductor Pam attempted to flesh out the Russian side of this program with the Shostakovich Sinfonia, a string orchestration of the composer’s String Quartet No. 8 Op. 110 organised by the American double-bass expert Lucas Drew, rather than the traditional version transcribed by Rudolf Barshai..  An ambitious undertaking, this score was often beyond the players’ competence.  Even during the opening Largo, the uniformity of articulation was suspect, the upper strings’ overall attack tentative.

Matters improved in the following harsh Allegro molto where the slashing accents and driving thematic insistence came close to acceptable.  But the last Largo was a mess;  I don’t know where but someone jumped the gun – hard to do in this slow-moving elegy – and, to finish the afternoon with some coherence, Pam had his players repeat it.  Rather than an emotionally wrenching experience, I think many of us were relieved to get to the Sinfonia‘s end and then look forward to the next program from this band on Sunday July 17 at MLC: those tried-and-true familiar entities the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 and Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4 provide the main elements.

Some hits, a few misses

cliveoconnell

PAAVALI, POULENC, DEBUSSY & BEETHOVEN

Paavali Jumppanen, ANAM Musicians

Australian National Academy of Music

Thursday May 19, 2016

Paavali Jumppanen
                                                     Paavali Jumppanen

Back at the National Academy as a guest faculty member, the Finnish pianist mentored and participated in this night of doubles where each composer was represented by two works; not in an attempt to show any progress from youth to maturity, but more to give each of them another voice, no matter how similar in accent.   While the contrast between Poulenc’s Trio for oboe, bassoon and piano of 1926 and his horn/piano Elegie from 1957 was pretty stark – the one loaded with frivolity and cheek, the Dennis Brain lament heavy with reminiscences of the Dialogues des Carmelites opera – Beethoven’s B flat Trio Op. 11 and his E flat Quintet for piano and winds, separated from each other by two years, displayed not-unexpected affinities.   The links between Debussy’s Cello Sonata and some of the Book II Preludes are more difficult to articulate yet the sonata’s Serenade and General Lavine, eccentric share a brusquerie and volatility that reveal their author’s handwriting very clearly.

Similar or dissimilar, the six works programmed made for an intermittently involving night, beginning with the Poulenc trio from oboe Stephanie Dixon, bassoon Christopher Haycroft, and piano Alexander Waite.   In the South Melbourne Town Hall’s large air-space, the keyboard sounded over-lush, a frequently applied sustaining pedal ensuring a mushy complement for the winds; a much better mix emerged in the Rondo-finale with the high-register piano writing slotting in deftly with the active woodwind lines.

Beethoven’s Gassenhauer Trio from clarinet Kenny Keppel, cello Jovan Pantelich and piano Adam McMillan made a more consistent fist of getting to grips with a consistent interpretation, giving just the right measure to the composer’s aggression; by the end of the exposition repeat in the first movement, the ensemble’s concerted attack made you feel that this was an exceptional performance-in-the-making, reinforced by an excellently well-managed variety in dynamic gradations from all three participants in the following Adagio.

For the Debussy sonata, Pantelich was accompanied by Jumppanen, who had the score by heart and was able to keep both eyes on the string player.   With the piano lid on the long-stick, the keyboard dominated the performance, pretty obviously in the Final which saw Pantelich drowned at several important points (for the cello), both artists taking a very cautious approach to the composer’s Anime direction.   Jumppanen was faced with more of a challenge in the Poulenc Elegie from Timothy Skelly‘s beefy horn  12-tone solo opening foray, efficiently anticipating that trademark striding energy when the piano enters this scene.   Listening to a French horn by itself always fills me with foreboding; the instrument is difficult and miscalculations occur with regularity.   But Skelly’s performance – apart from one slight and soft blip in the core of this score’s main argument – proved exemplary, if inclined to the more forceful end of the dynamic spectrum.

Apart from the Lavine piece, Jumppanen played Ondine and Bruyeres; the first delineated with care for detail which made the irregular arpeggio-like gruppetti of 12 notes all the more striking and crisp; the English countryside/Scottish moors/Daniel Waters film tone-picture enjoyed a plain-speaking interpretation, without the push-me pull-you rubato interpolations that other pianists use to make the negotiation of three staves easier.

The program’s concluding Beethoven Quintet Op. 16 involved all four wind players heard so far and a new pianist in Nicholas Young.   As with other pieces preceding it, this was excellent in patches, nowhere more so than the opening to its central Andante cantabile where, after the pianist had enunciated the main theme, the winds entered en bloc to repeat it with a rich warmth of sound that transmuted the ordinary into a powerfully affecting statement.

Here was a performance with relatively few flaws, apart from a difficult moment for Skelly in the first movement’s Allegro where, 40 bars from the end, Beethoven gives the horn a falling arpeggio solo that he puts into lip-splitting triplets two bars later.   Young had great success with his acutely active part, while Keppel took bravely to his task as dominant wind; in fact, I would have appreciated hearing Dixon’s line surging out of the mix more often but, in this case, the reason for the oboe’s reticence is as much due to Beethoven as to the assertiveness of the other ensemble members.

June Diary

cliveoconnell

Friday June 3

Sydney Symphony Orchestra Brass Ensemble, Australian National Academy of Music, 7 pm

Most of the northern orchestra’s corps will appear on this program which is being toured across the country – well, the lower east coast.   From the publicity material, it looks like four trumpets, four horns, three trombones and a tuba are involved, which makes a comfortable number.   Leading the group, guest conductor James Somerville is the principal horn in the Boston Symphony and naturally a bit of the Republic’s music gets an airing, climaxing in the Symphonic Dances from Bernstein’s West Side Story arranged by Eric Crees, principal trombone at the Covent Garden Opera House (Royal) and erstwhile co-principal of the London Symphony Orchestra.  The fertile Morten Lauridsen is represented by his most famous choral work, O magnum mysterium, complemented by Gabrieli’s setting of the text as well as a Magnificat from the Venetian master.   British veteran Mark-Anthony Turnage appears with a brass specific work, Out of Black Dust, and the ne plus ultra of film composers, John Williams, waves the Stars and Stripes with his 2014 Music for Brass which may present some logistical problems as it calls for 9 trumpets, 5 horns, 5 trombones, 2 bass trombones, 3 tubas, timpani and extra percussion.

 

Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 8 pm

Diego Matheuz, who put in a stint here over the past three years as Principal Guest Conductor of the MSO, returns to lead this all-Russian night, beginning with Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain in its original form, apparently, before Rimsky-Korsakov got his hands on it.   Joyce Tang will be soloist in the exemplar of a Romantic piano concerto  –  No. 2 in C minor by Rachmaninov   –   and Matheuz will take the MSO through excerpts from the great ballet score that ends the night.   The entertainment proceeds in neat chronological sequence – Tsarist, pre-Revolutionary, Communist – and gives a lop-sided portrait of Slavic musical genius.   Tang will doubtless enjoy much success with the concerto, although, given its melodic riches and spectacular-looking virtuosity, so would any pianist.

The program will be repeated on Saturday May 4 ( 8 pm) and Monday May 6 (6:30 pm).

 

Monday June 6

Alexander Gavrylyuk, Great Performers, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7:30 pm

Always a pleasure to have this USSR-born, Sydney resident pianist back here.   In this instance, Gavrylyuk forms part of the MRC’s Great Performers series and has assembled a fine miscellany, starting with Schubert in A, the three-movement gem that radiates summery good humour at every turn.   A bracket of Chopin contains the F minor Fantaisie challenge (leisurely or Lisztomanic?), the Nocturne in C minor from the Op. 38 set with the clangorous central chorale, and the mighty A flat Polonaise of 1842.  Then Gavrylyuk hones in on his birth country with Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 3, the shortest of the nine.  After this come some of Rachmaninov’s earlier set of Etudes-tableaux, and then that finger-twisting barnstormer, Balakirev’s Islamey – which is something of a Gavrylyuk specialty.

 

Tuesday June 7

Enso String Quartet, Musica Viva, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7 pm

Both programs that this US ensemble brings to us feature a new work by Melbourne composer Brenton Broadstock, part of the Musica Viva ongoing commitment to furthering the cause of contemporary Australian work which has led to some fine creations as well as some dross.   Another program constant is Beethoven’s Harp in E flat.  For this night, the group plays to one of its strengths with the middle Ginastera quartet, the Ensos having recorded all three to sustained acclaim.   And, keeping to the Latin ambience, the group will perform Turina’s 10-minute Serenata from 1943.

For the second program on Saturday June 18, the performers will exchange Turina and Ginastera for a Renaissance medley arranged by the quartet’s first violin, Maureen Nelson, and conclude with the familiar pages of Ravel in F.

 

Thursday June 9th

Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Recital Centre, 8 pm

Concertmaster Eoin Andersen  puts himself front and centre of this night by directing and playing the solo for Mendelssohn’s evergreen concerto, the one everybody knows in E minor rather than the D minor score from the composer’s youth discovered by Menuhin mid-20th century.   Less familiar but still a concert hall staple, Strauss’s tone-poem Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks appears in new chamber orchestra garb, specially prepared by Brett Dean.   More Strauss opens the night with the Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments, a teenager’s work of rich timbres and traditionalist-pleasing melodic orthodoxy.   To cap the occasion with a dash of sophistication counterbalancing Strauss’s lumpy rapscallion, Andersen leads Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite, that quirky arrangement of (alleged) Pergolesi pieces that signifies the composer’s movement into neo-classicism.

The program is repeated on Friday June 10 at 8 pm in the Robert Blackwood Hall, then back to the MRC for a final account on Saturday June 11 at 6:30 pm.

 

Tuesday June 14

Bach’s Circle, Latitude 37, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

Back once more in the Local Heroes league, this period music trio – violin Julia Fredersdorff, gamba Laura Vaughan, harpsichord Donald Nicholson – hits the Baroque with confident panache, this time round presenting Bach’s keyboard G Major Toccata with its jolly fugue-gigue finale, and the Violin Sonata in E minor.   As for the circle, a Telemann trio sonata definitely fills the bill, as does a sonata from Buxtehude.   The public Baroque comes with a Handel aria, Col partir la bella Clori from the canata Ah! che pur troppo e vero, presumably arranged for one of the string players, and a lesser-known light of the era will emerge in the Trio Sonata No. 4 by Philipp Heinrich Erlebach; one of the few surviving works of this Bach contemporary; his impressively full output was largely destroyed by fire 20 years after the composer’s death.   Still, we should enjoy what’s left and the Latitudes are well positioned to help us.

 

Wednesday June 15

Flames Within, The Consort of Melbourne, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

Addressing the pyromaniac in all of us, this fine vocal ensemble hosts guest Hannah Lane and her Baroque triple harp.   Tonight, the Consort goes for fires, both spiritual and physical, heading for the former definitely (one hopes) with a bit of Hildegard von Bingen, and possibly continuing in that elevated strain with a Marenzio madrigal alongside a Monteverdi or two, although you can’t be sure with either of those two.   Definitely, matters will take a turn for the erotic with the arrival of Gesualdo, our favourite homicidal ultra-Mannerist Prince of Venosa, and should then lighten up through the advent of that polite ardour to be found in Morley’s Fire, fire.   On the home front, the singers will work through Elliott Gyger’s 12-year-old Fire in the heavens setting of verses by Christopher Brennan.   Morton Lauridsen’s Five madrigals represent the USA, although the only relevant works I can find in the composer’s copious output are the Six Firesongs, madrigals setting Italian texts.    And that tragic figure who did not survive the Nazi era, Hugo Distler, is represented by his six-part setting of Morike’s Der Feuerreiter.

 

Musical Offering, Selby & Friends, Deakin Edge Federation Square, 7:30 pm

Kathryn Selby comes back for the third in her subscription series recitals for this year. Once again, she has cellist Timo-Veikko Valve from the Australian Chamber Orchestra as a collaborator/friend, and young Canadian Nikki Chooi is the ensemble’s violinist.   Both friends enjoy a solo spot – Valve with the Brahms Sonata No. 1 in E minor, Chooi in the Schumann Sonata No. 1 in A minor – before all three musicians work through that glory of the piano trio repertoire, Schubert in B flat: 40 minutes of sustained jubilation.   As a taster, the musicians are playing Julian Yu’s 1999 Prelude and not-a-fugue, the composer’s tribute to Bach on the 250th anniversary of the master’s death; the pseudo-fugue uses the B-A-C-H motif not so much as a subject but as a cantus firmus.   It is hard to over-recommend these events; Selby and her associates never fail to bring an intellectual mastery and interpretative brilliance to their work and this year’s events have been superb accomplishments so far.

 

Thursday June 16

Rachmaninov’s Paganini, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 8 pm

One of the concerts of the year, this program welcomes back Sir Andrew Davis for another tour of duty as the MSO’s chief panjandrum.   The curtain-raiser is early Haydn, the Symphony No. 6, Le matin, the first written for the Esterhazy court and one that involves more than its fair share of solo spots for the executants.   Solo pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet delighted or outraged audiences with an idiosyncratic Mozart G Major Concerto K. 453 last August under Davis; he’s back with the sparkling Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini by Rachmaninov in which the plainchant Dies irae has rarely been put to better use.   To end comes a real rarity  –  the Ives Symphony No. 4 which isn’t that long but involves a large orchestra, three or four pianos with two of them tuned a quarter-tone apart, a mixed chorus for the outer movements, a massive percussion section, organ (always a problem these days in Hamer Hall) and usually an additional conductor for (at least) the second movement’s metrical complexities – which is what this work has in spades.   For those of us who have been carrying an Ives torch for decades, this is an important occasion, especially because, for most of us true believers, this may be the first time we get to hear the work live in its revised form.

The program will be repeated on Friday June 17 at 8 pm.

 

Saturday June 18

Bach: Spirit & Spectacle, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Peninsula Community Theatre, Mornington, 7:30 pm

Yet another Bach night, you say.   Yes, it is, but there’s quite a bit on this program that would be unfamiliar to your run-of-the-mill concert-goer.   The MCO’s artistic director, William Hennessy, takes back the reins for the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and the Contrapunctus V from The Art Of Fugue, continuing the journey started by the Australian Chamber Orchestra at its last subscription concerts; in this exercise, the composer torques his subject into various situations simultaneously.   Later, Anne-Marie Johnson takes the solo line in the D minor Violin Concerto, which is a version of the well-known keyboard concerto in the same key.   Adding to the arcana, soprano Sara Macliver sings the B minor Mass’s Laudamus te, the slow-moving aria with flute obbligato Bete aber auch dabei from the cantata Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit, and another cantata aria (this one with obbligato violin), Vergnugen und Lust from Gott ist unsre Zuversicht.   Bach in chocolate-rich transmuted form appears in Stokowski’s transcription of the elegiac chorale melody Mein Jesu, was fur Seelenweh.  And, for a touch of the modern-day, the MCO and Macliver air Calvin Bowman’s Die linien des lebens, seven brief settings of verses by Holderlin.   Out of left-field, on the bill for the Mornington night, we are scheduled to start with Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata; very welcome, of course, but who’s playing this cello/viola-sonata-by-another-name remains a mystery.

In the city, this program will be performed on Sunday June 19 at 2:30 pm in the Deakin Edge, Federation Square, and at the Melbourne Recital Centre on Friday June 24 at 7:30 pm.

 

Sunday June 19

Frei aber einsam, Trio Anima Mundi, Holy Trinity Anglican Church, East Melbourne, 3 pm

This ensemble – violin Rochelle Ughetti, cello Noella Yan, piano Kenji Fujimura – has moved from its previous performing space in the Melbourne Recital Centre to East Melbourne where it is now presenting its usual subscription series of three recitals.   Opening the sequence, these musicians perform one work by each of the composers who collaborated in the F-A-E- Sonata, a tribute to the violinist Joachim whose life-motto gives this afternoon its title.   Schumann, the project’s originator, is represented by his 6 Studien in kanonischer Form, originally written for piano with an attached pedal board but more commonly heard on organ; here it appears in a transcription by Theodor Kirchner for piano trio.    Brahms’ last work in the form, Op. 101 in C minor, is the most familiar work on offer, while the third collaborator, Albert Dietrich, is represented by the first of his two attempts, also in C minor.

 

Songs Without Words, Team of Pianists, Rippon Lea, 6:30 pm

A mixed bag, this night has two guest artists: Sydney Symphony Orchestra principal second violin Marina Marsden and her SSO colleague and viola-playing sibling, Justine. Together with one of the Team’s senior members, Robert Chamberlain, they will play arrangements for their various combinations of pieces from Mendelssohn’s seemingly endless Lieder ohne Worte.    The sisters collaborate in Mozart’s K. 423 Duo, all three play Hans Koessler’s four-movement Trio-Suite.   Later, the inescapable Piazzolla appears in Oblivion, Eduard Herrmann’s arrangement of Three Russian Songs by Glinka give a refined Slavic polish to proceedings, and the Danish composer Jacob Gade’s catchy Jealousy Tango stands as a sort of programmed encore.   All over the place, this is an old-fashioned all-in bag of mixed sweets which asks you to just sit back and relish the sugar and schmaltz.

 

Friday June 24

Gabriel Faure, Australian National Academy of Music, 7 pm

Pianist Roy Howat is visiting ANAM and, as an expert on French piano music, particularly Debussy and Faure, what better way to use his time here than in nurturing his charges in the techniques and insights needed to give informed interpretations of the latter?   This recital will probably follow the same path as that of the recent Paavali Jumppanen appearances at ANAM: the teacher/performer will participate in some works, leaving the others for his now-up-to-speed juniors.   The program includes the Elegie for cello and piano, the Fantasie for flute and piano, the late Piano Trio in D minor, the second of the piano quartets, and some miniatures that I assume will be delineated by the visitor.   By night’s end, we should know a good deal more about the composer’s range (outside the Requiem, Pavane, and Pelleas et Melisande music) than we did at the start – and no songs! The real interest of events like this one lies more in watching the ANAM musicians finding their interpretative feet, although there is also the added benefit of hearing a master interpreter of this epoch in his element.

 

Saturday June 25

Gluzman Plays Brahms, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 2 pm

Sir Andrew – still here – directs the MSO in excerpts from Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet symphony; one day, someone will bite the bullet and perform the whole thing – warts, beauty spots and all.    Meanwhile, we’ll always have the Queen Mab scherzo, the Love Scene, and possibly Romeo seul.    The MSO Chorale is not involved, so the work’s last scene will not be given.   Helas.  The concert begins with the world premiere of Hollow Kings by Australian composer James Ledger.   It concerns four Shakespearean figures: Lear, Macbeth, Richard III and Henry VIII and ties in with the Berlioz: both have been mounted to amplify the 400th anniversary celebrations of the dramatist’s death.   Not connected with the Swan of Avon in any way except in its breadth, the Brahms Violin Concerto will be performed on his distinguished-heritage Stradivarius by Ukrainian-born Vadim Gluzman, here in Melbourne for his first visit, I believe.

The program will be performed at Geelong’s Costa Hall on Friday June 24 at 8 pm, and again in Hamer Hall on Monday June 27 at 6:30 pm

 

Monday June 27

Buonamente, Continuo Collective, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

Another Local Heroes recital, this one features the mainstays of the ensemble, Samantha Cohen on theorbo/guitar and Geoffrey Morris playing the chitarra attiorbata or theorboed guitar which has 16 strings – no, I’d never heard of it, either.   Helpers in the work are violinists Rachael Beesley and Emma Williams with Laura Vaughan on lirone/viola da gamba.   The aim is to put the spotlight on a Baroque still water, Giovanni Buonamente, many of whose compositions are lost.   What little I’ve seen has a sparkle and flair, although short-winded; expect plenty of repeats.   The Continuo will focus on works involving two violins and continuo – trio sonatas, in short.

 

Tuesday June 28

Midori – A Night in Vienna, Great Performers, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7:30 pm

The Japanese-born American violin star is taking her Vienna seriously; not much sentimentality or glutinous Sachertorte on this program.   In partnership with pianist Ozgur Aydin, she performs Schoenberg’s Phantasy, which will stretch the ears of the unwary.   The composer was certainly born in Vienna but wrote this last of his instrumental works in Los Angeles during 1949.   Also celebrating the Viennese spirit is the Brahms Sonata in G, first and most summery of the three.  The association with Austria’s capital is stronger in this context as the composer spent a large part of his life there.   A Mozart violin sonata (not identified at the time of writing) could not be more appropriate, although the cynics among us cannot forget the city’s treatment of this musical colossus.   Ditto Schubert, whose great Fantasie in C fills out a hefty night’s work. As an ice-breaker, I presume, Aydin will play Liszt’s nine Soirees de Vienne, Valses-caprices d’apres Schubert which take Schubert themes and transform them with skill and a surprising lack of chandelier-rattling flamboyance.

 

Thursday June 30

Mahler 6, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 8 pm.

Sir Andrew Davis rolls on his Mahler series, here coming to the centre of the generally accepted canon.   As a prelude, American pianist Jonathan Biss is soloist in Mozart’s Concerto No. 21 in C, forever associated with the 1967 Swedish film Elvira Madigan which over-utilised this work’s central Andante.   Biss performed Mozart three years ago, again with the MSO under Johannes Fritzsch: a top-rank reading of the rarely-performed Concerto No. 22 in E flat.   Delightful as all this reminiscence may be, the night’s purpose is the large Mahler work, which remains a problem or twenty for every interpreter.   Mahler re-ordered the movements’ sequence; various authorities put them back the way they were.   The instrumentation is malleable, with some indications asking for more than the set number of the original prescription.   And are there three or two big hammer-strokes in the finale?    All of which is interesting but has little bearing on the work’s superb vigour and developmental surprises.   Rarely performed, the Sixth is profoundly dark, despite some ardent melodic content and complete disruptions of tension, like the use of cowbells.    The conclusion is an emotional gloaming, with a dark night inevitable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Car stands out in problematic Verdi

cliveoconnell

LUISA MILLER

Opera Australia

State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne

Monday May 16, 2016

Nicole Car (Luisa)
                                                                                       Nicole Car 

It’s not really a hard sell, Luisa Miller; with a sharply-defined set of principals, some stirring, sometimes thrilling pages and a simple plot (albeit one with a few odd twists), the work could be an attractive proposition, especially welcome to finish the national company’s Melbourne autumn mini-season which otherwise walked through two repertoire staples.  For most of us simply a text-book name, one of the 15 or 16 early works by Verdi that largely remain unknown (with the exceptions of Nabucco and Macbeth), this opera represents a turning-point, the commentators say, where the composer’s fully-formed voice breaks into maturity and a buoyant originality that marks everything that follows.

This is a co-production with the Opera de Lausanne, in which house it was first staged over two years ago, and follows on from its appearance during the Sydney spring season in February this year.   From the northern capital’s staging, only the female singers have been transplanted to Melbourne  –  Nicole Car a sterling heroine, Eva Kong as the lightly-sketched confidante/villager Laura, and Sian Pendry taking the role of the other woman, Duchess Federica.    Tenor Riccardo Massi, who has sung in Sydney at least twice before, makes his Melbourne debut (I believe) as Luisa’s high-born lover, Rodolfo.  The remaining male soloists are all familiar home-grown faces: Michael Honeyman worked through the part of Luisa’s father; Steven Gallop added to his catalogue of villains with Wurm complementing his Nourabad from the company’s The Pearl Fishers; Operatunity Oz winner David Parkin (was it really a decade ago?!) gave his best to the unsympathetic role of Count Walter.

So, a reliable cast at work.  Why, then, was the effect so tedious?   Verdi took a gamble giving so much work to a baritone and two basses, especially in the work’s conniving centre.  But he gave them all some fine solos and concerted numbers.   Parkin came to life when Count Walter’s secret (he killed his cousin to get the title) becomes an issue but his self-justifications for stuffing up his son’s life failed to convince and, if you don’t believe that the Count is sincere  –  in this, at least  –  the whole tragedy crumbles.  Honeyman found a specific mode of delivery at Sacra la scelta e d’un consorte and stayed there, the shape of his line consistent but unchanging, so that his injunctions to Luisa and his wounded pride objurgations at the end of Act 1 sounded identical.  Gallop brought a menace to his characterization, his production packed with theatrical points that suggest the moustache-twirling villain, at his most impressive in the Act 2 duet with his master, L’alto retaggio non ho bramato, where both acknowledge their criminal past.

Pendry gave a cogent, dramatic account of the duchess, showing a fine balance between optimism and doubt in the opera’s central scene where Luisa is forced to lie that she feels no love for Rodolfo.   Yet you might reasonably have expected a more ample sound from the singer, particularly when her hopes increase that her wedding will take place. Possibly it was director Matthew Barclay‘s vision that Federica has something of the tightly-laced and snippy about her; I can’t find that in the music or in the actual dialogue that she conducts with Rodolfo on her first appearance.

Car sang with excellent point and clarity, giving an appropriate excitement to her opening L’o vidi e ‘l primo palpito, then making her over-wrought Tu puniscimi, O Signore the closest thing this production got to a show-stopper (it didn’t, but that’s more a comment on us than on Car and her fine clarinet support), and easing the weight of a lengthy double-death scene through an unerring command of her upper range and a clear awareness of her dramatic situation in duet with Massi for Ah piangi; il tuo dolore and in the concluding trio.   Luisa is cursed from the start, pulled from pillar to post by practically everybody with whom she interacts, a pitiable if conscious victim; Car’s gift was to draw a credible personality, one who gives in to Wurm, to the Count, to her father, to Rodolfo, but still has enough spirit to wave a rebellious flag  –  one that fails but you believe that her attempts are real, not just token efforts.

Massi’s Rodolfo proved to be the production’s most unsettling element – apart from the staging which stretched tolerance to an unnecessary degree.   His power stayed vigorous from the T’amo d’amor ch’esprimere duet where the lovers are at their short-lived happiest, through the argument with his father and consequent entreaties to Federica, continuing through the popular regretful aria Quando le sere al placido that experienced a rousing rendition, and into the final emotional chain that brings Rodolfo from disdain and anger to a revived, if fainting ardour at the work’s end.   Through this sequence, Massi sang with confidence and a resonant clangour, his tenor at full-stretch more often than not and his line full of points where he hoisted himself onto the note rather than attacking it cleanly; a powerful personification, yet in some ways not appropriate for this particular drama.

Conductor Andrea Licata gave Orchestra Victoria every encouragement, rousing a splendid ferment for moments like the conclusion to Act 1 where the drama’s personnel come into open conflict.   In later principal ensembles, the brass sounded over-energetic, although that’s an easy thing to accomplish in this space.   But the stand-out pit element for the duration of this opera’s run is the first clarinet.  Without a program, I can’t say for sure who the player is; the orchestra’s website lists Paul Champion as first desk, Andrew Mitchell as principal bass clarinet.   In any case, Verdi gave the San Carlo player plenty of exposure and his OV successor produced a sensible, present but not obtrusive account of the line.

As able as ever in this season, the Opera Australia Chorus gave good service in their few appearances, including a soft, somehow menacing reading of the Ti desta, Luisa opening serenade.  Not that the chorus is stretched at any point; Verdi kept his fireworks for the ill-fated lovers.   But the choral mix proved amiable and appropriately stentorian in support at climactic points.

The original director, Giancarlo del Monaco, moved the opera’s temporal situation from the early 17th century to relatively modern times, possibly about 1930.  The locale could still be the Tyrol; if so, it’s populated by villagers in perpetual evening dress, all set for a sombre gala.   Luisa wears white throughout;  the male principals affect tails, except for Miller who presents as a refugee from a Downton Abbey shooting party.   As the drama moves forward, the chorus remains outside the main acting space, processing slowly around it during the overture while carrying candles in what appeared to be plastic tubes. Preparing for the corpse-rich final curtain?   It’s hard to say.   Whatever the underpinning rationale, this group stays away from any involvement of a physical nature.

William Orlandi‘s set consists of two sculpture groups, one of a bourgeois domestic scene of nuclear family togetherness, the other of a gentleman bent over inspecting what could be a fountain or a civic monument.   Both are white, highly polished and suggestive of nothing so much as Lladro ceramics.   During the opera’s opening sections, these gradually roll upwards until they hang suspended over the stage – which could suggest an inversion of the natural order, if only we were sure what that was.   On the bare stage, Orlandi then employs chairs which the principals sit on (but not for long), or kick aside, or throw around in fits of rage or pique.   At the end, of course, the suspended statuary comes back down to stage level, right-side up.   It all makes for clear lines, a welter of black and white contrasts, minimal visual stimulation which focuses your attention on the music.

But, rather than offering a new locus from which to view the drama, the setting saps at its vitality in this specific staging.   Any concentration on Verdi’s score is laudable, certainly, but in bringing about this focus, the director and his team raise the bar for everyone – and only Car is equal to the challenge.   Too often, you have the impression that the male singers have little ability to shape their lines, that the differences between scenes, between individual lines, have been left unexplored, that getting the notes on pitch and on time is sufficient.  This might explain the interpretative pall that falls over the production early on and which rarely lifts.

With regard to a final puzzle that caused mild perturbation during the drive home, I’m assuming that the melodramatic climax  – where Rodolfo, with his last gasp, shoots Wurm –  misfired because the tenor’s gun, so active in the ludicrously handled duel scene, failed to work, leaving Gallop to strike a pose reminiscent of the central character in Goya’s The Third of May.    The effect of this tableau was to make a mystery of the opera’s final lines, where Rodolfo in extremis says to Wurm, A te sia pena, empio, la morte – and on this occasion did nothing.

The production has three further performances, ending on Friday May 27.

Competent but bland

cliveoconnell

THE PEARL FISHERS

Opera Australia

State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne

Saturday May 7, 2016

Emma Matthews (Leila) and Dmitry Korchak (Nadir)
                              Emma Matthews (Leila) and Dmitry Korchak (Nadir)

Many commentators – not I, though the temptation is great – find this Bizet opera a piece of dubiously-coloured tripe: its plot illogical or, if you’re feeling kind, clumsy; the music’s quality unworthy and variable, apart from the soaring glory of the Act 1 tenor/baritone duet; the vocal writing itself, for both soloists and chorus, undistinguished in comparison with the brilliance blazing out of the score for Carmen 12 years later.   Most of these complaints can be debated, if not completely justified, but what can’t be gainsaid is the popularity of The Pearl Fishers over recent decades in this city.  For a time, hardly a year went by, it seemed, when either the Victorian Opera Company or the Australian Opera did not produce this work with the same fervour as both organizations showed some time later for The Magic Flute.

An awful lot depends on the three main principal singers.  Each gets plenty of ensemble work but also a splendid, character-establishing aria.   Nadir enjoys the finely-spun arches of Je crois entendre encore, a gift for any tenor who can produce a soft upper register.  On this premiere night, Dmitry Korchak missed out on conveying the inbuilt languor and ecstasy-in-remembrance that fills these pages.

The priestess Leila opens with coloratura, singing to protect the fishers at their work, but her main extended aria, Comme autrefois, has a full-bodied lyricism and an interesting pattern of phrase-lengths.   Emma Matthews performed this with restraint, probably too much so; still, like everybody else, she was constrained by the slow tempi exerted by conductor Guillaume Tourniaire, a method of approach which meant that it was only half the time that singer and orchestra hit their cues simultaneously.   Jose Carbo sang a solid Zurga, making a dramatic meal of his late cavatina Nadir! . . . ami de mon jeune age which had the advantage of travelling securely across the footlights, as had all his singing since his early Act 1 appearance.

But the production’s most enjoyable singing came from the Opera Australia Chorus, in good shape vocally from the opening scene and consistently firm in articulation,  whether en masse or divided by gender.  In Michael Gow‘s direction, the group stood about in a block, filling up the rear of the acting area or geometrically aligned across temple steps; not much imagination shown in such dispositions but they ensured that mutual support was continuous and the concept of a body acting with one mind came across persuasively at moments like the election of Zurga to the population’s leadership or the death-threats hurled at the exposed lovers, Leila and Nadir, in the final scene of Act 2.

For those of us with a sneaking affection for this opera, certain moments are anticipated, usually with expectations that are rarely realized.  Most of these are duets, like the substantial love-duet in the third scene of Act 2 that has an irresistible sweeping power, not particularly original in its layout yet compelling and vehement\; just the thing for two lovers who have discovered each other at last.  Both Matthews and Korchak gave this section some much-needed animation, as also came across near the work’s end in the Zurga/Leila confrontation which brought out some fire in the soprano and a matching energy from Carbo, particularly at the point where he admits to his jealousy.

Michael Gow has reblocked the drama, turning both the male principals into middle-men of some kind, their dress that of the colonial administration rather than the original’s Sinhalese native-grown.  Right from the start, you’re led to question even the simplest matters, like why the fishers would elect Zurga their headman.  Nadir is always an outsider, a hermit-hunter by his own account, although in this personification he could have come fresh from the 19th century fleshpots of Western civilization in Kandy.   Why either would have at one time been hanging around Leila’s temple is a niggling question of behavioural probability.  Turning the priest Nourabad, sung at full throttle by Steven Gallop, into a sort of broker makes some sense, although why he also is dressed in a suit and at the same time can rouse the fishers to fury with menaces of divine vengeance adds to the plot’s oddities, rather than removing them.

But this production is short on subtleties, not least visually  as the sets by Robert Kemp emphasize the poverty of this community and, if anything, its lack of prosperity as the temples are overgrown with weeds.   Further inexplicabilities applied to the set mounted for Zurga’s bout of self-realization, suggestive of a white hunter’s bungalow in 19th century British Africa, complete with many hunting trophies (what has this pearl fisher-cum-entrepreneur been doing in his obviously copious free time?).

Still, as with all attempts to give a new vision to a work set in its time and place, the viewer has to exercise generosity. In this case, I’m not sure that much has been gained by taking all three male principals out of the population; the social commentary suggested appears pretty ordinary, giving a fresh socio-economic layer to a work that profits both musically and dramatically by its own simplicity.  Maybe it would be more persuasive in this regard with a central quartet that displayed more comfort in their work.

The production has seven further performances, ending in a 1 pm  matinee on Saturday, May 28.