Category: Orchestral

UMBERTO’S MAHLER

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centrre

Saturday February 24, 2024

Umberto Clerici

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RIVER

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday February 12, 2024

It is both probable and possible that all of us assembled in QPAC’s Concert Hall to experience River were in sympathy with the message of the film and its commentary (indeed, it would be hard to distinguish between them). After showing us a lavish variety of rivers in slow flow or full spate, the visual images change to face us with what humans have done to these essential resources and the truth gives plenty of cause for alarm. Set against this, the producers then turn to rivers of cloud, which are apparently immune to pollution (oh?) and we end with a message of hope: rivers are resilient and all we have to do is pull our fingers out and their chances of betterment multiply.

You can see that this scenario is possibly unpalatable but essentially true: we have polluted and restructured rivers, to their detriment and ours. Perhaps the only new insight I gained from this night was that dams are distorters, not huge achievements; in fact, the documentary reaches a kind of climax when we are treated to the sight of a dam being exploded and waters return to their original course, complete with the life that left or disappeared after their construction. Goodbye, Snowy 2: that undertaking was clearly an optimistic revisiting based on bad biology. Bob Brown and his confederates were absolutely right from the word go: dam the Franklin and you kill the river.

The River experience lasts over an hour but less than 90 minutes; split the difference and say 75 because it didn’t start on time and I had no idea when it finished until I was on the station at an unusually early hour. Despite that not-particularly-draining dimension, I was left thinking that the whole thing could have been cut to its own profit. Put simply, the pictorial element made its points well enough in each segment, in particular those ones that showed the beauty of ‘natural’ rivers and a variety of epic shots that bordered on abstract art. The visual array came close to wearing out its welcome as those later redemptive stages proved tedious, like a sermon familiar in its tropes and bringing little new to the converted.

A good many people are associated with the creation and performance of River: a wealth of cinematographers and a trio of writers, including producer Jennifer Peedom, Robert Macfarlane and Joseph Nizeti.  Prime responsibility for the music fell to the ACO’s artistic director Richard Tognetti, who also composed parts of the content, aided by Piers Burbrook de Vere and William Barton. The taped narration came from William Dafoe who gave the exercise a certain gravitas - when he could be heard. Was it a peculiarity of the QPAC Concert Hall’s amplification system that rendered parts of Dafoe’s narration close to inaudible – or better, impenetrable?  In patches, you could hear the murmur of the actor’s quiet delivery but the actual text could not be deciphered.

This generally took place when the ACO strings were active and the sound mix favoured the instruments. It would be helpful to point to specific moments when this problem took place but the hall was in darkness and taking notes was impossible. I suspect that one of these indistinct stretches coincided with a stage where four contemporary works followed each other: Wildness by Tognetti/Burbrook de Vere/Barton, Intervention by Tognetti/Burbrook de Vere, and Magic and Active by Tognetti. 

Speaking of the musical content, we heard a bewildering array of works, mainly scraps or revisions. Matters began crisply with the B minor Largo from Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in D Major RV 232 (all 29 bars?). A pair of inter-changeable pieces by Tognetti and Burbrook de Vere followed before a string orchestra arrangement of tracts gleaned from Bach’s D minor Violin Partita’s Chaconne. Well, it made for some effective fluttering to accompany visual images of surging waterscapes. Part of Sibelius’ Voces Intimae quartet arrived, arranged for the full string body, before another collation of modern pieces came over in a complex, from the three previously mentioned writers, also involving the first appearance of Jonny Greenwood’s Water, which enjoyed two later rinsings.

Another Vivaldi fragment interrupted the flow of these cinematographically apt compositions: the abruptly distracting Allegro e spiccato – Allegro pages from the G minor Concerto RV 578. But from here on, the current proved rapid and thick, part of Vask’s Vox amoris sinking in the flood, although Ades’ O Albion bobbed a momentary head out of the torrent, and the second movement of Ravel’s String Quartet enjoyed a fair (complete?) airing.

River came to rest with the Ruhevoll from Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 – a limited part of it, in fact, but bars that melded into the final stills and credits with quiet ease; the sort of music intended to send you off in a contentedly contemplative frame of mind. At certain points, Barton sang/vocalised but I had no idea why or what he was expressing. As well, principal violin Satu Vanska sang two songs, as I recall, but – as is so often the case with popular music – I couldn’t make out a word. So, while admiring the work of ACO regulars and extra-numeraries Brian Dixon on timpani and Nicholas Meredith on assorted percussion, the vocal component added little but confusion or over-obvious atmospherics to the proceedings.

But I think that deficiency may be part of the problems that remain after a River performance. In spreading the musical web so widely, Tognetti and his collaborators are attempting to broaden the potential audience for this polemic and demonstrate the universality of a massive natural disaster-in-the-making. Where the visuals present a wide vista of water in the world, the musical complement calls on a variety of sources to underline this problematic breadth. As far as I can tell, the aptness of Tognetti & Co.’s more conservative choices – Vivaldi, Bach, Sibelius, Mahler, Ravel, Vasks, Ades – is mitigated by the emotionally illustrative character of the modern pieces. In other words, the intended unanimity of purpose doesn’t come off because the older works inhabit different, more culturally distinct spaces than their more soundtrack-like companions.

Further, you encounter moments where these musics present as counteractive agents; for instance, when Barton’s didgeridoo enters the texture and suggests an indigenous landscape at odds with what we are seeing, or the sudden intrusion of Ravel’s ultra-sophisticated Assex vif cuts a salonesque caper across scenes of nature’s power. To be blunt, the musical events make up something of a dog’s breakfast, albeit one with some fine mouthfuls.

In the end, I suppose the principal question is: would I want to witness River again? To which the only answer is a tentative ‘maybe’. You can’t want for more variety, visual and aural. But I feel that the message is not mounted with sufficient starkness to have more impact than a mild, querying call to arms. In this large Brisbane audience,and judging by its ringing applause, you’d be going to find anyone unsympathetic to the fate of the world’s wild rivers. We can all see and agree on their parlous situation, but where does this awareness lead us? 

Towards its end, River becomes optimistic. Dry riverbeds are re-irrigated, water is re-directed across barren landscapes, fish return to dart through a rejuvenated medium. How is this achieved?  I can’t remember much about the details; stop damming, don’t divert, conserve. Of course, we’re to take River as a wake-up call before our resources run dry, but at the end any action appears to be lacking in focus. I’m all for employing music towards an admirable social end but it’s hard to find much beyond hand-wringing and vague good intentions in this exercise. Mind you, I can’t remember seeing the ACO’s Mountain film/music collaboration where any environmental aspirations might have been more apparent (if there were any).  But this latest in the series (including The Reef, The Crowd and I, Luminous) failed to engage this listener, despite flashes of abstract and natural grandeur.

CHOPIN & THE MENDELSSOHNS

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday November 13, 2023

Polina Leschenko

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DVORAK’S SERENADE

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday August 7, 2023

Bela Bartok

Fourth in an eleven-concert series, this Brisbane appearance by the ACO under Richard Tognetti‘s artistic and concertmasterly leadership divided neatly into opposing halves. Before interval, patrons were offered a fairly contemporary opening with Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte of 2011, a piece that the American composer wrote while a student at Princeton. This was followed by Tognetti’s new arrangement of the 1934 Bartok String Quartet No. 5, called ‘in B flat Major’ because it starts and ends in that key (roughly). After interval, we moved back in time a tad for Josef Suk’s Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale ‘St Wenceslas’, composed near the outbreak of World War One and used as a musical act of resistance against the German invaders (following in Sibelius’ anti-Russian footsteps). And we concluded with the night’s title, Dvorak’s delectable Serenade for Strings of 1875.

This last is a string orchestra staple but the ACO hasn’t recorded it, as far as I can tell. So what? There’s an awful lot of music for the same forces that the group has not dealt with, but the current personnel could make an impressive interpretation, worth setting down on something more public than the organization’s own tapes. Tognetti encouraged his players to give full vent to the composer’s throbbing expressiveness while keeping the lines clear. Not that clarity in this Romantic product would be a problem with this group where the bass lines feature three cellos and one bass only.

Once again, the two violin contingents made an impressive display, the seconds immediately with a finely shaped outline of the first movement’s opening subject, even more telling on its restatement at bar 13. In fact, the entirety of this Moderato demonstrated great care in preparation, from the soft high chords that concluded bars 22 and 24 to the modestly projected cello lines from bar 66 to near the movement’s end. But then, we’re treated here to one of Dvorak’s most tender lyrics, even quite early in his prodigious output.

The mellifluousness continued in the Valse/Trio with some danger spots deftly achieved, like the strings’ octave doubling from bar 11 on, which many another body plays with bursts of suspect intonation, and the delectable skipping exhibition for second violins and cellos at bar 37 which impressed by its grace and positivity. I admired the pace of the following Scherzo and a uniformity of address that typifies this body, particularly while they worked through the thick-and-fast canonic entries that dominate this movement’s progress. Even the lack of bass heft wasn’t too obvious at the bar 42 fortissimo-for-everyone tutti where cellos and bass have the running. And the ensemble created a finely-spun melancholy moment at the bar 286 a tempo as the melodic material is decelerated and subjected to a placid musing before the concluding rush.

You would be hard pressed to find a more appealing version of the ensuing Larghetto – from the delicate but disciplined opening, straight into the business, to the lightly tripping Un poco piu mosso beginning at bar 47 with not a double- or triple-stop unachieved briskly. Even the note-spinning high violin line that dominates proceedings from bar 54 to bar 63 (an odd creative lapse in this eloquent essay) exercised interest for the piercing thinness of its contour. While you could understand the need for tempo relaxation in the vivace last movement, I’ve never understood why everyone slows down for the episode beginning at bar 85. Is it viewed as the beginning of a new ‘step’, perhaps? At all events, we were caught up in the rapid scurrying of this allegro‘s central pages before the melting-moment return of the work’s opening theme at bar 344, and the brusque furiant that here brought us home to generous popular approval. Just as you’d expect from this outstanding body that is blessed with consistency of personnel.

Not much to report about Entr’acte which moves between rather ordinary chord groupings to some special effects harking back to the 1960s. The only thing I gained from this performance was an appreciation of the work’s variety of timbres – which are not apparent from available recorded versions. Or perhaps American orchestras aren’t fussed about these details which, as far as I can tell, are the work’s main interest . . . alongside the concluding cello solo, carried off here by Timo-Veikko Valve with a kind of phlegmatic consideration.

Similarly, not much remains in the memory of Suk’s brief hymn treatment. The opening pages are lushly scored although the harmonic vocabulary stays in A natural minor for the entire first part of 39 bars – not an accidental in sight. Double bass Maxime Bibeau was put to a difficult task, having to negotiate a part that called for three players, most obviously in the moving (and exposed) A Major triads of the last three bars. But the work was handled with considerable attention to its inbuilt surging character, based as it is on a kind of dour Gregorian chant and not the wider-ranging compass of the Tallis Fantasia with which Suk’s work bears slight comparison.

For my money, the night’s interest came with the Bartok arrangement. After a few days, I’m still doubtful about the point of this exercise, apart from giving the ACO an addition to its repertoire. From the opening avalanche of B flats, it was clear that we were in a new country where individual voices were subsumed in a kind of musical groupthink. Voices impressed as powerful blocks but some polish came off the details, like the trills in bars 21 to 23 of the opening Allegro. Not that this impression was uninterrupted, as in the second subject’s arrival in bar 44 which preserved its striking sinuosity, and the orchestral texture was pared back every so often, yet those unison/octave recurrences dominated the movement’s progress as at bars 59, 126 (minor 2nds, for a change), 159, and 210 – all of which served as anchors in a welter of thick part-writing; difficult to imbibe even in the original.

I seem to remember that the Adagio began with single instruments, the full corps entering at bar 10. Again, here significant details sounded blurred, like the five-note semi-chromatic rapid runs that begin at bar 26 but which lacked the original’s crepuscular mild stridulatory suggestiveness. It was a relief to get back to the slow-moving isolated trills after bar 50’s Piu andante.

Of the work’s five movements, the middle Alla bulgarese emerged best in this string orchestra garb, notably at the burst into a C Major/minor/modal three-bar break at bar 30: one of Bartok’s more folksy surprises. As well, the 3+2+2+3/8 Trio showed the ACO’s expertise in dealing with irregular rhythms; but then, the group’s had plenty of practice, ever since the group played the Sandor Veress Transylvanian Dances nearly 30 years ago. Even so, this Bartok is much more demanding. The composer’s counterpoint is less interwoven in these pages, even if the parallel and contrary motion passages are persistent, particularly in the Trio‘s later stages; so the employment of massed (and supple) strings doesn’t interfere with your enjoyment of this dance.

The outer stretches of the Andante maintained their shadowy atmosphere well enough, if the hard-worked Piu mosso from bar 64 to bar 80 proved wearying with the viola/cello/bass work opaque, if not muddy. Still, that made the following 10 bars of tonally inflected Tranquillo very striking for its purity, exercising a kind of static eloquence. Then, the vivace final movement proved an exercise in stamina, exemplified by an initial attack that was as ferocious as any I’ve heard from a quartet versed in this work. Of course, it had its inbuilt slackings-off and accelerations but the ensemble’s enthusiasm and responsiveness went a fair way to making a positive impression in the rapid-fire presto pages.

Even so, the quartet’s finale raised similar questions to those from the first movement. Has the transference achieved much beyond an emphasis on aggression? Is the exchange of intimacy for amplitude worth the transformation? Even with gifted trios of violas and cellos, is the sacrifice of individual lower voices compensated for by laudable collegiality of articulation? This is not the first of the ACO’s transliterations from quartet to chamber orchestra format but it is a questionable one, chiefly because so much goes on in the original that becomes either muffled or muted in the transference. For all that, the performance enjoyed a hearty welcome from last Monday’s audience here – which shows that – once again – I’m in the minority.

MOZART

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday June 26, 2023

Australian Chamber Orchestra

For this national season outing, the ACO under its artistic director Richard Tognetti enlisted the reinforcement of nine string performers from Melbourne’s Australian National Academy of Music, welcome additions in this Concert Hall’s large space (up, if not sideways) to give some competition to the wind-and-timpani guests also roped in for this all-Mozart night. I heard very few glitches from the combined string corps, which says a lot about the leader’s ability to enlist willing, young colleagues for his individual style of attack on some venerable masterpieces.

In all, we heard three symphonies: the Haffner No. 35 in D Major, the Linz No. 36 in C Major, and the Paris No. 31 in D Major. As a filler/irritant, Tognetti and his forces worked through some of the Idomeneo Ballet Music – the Chaconne and its interludes up to the Piu allegro, leaving out the Passepied, Gavotte and unfinished Passacaille. I don’t know why this suite has enjoyed so much prominence in the last few decades as – like nearly all ballet scores of its time – there’s nothing much of interest going on; apart from the opening bold ritornello (and its welcome reprises), little draws attention. Perhaps it needs to be danced, although it seems that its addition to the score wasn’t performed at the premiere. Still, like much of this program, it featured a lot of D Major.

I had only two carping queries about Tognetti’s Haffner. The first occurred early when the first Allegro‘s opening subject reached its second half and the quaver for all strings (and bassoon) in bars 7 and 9 disappeared. It has been a feature of some previous ACO work that certain phrases are allowed to peak and then die away to nothing; so that, in this case, the tender response to the opening bombast seems to end on an unresolved suspension. In the least best of all possible worlds, the first violins’ C sharp and E in those respective bars has to – at least – sound.

As for the second gripe. it concerns the Menuetto and the hesitations inserted before the second beat of bars 3 and 19. This still puzzles as it breaks the pulse of the dance in half, like a prefiguring of the hesitations in Strauss waltzes that Boskovsky implemented. In the Mozart case, it might give some relief from the tub-thumping insistence of this rustic minuet but it also struck me as an unnecessary preparation for the ensuing violins’ triple-stop chords. Oh, another suspected oddity was that I don’t think Tognetti performed the repeat of the Andante‘s second half.

But, like the other symphonies presented, the performance sounded splendidly clear and poised, capped by a revelatory reading of the final Presto with a laudably energetic response to the quiet opening bars coming in the bar 9 tutti outburst – a delight each time it came up. More praise should be given to the doubled/unison bursts starting at bar 20 where the discipline of the combined string forces impressed with its unflappable accuracy. And the dozen wind were hard to fault, most memorable the Trio‘s oboe/bassoon/horn combination which proved eloquently shaped in its finished phrasing.

Little needs to be added about the Linz reading. Its opening 19-bar Adagio came across with excellent precision and a deft giving-way to the two woodwind lines from bars 10 and 15. As with the preceding work, I’m unsure whether the second movement’s second half enjoyed a repeat but this Andante moved briskly, especially compared to some European orchestral interpretations which can turn these pages into a pretty turgid siciliano. Tognetti allowed some woodwind ornamentation to the oboe and bassoon principals for the Trio; not enough to be distracting but sufficient to infuse some individuality.

Then, this symphony’s Presto conclusion showed the ensemble’s high standards under pressure with a crisp pace set from the start which Tognetti whipped into a near-accelerando during the last ritornello from about bar 383 on, achieving a fine flourish to end this substantial score with controlled ebullience, only a suspicion of horn imperfection to disturb the polished surface.

With flutes and clarinets back into the mix, the Paris matched its companions for verve and execution, particularly the main subject’s syncopations in the concluding Allegro which brought about their usual delight when everything flips back to ‘normal’ in bar 7. As well, the group shone bright lights in the transparent fugato beginning at bar 45 – and we had another near-accelerando to finish the night. But you could find equally brilliant patches in the initial Allegro assai, as in the shapely fluency of the second subject and its statement/response clarity, and the unflustered introduction of triplets at the end of the exposition.

As for the Andante, this gave us an object lesson (if one were needed after what had come before) of the group’s treatment of dynamics, in particular those fp markings. In Tognetti’s realization, neither is treated with emphasis: the initial loud notes aren’t whacked out with emphasis; nor do the following phrases undergo an uncomfortable softness of delivery. In effect, the initial attack is made to stand out from its surroundings but not in a black/white contrast, or like a punch followed by a caress. But this is an instance of the composer at his most whimsically honest, pages where the material is both satisfyingly open-ended and treated with Mozart’s stunning breadth of charity – his gift that keeps on giving, no matter how many times you encounter these pages.

You could find nothing to complain about with the ballet music apart from the fact that it was there. At one stage, I was under the impression that the ensemble was going to preface these pages with the opera’s overture, but that didn’t happen. So we were left to admire the performers’ expertise in handling music that doesn’t demand much in terms of interpretative insight. Still, it expanded your awareness of the sort of work that Mozart undertook across the span of 6 years covered by this program. Still, I would have preferred something like the C Major Symphony No. 34; 5 or 6 minutes longer than the ballet music but welcome for breaking the D Major hegemony.

For all that, when the ACO visits, you have to be grateful, particularly on occasions like this where the ensemble indulges in a guest-less, Classical era program where no distractions stand between performer and listener. I didn’t think that such an event would bring out Brisbane’s music-loving public in significant numbers but, as far as I could tell, the stalls (at least) were well-packed. More to the point, the audience seemed well aware of the high quality of this experience.

THE FOUR SEASONS

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday March 13, 2023

Joseph Tawadros

I’ve heard this program before. Well, perhaps not the exact thing but something close to it. When the penny dropped during Spring, the preliminary program booklet statement from ACO Managing Director Richard Evans suddenly struck a nerve: ‘We are thrilled to bring back this spectacular concert . . . ‘ If the energy had been there, I might have tracked down when the ACO and the Tawadros brothers launched their first shared national tour, but I know they committed their Four Seasons collaboration in Melbourne (and everywhere else) during 2015 when the Vivaldi concerti were also surrounded by, amongst other things, compositions from oud expert Joseph Tawadros.

The organization knew that it was on to a good thing with this partnership; hence a re-presentation to packed houses across the country. Brisbane proved no exception: as far as I could see, apart from a few empty seats in the organ gallery, the Concert Hall was packed. With enthusiasm as well, for everything from the individual Vivaldi compositions to Tawadros‘ flashy works that seemed to be divided into two sections: rhapsodic slow, pacey fast. These latter seem to follow a pattern that turns up in musical settings from India’s alap/taan to the lassan/friska of Hungary – uncomplicated, an easy juxtaposition/ capable of revisitings and recapitulations to taste. Tawadros proposes that some of his work has its roots in personal experiences. Good for him, although it has to be said that such inspirational roots are hardly uncommon. You might almost say that the fertile Venetian seasonal depictions come from living through plenty of Veneto campagna weather variants: it’s true, but just what you’d expect.

As well as the four concerti, we were also promised other Baroque music. Well, we got a scrap: the 22-bar long Grave from Vivaldi’s D Major Violin Concerto RV 208, nicknamed Grosso Mogul and therefore relevant to this program. Maybe: did the composer know about this distinctive title? Most organists know the work in a Bach transcription, BWV 594 where whatever Oriental flavour is dissipated. In any case, ACO artistic director Richard Tognetti took the solo line and turned it into an improvisational exercise, packed with bazaar-style flourishes and whines, alongside abrupt curvets in and out of focus, dynamic hurtling and soft rustlings in turn; all very creative, but it couldn’t disguise an inbuilt taut structure of (almost) predictable sequences.

Apart from the six Tawadros numbers – Kindred Spirits, Permission to Evaporate, Eye of the Beholder, Give or Take, Point of Departure, Constantinople – the only other extraneous pieces were a prelude or taksim, named Nihavend, by Mehmed VI Vahideddin, the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire; and Makam-i-Rehavi Cember-i-Koca, an Ottoman march by Tanburi Angeli which was played – like the four other Angeli(s) pieces I know – as a single line taken on by all instruments. Both pieces were among the briefest on the program: 3 minutes and 2 minutes respectively.

A continuing performance peculiarity was Joseph Tawadros’ penchant for following Tognetti’s line (or somebody else’s) in the Vivaldi concertos, as well as brother James‘ support, particularly in thumping bucolic movements, on his riq or bendir. To me, the percussion reinforcement sounded superfluous for most of the time: the originals are bouncy enough, like the first movement of Mozart’s 40th; a percussive underpinning, no matter how subtle in dynamic, seems like gilding an already glittering lily. Still, you got a perverse pleasure from hearing the lute attempting to match Tognetti’s flickering, fast output.

Not that all of the artistic director’s work was audible. In the later Seasons especially, his production moved into inaudible territory and I was sitting in a fairly close stalls position. Virtuosic scale passages often disappeared in their downward trajectories, casualties from the effort to make this firmly-based concerto sequence take on the character of an improvisation. Maybe it might have worked with a set of scores not so well known but this demonstration wound up by irritating; notes you know should have been audible failed to come across, although a famous passage like the three-violin bird exchange at the start of Spring was crystal-clear. Then – the oddest moment of all – between Movements One and Two of Winter, the orchestra inserted what I suspect was another Tawadros composition. Rather than cementing a pathway between East and West, the disjunction proved incomprehensible.

Which brings us to the most difficult aspect of this entertainment: the projected musical connection between Venice and the Orient. As light entertainment, the program contained an essay by Robert Dessaix which, before it reached its didactic core, described a Good Friday concert in the Scuola Grande of the Four Seasons; it sounds glorious until you reckon with the standard of Vivaldi performances in pretty much all reaches of the lagoon. Dessaix writes further of the mercantile achievement of the city and its artistic magnificence – the paintings, the buildings (some of them), the occasional solid fantasias – but there is precious little about the music.

I probably carped about this when covering the previous Four Seasons appearances of the ACO and Tawadros brothers, but you scratch hard and painfully to find a relationship between Vivaldi and a non-European music. The modes and scales are different; the harmonic languages don’t touch; when Tawadros goes in for metrical complexity or simple syncopations, you’re a world away from continuo homophony. Even the fusing of textures serves as aural confrontation; you could say it was Vivaldi’s fault for not experimenting with the oud’s texture, contenting himself with an archlute (Simon Martyn-Ellis theorboing and Baroque guitaring behind Joseph Tawadros all night), and not using any member of the Arabian percussion panoply. But he didn’t.

At the end of the printed program, after the rousing flurries of fabric and driving rhythmic freneticism, a standing ovation from a house packed with patrons who have learned their reaction techniques from State of the Union broadcasts or (more credibly) Australia’s Got Talent. So you can argue that, even if the cross-over is not persuasive, it makes for popular success. For me, as with the first time I came on a Tawadros/Grigoryan mixture, the original experience was indubitably interesting for its level of accomplishment and the willing endeavour from all concerned; this time around, the output was expert if unsurprising. Next time? I don’t know. Where do you go after the Four Seasons? Going back to the Gabrieli family is impossible; and there’s not much that is well-known after the so-called Venetian Golden Age. Furthermore, what about Tawadros’ contribution? By the time he began his last number on this night, I felt as though we were spinning on the spot, that nothing new was happening.

A palpable hit, this whole affair, punctuated by some splendid music-making. And there’ll always be fans who appreciate and love these artists working together: God knows that the world of popular music demonstrates daily how long you can get along by repeating yourself. Further, you will always have couples like the pair in front of me who got carried away into ecstatic applause with the Near-Eastern excerpts and relaxed with knowing smiles every time Tognetti launched into a tune familiar from TV ads. Makes a fellow proud to be Australian.

ILYA GRINGOLTS PLAYS BRUCH

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday February 13, 2023 at 7 pm

Ilya Gringolts

A tad bitty, this opening Brisbane gambit from the Australian Chamber Orchestra for 2023. Missing from the line-up were artistic director Richard Tognetti and associate Satu Vanska, but the band enjoyed some amplification – an extra viola (Carl Lee), a pair of new cellists (Charlotte Miles and Eliza Sdraulig), a mate (Axel Ruge) for bass Maxime Bibeau, and some violinists I’ve not come across before (I think!): Anna Da Silva Chen and Tim Yu. Also, by an arranger’s quirk, timpanist Brian Nixon came to prominence during the night’s big feature: Bruch’s G minor Violin Concerto.

Control of these forces fell to Ilya Gringolts, last heard with the ACO five years ago when he performed Paganini as we should have been hearing it. On this night, he took the soloist’s spot for the Bruch warhorse as well as for a splendidly cogent reading of Frank Martin’s Polyptyque, In more workmanlike mode, he took over Tognetti’s usual place as concertmaster-director for the last of Mendelssohn’s early string symphonies, the one-movement No. 13 in C minor; a fresh commission in Australian writer Harry Sdraulig‘s Slanted; then finished off proceedings through Grazyna Bacewicz’s Concerto for String Orchestra of 1948.

Naturally enough, popular acclaim went to the great-hearted German concerto, arranged for smaller forces by the ACO’s artistic administration manager Bernard Rofe. All the wind parts vanished – 2 each of the woodwind, four horns and two trumpets – their lines relocated to any stray strings; as you might have expected, this meant a loss of timbral variety and an absence of ambient gravity which can actually weigh down considerably this score’s progress. Further, the absence of a sizeable group changed the concerto’s flavour; if you knew the work (and that would have described quite a few patrons), you would have missed some tutti passages memorable for their abrupt bite and stridency, let alone the Vorspiel‘s haunting initial wind chords.

Nevertheless, Gringolts gave us a memorable account of the solo line, accommodating to his reduced background so that full ensemble passages came across with less heft than usual; for instance, the first explosion at bar 11 after Gringolt’s second cadenza was a watery intimation of the real thing. But you learned to compensate as the Vorspiel surged forward with its amalgam of rhapsody and respectability. The absence of timbral punch mattered less in the central Adagio but by this stage Gringolts had absorbed most of our attention with an impeccable demonstration of how to perform the score’s technical hurdles with absolute confidence, while simultaneously expounding the concerto’s rich romantic paragraphs.

Unlike other brilliant interpreters, Gringolts refrained from generating a seamlessly pure line with its contours neatly enfolded; when the action heated up, you could hear some preparatory scrapes as double- and quadruple-stops were hit hard – but not so much in the energetic Allegro last movement where the temptation to add extra gutsiness to the main theme’s thirds and sixths is too great for many an executant to resist. Both soloist and orchestra made as much as necessary with dynamic contrasts, while the whole reading kept you involved by its rhythmic intensity in the outer movements and through the waves of tensile string fabric in the second movement.

Messiaen stole several marches on his contemporaries with regard to putting his Christian/Catholic faith into musical practice, but Martin’s late creation for violin and two string orchestras scales some religio-emotional peaks with just as much sincerity and brilliance of utterance as the French master. His Polyptyque was inspired by a series of miniatures in Siena that depicted various stages of the Passion. In his six movements , Martin lets the solo line represent Christ and a Narrator, in the best Bach fashion; hence also, the two orchestral forces. It only seems like yesterday that adventurous choirs would present the Swiss writer’s Mass for Double Chorus (now almost a century old!) as the last word in modernity and improbably hard choral writing. You would hardly say the same about Polyptyque which is couched in that stringent, athletic language with which some of us have become familiar through the chamber works. Any appearance of a work by Martin is still remarkable, if not as noteworthy as it would have been 30 or 40 years ago.

As at the best of concerts, this performance was a revelation because of a happy combination of expertise and inspiration. After seven live audience performances, this penultimate one in Brisbane came to us well-honed and holding no surprises for all concerned. But the fulcrum of this success emerged through Gringolts’ sympathetic outline of the central role: in turn jubilant, mournful, aggressive, transfigured. Of course, the composer’s realization of specific images veered closer to the physically illustrative than anything in Messiaen’s work. For instance, the opening movement depicting Palm Sunday set out the turba in action – not wholly elated, but busy with suggestive undercurrents – while the violin wove a clearly defined path into the city.

Martin did justice to Judas with an active cadenza for the soloist, packed with self-circling energy like a man newly-arrived in a prison cell and finding no relief, even when the orchestras enter sombrely to underline the traitor-victim’s isolation. To end, the composer contrived a matched pair: the judgement before Pilate and Via crucis, prefacing a continually aspiring image of Christ’s glorification which is achieved by simple means, certainly more mobile than the Louange a l’immortalite de Jesus and less constipated than Majeste du Christ demandant sa gloire a son Pere. In these pages, Gringolts led us on an all-too-brief journey, remarkable in its concentration of output as it moved beyond a kind of remote tension to a radiant, soft triumph. Obviously, an experience to treasure.

The evening started with the Mendelssohn Sinfoniesatz, the last of the teenage composer’s essays in the form. While being happy to observe the near-adult grappling successfully with formal exercises, I’ve never gone overboard about any of these early efforts, least of all this effort with its thickly applied imitative passages of fugato. But then, I feel the same discomfort when Schumann starts fugueing in the Piano Quintet’s final Allegro, or even when the piano kicks off a mini-fugue in the last movement of Bartok’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (bar 228). But, if nothing else, this piece set the physical scene: Gringolts leading an all-male first violin group, Helena Rathbone opposite him at the head of an all-female second violin bevy; pairs of violas either side of centre-stage (this is one of the string symphonies with two viola lines); pairs of cellos in the rear centre, Timo-Veikko Valve and Julian Thompson at the front, of course, with the two females seated in the second row; and the two basses bringing up the real rea, one behind each group.. In any case, the Mendelssohn served its purposes of clearing the sinuses, loosening bowing arms and establishing a communal sound.

Better followed with Sdraulig’s new work. I can’t quite grasp the rationale behind Slanted, even if the composer explains it in two ways: the first, in terms of the actual music’s shape, its architecture as the 18 variations elide into one another; then, as a social commentary on the biases with which we’re all infected these days. Not ignoring these descriptor/explanations, you tended to become less concerned with the underpinning dialectic and more enthralled by the composer’s felicitous writing: expertly shaded, clearly defined in its allocation of responsibilities, gripping in its athletic first part and subtly atmospheric when the tension eased rhythmically for the later stages. It reminded me of several all-strings scores (well, of course, given the timbral potentialities) but carved out an individual stature by means of its remarkable definition, like a solidly sculptured torso. In some ways, it recalled the Frank Bridge Variations but with less glitter: Britten with balls.

Bacewicz’s famous Concerto rounded out this night effectively; to my mind, more so as a demonstration of the ACO’s finesse and ardour in attack than for the ground-breaking qualities of the score itself. As a standard-bearer for Polish modern music in the grim late 1940s, Bacewicz struck out on a progressive track although, in a wider European context, this work is not ground-breaking. Nevertheless, the composer’s vocabulary presents as strong and flinty with its neo-classical sprightliness and linear lucidity at a time when the great ruck of writers were still stuck in a post-Romantic morass. Gringolts headed an interpretation that found grace, even elegance amid the spiky polyphony; I heard only one suspect early entry , probably from the second violins, in this composition’s expertly-contrived delineation. More memorable was the rank and file’s vivid reaction to their guest leader’s never-failing enthusiasm.

BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 9 – SYMPHONIA CHORALIS (VIC)

Bendigo Symphony Orchestra and The Gisborne Singers

Ulumbarra Theatre, Bendigo

Sunday December 11, 2022

Merlyn Quaife

We’ve imbibed all the old saws throughout our lives; warnings about Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, or injunctions along the lines of Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp . . . and very encouraging/discouraging they can be. But surely you have to take these up on a personal basis, judging how they apply to you. It’s a different matter when you involve others in your aspirations: then, the ambition is a shared one, the grasp becomes common property. Also, if you exert yourself to carry off an individual accomplishment, it’s OK if success or failure belongs to you and you alone.

Concerning this concert broadcast under the Australian Digital Concert Hall auspices, Browning’s line came to mind many times during the performance. This mighty score tested the grasp of the assembled musicians – Bendigo Symphony and Gisborne Singers – and the results were unhappy, for the most part. Uncertainty ran through the instrumental forces from the opening bars in Beethoven’s Allegro ma non troppo where the sotto voce 5ths and 4ths for the first violins sounded unhappy and uncertain. As with much of what followed, certainty arrived only when everybody was involved, as at the bars 16-to-17 explosion of the movement’s first theme. Biting away at this sudden assurance, the two trumpets dominated this stretch, the theme itself disappearing under the brass’s octave Ds and As. I thought this imbalance might have been due to the ADCH microphone placements, but the problem really lay with the small number of unassertive high strings in the ensemble.

Why the Choral Symphony, of all works? It’s been with us for nearly 200 years and its finale has turned into a celebratory cliche but the complexities involved in getting through the thing still tax even expert musicians who don’t rely on sailing along on the grounds of professional competence and/or regular familiarity. Conductor of the Bendigo and Gisborne forces, Luke Severn was hard pressed to keep his orchestra in time, let alone in tune or taking proper care with articulation and tuning. In the end, this performance struggled up to the last movement and that’s a long stretch of purely orchestral fabric to generate successfully – and to sit through when the output fails to deliver.

As for an actual cause for this concert, it came about through a choral festival held in Bendigo last weekend. On Saturday evening, participating choirs showed their wares to each other (and the public, one assumes), while the combined forces came together on Sunday for the Beethoven Ode – even though the only listed choir in the program was Severn’s Gisborne Singers. In fact, 55 singers were listed as his Gisborners – which is a respectable number but insufficient to carry off this score, particularly as these vocalists were rarely able to produce a sufficiently robust sound.

So Severn was labouring under all kinds of disadvantages, the main one being his players’ pussy-footing round a masterpiece that demands absolute confidence, particularly in its first two movements. All manner of details were muffed, like the violins and violas downward demi-semiquaver scales at bars 34 and 35 and the fatigued upper string sound at bar 71. Every so often the bland texture was disturbed by a misreading, as among the unison strings during bar 116, or by an absence like the missing woodwind at bar 138, or by a simple mistake like the first violin’s falling 5th at bar 177, or by the lack of woodwind coherence in the simple chords of bar 197. Then you’d suddenly come across a patch of competent work as in the flute/bassoon dialogue starting at bar 253 which shone for its unexpected clarity. But matters had become laboured, bogged down in hard slog by bar 333. Horns 1 and 2 had their exposure almost precise at bars 469 to 477 but the trumpet pair revisited their original hard-man brashness from bar 531 on, drowning everything else that was being generated at fortissimo level.

I’m afraid the scherzo fared little better. Right at the start, the trumpets made a mess of their D octave leap in bar 5 and, from then on, we were on tenterhooks as this naturally biting movement progressed. Wisely, Severn did not undertake most of the repeats in either the main body of this vivace or its Trio but you encountered some unexpected pleasures, like the bassoon work kicking off the Ritmo di tre battute pages, counterbalanced by the first oboe unable to make sense of a simple exposed melody line at bar 468. What you really missed in this movement was an efficient contrast between its initial ferocity and its complementary fleet-footed warmth.

It might be a slow movement but Beethoven’s Adagio offers many challenges, most obviously through the exposure of all its executants; the first violins and all four horns enjoy some torridly testing stretches of play. Again, it seemed to be a case of simply getting through these pages without much attempt to shape individual phrases; suppleness was at a premium, exemplified in bar 42 and the rushed lead-up to the violins’ E flat pause (which didn’t happen), as well as the fourth horn’s unhappy arpeggio encounter finishing bar 55. The Andante moderato change in pace went unmarked, but horn 4 gave an almost precise account of the stand-alone bar 96. This near-success was almost immediately followed by the first violins’ rhythmic malfunction at the bar 99 change of key back to B flat and the time signature splaying out to 12/8. One of the simple brass chords across bar 122 proved defective but then this section reached another apogee of strained performance at about bar 141 before a messy account from the first violins of bar 151’s semiquaver triplets.

Cellos and double-basses gave a persuasive account of the finale’s six recitatives but they were set a fast pace through Beethoven’s famous D Major melody starting at bar 92, their tuning occasionally off-centre. When the first violins got their crack at the tune in bar 149, you would have expected that the ensemble would have acquired some fluency in its treatment but their enunciation sounded stilted, although the least impressive part of this celebratory all-in came with a trumpet fluff across the theme’s last phrase at bar 184.

Bass soloist Teddy Tahu Rhodes delineated his O Freunde recitative with a vibrato as wide as the Calder Freeway but his delivery mode proved welcome for its assurance. Which only served to emphasize the lack of projection from the Gisborne altos, tenors and basses at their bar 21 entry of the Allegro assai. Soprano soloist Merlyn Quaife attempted to bring the whole operation back to a more measured, less runaway pace from her Wer ein holdes Weib entry at bar 37. Severn’s forces began the Alla marcia quite well, giving a congenial setting for tenor soloist Michael Petruccelli‘s bravely buoyant Froh investing these pages with much-needed vivacity, although I would have liked his concluding high B flats at bars 101-2 to have been hurled out with more ardour.

The consequent orchestral double fugue proved to be a testing set of pages that simply lacked consistency of output with valuable lines lost in a general melange, climaxing in a pair of disappearing horns at bar 210, their repeated octave F sharp inaudible. While the male choristers gave a good account (if not quite loud enough) of the Seid umschlungen maestoso, their Bruder in bar 17 came over as faint, given the context; but later, the full choral Welt? exclamation in bar 44 made for an unanticipated aural bolt.

The Gisborne sopranos handled the top As that pepper the Allegro energico with laudable vim; speaking of which, it was gratifying to hear the small band of tenors handling the same note with force at bar 65. And it was reassuring to come across mezzo soprano Kristen Leich‘s line emerging clearly during the soloists’ Alle menschen melismatic stroll starting at bar 70. But the performance’s underlying tentativeness endured to the end with an unsatisfying prod at the last stringendo‘s kick-off in bar 81, the concluding bars an unsatisfying series of soft punches.

Obviously, I didn’t enjoy this concert, finding it full of specific flaws and a lack of coherent interpretation. A school of thought that prevails these days believes that any effort is to be praised; you can see this mind-set at work in every classroom across our country where accomplishment comes second to the Morrisonian trope of ‘having a go’. Well, it didn’t work for the self-aggrandizing Australian football team in blood-drenched Qatar; it doesn’t work for the petulant brats who represent us in the world’s tennis stadia; much more importantly, it doesn’t do anything for the thousands of underpaid workers in our hospitals and nursing homes.

You have to be capable of more than good intentions when putting your grappling skills into operation for any Beethoven symphony; this D minor masterwork, one of Western music’s cornerstones, is not a construct for which it’s sufficient to ‘do your best.’\

BOHEMIA AND BEYOND

Geelong Symphony Orchestra

Costa Hall, Deakin University, Geelong

Saturday October 22, 2022

Stefan Cassomenos

This regional orchestra was established in 2016 and, under favourable conditions, it has managed to present three concerts a year since then, apart from the recent Plague Years that are now being re-evaluated as not as perilous as first thought; a marvel to be living through historical re-writing, unabashed to the point of brazen. Even in its early years, it didn’t come to my attention in the same way that the Stonnington Symphony did during my decades in Melbourne. Of course, I heard enough of the Malvern people to know that their efforts were more am than pro, their work sometimes painfully laboured; which made expectations of the Geelong musicians rather carefully non-commital. They remain so.

Saturday night’s concert as presented online by the Australian Digital Concert Hall saw conductor Richard Davis take his players through Smetana’s The Moldau and the E minor Symphony No. 9 by Dvorak. In the centre of this old-fashioned program, Stefan Cassomenos was soloist in Schumann’s Op. 54 Piano Concerto. From their archives, you can see that Davis is a regular with this body and Cassomenos has appeared in a GSO event almost four years ago to the day when he performed the Mozart K. 450 in B flat. As well, you can see that the organization’s ambitions are high as it presents familiar if taxing repertoire.

Like this night. The two Czech works feature among serious music’s most familiar scores, turning up in all over the Western world’s concert halls on a regular basis. And that’s fine, particularly if you get reasonably accurate interpretations; they don’t have to be plain sailing, pure velvet all the way, but you’d like to follow the progress without wincing. For the greater part of this night, the Geelong musicians got all the notes out and in tune. But they were hard-pressed in their work and it showed in some leaden pages during both the symphony and the concerto.

Things began ominously. We came online to see the orchestra on stage and a hush over Costa Hall – which went on for some time. Then the wind players started some little flourishes, general talk broke out, all of which again descended into an ecclesiastical murmur. Some wag called out an encouragement to general amusement (muted). Then the concertmaster arrived, followed pretty swiftly by Davis. But for a moment I was taken back to an MSO concert where the concertmaster failed to arrive for a very long time; we found out later that he was playing hardball in his contract negotiations with the orchestra or the ABC, I can’t remember which.

In any case, the unnamed leader arrived, then the conductor and soon we were into the flute duet that opens The Moldau. This exquisite dovetailing lasts for 15 bars and you’re meant to get the impression, before the clarinets arrive, that one flute is playing. Sadly, the joins here showed a bit too clearly. But the quadruple winds passage to bar 36 worked to better effect as the Moldau’s feeder streams led to the main body with some fine murmuring from the group’s violas. The texture sounded unduly ragged when the first violins cut out at bar 69 and the seconds were left exposed but the melodic flow was impressive up to the mood-changing Es at bar 118 where the horns wavered on an easy cliff-edge. Another case of lapsed concentration emerged at bar 133 in the middle of the rustic wedding where the communal attack wasn’t; surprising, as the Geelong basses made an emphatic underpinning for this entire stretch.

The strings (upper) took to the Moonlight change of scene with an unwillingness to let go, their minims and semibreves not very congruent with the woodwind’s burbling semiquavers. Later, the woodwind should have been similarly indulged around bar 233 but weren’t allowed sufficient lebensraum. So on to St. John’s Rapids and a prominent cymbal just before the river broadened (following a very muddy violins+violas upward rush at bar 332), and we reached Vysehrad which was despatched very rapidly. I don’t understand the need for a ritardando at about bar 404, the last heroic blazoning; perhaps an unconscious salute to marine pollution brought in by the Elbe. But those triumphant concluding pages before the moving last string arpeggios gave an impression of untidiness; the tone poem sounding at its best when handling the rustic central segment.

We enjoyed another solid break while the piano’s microphones were adjusted with a care that seemed finicky to me but was eminently justifiable according to the demands of the electrician’s operating handbook; the settling of microphones can take almost as much time as percussionists organizing themselves at a contemporary chamber music affair. I didn’t see anyone use the piano’s A for a tuning pivot: everyone just took the oboe’s pitch as the operating datum. Cassomenos used a score which I’ve never been able to criticise having seen the great Moura Lympany once lose her place during the first movement of the Emperor.

A worrying problem was the lack of synchronicity between soloist and orchestra as early as the tutti chords at bars 3-4. A momentary freeze in transmission, and we took up again at the soloist’s restatement of the main theme in C Major. It was hard to work out why the clarinet wasn’t sustaining notes for their full length in the following Animato section; minims tied to crotchets simply disappeared halfway through; as was the case further on at the Andante espressivo section. At Letter C in my old Breitkopf and Hartel edition where the work’s opening flourish is revisited, the orchestra came to life during some expert statement-and-response work with Cassomenos, whose attack moved into choppy territory at the Piu animato duet with the GSO first flute. Still, by the time he reached the next solo, just before the recapitulation, he was working at an excellent Schumann vein of controlled delicacy which continued up to his duet with the first oboe preceding Letter F. At the start of the cadenza, the pianist manipulated the piano’s upper line with impressive expertise, even if I found the trills at the Un poco andante to be over-aggressive. To end, the orchestra was late across the movement’s last four chords.

By contrast, the Intermezzo satisfied on nearly all grounds, the flute/clarinet/bassoon/horn ensemble punctuations both efficient and well-inserted into the narrative. Cassomenos momentarily hit a patch of uneven delivery 17 bars before the third movement eruption and the string rush that leads into that Allegro vivace was undisciplined. The pianist’s instrument sounded very weighty at the opening and, after a while, you took extra pleasure in segments where the soloist did not feel the need to punch out his contribution. That abrupt change to a march rhythm across the prevailing 3/4 bar lengths found the strings uneasy with where to put the emphases. A later unhappy point came just before the key signature change to F Major where individual groups were exposed, most of them rather thin in output by this stage. An uncharacteristic fumble from the pianist marred the endless right-hand quaver patterns 23 bars before Letter H and the return of the march.

At about this stage you were struck by how little ebullience had been transmitted during this movement. The flashes that should burst out in the tutti passages failed to appear and the pages packed with piano figuration were characterless – exercises without individuality. The end came as a release from tedium, I’m afraid, this last movement a slog for both performers and audience.

After interval, the concertmaster again made another individual entrance and the players again stood for the conductor; something of an excess in protocols of acknowledgement unless the parties involved felt the need for such mindless bobbing and unnecessary bouts of applause (for what? showing up?). What until this stage had been a suspicion became obvious when the Dvorak symphony got under way: this orchestra doesn’t have enough high and middle strings. For all that lack of weight, the bodies concerned put their backs into their work, such enthusiasm paying off well in tutti patches. Once more, we experienced an early unsettling inaccuracy from horns 3 and 4 in bar 16, the prefiguring of the Allegro molto‘s first subject. However, the performance settled into place quickly and the only disturbance during the exposition (which was repeated) came with a dynamic imbalance at about bar 129 where the woodwind sextet choir proved too strong for the melody-carrying violins (let alone the momentarily high-lit basses).

Davis isn’t alone in pulling back the pace in the string handling of Dvorak’s Swing low theme at bar 157 but it always strikes me as over-sentimentalizing this touching moment. A small glitch marring this movement’s development came in the horns (1 and 2 this time) at bar 220 but the fortissimo explosions impressed the further these players got into the score’s homely bravado; all that was lacking was a touch of high string hysteria. Finally, I couldn’t pin it down (viz. ascribe definite blame) but the rush towards the final cadence, at about bar 441, was faulty in what is a straightforward passage of play.

A famous danger spot, the opening wind chord to Dvorak’s Largo failed to reassure you of the ensemble’s security. That famous cor anglais solo didn’t enjoy the happiest bar 8 where a small clip disturbed the flow, and the second bassoon minim in bar 20 made a delayed entry. Once more, Davis is not alone in rushing through the string filler at bars 32 to 34, but is anything gained by this acceleration? At their first statement of the middle C sharp minor interlude (bars 64 to 67), the first violins demonstrated their potential as a highly responsive corps; and the string decet near the movement’s end was graced by an excellent, vibrant duet between the concertmaster and principal cello. I turned the volume up but still didn’t register the low D flat in the Largo‘s last bass divisi chord.

Happily, the following scherzo passed with loads of vehemence and crisp dynamics, my only quibble the clarinets’ restatement of the trio’s theme at bar 78 where the players weren’t quite on the note for a substantial octave stretch of 8 bars. Some more obvious problems peppered the concluding Allegro vivace. One of the brass missed the top note in bar 24; that lack of upper string power proved a detraction from the energy needed between bars 100 to 105. However, the stretch where Dvorak reviews his preceding movements was negotiated very well indeed and the strings made a graceful case for the decelerando at bar 220. In fact most of these last pages in the symphony came off successfully for this section, while a horn made a sad encounter with the top note of bar 268, and some players were jostling out of line at the approach to the Meno mosso e maestoso peroration, while the final chord could have been attacked more cleanly.

You can find a fair degree of competence in the Geelong orchestra and you have to wonder if the ensemble might have fared better with a program that wasn’t so well-known. When you’ve been familiar for years with these particular scores and the polish brought to them by great musicians – Ancerl, Szell, Brendel – it’s difficult to ignore any flaws, even when the interpretations on offer are based on laudable intentions. Obviously, I found this Smetana/Schumann/Dvorak trilogy only occasionally successful but, judged by the standards of other regional and suburban orchestras that I’ve heard, the GSO has a solid base on which to work. I’d like to hear the group at a later date, especially when performing music that doesn’t have a wealth of shatteringly fine interpretations readily available for comparison.

THE CROWD & I

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday August 15, 2022

I would have thought that putting this exercise into operation was pretty simple. For all that, the process seems to have taken a number of years before it grew into its current form. The construct’s realization came from three prime sources: the ACO’s artistic director Richard Tognetti, film and staging director Nigel Jamieson, cinematographer and editor Jon Frank. Of course, a cast of several assisted this creative trinity, but the actual composite whole boiled down to a sequence of film sequences for the eyes and a collation of musics for the ears.

I’ve seen one of these collaborations before, when Tognetti went into partnership with photographer Bill Henson for Luminous in 2005. I think the surf/water one came my way at some time but nothing remains in the memory about that; Mountain, from about five years ago, remains a personal terra incognita, if not quite nullius. You can find little to take exception to in The Crowd & I; visually, it’s occasionally gripping and at other times tedious; with its musical stratum, the success rate is just about the same. So, much of the presentation fell outside my competence level, and the ACO’s contribution was hard to assess as the body seemed to be amplified for part of the night and the corps had mixed success with some works; not so much with the notes’ production but in how they sounded.

Along with the organization’s 16 strings (one down on the usual number, I think), we heard a flute/piccolo, a clarinet/bass clarinet, a bassoon/contrabassoon, a trumpet, a trombone/bass trombone, two percussionists and pianist Konstantin Shamray. Supplying vocal sounds came six members of Sydney’s Song Company. I think that summary includes all on-stage performers but can’t be sure: for much of the night, the musicians were working in darkness, a black-as-pitch pit situation with some strange groupings being carried out. Further to this, certain moments had you wondering whether you should just give up and watch the films rather than trying to make logical sense out of what you were hearing. For instance, during Ives’ The Unanswered Question, I could have sworn I saw an extra (anonymous) flute taking part in the woodwind ejaculations. The night began with the first movement to Schubert’s B minor Symphony in a Tognetti arrangement where the 15 original winds were cut to five, the result being that both oboe and horn textures were sadly missed by those of us who are asinine enough to revere this splendid fragment.

But some readings succeeded well enough, like the Slow Waltz section of Morton Feldman’s Three Voices that accompanied images of refugee camps and their dispiriting mixture of desolation and overcrowding. A Shostakovich polka supported shots of football crowds in all their natural repulsive mindlessness. The sickening images of the Cronulla riots in 2005 made a fine melding with Tognetti’s own rabid Mosh Maggot, which title is an apt descriptor for each one of those who initiated (from a gutless distance) or took part in this national celebration. Also, the final sequence of a Japanese fast train speeding through a seemingly endless, self-perpetuating cityscape while Chopin’s Op. 27 C sharp minor Nocturne forged along its troubled, unhappy path made for a conclusion to the evening that transcended much of the program’s main body, colourful though this was in many parts.

In the end, you’re left with an old-fashioned entertainment which, in fact, has no pretensions to grandeur or wide range of thought; more, it’s a look at the multitude and the individual in different contexts: the crowd or I. As expected, the visual component(s) stole most of the thunder and it often required a wrench to give proper focus to what Tognetti and his cohorts were about. I never thought that I’d be distracted from the Molto adagio of Beethoven’s Op. 132 but Michael Wolf’s images of individual faces among a crushed host of Japanese commuters were among the most arresting sequences in this night’s work; as were the succeeding prospects of Hong Kong housing that resembled computer strips straight out of the Matrix films.

It’s clear (to me, at least) that Tognetti, Jamieson and Frank are content to face you with their combined vision and leave open whatever you choose to make of it. (Well, there’s nothing original in that observation: most of today’s arts avoid audience direction.) Certainly, there are crowds galore, some of them obviously Australian (not just the Cronulla sub-normals), some of them close to being in extremis like the refugees coming to land on Samos or Lesbos, others a mass of individual colours that somehow cancel out individuality as in the millions that gather on the banks of the Ganges. Juxtaposed or interspersed with these come single units, like an elder walking into the landscape of the Tanami while the camera pans back until his figure is just a fleck in the spinifex; or like the football fan captured by Dragan Aleksic whose creased face reflects his team’s fortunes from minute to minute but might just as well be witnessing yet another mind-numbing spectacle in today’s Ukraine.

Look, for me, Augustus’ pet put it best: Odi profanum volgus et arceo. It’s clearly a sign of social decrepitude but these days I can’t imagine anything worse than sitting in a packed football stadium – and this from somebody who stood from 8:30 am to the final whistle at the 1970 Collingwood-Carlton grand final and who, at the same ground, watched with muted involvement as South Melbourne won their 2005 premiership cup. Despite the much-vaunted bonhomie of sports crowds, any generosity of spirit, tolerance and fellowship can disappear in a split second with an unintentional jostle, just as it can in a bar. What this night made me consider was the essential – for better or worse – isolation that pervades our society.

In the filmed imagery, you saw little sign of benevolence. No, it wasn’t all horror stories but the final message was a contradiction of the dean’s dictum: every man is an island, entire of itself. You may live in one of those Hong Kong pigeon coops, as a tour leader in that city described her home to me, but, just because you are thrust daily into a variety of social complexes, what follows isn’t membership of a philanthropic multitude. For assured social connection, you might have your family; all too often, that’s it. As a counterweight to this gloom, our aboriginal peoples are determined to speak individually of belonging to a ‘mob’; but I suppose that concept is vital if you are part of an all-too-easily dismissed minority.

But the majority of us have no such right of relationship. Friends? Sure, but, as you age, they become ships that disappear into the night. A multiplicity of associations give you a semblance of being part of the main, but all such clannish continents are built on sand; ask any politician. For my part, The Crowd & I impressed as a 15-part kaleidoscope of sombre sadness, bordering on depression; the world’s peoples are varied but rarely are you attracted to join in, even when faced with bland celebrations of the spectacularly little, like Ekka or Moomba. But I admired the probity of the ACO’s construct which persevered in its unflattering vision of humanity as, in line with the Schubert overture piece, unfinished.

You’d like to be optimistic about our future, as proposed in the night’s opening shot of the earth as a vital, beautiful object in space, before the camera zooms in on the globe’s details. As it was presented, our world is – from a distance – a breathtaking objet trouve. But then comes the rot: while you may hope for the dearest freshness deep down things, you rarely find it. Strangely enough, on this night, while recognizing several truncations and arrangements, a sort of buoyancy of spirit emerged, even out of the program’s more tenebrous music, bearing witness to Tognetti’s (assisted?) catholicity of vision.