Orchestral – Page 9 – O'Connell the Music

Cup half full

May 23, 2016September 3, 2021 cliveoconnell

SAX AND SENSITIVITY

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.

Youthful enthusiasm pays off

April 18, 2016September 2, 2021 cliveoconnell

THE GYPSY PALACE

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre

April 17, 2016

Despite a lurching process from one end of Western music’s history to the other – a Josquin motet from 1485 to Carl Vine‘s Third String Quartet of 1994 – the latest MCO concert was an invigorating business, presided over by Rebecca Chan who took on directorial duties as well as the solo line in Haydn’s G Major Concerto. In a quest to make connections between gypsy music and some Baroque and Classical period writers, Chan punctuated her offerings with excerpts from the Uhrovska Collection, a Slovakian miscellany of melodies arranged by the violinist for the forces available (11 strings and a lutenist), and occasionally serving as links while stands and players’ positions were being adjusted.

From her time with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Chan brought to this afternoon’s work that sort of scouring effect that Tognetti has made a feature of his group’s approach to pre-Romantic scores. Setting the standard straight away, the MCO took an aggressive road with Telemann’s G minor Suite, La musette, making a biting attack on the Ouverture that grabbed your interest and sustained it through the following brief movements, Samantha Cohen‘s theorbo a vital presence as substitute for the usual harpsichord continuo. In contrast to many another ensemble playing this music, the viola line made its presence felt, the duo of James Wannan and Simon Gangotena a contributing thread to the mix.

Vivaldi’s Four Violin Concerto, the first of the L’estro armonico set, found Roy Theaker taking the top line, with Shane Chen, Monique Lapins and Lynette Rayner his colleagues in a reading that continued the forward-projecting character of these performances, sustaining the suspension-rich tension even through a few patches of rhythmic discrepancy in the opening Allegro. Michael Dahlenburg‘s account of the solo part in the same composer’s A minor Cello Concerto opened with a rapidly paced Allegro that turned placid arpeggios into exciting bouts of play, relieved by some effective if predictable dynamic terracing and a subtle rubato.

Chan’s Haydn interpretation proved to be polished and unaffectedly refined, animated in its opening, just as urgent in the Adagio‘s attractive arcs, then packed with vim for the bracing finale. This violinist has the insight to leave any histrionics to the cadenzas and let the solo part speak for itself, without over-emphasizing the many trills or semiquaver runs. Still, she can project well enough to dominate the texture, an audible voice even in tutti passages like the concerto’s final non-flamboyant bars. This exercise in clarity made a fine companion piece for the C.P.E Bach String Symphony in B flat, which Tognetti and his band played here last October and which I have a fading memory of the ACO performing in Hamer Hall many years ago. Just as with their Telemann, the young players gave this a surface layer of punchy drama, complete with action-packed leaps across the admittedly limited violin compass. By the time of the final Presto, however, the intonation was suffering, not as reliably true as it had been in the program’s first half.

The concert proper concluded with part of Carl Vine’s Smith’s Alchemy, the assertive final movement with lashings of sound-rocket unisons and a trademark rhythmic emphasis that compensates for a dearth of interesting melodic matter. It made for a brisk conclusion to this event, mirroring the vitality that permeated the opening Telemann suite. Certainly, it showed more of a relationship with the gypsy pieces than two other oddities that emerged from nowhere in each of the afternoon’s halves. String arrangements of Josquin’s Ave Maria and a Gesualdo madrigal., O dolce mio tesoro, gave service chiefly as respites from the program’s main urging thrust, but apart from an alleviation of tension, it was hard to work out if either of these texturally transparent pieces served any other purpose.

Nevertheless, Chan’s arrangements of about eight pieces from the Uhrovska collection made for pleasant listening. The influence of gypsy music was admitted by Telemann and very obvious in parts of Haydn’s output, if not necessarily that clear in this afternoon’s violin concerto. But the effect of these interpolations proved bracing, especially the second one of three that followed the opening work; Chan’s suggestion here of a dulcimer was remarkably effective. Later, a metrically changeable construct that preceded the Bach symphony brought the twin spectres of Bartok and Kodaly to the Recital Centre’s hall. These fragments, moulded into shapely entities, mirrored the vivacity of Telemann’s Murky and Harlequinade movements in particular.

The pity is that MCO patrons stayed away in numbers. While quite happy to pack in for yet another run-through of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, when it comes to a mildly experimental afternoon such as this one, without the presence of an over-familiar masterpiece or three, people would rather stay at home, it seems. Well, their loss: this was a vital, interesting afternoon’s work, a tribute to Chan’s organizational skills and her talent at infusing other musicians with her enthusiasm.

Best of partners

April 12, 2016September 1, 2021 cliveoconnell

CINEMUSICA

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Hamer Hall

April 10 & 11, 2016

For a collaboration between the ACO and Sydney-based group Synergy Percussion, this program delivered some odd goods, founded a not-quite persuasive backdrop of music written for film. To be sure, Tognetti and his ACO played some genre-specific samples: a string orchestra suite constructed by Bernard Herrmann from his score to Hitchcock’s Psycho, some extracts arranged by Sydney composer Cyrus Meurant from Thomas Newman‘s aural backdrop to Sam Mendes’ American Beauty.

But one of Monday night’s more outstanding passages of play had no celluloid connection, as far as I could tell. Voile for 20 strings by Xenakis served as a fine curtain-raiser to the evening’s miscellany-of-sorts, the ACO players confidently constructing some excellent sound-clusters, their disposition of pitches typified by fearless attack and an almost-nonchalant embrace of the sonic barrage that at times comes close to white noise. Further, the performers underlined the internal discipline of this score, notably the block chords alternating with ascending and descending close-interval sequences for small pairs and trios of executants. It made for a bracing overture, too much so for the Hollywood products that followed.

In fact, after the acerbic bite of Xenakis’ final chords in Voile, the signature brusque glissandi swipes that accompany Janet Leigh’s unforgettable shower scene in Psycho sounded pretty tame, not the visceral shocks of 50-plus years ago. Hermann’s collation is, by his own descriptor, a narrative where he outlines the film’s plot from Marion’s flight with the stolen money to the Bates hotel, her murder and the eventual psychological dysmorphism of Norman as his mother’s persona takes over. While the score itself, for strings alone, is a formidable construct as a reinforcement of the film’s action, this performance gave the ACO musicians no challenges although the ensemble captured persuasively the three major contrasts of atmosphere and attack that Herrmann used as mini-pillars for this reminiscence-evoking offshoot.

Newman’s soundtrack is reduced to three scenes in Meurant’s arrangement, all suggestive of the film’s action, or lack of it. Synergy members Timothy Constable, Joshua Hill and Bree van Reyk, along with Bobby Singh‘s tabla, gave a colourful complement to the ACO’s yet-again untroubled strings which invested a well-paced grace in Newman’s score, an oddly touching employment of simple motives intended to suggest the mundane lackadaisical nature of characters involved in psychological stresses behind well-to-do facades. While this version brought back vague impressions of the film’s emotional character, the visual complements remained amorphous in the memory – well, mine; here, more than at any other time in the concert, you needed either stills or clips to give focus to pages that could be used to illustrate many scenarios in many films.

Another Xenakis finished the program’s first half: Psappha for percussion alone. Here, the Synergists took to the 1975 score with determination, Hill given the scene-setting opening statement, van Reyk restricted to two timpani and bass drum while Constable enjoyed the most timbral variety. The composer’s requirements are simple enough: three groups of wood instruments, possibly another of skins, certainly another group of metal. Ostinati of an unreliable nature with regular and odd accents alternating recur throughout the work’s progress, the most arresting moments long, enervating silences before single, sudden bass drum strokes. What the work has to do with Sappho, a variant of whose name supplies the work’s title, remains a mystery; nothing to do with the poet’s verse, I’d guess, except possibly in the mathematics of its metrical construction which, without reference to specific texts or arithmetical metadata, preserves its mysteries.

As a central collaboration, both participating bodies ended their concert with Bartok’s Music for Strings Percussion and Celesta; the film connection here coming about through this work’s use in that arch-musical magpie Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and also in Being John Malkovich, Spike Jonze’s fantasy of 1999. Just prior to this, Constable took centre-stage – and vibraphone? – for his own Cinemusica, a two-movement reflection on the evening’s content – well, some of it – with focal roles for his Synergy colleagues and Singh. As the composer intended, the work provides contrasts in emotional impact and colour variety. Not much remains in the memory some hours later, except a clear affinity with the film score language of Herrmann and Newman: amiable, undemanding, and, in this instance, deftly carried out.

For the Bartok, Neal Peres da Costa provided the celesta voice, Benjamin Martin the piano, Julie Raines on harp and an extra ten strings fleshed out the ACO for the double orchestra required with Synergy percussion making their marks through the required xylophone, snare drum, bass drum, timpani, tam-tam and cymbals. What we heard was a far cry from the usual glutinous mash, particularly in the fugue opening movement and the high-point to the Adagio. Taking its cue from the percussion writing, this reading worked towards a clear statement of material throughout, not just in the even-numbered dance movements. For the first time in my live experience of the piece, the antiphonal passages for strings succeeded splendidly, probably because both bodies were evenly split in executive skill, but also because of the integrity of the interpretation where each player slotted into the complex, particularly noticeable in the edgy upper strings; there are no passengers in this ensemble.

In fact, you could catalogue a whole range of specific pleasures to this reading, but the main headings would include the clean-limbed string lines, particularly in moments of maximum interweaving like the build-up in the first movement and the rich peroration that caps the finale; the welding of percussion into the fabric, notably Martin’s piano and van Reyk’s third movement pointillist xylophone; the luminous sound-world conjured up by celesta, harp and piano in the centre and at the end of the work’s central ‘night music’ pages; the whole body’s energetic control of Bartok’s hefty but ever-changing rhythms.

As a collaboration, they don’t come much better than this; the pity is, as others have observed, there’s precious little written for the strings and percussion combination. Even so, experiences like this open our ears to possibilities, as well as doing the inestimable service of scouring sentimental, vibrato-heavy dross from a vibrant, glittering 80-year-old masterpiece.

Local voices aired on Richmond Hill

April 4, 2016September 1, 2021 cliveoconnell

COMPOSER’S CONCERT

Melbourne Composers

St. Stephen’s Anglican Church, Richmond

Sunday April 3, 2016

Anyone looking at this concert program before the event would have felt overwhelmed: five composers, seven world premieres, eleven works in all ranging from solo piano pieces, through trios and string quartets, to a full-blown symphony. As things turned out, the overkill looked more threatening on paper than in actual performance even if, as you might have anticipated, the impact of certain works was less substantial than a few stand-out scores.

As conductor/host Andrew Wailes pointed out, the musicians who made up the afternoon’s personnel were of mixed abilities: some professionals, some advanced students, some amateurs or amiable musically competent friends. Further to this, several of the more difficult works suffered from that bugbear of projects that work on volunteers’ good-will almost exclusively: insufficient rehearsal. Counterbalancing those problems, quite a substantial number of the works presented made congenial listening, if often not offering much challenge to audience or performers. This easy-access aspect emerged pretty quickly with Kitty Xiao‘s Nimbus and Nipper for flute/alto flute, violin and piano where the amiable spirit of Australian post-impressionism loomed large. At certain points, when the instrumental mesh and harmonic changes were aligned, you also heard echoes of Franck’s chamber works – which is fair enough if your intention is to suggest a combination of aural imagery and weltering emotional activity. Xiao’s piano part took the limelight in both works for a while but she was more than adequately served by Cameron Jamieson‘s violin and the breathy flutes of Jessica Laird.

Hana Zreikat‘s first offering came in the form of a piano solo, Elan, which employed plenty of common chords in its stop-and-start progress. You could not find much of a contemporary edge to this composition, pleasing though it was but mainly distinguished by the addition of added notes for an occasional frisson of harmonic colour.

Three of the premieres followed in quick succession. Carol Dixon‘s Piano Trio No. 1, The Dove, made its points in one continuous movement with the best content falling to pianist Natasha Lin; her companions, violin Navin Gulavita and cello Sage Fuller, made an unhappy start with what at first impressed as poorly matched intonation, which then recovered, only to fall prey later to further dislocation. For a while, you could suspect that these tuning discrepancies might have been caused by Dixon’s adding tension to her harmonic constructs, but no: the unsettling effect came from the playing itself. Certainly the work followed the environment set up by both Xiao and Zreikat in being amiable in its melodic fluency, predictable through its rhythmic consistency and un-alarming in the actual demands on its interpreters.

By contrast, Sarah Elise Thomson‘s fresh String Quartet No. 1 showed attempts to grapple with post-Bartokian musical activity. Following the one-movement format, this piece showed an enthusiasm for activity, although at its centre lay a lengthy section featuring sustained-note interjections from the upper strings over a repeated pattern from Sage Fuller’s cello. Gulavita at second violin partnered Matthew Rigby on first and Georgia Stibbard‘s viola but, despite the activity, the performance proved to be some rehearsals removed from security.

Rigby proved a strong presence in the succeeding String Quartet No. 1 by Dixon. Subtitled No Stone Unturned, the score followed minor melodic paths for much of its length but showed little sense of parameter-expanding adventure, especially compared with its predecessor in this program. Acknowledging the influence of Ravel’s and Debussy’s essays in the form, Dixon imposed a fairly obvious structure of returning to and mildly developing her material with a penchant for the sorts of fluttery gestures found in both the French composers’ quartets, but you would need a very secure body of performers to give polish and interest to a pretty predictable piece like this one.

Benjamin Bates adopted the time-honoured three-movement framework for his Symphony No. 3, this program’s largest element in scale and number of participants. While the composer led the double basses in this presentation under Wailes’ direction, he based a fair bit of the symphony’s material on Spanish guitar-inflected melodic scraps, fairly obvious when Bates brought them to the front of the action, but not the most arresting features of the work when considered as an entity. The three movements ran into each other so that the second movement’s impressive solos for cor anglais and bass clarinet emerged organically from a tautly argued opening Allegro–Presto–Allegro continuum; later, the finale’s attempt at a fugue also emerged from the fabric without any warning.

Some woodwind pitching could have been more carefully managed, the flute pair sounding the most reliable performers from that cohort. You felt the absence of trumpets from the mix, if only to provide some brisker flavour to the exposed brace of horns, able though these players were. And confining percussionist Jessica Bird’s contributions to a side-drum removed another source of potential timbral input. Still, the score has an intriguing energy and a kind of Sibelian brusque lyricism at its best moments, as well as several patches of tedium where the argument loses impetus, as in the fugue which cries out for a tauter delivery than could be achieved with two rehearsals.

As a bracket to this major piece, the program moved back into chamber mode with music by Dixon, Zreikat, Thompson and Xiao. For her Soldiers’ Suite, Zreikat accompanied herself while singing three songs: Now I Find Myself Hoping which proved to be a simple pop-tune lyric of some length, in the manner of Adele at her most depressed; Somebody’s Waiting which followed a similar vein of predictability; finally, Enya’s May It Be from the soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. All of which seemed to be an anomaly on this program where other contributors grappled with the art of composition without resorting to overuse of cliches and sentimental simplicity.

Dixon’s Ocean Oasis I for mixed trio – Laird, Jamieson, Xiao – generated more of the same impressionistic colouring as at the afternoon’s start, this time depicting Norfolk Island. Again, the piece raised no alarms and presented its atmospheric suggestions with expertise: perfect accompaniment for a documentary on the island’s beauties. Xiao’s Emei, reminiscing about a journey up a mountain in China, turned into a slow waltz, lushly scored with plenty of imitative work for Laird and Jamieson, Xiao’s piano generating an attractive underpinning shimmer in parts. This was just as suggestive of Ravel as the Dixon String Quartet No. 1, although this time what came to mind was the Ravel Piano Trio especially its final movement’s assertive figuration. In contrast Thompson’s Riven piano solo, played by Zreikat, showed an adventurous mind at work, what with hitting the piano wood, playing on the strings and occasionally indulging in washes of sustained, across-the-keyboard dissonance, counterbalancing an employment of lavishly arpeggiated common chords.

In the end, the many components of this program formed a kind of arch with smaller-framed constructs, some close to bagatelles, book-ending the central symphony. The composers themselves deserve praise for the actual physical exercise involved in collaborating to mount this concert and in attracting into service the various talents required: the Nimbus Trio of Laird, Jamieson, and Xiao; the Briar String Quartet of Rigby, Gulavita, Stibbard and Fuller; Zreikat lending her talents to Thompson; and the significant number of well-wishing musicians participating in the Bates symphony. It’s grass roots stuff and at times rough-edged, but this sort of ad hoc concerted willingness to give creative voices an airing bears witness to the reassuring fact that at least this particular Melbourne Composers corner of our city’s musical life enjoys good health.

Arcko challenges and cheers

March 20, 2016August 29, 2021 cliveoconnell

MELBOURNE MADE

Arcko Symphonic Ensemble

Church of All Nations, Carlton

Saturday March 19, 2016

Like a Maelstrom CD (arckosymphonicorchestra,bandcamp.com)

This concert offered a little bit of the old as well as the new – that’s if you could call anything on this program old. Timothy Phillips and his symphonic ensemble specialize in challenging new music and yesterday had that in spades with the world premiere of Tim Dargaville‘s Kolam, a return visit to Caerwen Martin‘s X-Ray Baby (featured on the first Arcko CD), Ingressa of 2009 by Elliott Gyger, and Brendan Colbert‘s . . . like a Maelstrom which is the title of the latest CD from these players, launched at this concert.

It’s been quite a few years (twenty?) since I last visited this church which has now become a community powerhouse – and it shows. The interior last night had a few pews along the side walls while the central space was lined with individual, if not very comfortable, chairs. The Arcko players worked from the front facade where the preacher’s gallery sits, on the same level as the audience which meant that, to see individuals at work, you had to crane; which the lady in front of me did throughout the evening, although she seemed indiscriminate in her viewing choices, contorting her body in the direction of players who were, at the time, static.

Still, she could do little to disrupt Tim Dargaville’s new work, taking its impetus from a Tamil religious practice. The composer is making no attempt to absorb and discharge Indian musical influences: no Bollywood echoes, no resuscitated Ravi Shankar. The recurring motif is a falling major 2nd, an upward leap of a 5th, then back to the original interval. But for much of its length, the score is of interest for its textures; there is a melody for cello that eventually emerges, followed by another for horn, but one of the distinctive points of interest is a brisk section for winds alone prior to a fulminating climax. As an example of management of forces, Kolam makes a positive impression but its philosophical underpinning remains a mystery to this listener, even if the work’s format presents few problems.

Gyger’s work is based on a type of religious chant that emanates from the town of Benevento, a Campanian city near Naples. Scored for wind and string quintets, piano, harp and two percussionists, this work is based on an entrance chant for Easter Sunday, a dialogue between Mary Magdalene and the angel at Christ’s tomb. Using far more notes for a musical phrase than the more common Gregorian, this sample of Beneventan chant is angular, inclined to more abrupt intervallic leaps than you’d expect, and not averse to ending phrases mid-word. You would need a score to trace the melody’s use in this piece, as the instrumental output is strikingly dense, but its climactic point, an Alleluia divided between strings, solo horn and tubular bells, is effectively jubilant, bringing to mind the more restrained outpouring in the final Taize-illustrating movement of the Laudes octet by Nigel Butterley, on whose music Gyger is an authority. Still, throughout this work’s progress, the percussionists have all the running, Amy Valent-Curtis and Peter Neville dominating the action with a wide-ranging battery of sound-sources.

Martin’s construct aims to suggest hospital sounds, beginning with rustlings and subdued suggestive wisps, eventually graduating to a very forceful climax. Dedicated to the composer’s two daughters, the score has graphic elements based on her children’s scans and X-rays; like Gyger’s chant, constituents you can not easily assimilate from what you hear. Given that the composer has clearly spent a good amount of time in medical institutions, her work succeeds in suggesting the mechanics of the hospital experience. Well, you can pick out passages that strike you as suggestive; I heard sirens, nurse-doctor confrontations, the lapping of amniotic fluid, a loud labour, disputes in emergency. Once the thesis is suggested, you can hear whatever you want to – or fear. Despite Martin’s description of X-Ray Baby as abstract by nature, it takes very little effort to find musical illustrations of medical realities.

Colbert’s score owes its title to an Emily Dickinson poem of morbid imagery, even for that death-haunted poet. It is a double concerto for trumpet and piano with emphasis on the latter which is not silent throughout the work’s half-hour length. This was a remarkable tour de force from Peter Dumsday; getting the notes under his fingers an achievement in itself but maintaining stamina across an unforgivingly active part was a tribute to the performer and, on his part, to the composer. By comparison, Bruno Siketa‘s trumpet had things easy, not entering for some time, then kept restrained by being muted for the concerto’s outer segments. Once again, percussion played a major role and the chamber orchestra strings, bowing away fiercely in the first five minutes, stayed close to inaudible for a good part of the action. To his credit, Colbert does not compromise, maintaining tension without much relief, the default expression marking being a determined forte, it seems. At certain moments, the experience brought back memories of Cage’s 1958 Concert for Piano and Orchestra; not in its soundscape, because Colbert’s is through-composed, not left up to the musicians to choose their own paths, but for the massive onslaught of sound that coloured so much of its impact.

It’s an uncompromising voice, both enervating and exciting to hear in an age when contemporary composition is finding it difficult to sustain interest, let alone an audience. In that regard, . . . like a Malestrom represents the sort of initiative for which the Arcko organization exists. Whether or not it offers pleasure is irrelevant; what it does give you without holding anything back is a horizon-expanding experience, one where your ears are challenged to an aesthetic confrontation. At a new music concert, I can’t imagine anything better.

An unexpected light

March 20, 2016August 29, 2021 cliveoconnell

SIR ANDREW DAVIS CONDUCTS MAHLER 5

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall

Saturday March 19, 2016

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (en.wikipedia.org) — *Pierre-Laurent Aimard*

With the bit between their collective teeth, the MSO musicians mounted an impressive assault on the central Mahler leviathan, their chief conductor bringing a surging energy to a score that other conductors handle as though its opening funeral march determines the complete score. From principal trumpet Geoffrey Payne‘s opening call-to-obsequies, the ground was set for a reading that spoke clearly but at its own pace with an elastic approach to metre that initially led to some slight discrepancies between the brass corps and the rest. But the energy behind this reading came bursting out in the 13th bar’s explosive full-orchestra chord and was sustained throughout the following grim pages.

But what eventually distinguished this performance was an immediacy of impact, even in pesante passages throughout each of the five movements. Through the Sturmisch bewegt that follows the march, the textural balance ensured that secondary voices came across with appropriate clarity and, although Mahler’s symphonic scores have plenty of mud-pools waiting for any orchestra, Davis managed to keep the MSO’s output lucid and so much more involving than when an audience is bombarded with bullying heftiness. Not that matters are made easy since, after the second movement’s whip-crack first gestures, the development becomes something of a passage of play between orchestral blocks. But what came across here was a clearly perceptible development, the variety of harmonic and digital shifts and juxtapositions a genuine intellectual engagement with the listener, more than a demonstration of temperament and hyped-up dynamics.

Two problem movements confront every interpreter of this work. Both the central; Landler and the Rondo-Finale have the potential – realized all too often – of wearing out both players and patrons. Both are lengthy, even if the middle movement has a more moderate emotional cast, and in both the seams between sections can be over-exposed, as though the paragraphs have to be sharply delineated: finished with that, on with this. Davis gave us a changeable sonic landscape, distinguished by a lightness of touch even in difficult juxtapositions of attack and ever-changing dynamics, as in the melange prior to Letter 4. And, for the first time in many years, the last movement radiated bonhomie and a spirit-infusing warmth; usually, I’m waiting for the concluding rush with impatience, worn out by what all too often sounds like the composer’s self-indulgence in delaying tactics. As with the Landler, this finale had a cogency and an insightfully driven suspense that made sense of its episodes as a cumulative process.

Just as deftly accomplished, the Adagietto found itself subjected to sensible treatment; without interpolated pauses, its melodic drift given full weight but the entire movement kinetic – no oleaginous Venetian pooling but an ardent and controlled emotional exhalation with the MSO strings steady and cohesive; moments like the pianissimo shift back to F Major achieved with minimal fuss or pausing for effect. Further, for once, the harp element from Yinuo Mu made itself a constituent part of the action, not just a presence in the opening bars and at the first high-point.

Of course, this work is no strange territory for the MSO who recorded it about a decade ago under Markus Stenz as part of that conductor’s review of the full Mahler symphonic range, and revisited it less than three years ago with Simone Young. Yet, this time around, its remembered longueurs dissipated in a forceful and fresh interpretation, giving much promise for the next two works in the cycle which present even greater challenges.

As a preface to the main work, Pierre-Laurent Aimard took the solo part for Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand; not a work you hear often live, partly due to the scarcity of disabled performers and also owing, one suspects, to the desire of most pianists to exercise their craft using all their gifts. Davis and his players provided a louring background for Aimard, whose handling of the deliberately wide-ranging keyboard part was hard to fault, particularly in the necessary leaps between bass and treble and the multitude of arpeggio-like passages by which Ravel gives the executant full coverage of the instrument’s range.

Still, this concerto comes to life in its two cadenzas which are packed with wrenching difficulties, although Aimard negotiated them with authority and abstained from an over-employment of the sustaining pedal. Particularly impressive were the pianist’s emphatic delivery at both ends of the compass, including some thunderous bass clusters, and the penetrating duet with clarinet under the orchestra’s clarion calls near the work’s thrilling conclusion.

Aimard is certainly the first guest I know of to treat an MSO audience to an encore by Boulez. He played three of the Douze Notations with agility and a cogent communication of the composer’s febrile piano style. As the title indicates, the works are rapidly done and came as a kind of spicy interlude in an afternoon where gravity was a significant element. More interestingly, this encore, although some worlds away from the expected Debussy or Ravel miniature, did not appear to upset the MSO’s Mahler aficionados. But then, as I say, the Notations are over very quickly.

Today Aimard performs Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jesus in the Melbourne Recital Centre at 5 pm, after having played them in Sydney last week following three performances of Messiaen’s Des canyons aux etoiles . . . A true devotee, the pianist studied with Messiaen’s widow, Yvonne Loriod, so you can expect an ultra-informed performance.

And the Ravel concerto and Mahler Symphony will be repeated in Hamer Hall on Monday March 21 at 6:30 pm.

Mozart all the way

March 7, 2016August 29, 2021 cliveoconnell

CLASSICAL VISIONS

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre

March 6, 2016

Starting its 2016 activities, the city’s leading chamber orchestra eased its patrons into a kind of contentment, a slippers-and-whisky mode with a diet of firm favourites and comfortable listening. The main works came from Mozart, two of the incomparable masterpieces of Western music: his Symphony No. 40 in G minor, and the Clarinet Concerto from the last months of the composer’s life. The MCO’s artistic director, William Hennessy, controlled the readings from his usual concertmaster position, while the soloist for the concerto was David Griffiths, familiar to concert-goers from his work in the always-fresh Ensemble Liaison.

As leavening for these repertoire pillars, harpist Melina van Leeuwen took centre stage for two French works that typify her instrument’s repertoire as most of us know it: Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro requiring also flute, clarinet and string quartet, and Debussy’s Danse sacree et danse profane which have the soloist supported by a string orchestra. Perhaps these were not the most original works to program but they made amiable enough contrasts with the afternoon’s Mozart content. Neither presented van Leeuwen with obvious problems, her generously spaced, ornately complex arpeggios at the opening to the Ravel work a promise of the fluency that she brought to the score’s major segment.

Not that the performance was blemish-free; the opening brief wind duet in thirds (Griffiths and an unknown flautist – I had no program) came over as uneasy, a sort of feeling-your-way that is made a more exact experience by a central conductor. Further, the piece gains a good deal more weight if, as on this occasion, a string orchestra is employed – if that added heft is what you want. Not that the composer had any problems with other musicians’ re-shapings of this piece but restricting the forces to a string quartet gives the more active stretches of the Allegro an agreeably febrile quality that a group three times that size smooths away.

Later, the Debussy test-piece enjoyed a fine airing, its open textures cleanly carried off in the mode-infested first half string writing while van Leeuwen gave full voice to the sacred dance’s rich two-hand chords. After the stately, hieratic suggestions of this opening set of pages, it always seems a comic relief when the D Major waltz marks out Debussy’s entry into the secular world that the second dance intends to represent. This section is far more colourful for the soloist with a wide range of technical requirements and a rapid alternation between various techniques of sound production. But van Leeuwen kept the interpretative tenor on an even keel, the details of harmonics and appoggiaturas coming across without unsettling stress, and the various ritenuto/a tempo changes handled with aplomb.

For the G minor symphony, Hennessy kept to an orthodox path; no abrupt tempo shocks, the dynamic shifts in keeping with the run of the score rather than an imposition of interpretative temperament, the all-important string complex working with dedication through these well-travelled pages. The director was also lucky with his wind back-line, the horn duo a touch over-prominent but accurate. If we didn’t learn much new about this score, we experienced a reassurance of sorts in the experience of its outer movements’ unforgettable restless determination. Some might have preferred to hear one of the earlier symphonies – a Haffner or a Linz, a Paris, even No. 33 in B flat that I don’t think many of us would have heard live – but there is also a school of belief that you can never get enough of this work; certainly, those patrons near me were more than pleased with the experience.

Griffiths is a veteran with this concerto; Sunday must have been the third or fourth time I was hearing his interpretation and it has always given an invigorating pleasure. The emphasis is not on the mellow and smooth but more concerned with both expressiveness and a restrained jauntiness. Rather than barnstorming through the first movement, this musician holds back on the wallowing chalumeau texture and aims for subtlety of dynamic, including some improbably soft cadential passages, moments where the player takes risks in production as his output approaches inaudibility. And while the central Adagio came over with admirably simple phrase-shaping and a welcome emotional reserve, the final Rondo impressed for its good-humoured bounce, bringing out the composer’s open-hearted humanity with great persuasiveness; even the scale-rich passage-work illustrated with the closest thing music gets to aristocratic wit. Here was a performance to treasure.

David Griffiths (mco.org.au) — *David Griffiths*

This program will be repeated at 7:30 pm on Friday March 11 in the Deakin Edge, Federation Square; a space that seats less than half of the Recital Centre’s Murdoch Hall. Given this quality of playing and the program’s appeal, the place should be packed.

Under new management

March 6, 2016August 29, 2021 cliveoconnell

OPENING CONCERT

Australian National Academy of Music Orchestra

South Melbourne Town Hall

March 5, 2016

Once again, rumours have begun to circulate about the parlous situation of the National Academy, whose administrators seem fated to plead on a regular basis with Canberra for funds to continue their activities. Late last year, the news came that the Australian National University is willing to house the Academy when its lease arrangements with the South Melbourne Town Hall come up for renewal in 2017 – a move that has its proponents but many more detractors, fortunately. Peter Garrett, as Minister for the Arts, proposed closing ANAM in 2008 because he saw the institution as elitist; what he wanted in its place remained unclear. But the thinking behind the minister’s proposal showed both a meanness (or absence) of spirit and a totally inadequate comprehension of what it takes to make a real musician. And that lack of insight has lasted well beyond the first Rudd ministry.

If you want to see why ANAM is both important and successful, all you have to do is attend a single concert or recital to understand what is being achieved. Not everything you hear will be easy listening, but anything performed by this body’s young instrumentalists stands several aesthetic strata above the products that emanated from Garrett during his musical career-of-sorts. Saturday night was a sterling example of where the Academy’s players are situated with a half-challenging (for the audience) night’s work of a near-contemporary concerto for percussion, a remarkable freshly-minted work from outgoing ANAM director Paul Dean to expose the virtuosity of his successor Nick Deutsch, and a rousing trip into established repertoire with the Sibelius Symphony No. 2 in D.

Soloist in Per Norgard‘s Percussion Concerto For a Change, Kaylie Melville operated from (as far as I could see) three stations positioned right in front of the audience. Norgard’s work is ostensibly in four movements, representing four states of being extracted from that fountain of fascination for post-Cage composers: the I Ching or Book of Changes. What actually comes out is a sequence of massively charged solos for the percussionist with the orchestra very much a supporting act, occasionally offering relief and, it has to be said, context behind the free-wheeling, attention-grabbing soloist. Norgard’s enthusiasm for Eastern sounds come over with remarkable clarity in the flavours of his writing, even if the cultural suggestions in movements like the opening Thunder Repeated, the Image of Shock sound more like Tibet than China, suggesting the long semi-braying trumpets that used to sound from the Potala in Lhasa.

Melville gave a bravura performance, moving from drums and woodblocks to a large array of gongs, then over to a panoply of more drums – the whole exercise carried out with assurance and an obvious familiarity with the Danish composer’s demands. While you came across moments of tranquillity, even near-stasis, the score (here receiving its Australian premiere, although I thought that distinction had already gone to Perth’s Tim White) made its most compelling impact in a set of long cadenza-style solo passages for Melville: shifting rhythms suggesting a compressed minimalism, just-this-side-of-painful heightened dynamics, a constant barrage of contrasting timbres. As a vehicle for this ANAM graduate, Norgard’s sustained exercise enjoyed a positive reception in a hall that, at its conclusion, was tropically sweltering.

Paul Dean’s farewell gesture to ANAM is an oboe concerto, with Deutsch its first executant; this work did enjoy a premiere performance on Saturday night. For reasons that escape me, the composer has kept his soloist’s output fixed in the instrument’s high register, which means that the oboe is a pretty strident line for most of the time. In the traditional three movements, the fast-slow-fast sequence is interrupted by a cadenza, one that is no free-for-all rubato rhapsody because an escorting snare drum emerges to set up a grounding rhythmic baseline. Dean lays on rich washes of sound in the outer segments, wind and brass providing solid sound-walls that the soloist emerges from with penetrating sustained notes. An easing lyricism obtains in the central adagio where the support is reduced to strings alone but, in keeping with the concerto’s unapologetic focus on the soloist, Deutsch set up the lyrical running pretty quickly and maintained it throughout what was a welcome hiatus in a typically ebullient creation.

Fortunately, the ANAM strings came into their own for the Sibelius symphony. Indeed, one of the more gripping spectacles in what had now become uncomfortable atmospheric conditions was the sight of the corps bending into their work, both in the flows and ebbs of Sibelius’ opening Allegretto and late in the arches of the finale’s central theme. In sum, the reading generated by conductor Antonio Mendez proved to be urgent and magniloquent, its ongoing problem one of balance. Even from the first, you were left to question the conductor’s weighting; when the woodwind entered with the first theme in bar 9, the clarinets could be heard clearly while the lead oboe line was present but not dominant. The third movement Vivacissimo was certainly that, its 6/8 tarantella exciting to watch but clarity of delivery was questionable, particularly after Letter C when the brass made their presence felt.

Something similar dogged the finale; not so much in the broad-beamed melodic streams but, in pesante full orchestra pages, the brass and wind were allowed too much dynamic latitude. You felt that the suggestions of Scandinavian grandeur-in-nature were suffering from over-kill, that Sibelius’ spacious sonorous edifices had been turned into cliff-faces without detail. Having noted that, however, the final peroration came over as a proper capstone to the performance, the players undiminished in drive and responsiveness. Obviously, the Academy is raring to go for another year; here’s hoping the bureaucrats and penny-pinchers somehow, sometime, get to see these gifted talents showcasing their abilities. It’s always an invigorating sight and the full ensemble’s impact can be striking; this Sibelius reading had more individuality, even with its over-heftiness, than a performance broadcast on ABC Radio from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra the preceding night.

A mixed quartet of cities

February 12, 2016August 28, 2021 cliveoconnell

CYBEC 21ST CENTURY AUSTRALIAN COMPOSERS CONCERT

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Iwaki Auditorium Southbank

February 10, 2016

Begun in 2003, this exercise serves as a welcome outlet for creativity and an opportunity for young writers to hear their works in a professional setting. The invitation to participate, offered to composers under 30, is advertised, following which successful applicants are invited to workshop their scores with an established mentor-composer prior to a public performance. For some time now, the number of participants has settled on four; given that the allocated time for each work is ten minutes, even with an ebullient verbal introduction, compulsory if sometimes awkward interviews between composers and conductor, and a lengthy postlude featuring fulsome expressions of gratitude, the night’s proceedings are quickly accomplished.

The benevolent co-founder of this annual event, Roger Riordan, in his address following Wednesday’s concert, expressed the aspiration that the Foundation would have achieved its aim if, somewhere along the line, it threw up another Mozart – which appeared to be setting the bar a tad high. Nevertheless, each of the pieces played by a chamber-formatted Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under conductor Benjamin Northey made its points with clear character and evident skill. All composers were required to relate their constructs to a specific theme: the city.

Samuel Smith, currently based in Melbourne, offered Interior cities, five sections that felt like three. attempting a depiction of the contrast and eventual confluence of exterior and interior states – emotional, geographical, psychological, civic: it was difficult to localise. Which was probably the point; the contrasts given by sets of instrumental trios in opposition positionally but melding into each other’s language illustrated the fluidity supporting the score’s development. Apart from a fondness for single-note crescendos culminating in a snappish change of pitch, Smith established a sustaining aural framework employing a central string nonet encased by two horn/trumpet/clarinet discrete bodies, a flute/oboe/contrabassoon trio in the usual woodwind position, two trombones, piano, harp, and three percussion and timpani operators. Interior cities is couched in a rigorous, emphatically contemporary language, although its most telling feature came in the concluding pages through a welcome relief from tension and rigour into pointillist flashes of colour leading to silence.

Sally Greenaway from the ACT juxtaposed the brash world of the modern city with extra-mural nature in Worlds within worlds. In its shape, this score seemed like an old-fashioned rondo, with episodes of placidity and romantic breadth interposed between loud if tuneful depictions of urban bustle. In her pre-performance interview, the composer indicated the influence of some early 20th century compositional strands found in Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky; once aired, it was hard to forget the names, so that echoes could be found at every turn. Greenaway’s opening strophes brought to mind the Shrovetide Fair music from Petrushka, if without the Russian master’s heaping up of time signatures on top of one another – but quite clearly in Greenaway’s use of brass and underpinning restless string patterns. In fact, the score proceeded in a regular pattern, specifically in its four-square phrasing, both in its city-scape sections and in the nature-evoking interludes with their shadings of the E minor Symphony’s Adagio, and a nifty glimpse of Gershwin’s An American in Paris to finish; the allure of the natural world is all very well, but Greenaway’s city is no hell-hole. In the concert’s four-part context, this made for easy listening and was none the worse for that.

From Perth, Alex Turley proposed a more minatory vision than anything heard so far. City of Ghosts is, as you’d expect, a deserted site, reminiscent for the composer of Francis Lawrence’s 2007 post-apocalyptic film I Am Legend where the Will Smith hero roves purposefully through a derelict New York. Not harmonically aggressive and sticking to a regular tempo through each of its three segments, Turley’s score kept substantially to the same personnel as used in Greenaway’s work and in the final contribution by Michael Bakrncev: pairs of horns, clarinets and trumpets; flute and oboe; the string body, percussion trio, with harp and piano/celesta for additional sparks. Just when you anticipated an extended study in sound-patterns, Andrew Macleod‘s alto flute produced a fluent, fertile melody, followed by Michael Pisani‘s cor anglais taking up the thread. A faster-moving segment featuring a well-constructed piccolo solo supported by string patterns led to a brief return of the opening mood. Turley offered his performers some aleatoric episodes but, judging by Northey’s cues, these were pretty well-contained moments of freedom.

Bakrncev’s Sky Jammer came closest in this quartet of compositions to the polemical. Its underlying concern is for the city bursting its bounds, the one-time wondrous skyscraper becoming a symbol of over-population as its species gets higher and more prolific. To this end, the work presents a fierce sound-fabric with plenty of frenetic action from the wind and strings, series of syncopated blips creating a sense of uncertainty and suggestive of rhythmic, and therefore social, disjunction. But the main actors on this scene were the percussion panoplies of Robert Clarke and Robert Cossom with Christine Turpin‘s timpani creating a powerful chain of bass timbres. These supplied the score with its climactic outbursts, asking the listener to respond to their explosions with – what? Sympathy for or empathy with the composer’s dystopian musical vision, I suppose. At its most frenetic points, Sky Jammer needed more strings – the only one of the night’s four pieces that underlined the inadequacy of that group’s dynamic impact. You could not mistake the composer’s intensity of purpose, notably in the work’s emphatic, menacing last strokes. Yet, in contrast with its companions, this construct presented its vehement washes of sound-fabric as an old-fashioned fusion of medium and message.

The Cybec 21st Century initiative is not confined to this one night. Two of these four works will be selected for inclusion in the MSO’s Metropolis New Music Festival, interpolated into Melbourne Recital Centre programs on Saturday May 14 and Saturday May 21 where they will keep company with Steve Reich’s City Life and Messiaen’s Couleurs de la cite celeste, among others. Of course, the Chosen Two will have the opportunity to refine their products further, with extended resources of personnel if no expansion in their works’ lengths. As an enterprise that encourages musicians to exercise their craft, the Cybec Foundation’s activity is an outstanding act of corporate benevolence; looking at the honour roll of previous participants, you come across many names that continue to feature on contemporary programs – no obvious Mozarts yet, but plenty of talents that continue to create with assurance and zest.

East is East and . . .

December 11, 2015August 28, 2021 cliveoconnell

THE FOUR SEASONS

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre

December 9, 2015

Vivaldi_caricature — *Caricature of Vivaldi Il prete rosso by Pier Leone Ghezzi (1723)*

In virtually identical fashion, the ACO began and ended its Melbourne year with this program built around Vivaldi’s well-worn quartet of violin concertos. Richard Tognetti roused audience approbation for his vital interpretations of these familiar pages at both last Wednesday’s packed concert and back in the last week of February. With characteristic mastery, he found refreshing novelties in both tutti passages and solos – heaving the line into faster or slower pace to unsettle expectations, lingering suggestively over chromatic ascents, then abruptly hurtling through whole segments in the Autumn and Winter scores with remarkable rapidity, and always finding a ready response from his associates – a string nonet of ACO regulars, Neal Peres Da Costa oscillating between harpsichord and chamber organ in performing continuo offices, Tommie Andersson also doing dual service on theorbo and guitar.

So far, so fair. These concerts have a well-earned reputation for rattling cupboards, raising dust, turning on unfiltered lights. Along with a re-viewing of the season-celebrating evergreens, with two isolated Vivaldi movements from other concertos and a Gabrieli sonata for extra Venetian heft, Tognetti arranged a juxtaposition of European Baroque and contemporary Egyptian through a collaboration with the Tawadros brothers, Joseph playing oud and James on the tambourine-like riq and occasionally the bendir hand-drum. Not that this musical association is new; both Tawadros musicians have been performing with the ACO for almost 15 years.

But this program proposed a more serious aim than a mirror reflecting culturally differing musical elements. Tognetti has been looking for a common ground between the worlds of Islam and the Venetian Republic with specific reference to music, given that the inter-relationship certainly existed in artefacts, goods and solid artistic objects, not to mention that trite descriptor of cross-cultural pollination – cuisine.

But when it comes to music, the influences, one-sided or mutual, prove difficult to track down. In the end, what this program offered seemed unconvincing, even more so after a second experience. Joseph’s lute-like instrument served competently in giving an edge to the orchestra’s output, reinforcing Andersson’s timbre if with a more brusque sound-quality, less happy doubling the solo line in several concerto movements. Joseph’s percussion underpinning, especially in the more bouncy third movements, sounded like an unnecessary adjunct, sadly reminiscent of that inane version of the first Allegro in Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 which was supplied with a drum-kit undertow. What did the insertion of that percussive supplement add to the Mozartian experience? Precious little, if anything. I fear, the same applied to this Vivaldi fusion experience.

Interleaved between the Vivaldi concertos and single movements, Joseph presented seven of his own compositions, episodic constructs with occasional spotlights on ACO players – Tognetti, of course, and bass Maxime Bibeau – but the focus centred consistently on the oud, apart from one extended riq solo to begin Give or Take. Modal melodies, sprightly metrical set-ups, plenty of unison work for the ACO strings, cadenza-type breaks all helped to create a specific sound-world although I found it hard to differentiate between most of these pieces and what I’ve heard from Turkey and Iran. Complicating the mix, an Indian influence is inescapable, the riq’s rapidity and ability to produce rapid-fire bursts and semi-complex patterns resembling the tabla in everything but the use of the palm, while the decorative ripples from Joseph’s lute occasionally came very close to a sitar’s enunciation of a raga.

Yet, while both the orchestra and its guests entered into each other’s worlds with that confidence gained through a long-time aesthetic conversation and built on the performing security invested in the last night of a national tour taking in four state capitals, their respective worlds, their basic languages remained discrete. In the opening Gabrieli sonata for three violins, it seemed that an attempt was made to give lines an Eastern curve – hesitant, languorous, dynamically restrained – but when all parts were well under way, the Orient disappeared and the instrumental fabric reverted to type. In the Tawadros pieces, the ACO players sounded as if added on, providing a sound quality that all too often sounded suggestive of an old-fashioned the dansant straight out of Death on the Nile. When Tognetti took a prominent part, the spectre of Stephane Grappelli and his Hot Club Quintet loomed unnervingly close. Added to this odd non-Venetian shadow of reminiscence, the works sometimes began promisingly – the oud solo at the beginning of Point of Departure with suggestions of intriguing irregularities, a similarly expectation-lifting start to Permission to Evaporate – but settled for rapid-fire rushes of activity, negotiated with a palette of colours in which eventually you laboured to find points of differentiation, let alone any timbral, melodic, harmonic or rhythmic congruence with the European scores.

Perhaps I’m wrong. Further exposure to Tawadros’ music may reveal connections with music of the European Mediterranean that are definitely discernible in several parameters. At present, the links continue to elude. Not that this concerned the rest of the MRC audience, who were fortunate to hear these players in the clear acoustic of the Recital Centre’s Elizabeth Murdoch space rather than at the ACO’s usual theatre of operations in Hamer Hall, as was the case in February. A well-applied amplification system helped even more in heightening accessibility, particularly during the central movement to Vivaldi’s Autumn where Da Costa filled in its 45 bars with a deftly executed solo over the semi-static string chords. More importantly, it put us up-close with the Tawadros brothers’ determined attack and sharp delivery right from their opening Kindred Spirits – one of the concert’s most effective demonstrations of their craft.