Category: Uncategorized

As I’ve relocated to the Gold Coast, the musical events outlined below (few as they are) relate to Brisbane and its environs.  Fortunately, some of the organizations and ensembles that perform in Melbourne also appear in Queensland’s capital – Musica Viva, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Australian String Quartet.  And there may be the chance to see what’s become of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in the 20 years since I last heard it live, as well as the possibility of getting to a Camerata performance at last, and perhaps opportunities to witness Queensland Opera grappling with Tristan and Aida.

 

Friday November 1

TCHAIKOVSKY AND BEETHOVEN

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre at 7:30 pm

Alondra de la Parra, chief conductor of the QSO,  introduces this program with a work that springs from her Mexican family’s heritage: the Sinfonia No. 2,  Las Antesalas del Sueno, by Federico Ibarra Groth.   Well, it’s arrestingly different to be invited to explore the antechambers of dream, whatever and wherever they are; all you can do is withhold judgement until the 10-minute score has reached its termination.   Matters become more predictable when Franco-Serbian violinist Nemanja Radulovic, fresh from a short recital tour (Hobart, Melbourne Sydney) with Ensemble Liaison, fronts the Tchaikovsky D Major Concerto.   De la Parra fills out the night pleasantly enough with the Beethoven Symphony No. 6 which will give the QSO woodwind ranks plenty of scope to exercise their bucolic talents.

 

Saturday November 2

MUSIC BY THE SEA

Orava Quartet

Town Hall, Sandgate at 7:30 pm

These players have enjoyed remarkable success, both in this country and in America and Europe.   I’ve heard them in the Melbourne Recital Centre, the Collins St. Baptist Church, and the South Melbourne Town Hall during their participation in the Asia Pacific Chamber Music Competition; now the occasion presents itself to watch them in their home town, although Sandgate is a tad off the beaten track.  More unnerving is that I can’t find out what will be played.  The group follows this appearance with two more in the Utzon Room and the Potter Salon later in November where they play Schubert’s Death and the Maiden String Quartet No. 14, than which they do not come more demanding, framed by two Renaissance motets: Victoria’s O magnum mysterium and Byrd’s Ave verum corpus.   Both are in four parts but don’t get your hopes up: the Oravas will probably play the lines, not sing them.   And I could be off the track altogether and the actual program will have a marine element to justify the night’s title.

 

Friday November 8

FRENCH REVELATIONS

Ensemble Trivium

Old Government House, Brisbane at 7 pm

On this occasion, the ensemble is a quintet: soprano Rachael Griffin, founder/flute Monika Koerner, viola Raquel Bastos, cello Eleanor Streatfeild, and pianist Brierley Cutting.  Koerner is a known quantity and a highly gifted artist; the other participants are new to me.  But their program features a fair cross-section of French masters: Devienne, Debussy, Roussel, Ravel, Poulenc, Durufle, and Messiaen.  The Devienne piece is a duo concertante for flute and viola; Debussy is represented by his exhilarating Cello Sonata;  Roussel’s Trio for flute, viola and cello ends the program.  But the rest of the evening moves into some unexplored byways.  The Chansons madecasses by Ravel are not left-field material but not suited to every voice; they will be a test of Griffin’s lower register.  Written for soprano and piano, Poulenc’s 1943 Metamorphoses is a very brief cycle of three poems that I’ve never heard.   Similarly, Durufle’s early Op. 3 Prelude, Recitatif et Variations for flute, viola and piano has never crossed my path.  To compensate, Messiaen’s Le merle noir is a highly popular fundamental of modern French writing for the flute-and-piano combination.

 

Saturday November 16

TIMELESS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre at 7:30 pm

This night’s operations roughly parallel the QSO’s program on November 1.  De la Parra works her players pretty hard with Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole as a warm-up.  Admittedly the first three movements are not over-taxing but the Feria finale asks for brilliance from each part of the orchestra.   I heard the estimable Paul Lewis perform Beethoven’s C minor Concerto in mid-September with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra – an honest, original take on a very familiar masterpiece.  Tonight, he takes to Grieg’s Piano Concerto and will probably bring an equal level of insight to its four-square lyricism.  To close proceedings, de la Parra takes on Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 where melancholy and lacerating vitality combine in a remarkable construct that falters only in the final pompous pages.

 

Sunday November 17

HANDEL ISRAEL IN EGYPT

Brisbane Chorale, Canticum Chamber Choir, Camerata

City Hall, Brisbane at 3 pm

Perhaps it depends on where you live but I’ve heard this oratorio exactly once; like Belshazzar and Mendelssohn’s St Paul.   Yet, at one time, Israel in Egypt was well-known, if nowhere near as popular to the point of universality, as Messiah, probably because of its multiplicity of choruses.   Anyway, here it comes as a welcome novelty, on a par with Saul, Alexander’s Feast and Solomon and the approximately 20 other compositions in this genre that are familiar only in excerpt form.   Graham Abbott conducts and the work features six soloists: sopranos Sarah Crane and Emily Turner, mezzo Jessica Low, tenor Nick Kirkup, and baritones Shaun Brown and Daniel Smerdon.  I don’t know anything about the City Hall’s acoustics but, going on this country’s tendency to duplicate itself in this regard – e.g., Sydney Town Hall, Melbourne Town Hall and Adelaide Town Hall, which I have experienced – you’d be expecting something booming and with a generous echo.

 

Monday November 18

BRAHMS & DVORAK

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Queensland Performing Arts Centre at 7 pm

Two splendid works from the great composers but the ACO would be the last to toe the party line by playing only the very familiar.  The Brahms is his Double Concerto for violin and cello, while the Dvorak is that composer’s penultimate symphony in G Major which, after a long interval, I last heard at the start of September from the MSO under James Gaffigan.   An optimistic piece, this Dvorak muffles its rustic roots to some extent and the melodic output has less immediate appeal than its successor in the composer’s oeuvre.   But it contrives an impressive union of craft and lyricism.   In similar vein, the Brahms score has suffered by comparison with the composer’s mighty solo violin concerto and the equally strong two piano concertos.   But you’d be crazy to miss the chance of hearing Richard Tognetti and Timo-Veikko Valve launch themselves across its broad canvas.  For preludial material, some ACO ring-ins play Andrew Ford‘s 3 minute-long Jouissance for two trumpets and vibraphone which the organization premiered in 1993.   Then we hear American writer Andrew Norman‘s Gran Turismo for 8 virtuoso violinists that finds a link between the Baroque concerto grosso, Italian Futurist art (specifically Giacomo Balla),and a race car video game; good luck with that.

 

Sunday November 24

COMPELLING THEMES

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio at 3 pm

This program brings to mind the Sunday morning recitals from Melbourne Symphony Orchestra personnel in the Iwaki Auditorium which are always packed out.  What strikes you as different is the variety of participants – or perhaps that’s just due to the demands of this particular program.   The afternoon begins with a Michael Haydn Divertimento for oboe (Sarah Meagher), viola (Charlotte Burbrook de Vere), and double bass (Justin Bullock) substituting for the original violone; not a particularly original piece but an amiable sequence of four movements.   Beethoven’s String Quintet in C uses a quartet – violinists Shane Chen and Helen Travers, viola Graham Simpson, cellist Andre Duthoit – and an extra viola in Nicole Greentree.   It’s the composer’s only original quintet, not a reworking or arrangement of other material.   Finally comes the chance to experience Martinu’s String Sextet, composed in one 1932 week.   Here, the executants are violins Chen and Katie Betts, violas Greentree and Bernard Hoey, cellos Matthew Kinmont and Hyung Suk Bae.

 

Thursday November 28

WHEN THE WORLD WAS WIDE

Camerata

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre at 7 pm

The fifth collaboration between Camerata and director/actor/writer Tama Matheson, this exercise investigates the relationship between Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson through a melding of music, narrative and acting.   Well, the excerpts from the two poets’ writings will be very welcome in this age when their reputations grow dim.  As for the music, Camerata have outlined what they intend, beginning with May Brahe’s Bless This House song from 1927 which certainly suggests the between-wars period and a facet of its emotional atmosphere.  Two Lawson settings follow, both by John Horn and coming from his 2015 song cycle Looking for Lawson: The Shame of Going Back and Faces in the Street – one a plaint on failure in life, the second a warning of social revolution.   Peter Sculthorpe‘s Port Essington recalls the attempts to found a Northern Territory settlement.   It compares and contrasts the out-of-place world of the garrison and settlers with the Aboriginal culture that eventually reclaimed the landscape.   John Tavener’s Eternal Memory for cello and strings follows: like Port Essington, an Australian Chamber Orchestra commission.  Back with the people concerned most in this evening, Camerata resurrects Miriam Hyde‘s Fantasia on Waltzing Matilda in, I assume, the 1943 version. The finale comprises Brisbane film composer Cameron Patrick‘s Impressions of Erin, which is drawing a long bow if it refers to the background of either poet.  But it matches the program’s opening in its musical summation of an era.

 

Friday November 29

GIANNI SCHICCHI

Opera Gold Coast

Helensvale Library Community and Cultural Centre at 7:30 pm

One third of Il Trittico – the only decent one of the set – is to be presented by a group that is new to me.   The opera’s humour is broad, the action completely improbable, the characters straight out of a commedia dell’arte copy-book.   But there are two passages of melting Puccini magnificence in Rinuccio’s Firenze e come un albero fiorito and O mio babbino caro sung by the titular character’s daughter, Lauretta.  Most of the productions I’ve seen (3? 4?) have been directed poorly so that Buoso’s grieving relatives have no personality while Schicchi usually has too much because the temptation to over-act is not resisted.   But it’s a quick piece – less than an hour – and this presentation boasts a ‘live orchestra’, although conductor and singers remain anonymous.  The temptation to see what’s happening just up the road is near irresistible; God knows, I’ve wasted my time at many higher profile operatic essays.

This opera will be repeated on Saturday November 30 at 2 pm and 7:30 pm.

 

Saturday November 30

CINEMATIC

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre at  2 pm

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, or its administration, fell in love with film scores some years ago and is presenting heftier swags of them as the years roll by.   Some of these have been enchanting experiences, especially if the film dialogue is subtitled since the orchestral fabric can drown out the words.   This concert is less ambitious in that it comprises music from great and not-so-great films, but without pictures.   Nicholas Buc conducts, a veteran in this music despite his youth (for a conductor: he can’t be 40 yet).  As you’d expect, John Williams scores well: the main theme from Star Wars, selections from the Harry Potter films, Rey’s theme from  Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  Nigel Westlake‘s output is whittled down to some scraps from Babe; Jerry Goldsmith is also shrunk to the end credits for Star Trek: First Contact.   Alan Silvestri‘s Back to the Future music appears – hopefully, not all of it – and his Avengers Theme.  Michael Giacchino is represented by his score to The Incredibles and a Star Trek: Into Darkness suite.  Another suite has been assembled from Howard Shore‘s The Lord of the Rings scores.  A swag of singles I don’t know or don’t recall fleshes out the material: James Horner‘s main title for Apollo 13,  an excerpt from the How to Train Your Dragon by John Powell, two segments from Austin Wintory’s sound-track for the game Journey – Nascence and Apotheosis, and the brief Time from Hans Zimmer‘s score for Inception.   Younger ears will doubtless enjoy much of this: the more senior among us will silently lament Korngold and Steiner.

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

 

 

 

Due to some confusion in communications, I think it’s necessary to state somewhere that I’ve resigned from writing music criticism for The Age.  A message went out to all on my email address book, but clearly that move didn’t spread the information far enough.

My first review appeared on March 20, 1978, the last on October 22 this year; quite long enough, I think.   All those luminaries on the paper who brightened my reviewing life – Kenneth Hince, Neil Jillett, Leonard Radic, Michael Shmith, Ray Gill, Gina McColl, Robin Usher – have passed on in one way or another and I can tell you emphatically that there’s no joy or triumph in being the last man of my generation still standing.

I intend to keep this blog running, not least because it allows more spatial freedom than the inexorable 250-word limit imposed by the paper, but also because – as intended from the start three years ago – it’s a means of celebrating and encouraging musicians and composers who get precious little attention elsewhere.

Sunday October 1

EMMANUEL PAHUD

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Hamer Hall at 2:30 pm

Getting themselves into shape, the ACO begins with the Ricercar a 6 from Bach’s A Musical Offering; I doubt that it will be the enthralling Webern orchestration – just a bland, everyday transcription for strings.  Pahud, here billed as ‘the world’s greatest living flautist’, will then play the C.P.E. Bach A minor Sonata, hopefully unaccompanied.  The orchestra’s outing wouldn’t be complete without a string quartet transmogrified for their forces, and here comes defenceless Ravel in F.  Another unaccompanied stand-by in Debussy’s Syrinx and Pahud finally joins up with the ACO in Franck’s Sonata for Flute and Strings, which is a misnomer: the composer wrote nothing for flute solo.  This work is for violin and piano, one of the great duos and not that suited to the flute, even Pahud’s; but then, I didn’t think much of the Galway/Agerich recording, either. Tognetti has organised the piano part for strings which should provide a barrel of laughs for anyone who’s played the work in its original form.

This program will be repeated on Tuesday October 3 at 7:30 pm.

 

Sunday October 1

MENDELSSOHN’S OCTET

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre at 2:30 pm

The MCO has its own octet; not hard to achieve, considering the wealth of willing talent available.  This afternoon, the title work is surrounded by the buoyant B flat Major Sextet by Brahms and a new octet by Douglas Weiland, the British composer, founding member of the Australian String Quartet, and a favourite voice of the ACO’s artistic director, William Hennessy who shared those early ASQ days with Weiland.  The new work is called Winterreise, which sets up all sorts of expectations.  The work comprises six movements, lasts about 14 minutes and was commissioned by Hennessy in 2015, was completed in August that year and is finally getting an airing here.  It’s very welcome, of course, but the pairing of the Mendelssohn and Brahms scores was an inspired move: both youthful, glowing works but what a world of difference!

 

Tuesday October 3

WILLIAM WINNANT

Australian National Academy of Music

South Melbourne Town Hall at 7:30 pm

Continuing the Academy’s percussion festival, the California-based senior citizen of contemporary music-making leads three works by Lou Harrison, the centenary of whose birth is the fulcrum on which this series of concerts and recitals turns.  First is Tributes to Charon from 1982 for three percussionists and alarm clocks, which Winnant requested from the composer for a 65th birthday concert; then, the 1987 five-movement Varied Trio for violin, piano and percussion; finally, the earlier (1973) Concerto for organ with percussion orchestra – about a dozen players –  in five movements which will present some logistical problems, mainly in siting the solo instrument.  As light relief come Henry Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo for Percussion octet, a pioneering piece from 1934 that lasts about 3 minutes – don’t blink; and John Cage’s Four6 from 1992, one of the great master’s late works and originally written for an unspecified (naturally) quartet.  Like pretty well everything in these American Triptych events, the content is significant and still challenging.

 

 

Friday October 6

GLORIES OF THE FRENCH BAROQUE

Brenda Rae and the Australian National Academy of Music Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30

While the Academy’s percussionists are being happily engaged in their US-inspired orgy, the organisation’s other instrumentalists will be working under conductor Benjamin Bayl to support the American soprano in this night of music by Rameau.  I know nothing about Rae who is appearing here for the first time in Australia and tonight has the honour of launching the serious  music side of this year’s Melbourne Festival.  She will sing seven arias, which will be surrounded by overtures, dances and scene-setting interludes from the French composer’s operas, none of which we see today unless you’re lucky enough to live in Sydney: Les Paladins, Castor et Pollux (produced by Pinchgut Opera five years ago), Platee, Zoroastre, and two works from which you might have heard extracts: Les Boreades, and Les Indes galantes.   Other Pinchgut Rameaux include Dardanus in 2005, then Anacreon and Pigmalion on a triple bill earlier this year.  It’s a specialized field but just the sort of material that should be mounted at a festival because you’re unlikely to hear anything this concentrated very often.  The musicologists among us will be happy; let’s hope the singer is able.

 

Saturday October 7

JAN WILLIAMS

Australian National Academy of Music

South Melbourne Town Hall at 7:30 pm

Finishing up the American Triptych celebrating the wealth of the Republic’s composers for percussion comes another senior figure in the field and long-time presence at the University of Buffalo.  Williams leads four works by Lou Harrison, with a solitary stranger in the middle: Morton Feldman’s Instruments 3 for flute, oboe and percussion – 20 minutes of atypical activity.  But the night opens with Song of Quetzalcoatl, a 1941 composition for four percussionists with an understandable emphasis on Mexican instruments.   The brief 1939 Concerto No. 1 for Flute follows: also a trio, the woodwind solo is supported by two percussionists, although I’ve seen it played with only one handling the accompaniment. Like Debussy’s Rhapsodie, the ‘No. 1’ seems superfluous: I can’t find another.  Post-Feldman, Williams takes charge of the Canticle No. 1, also from 1939 and a percussion quintet lasting about 4 or 5 minutes; don’t blink.  The last Harrison work is the 1941 Labyrinth No. 3 for 11 percussion players and a relatively large-scale work, not just in the number of its executants but also in its four-movement length.

 

Saturday October 7

TURNING POINT

Australian String Quartet

Collingwood Arts Precinct at 8 pm

A further bullet in the Melbourne Festival’s gun-belt, this recital begins with a non-string quartet: Scarlatti’s Piece in 4 voices.  Well, I say it’s not a string quartet but I could be wrong; the work might not be by Alessandro or Domenico but by some other member of the family.  Or it could just be a keyboard sonata arranged for the ASQ instruments.   Anyway, there’s no doubting the provenance of Bartok’s First String Quartet or the first Beethoven Razumovsky which sustain the bulk of this event.  Also enjoying an outing is Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 3, Mishima: a six-movement work and part of the composer’s score for Paul Schrader’s film based on the Japanese author’s last day.  The recital’s venue is a new one to me; from the directions given on the Festival website, it seems to be part of the old NMIT complex on the corner of Wellington and Johnston Streets.

This program will be repeated on Sunday October 8 at 6 pm, and on Monday October 8 at 7 pm.

 

Sunday October 8

MORE TELEMANN

The Melbourne Musicians

St. John’s Southgate at 3 pm

Finishing up for the year, Frank Pam and his chamber orchestra give Bach’s voluble contemporary a fair hearing, starting with his Canary Cantata, a compendium of four arias and recitatives on the death of a well-loved pet to be sung by soprano Tania de Jong. Pam himself takes the solo line in Telemann’s solitary and popular Viola Concerto in G Major, followed by Mark Fitzpatrick coping with the composer’s even-more popular, brief D Major Trumpet Concerto.  As makeweights, de Jong will sing Handel’s Ombra mai fu – the only aria anyone knows from the opera Serse – and the afternoon concludes with the first two symphonies by Johann Stamitz, so-called Mannheim Symphonies the first of which is a questionable attribution to this fertile composer who had an impact on Haydn and Mozart.

 

Thursday October 12

MSO PLAYS BEETHOVEN 8

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre at 8 pm

They will eventually get around to playing the unassuming F Major symphony, but only after an odd collection of pieces, beginning with Dvorak’s Serenade for Winds.  Written for pairs of oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, with three horns, an ad lib line for contrabassoon and cello and double bass parts supplied to supplement the bass line if you can’t find a contra, this work belongs more to the MSO’s Sunday morning Iwaki Auditorium recital programs.  Still, guest conductor Michael Collins will doubtless control proceedings from the first clarinet desk.  The night’s other soloist will be Lloyd Van’t Hoff sharing the honours in Mendelssohn’s Konzertstuck on his basset horn while Collins takes the clarinet line; I just don’t know which one of the two that the composer wrote is to be played   –  the F minor or the D minor.   And you’d assume they will use the orchestrated accompaniment instead of the composer’s clearer piano support.  Elena Kats-Chernin’s Ornamental Air from 2007, a solid three-movement concerto for basset clarinet and chamber orchestra, could find either of the two Mendelssohn soloists under the spotlight.

This program will be repeated in the Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University on Friday October 13 at 8 pm.

 

Friday October 13

BANGSOKOL – A REQUIEM FOR CAMBODIA

Rithy Panh, Him Sophy

Hamer Hall at 7:30 pm

Another Melbourne Festival offering, this is the result of a collaboration between film-maker Rithy Panh and composer Him Sophy.  They have assembled a group of singers and instrumentalists to perform a hybrid lament for the agony of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.  The hour-long piece combines the Buddhist Bangsokol ritual and the Christian requiem in a fusion of dance, film, song and speech.  As the world now knows, there is a lot to grieve for; it strikes you even four decades on, principally the loss of two million lives as well as the near-annihilation of a culture = all made possible by a continuing wilful ignorance in the West.  This collaboration is receiving its world premiere here before it is taken to New York and Paris.

The program will be repeated on Saturday October 14 at 7:30 pm.

 

Saturday October 14

Joep Beving

Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm

Beving is an amateur pianist from the Netherlands who has made a splash with two CDs and is appearing under the aegis of the Melbourne Festival. I’ve listened to about ten tracks from these and the best that can be said is that it constitutes fairly harmless musical doodling.   The titles of his works might be different but Beving’s music is tediously similar, an aimless meander around the keyboard that betrays a harmonic gaucheness and melodic stasis.   It makes you long for the going-nowhere-quickly ambience of the American minimalists.  This recital is scheduled to last 75 minutes; for some of us, that’s over an hour too long.

 

Tuesday October 17

DOUBLE MANUAL

Peter de Jager

Melbourne Recital Centre at 6 pm

Another pianist on the Melbourne Festival roster is this remarkable musician who is mounting a one-night stand featuring only music by Iannis Xenakis, the Romanian/Greek/French composer whose immersion of composition in mathematics set challenges – some of them impossible to surmount – for even the most willing and adventurous musicians.  De Jager plays three of the major piano pieces – Herma (1961), Evryali (1973) and Mists (1980), which was written for Roger Woodward.  For variety, he will also play the composer’s only two solo harpsichord works: Khoai (1976) and Naama (1984). The performance of one Xenakis keyboard work is a rarity because preparation requires a very long time . . . but five?  Unless you attend with scores in your hand, there’s no way you can testify to de Jager’s precision, especially in the earlier piano works which show what wimps Stockhausen and Boulez turned out to be.  But for some of us, this 70-minute stretch could turn out to be one of this year’s high-water marks.

 

Thursday October 19

‘ROUND MIDNIGHT

Emanuele Arciuli

Melbourne Recital Centre at 8 pm

Third of our Festival’s three solo pianists is the Italian-born expert in contemporary American composition for his instrument.  Making his Australian debut, Arciuli goes all the way, beginning with China Gates by John Adams, a brief bagatelle from 1977.  Then he plays Judd Greenstein’s First Ballade, a jump of thirty years in chronological time but a retrograde step in modernity; the piece stays in the same harmonic loop for most of its duration and you can see why he gave it this title.  Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik: Ruminations on ‘Round Midnight by Thelonious Monk by George Crumb requires an amplified piano and is a nine-section construct commissioned by Arciuli himself 16 years ago.  Sound Gone was written in 1967 by Stephen Alexander Chambers before he converted to Sufism and changed his name to Talib Rasul Hakim.  Arciuli winds up his hour with Rzewski’s pounding Constructivist revival, Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.

Arciuli presents a second program at the Deakin Edge, Federation Square on Friday October 20.  Works include Cage’s In a Landscape, Louis Ballard’s Four American Indian Piano Preludes, the ‘Round Midnight Suite variations on a Thelonious Monk theme by Rzewski, Babbitt, Torke, Harbison and Daugherty, and  Phrygian Gates by John Adams.

 

Friday October 20

HOWARD PENNY: FROM THE CELLO

Australian National Academy of Music

South Melbourne Town Hall at 7:30 pm

Head of Strings at ANAM, Penny takes control of the organization’s strings in a breezy night’s work that begins with Two Pieces for String Octet by Shostakovich, a prelude and scherzo dating from the composer’s student years and written concurrently with the startling Symphony No. 1.   The forces reduce a tad for the warm, aspiring Brahms Sextet No. 2 in G Major; you can go years without hearing either of the composer’s works in this form, then they both turn up within weeks of each other (see above, Sunday October 1). Quite a few more players will be needed for Bartok’s Divertimento of 1939; in fact, 22 is the prescribed minimum, the composer having a keen eye for the weight needed when he divides the players which happens regularly, although he’s more happy to play off principals from each section against the main body in the best concerto grosso manner; always an exhilarating journey, if a brief one.

 

Friday October 20

PATH OF MIRACLES

Tenebrae

St. John’s Anglican Church, Malvern East at 7:30 pm

A 15-year-old British choir making its debut in the Melbourne Festival, Tenebrae is presenting a single program at two different venues.  The works to be given are Owain Park’s Footsteps and Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles, both of them recently recorded together by these singers.  Which makes you wonder why they’d bother bringing them so far and making them the only offerings available.  Talbot’s four-movement work, for 17-part a cappella choir with a few crotales thrown in for atmosphere, follows a pilgrim’s route from Roncesvalles, through Burgos and Leon to Santiago and the shrine of St. James; it lasts a little over an hour and is a Tenebrae specialty because the director Nigel Short commissioned it.   But then, so he did for Park’s work that presents images of a tiring traveller in a little over fifteen minutes.  All well and good and the few performance extracts provided sound effective, but again: why come all this way to sing a record?

The program will be repeated  in the Melbourne Recital Centre at 8 pm on Saturday October 21.

 

Saturday October 21

SOUND TEXT

Charles Gaines

Melbourne Recital Centre at 6 pm

This recital concludes an exhibition, The Score,  which runs from August 1 to November 5, and a series of seminars held throughout the Melbourne Festival at the Ian Potter Museum.  The recital is a combination of art and music put together by American conceptual artist Charles Gaines with music supplied by Opera Povera’s Sean Griffin.  The musical content ranges from Reconstruction-era spirituals (were there any?) to French Revolutionary ballads.  The art itself seems to revolve around musical scores that lurch out into visual and linguistic areas; something like the stuff we were all writing back in the 1960s, except that this has intimations of holding more of an emphasis on politics.  It all sounds promising and there’s some hope, as it’s Festival time, that the occasion could be confrontational.

 

Tuesday October 24

THE END OF TIME

Ensemble Liaison

Melbourne Recital Centre at 7 pm

As soon as you see this night’s title, you immediately think of Messiaen, don’t you?  And you’re spot-on: the climax of this recital is the famous quartet with guest Dene Olding coming in for the work’s violin line.  Before that long sequence of visions spiritual and a leetle bit temporal comes Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro Op. 70 which could feature either Olding or Svetlana Bogosavljevic’s cello, but certainly Timothy Young’s piano, and certainly not the original score’s horn.  As well, the group presents the premiere of Australian writer Samantha Wolf’s Splinter for an as-yet unspecified instrumental combination; and, to begin, Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale in the composer’s own version for violin, clarinet (David Griffiths, on this night) and piano.  We are promised a lighting design from Paul Jackson, so the night’s colours won’t be only instrumental.

 

Wednesday October 25

SOUVENIR DE FLORENCE

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm

Once again, a real chamber recital from the ACO and exclusively for Melbourne, it would seem.   As well as Tchaikovsky’s athletic string sextet to bring down the curtain, the visiting ACO personnel will also indulge us in Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge – hopefully for just the original four strings – and Shostakovich’s Two Pieces for String Octet, performed just five days previously by Howard Penny and his ANAM forces (see above, Friday October 20). Carrying the torch for frequent collaborator Olli Mustonen, Tognetti and his colleagues will play the Finnish pianist’s eight-movement Nonet No. 2 from 2000 for two string quartets and double bass: a work that the ACO hastened to present in the following year and of which I can’t recall any trace.

 

Friday October 27

MSO PLAYS SCHUBERT 9

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall at 8 pm

Back in the old routine, this event shows the MSO back in the well-worn saddle.  Finishing off the program, the strings will suffer from an extended bout of RSI with the Schubert Symphony No. 9 which is Great, as its nickname claims, but draining for the performers who endure page after page of scrubbing.  British conductor/musicologist Andrew Manze starts off with Beethoven as well – the dour Coriolan Overture – and Isabelle van Keulen is soloist in Prokofiev’s rapidly accomplished (20 minutes or so) Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major.   Van Keulen was the Eurovision Young Musician of the Year in 1984 but has been much more than a flash-in-the-pan popular success; the pity is that it has taken her so long to get to these shores.

This program will be repeated at 8 pm on Saturday October 28 and Monday October 30 at 6:30 pm.

 

Saturday October 28

JACOBEAN COMPOSERS IN THE LOW COUNTRIES

Ensemble Gombert

Xavier College Chapel at 8 pm

John O’Donnell begins this journey into another historical byway with an organ work by John Bull, Prelude on Laet ons met herten reijne; probably written while the composer saw out his exile in Antwerp after having to escape from the law in England for the unmusical talents of fornication and adultery.  The Gombert singers come on to the scene with selections from Peter Philips’ Cantiones sacrae, apparently picking material from both sets for five and eight voices;  this composer had a more high-flown reason for living in the Netherlands and Belgium as he was a Catholic.  The main part of the program will probably be consumed by Richard Dering’s first book of Cantiones sacrae quinque vocum; here was another Catholic who nevertheless managed to get back to England when  appointed organist to that crazy, resentful royal, Queen Henrietta Maria.  A last chance to hear this excellent choir before its final-for-the-year Christmas celebration in the same venue on Saturday December 9.

 

 

 

 

 

 

WORKS FOR PERCUSSION AND RECORDER

Duo Blockstix

Move Records MCD 581

Despite the best intentions of its practitioners, the recorder doesn’t lend itself to contemporary sounds; that is, if you treat it fairly and don’t over-amplify it to a ludicrous degree.   Not only does it have a limited projection power, but also its mechanics make it hors de combat when considering harmonically complex instrumental fabric.   So it’s only to be expected that this CD doesn’t contain anything confrontational or challenging; indeed, a fair number of its twelve tracks make for very easy listening.   Even though the results sound pleasant enough, you come across a few patches where a sterner editorial hand might have been of service – moments where the fluency falters; not by much, but just enough to disturb a listener’s expectations.

Duo Blockstix comprises recorder player Alicia Crossley and percussionist Joshua Hill.  Both are Sydney musicians and, as far as I can tell, have not had much contact with Melbourne, except that Hill is a member of the Synergy Percussion group, so I must have seen him somewhere down the track.   Both are promoters of modern music but what they present on this CD is very comfortable listening and, it seems, just as comfortable playing.  The disc contains works by seven composers, most of whom are unfamiliar names to me. Daniel Rojas rings some tango-connected bells but nothing memorable.   I’ve looked at the catalogue of Peter McNamara‘s works and nothing springs out.   Julian Day is a well-known personality from ABC radio but his Five Easy Pieces are the first of his compositions that I’ve heard; very strange for a Bendigo-born writer with an impressive back-log of national and international appearances.

Damien Barbeler has made some glancing appearances here but is, like all composers mentioned so far, a Sydney resident.   Mark Oliveiro, educated in Sydney, now appears to be resident in America.   Tim Hansen has also enjoyed similar associations with the United States but his main area of activity seems to be New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.  Tasmanian-born Paul Cutlan doesn’t fit the rest of the CD contributors’ mould in his origins but, like all of them, his career path has been – to put it mildly – adventurous.

The players open with  .  .  .  of magic and realism by Rojas.   The composer’s notes refer to Llosa and Marquez, as the title would suggest, and the piece itself is intended to reflect an occasional junction of the everyday and the supernatural.   To my regret, I found nothing of the kind in experiencing this track.  It sets up a Latin beat which rouses in this listener’s mind the unexpected but ever-welcome shade of Arthur Benjamin and his Jamaican Rumba; it stays with the same pulse and the recorder and marimba ring changes on an amiable sequence of motives.   In the piece’s second half, a bit after the 4 minute mark, the players show slight signs of uncertainty – not with each other, but the progress of their individual parts.   Still, the 7 minutes’ duration passes by agreeably enough with plenty of colourful tinctures.

McNamara’s Duo Generere requires a bass recorder, marimba (both struck and bowed) and suspended cymbal.   The composer begins with a sequence of soft low-lying textures, then moves into a quiet development of his initial material; the instrumental interplay impresses as pretty simple and any rhythmic novelties that arise hold no difficulties. In spite of its modestly inventive opening, the work is heavy on ostinati and the overlapping ascending scales leading to the muted final notes, even with some plosive recorder punctuation, wear out their welcome.

With Day’s pieces, we are taken into a world that is reassuringly contemporary and involved with sound manipulation. The first gives slow-moving single notes and repeated-note patterns to both recorder and marimba; this pattern obtains for most of the other sections as well, with an occasional overblow or semi-tonal wavering to spice up the sparse Webernian atmosphere.   Like some of the master’s products, the dynamic level rarely rises above piano and the five elements take five minutes to negotiate.   Day’s creation presents as ultra-controlled, emotionally calm and –  as the title has it  – easy.

Hill’s marimba is rested for Barbeler’s Resonant Voice, but plenty of other percussion instruments are employed – gongs and cymbals  – and this complex follows a similar path to that of Crossley’s bass recorder.  The composer has given a poem (intentionally unidentified) to the performers to ‘read’; their interpretation constitutes the score, as far as I can tell.   The recorder line suggests folk-tunes; the percussion spends some time mirroring the wind instrument but enjoys an exposed cadenza near the performance’s ending.

Some of the writers comment on the odd combination they are working with but the general solution is to give the recorder prime position.   Barbeler restrains his percussion part – or Hill does – so that this sudden solo strikes you as remarkably aggressive, coming after Day’s pastel shades and – up to this point – courteous support for the recorder.

Oliveiro also employs the bass recorder/marimba combination for his Auto Dafe Suite.   The composer has produced four movements that call on various traditions or influences: medieval European modes, Malaysian kompang rhythms, Japanese sho clusters.   The title’s reference to Inquisition torments and the impact of Catholic missionaries and military forces on older civilizations is deliberate.   Sesquialtera Ritual summons up images of an organ rank although the actual sound is more primitive than European.   Rentak Silat Ritual refers to rhythm and martial arts, possibly Malay, and the effects are occasionally suggestive of a gamelan.   Iteration Ritual follows a repeated pattern, of course: a rising third, followed by two staccato explosions; Oliveiro offers variants but the basic path follows these two elements with a keen sense of suspense.   Finally, Reflection Ritual sets up a repeated note ostinato, then recorder and marimba follow the same melodic path under that relentless treble pecking.  The pattern is broken just at the end.

It’s an intriguing experiment and the combination of cultures works well enough.   One thing I missed was the composer’s reference to the ‘violent effect’ of Europe on Asian culture.   If anything, this piece sounded as though those cultures were doing quite well.   But it is heartening to see that the fascination of Eastern music still finds a response in at least one young Australian composer, all these years after Dreyfus, Meale and Sculthorpe were writing seminal scores – Clouds now and then, From within, looking out, Sun Music III – that revealed a welcome preoccupation with our place in Asia.

Three Pencils is Hansen’s suite for recorder and marimba where the spirit of Les Six is alive and well, as well as the Nino Rota of Fellini film scores.   The Cartoon Philosopher refers to Michael Leunig and is a very appropriate jaunt, quietly syncopated but as innocent as a landscape populated by Mr Curly, Vasco Pyjama and a multiplicity of ducks.   Five Year Arrival celebrates Shaun Tan’s famous book that occupied the artist for five years; a long-note melody curves over a continuous odd-notes arpeggio marimba figure, the result a fusion of action and musing.   Finally, Self Portrait in HB is a slow bluesy amble that suggests a personality along the lines of C J. Dennis’s Sentimental Bloke.

The Duo leave the longest work to the final track.   Cutlan’s Affirmations, originally written for amplified bass recorder, cello with electronic effects and didjeridu, starts placidly with a phrase-sentence for bass recorder and forward motion gathers speed as the marimba enters.   Then everything stops for a flute cadenza which circles around the same notes. The marimba returns and you become conscious of Cutlan’s plan of opening his main theme by degrees, as the marimba performs a cadenza also.

When the two musicians are working in tandem, the rhythmic patterns are regular, but the work’s interest comes in these interstitial solos.   With the concerted passages – even in the final melody revelation – the writing is unexceptional, despite some supple syncopations and the surprise of the recorder’s last gesture.   For a good deal of time, you have the impression of note-spinning: the duo could go on for quite a long time manipulating a limited suitcase of notes without necessarily getting anywhere new..

For sure, this duo combination is an exceptional one in its composition and the confidence of its members.   Crossley and Hill are to be applauded for their enterprise in working closely with pretty well all of the seven composers and getting music out of them.   Four of these works come from this current year – Rojas, Day, Oliveiro, Barbeler – while the other three date from 2014.    All works were premiered (Cutlan’s piece in this format) during a recital by Duo Blockstix on June 15 this year at the Wesley Music Centre, Canberra.    If you are after about 52 minutes of generally soothing, breathy music that makes no demands but just nibbles at your consciousness, this CD fits the bill.

LA SONNAMBULA

Victorian Opera

Hamer Hall, Victorian Arts Centre

Friday May 5, 2017

                                                                                     Jessica Pratt

Somehow I’ve missed the Victorian Opera’s previous concert versions of Bellini operas – Norma and I puritani.  A real pleasure, then, to come upon the latest enterprise, particularly as the performance worked very well, notable for a top-notch cast, a willing if distant chorus and a revitalised Orchestra Victoria, coping easily with this score and revealing a good deal more polish than had obtained during the previous night’s Carmen for Opera Australia.

Not that the opera has a large principal line-up.  The sleep-walking heroine Amina is a virtuoso role – well, it’s made so by the insertion of ornamentation to taste; Jessica Pratt proved more than equal to the task with admirable technical control and a fine characterization of open-hearted simplicity.  As her betrothed, Elvino, tenor Carlos Enrique Barcenas maintained a firm delivery throughout the night; if the high notes sounded strained, they were present and correct, although they would be more telling if the singer would treat them with greater relaxation of his physical equipment.   Paolo Pecchioli, a bass new to me, proved an exceptional Count Rudolfo, capable of responsible phrasing and varied delivery as evident from his first appearance where you immediately gained insight into a personality capable of command and sensitivity.

Another substantial contributor was Greta Bradman who, as Lisa, enjoyed two arias, including that which follows the opening chorus, Tutto e gioia, and the later one with chorus, De’ lieti auguri, where she thinks Elvino will marry her instead of the ‘unfaithful’ Amina.  The pyrotechnics came less thick and fast than in Pratt’s line but Bradman balanced her fellow principal soprano with a more solid timbre in production, and brought some welcome relief to the work’s sweetness and light with her barbed responses to her courting by Alessio.  This latter role brought bass Timothy Newton down from the chorus for the character’s contributions, although his role in ensembles often simply mirrored his upstage colleagues.

Mezzo Roxane Hislop sang Amina’s foster-mother, Teresa, with seasoned security, blotting her copybook only once with an early entry, almost cutting off the distant horns at  Ma . . . il sol tramonta, but quickly pounced on by conductor Richard Mills.  Tenor Tomas Dalton followed Newton’s lead, coming down from the choir for the Notary’s brief contribution when all things are going swimmingly at the betrothal scene.

Pecchioli had only two significant passages in which to shine.  The deceptively long Vi ravviso and its pendant Tu non sai is the more important in revealing something of the Count’s character as an informed, benevolent if somewhat secretive aristocrat with a splendid line in rolling reminiscence.   In Act 2, he attempts to explain (briefly and lucidly) to the village what a somnambulist is, V’han certuni che dormendo, before Elvino leads a chorus of denial.   As you’d hoped, the singer’s tone quality retained a carrying amplitude, not over-stressed in the part’s upper register and satisfyingly dark at the other end.

Barcenas made a favourable impression from his opening recitative, although the strain to get through the mordent to the upper B flat at rendesti il padre interrupted a well-controlled delivery.   But the following duet  Prendi: l’anel ti dono turned out to be one of the performance’s gems, the tenor gifted with the high road and keeping it.   Still, the four high Cs that turn up later in the scene would have gained from a less determined approach.   As shown better in Act 2, this tenor has an attractive authority across most of his compass, if not yet the floating elasticity of an ideal Elvino like Tagliavini.   A short burst of regret in Ah! Perche no posso odiarti gave us a telling insight into Barcenas’ talent at instant communication – address without complications, the lyric falling in the nutty kernel of his talent.

Pratt gave us an excellent Amina, from her first appearance to the happy (and quick) resolution of the opera’s action.   In the initial Come per me sereno cavatina, she demonstrated how to handle the composer’s thick fioriture, particularly in a throw-away piece of brilliance at non, non brillo (the sort of startling facility that typified Sutherland at her best). and again at a quicksilver non ha forza a sostener.   In fact, Pratt sustained her role beyond expectations at the crucial point where she is spurned by Elvino, maintaining our sympathy throughout the D’un pensiero quintet and the following Act 1 finale where again the character yields dynamic and range primacy to her ex-fiance –  whom any spirited girl outside opera would have now given up as a waste of space.

But it’s Ah non credea mirarti that crowns the opera – a surprisingly non-flamboyant peak, but you can expect only a few flashes of brilliance from a sleepwalking heroine (unless you happen to be watching Lady Macbeth or Lucia).   Pratt mirrored her opening aria’s happiness with a moving depiction of a credulous soul finding consolation in her dreams. But the pretty-well packed hall was waiting for the fireworks of Ah! non giunge, and Pratt didn’t disappoint, although the top E flat in her final solo bar was a close thing.

Without claiming to have made a concerted study of the scores, I find it hard to recall an opera of this type that requires so much chorus work.   Looking through the music afterwards, I was taken aback by the number of principal solos, duets and other ensembles that featured support, in this case from the near-omnipresent villagers.  On this night, the VO Chorus carried out their work with diligence, even if you might have wanted more power from the 32 singers involved.   Mind you, the body operated from behind Mills and his orchestra, who were nothing if not lively.  But their contribution assisted considerably in raising the work’s involvement level.

Another oddity that struck me after this performance was Bellini’s delight in his own triplet-rich, meandering melodies; his operating principle appeared to be that, if something was worth saying twice, it was probably worth repeating once more.   This can take its toll in Act 1 where the lovers’ idyllic satisfaction goes on for a patience-wearing stretch of time. However, the absence of staging, costumes, and scenery meant that the performance centred solely on the music – a real concert, in other words, and so an experience to be treasured for giving all executants, both vocal and instrumental, a blank field to work in, and handing to an audience the inestimable gift of witnessing music-making without theatrical distractions, in an arena where the performers stand purely on their own abilities.   After this, I’m more than a little regretful that I missed the company’s previous Bellini expeditions.

CARMEN

Opera Australia

State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday May 4, 2017

                                                                                 Stacey Alleaume

You’re pressed to put your finger on significant faults in the national company’s opening salvo for the Melbourne Autumn season, yet the net result doesn’t satisfy as much as you’d want it to do.  The Carmen, Rinat Shaham, is gifted with a full-bodied mezzo ran\ge and she plays her role well enough, if not distinctively.   Her Jose, Dmytro Popov, gets all the notes and is an assertive enough figure, even in that drawn-out final duet.   Shane Lowrencev is a competent Escamillo, his big number ringingly confident.  Our heroine’s gypsy/smuggler cohorts – Jane Ede (Frasquita), Sian Pendry (Mercedes), Luke Gabbedy (Dancairo), Benjamin Rasheed (Remendado) –  handle the middle act ensembles with gusto and reliability.   Even the principal soldiers – Christopher Hillier as Morales, Adrian Tamburini playing Zuniga – work through their parts with unswerving directness.

But the only time you felt that something exceptional was taking place occurred during that difficult Act 3 aria, Je dis que rien ne m’epouvante when the night’s Micaela, Stacey Alleaume, gave a flawless interpretation that clearly woke up a house that till that point was polite but not off its collective face with enthusiasm.   Yes, you could quibble with some of Alleaume’s breathing decisions but the careful construction of the lyric and her treatment of its melodic arches were not only memorable, but as good as I’ve heard live.

The opera’s last real solo made as good a high-point as any for the night, although its usual reception is often to be under-rated; after all, Micaela is the only decent character in the whole work and she can cast a pallid shadow in the middle of so much passion and nationalistic colour.   But Alleaume’s success was obvious, especially at curtain-call time when her appearance was greeted by the closest thing a first-night Melbourne audience comes to a roar of approbation.

Shaham’s Carmen follows the usual path.  She’s physically attractive, dominates the Habanera scene very well, handles her duets with Popov successfully enough, although there seemed to be a hesitant moment when a cue was dropped at the point in Act IV when Don Jose gives up the wimping appeals and turns violent.   Her fault?   His fault?   I wasn’t quick enough to pick it up.   But the best part of Shaham’s reading came early; her L’amour est un oiseau rebelle made deft work of an all-too-familiar aria, but her Seguidilla proved to be vocally distinctive and well-pitched – I don’t mean just the notes’ placement but the nice mix of sultriness and pseudo-innocence that constitutes Carmen’s quick-moving seduction of Don Jose.

Later, the brilliantly atmospheric opening to Act 2, Les tringles des sistres tintaient, worked to fine effect vocally, while the staging and choreography walked a distracting uninspired path.    Even Carmen’s sudden change of character into a freedom-fighter came over without generating too much scepticism.    But the Act 3 card scene, where Carmen takes over for the solo En vain pour eviter, the pace slowed to an improbable adagio, sucking out the music’s fluency and this section’s tragic resignation to the inevitable.   Shaham gave excellent work in the vituperation of the last act’s closing stages where the semi-erotic posturing of the previous three acts has no place, but the same can be said of many another Carmen that the company has given us.

Popov impressed in Act 1 for his straightforward delivery, even if he faced the same problem as every Don Jose in making his rapid fall from grace an occasion of general disbelief suspension.   His tenor is solid, stentorian rather than elegant, as evident in his Act 1 duet with Micaela, Ma mere, je la vois, where Alleaume turned into an emphatic second fiddle.   His La fleur que tu m’avais jetee had everything but suppleness; even the climactic top note wasn’t the usual bellow you get from many another singer.   But the duel scene with Escamillo held little suggestion of danger from either singer and Popov, while convincing in his communication of despair at the end, missed out on communicating the fierce brutality of murdering Carmen; equipped vocally to invest this duet with force and energy, the tenor failed to impress as deranged and heartbroken at what he has done.

One of the night’s successes emerged in the delicious Nous avons en tete une affaire quintet where the vocal combination came across as precise and well-judged, Jane Ede’s soprano occasionally riding without unnecessary force above the others.   Lowrencev’s big Votre toast number worked well enough; its refrain is difficult to freshen up but this bass-baritone refrained from bellowing.   The trouble with his characterization was its lack of spark; the invitation in Act 3 to his upcoming corrida sounded perfunctory, even when he got specific with Carmen.

Brian Castles-Onion conducted Orchestra Victoria and, the louder the forces involved, the better the score sounded.  To general gratification, the ensemble’s horns acquitted themselves very creditably in exposed passages, but every so often a fault marred the good work: a missed flute note in one of the entr’actes, an off-kilter upper string phrase, some heavy vibrato from the cellos, an over-egged percussion during choruses.

Teresa Negroponte‘s costumes concentrated on unsubtle bubble-gum colours: pink, orange, greens of various shades, purple.   Both adult and children’s choruses were dressed in a contemporary fashion, the latter looking as though they could have stepped off any street corner in Melbourne.   These bodies’ singing was solid in delivery, the males tending to hog the limelight, but then they are the force that sets the opera’s tone right from the opening scene.

Michael Scott Mitchell has constructed a touring set, a three-wall frame that could fit anywhere and doesn’t change throughout the opera.   A truck features in three acts – Lillas Pastia’s easily transportable tavern, then the contraband conveyance, finally the triumphal dais at the entrance of Escamillo and Carmen for their four lines of love declaration. Mitchell’s stage is on two planes with some connecting stairs along the stage’s length; this only proved a problem at one point in the last act where things were in danger of coming adrift between singers on the upper level and the pit.

Director John Bell has re-situated the opera’s locale to ‘somewhere resembling today’s Havana’.   As it’s only a semblance, he can gloss over references to Seville in the libretto.   Why Havana?   Because he knows it and he enjoys ‘the audience’s shock of recognition’ (of Havana, that much visited city?) and ‘the dramatic tension between a contemporary vision and an older text’  –  which is fine if difficult to achieve when dealing with a work so much wedded to its original place in both words and music.

Bell also wanted to avoid the ‘traditional . . .  flamenco dancers, gypsies and toreadors’.   Sadly, a lot of these remain, although I have to admit the dancers have been replaced  –  by four couples who specialize in a New York-style 50s latter- day jitterbug, co-existing with stretches of languorous leg movements, stylized sexual gestures reminiscent of a camped-up tango club, and some aimless gesturing from the non-dancing chorus.   More Havanian relevance comes to Bell with the findings that ‘it’s hot, it’s Spanish, it’s sexy, and right now seems to be flavour of the month’.   Much the same –  hot, sexy, Spanish – could be said about Mexico and the Philippines, but flavour of the month?   It was heading that way with the recent relaxation of  restrictions but any recovery from its Castro-era greyness (or jungle greenness} will be a long while coming.    As, I suspect, will a meaningful influx of tourists.

But these are all accidents of performance, attempts to set a scene and sustain it.   You’d have to work hard to find Cuba in this production; you might just as well look to Buenos Aires or Bogota for a locale positioning.   Sadly, to my mind, the city that came to mind most was Miami – clashing colours piled on and juxtaposed, old-time honky-tonk eroticism, rank depression in this nether-world behind a Mar-a-Largo facade.

But what you don’t get is any sense of urgent menace and, without that, the opera suffers considerably.

As for what the principals and chorus actually do, you won’t find much difference here to any other Carmen.  There’s an absence of crowds to populate the opening scene’s plaza; the official parade of the last act is not on-stage but in the audience, the chorus looking out at us as a poor substitute for the spectacle they’re observing.   But it’s in the principals’ activity that you look for some freshness of approach and I, for one, found not much.   Bell has not caused any chance of a frisson of outrage or excitement to interfere with his production; by its underlying staidness, it is probably for some a reassurance, for others a disappointment.

The work will be performed at 7:30 pm on May 6, 11, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26 and at 1 pm on May 13.   As far as I can see, the cast remains unchanged.

BACH VIOLIN CONCERTOS

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Hamer Hall

Sunday April 2 and Monday April 3, 2017

A congenial combination of Haydn and J. S. Bach provided the fodder for Richard Tognetti‘s ACO concerts over the weekend.   Playing to indubitable strengths, the ensemble presented three Bach concertos: that for solo violin in E Major BWV 1042, which some of us may know better as a keyboard work; the overwhelming D minor Concerto for Two Violins BWV 1043, fixed firmly in this backward-gazing mind by the inspired recording of David and Igor Oistrakh from the early 1960s; and the Concerto for Three Violins BWV 1064R, reconstructed from the Three Keyboards pseudo-original, but by whom I’m not sure – there’s an edition by Christopher Hogwood but the arranger could easily have been someone less familiar/eminent  .  .  .  like Wilfried Fischer (probably not).

Interwoven with the concertos came some smaller gems.  Tognetti began Sunday afternoon with the Preludio of the Violin Partita in E Major which he himself arranged, taking the semiquaver-stacked solo himself and leaving the ACO strings to pizzicato an accompaniment that struck me as having its basis in the organ-fronting Sinfonia score to the composer’s Cantata No. 29 where Bach indulged in yet another piece of recycling.   In the middle of the program’s second part, room was made for principal cellist Timo-Veikko Valve to perform the Sarabande from the E flat Suite straight, without any accompaniment.

The pair of Haydn symphonies were early: No. 22 in E flat, called The Philosopher for no apparent reason, and No. 27 in G Major.   Both were written within 15 years of Bach’s death but have little relationship with the Bach scores, except as possible commentaries on why the senior composer’s work fell into neglect as a less contrapuntally fixated generation took over the reins.

The Preludio lollipop worked as a throat-clearer, I suppose, its non-stop onward rush a test of left-hand dexterity in negotiating scales and arpeggios interspersed with some interest-raising leaps; Tognetti dispatched it with brisk authority.   More solid matter emerged in the solo concerto and on this wider canvas you could appreciate the violinist’s manipulation of what looks so four-square on the page.   Taking Eliot to heart, Tognetti does not cease from exploration but treats Bach’s bare bones with flexibility – not just inserting ornamentation but investing those long phrases with something close to rubato, just not as obviously following the wait/catch-up process that the term entails. In fact, it’s not just a case of being flexible, but more a pliable quality and, if the distinction seems non-existent, the only explanation I can offer is that you can hear that Bach’s solo line is being manipulated but it comes across as unforced, as part of the performer’s approach: not trying it on but treating the linear contour with respect for its organic elements.

In this work, Tognetti was more able to demonstrate this originality of approach, something that amounts to affection for the composer’s product informed by a fine array of dynamic shades and juxtapositions where the soloist could take familiar passages and re-animate them with unexpected differentiations of attack, in particular eschewing the sawing heftiness of many interpretations that emphasize the composer’s harmonic insistence rather than the chromatic subtleties that come between those solid tutti passages.   He might have been following a similar pattern in other works, but this was one where harpsichordist Joao Rival swapped his harpsichord continuo for a chamber organ in the Adagio movement, supporting the momentarily placid ACO strings – nine violins excluding Tognetti, three violas, three cellos and Maxime Bibeau‘s bass.

Later, principal violin Helena Rathbone joined her artistic director for the second solo part in that urgent double violin concerto and again the central players eschewed heft for sinuosity. as in the long intertwining exposed passage in the first Allegro from bar 58 to bar 84, or in the light application of two double-stop passages in the finale where both players pulled back and exposed the orchestral movement, rather than churning out their chords fortissimo.

It would be difficult to find a more affecting interpretation of this work’s central Largo where the pliability of tempo was a shared quantity between Tognetti and Rathbone but the players eschewed that  non-stop mimicry that you expect to hear in these pages.   By contrast, the last Allegro showed the ACO at its most exhilarating, with plenty of bite in attack and lots of brisk work near the nut in a reading that contrasted the linear clarity of its precedent with a fast-paced aggression.   An odder unexpected touch came with the first movement’s concluding tierce de Picardie where probably every other version I’ve heard is content to leave the violas with their F natural.

The last performed of these concertos, that for three violin soloists, brought Satu Vanska to the front as third-line specialist.   This sounded the most virtuosic of the program’s offerings with loads of exposure for each principal either in solo, duo or trio format. with some mini-cadenzas thrown in.   Both outer movements came across with loads of vim and gusto, all concerned obviously enthusiastic about the score’s emotional spaciousness, even in the plangent B minor Adagio.   Vanska eventually enjoyed the limelight in a rapid-fire moment of sustained exposure during the Allegro assai but the principal trio impressed chiefly by dovetailing and curvetting around each other with eloquent elegance.

The Haydn G Major Symphony in three brief movements brought some super-numeraries to the stage in braces of oboes and horns.   Not that this slight piece tests anybody except in clarity.   Unfortunately, the horn work generated an occasional blooper which, in this transparent score, makes more of an impact than usual.   Despite the repeats, this symphony is quickly accomplished and, if the speeds were on the rapid side, that’s fine as there isn’t much ground for meditation.   The E flat Major work sticks out from the ruck by asking for a pair of cor anglais rather than oboes; Michael Pisani from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and visitor Dmitry Malkin from the Jerusalem Symphony made a well-matched pair, offering antiphonal interplay with the Sydney Symphony’s Ben Jacks and Stephane Mooser  on horns in the initial ceremonial Adagio.  The ACO itself bounded through the work’s three following segments with as much finesse and dedication as they had shown throughout the program, but I have to confess that the second movement’s Presto repeats made for dutiful listening rather than the totally elevating experience that previous program components had brought about.

A BEETHOVEN ODYSSEY VOLUME 3

James Brawn

MSR Classics  MS 1467

For the third disc in his Beethoven sonatas cycle, James Brawn has picked out three works across a (roughly) 14-year span of production.  He starts with the consistently even-tempered, happy No. 2 in A Major, hurtles forward to No.. 17 –  the D minor Tempest of 1802  –  and finishes on the cusp of the second-to-third period interchange with the exultant  Les Adieux No. 26 in E flat.   With  this recording, Brawn moves closer to the half-way mark of his journey and the rewards from accompanying him, or just going along for the ride, keep on coming.

He finds a satisfying vein of restrained jocularity in the A Major work; not piling on the humour but giving a pleasurable heft to the staccato chords that recur in this sonata’s opening.   As expected, he keeps the texture clear, right from the opening pages’ semiquaver triplets alternating between the hands.   Even better proof of the player’s executive lucidity emerges whenever he has to negotiate a quick mordent or three, and the stretch of development past the first double bar is impressive in its transparent delivery – both times, since Brawn observes the second-half repeat.

Again, in the Largo‘s opening sentence, Brawn strikes a persuasive emotional level with his shaping of the near-static melody over that strangely moving pizzicato bass – Beethoven as a young man showing his capacity for inexorability with consolation.  The pianist’s innate polish of delivery shines out in the finely-judged trills of bars 9-11.  On the repeat, you get to take in the amiable charm infused into the extended melody line and the unflustered character of the movement’s ornamentation.   But with Brawn, detail is vital and makes a large element in the satisfaction of his performing style; each movement has some luminous instance, like the excellent accuracy of his pacing in the last six-bars where the slurred right-hand motive balances the left-hand’s combination of slurred and detached notes, leading to a moving subsidence in the final notes.

For the Scherzo, Brawn takes a level-headed look at the many staccato/accent markings, implying that, if Beethoven puts a dot over a crotchet, he doesn’t want the note under-valued but negotiated in such a way as to form part of the central motif.  There’s no lack of crispness as the message passes across treble and bass registers.  With the Rondo, the performer takes the Grazioso direction literally, employing as much room as he needs to make an elegant statement of the main theme’s arpeggiated upward sweep in all its disparate rhythmic transformations.  And you feel no need to have emphasized the second bar’s semiquaver rest after the leap of a 12th downwards: it’s a breath, not a separation mark.  When the key signature changes to accommodate A minor, Brawn moves into more declamatory, punchy territory, so that the eventual move back gains by contrast in this movement’s gradual unfolding.

Speaking of contrast, in this CD’s reading of the D minor Sonata,  those famous opening Largo bars are given dead slow – which makes the move to Allegro all the more invigorating.   Here also, the use of staccato is carefully positioned in a relentlessly driving urgency that prevails until the slightest of rallentandi at the end of the exposition.   The atmosphere moves into the spacious for the arpeggio-rich passage that follows the double bar and the progress becomes tightly-argued until the Largo returns, capped with two small recitatives that impress for their pianissimo understatement.  And Brawn is to be praised for his control of touch in the dynamic deceleration to silence during the movement’s uncompromising conclusion.

Another detail among many, it was hard to ignore the demi-semiquaver triplet/quaver rhythmic motto during the Adagio, mainly because you heard no smudging, the tattoo making its presence felt with telling regularity each time.   Brawn gave these pages the correct tension with his effectively administered crescendi cutting abruptly back to piano, a kind of emotional delaying tactic until the last six bars, here played at a slower tempo as Beethoven gives a final chaste valediction.  In the Gretchen-at-the-Spinning-Wheel Allegretto finale, the pianist treats each repetition of the main four-note figure as part of a sentence-length contributing to a composite, rather than as a series of perky individual blobs.  The effect makes this reading more legato than most, the interpreter trusting in the expression markings, particularly crisp sforzandi, to provide dramatic character, as in the passage leading back to the rondo tune after the post-exposition chromatic shenanigans.  Brawn is his own man here in what he chooses to link up and what he isolates; yet the spinning-wheel is unfaltering, right up to the final bars’ fade to black.

With the Les Adieux program piece, the shortest sonata on this disc, we come closer to the taxing masterpieces at the end of Beethoven’s piano sonata achievement.  The initial Lebewohl  is taken slowly, reinforcing Brawn’s consistent reaction to tempo and mood directions; the Allegro that follows proves brisk but not as much as its counterpart in the preceding sonata’s first movement.   The leave-taking nervousness comes through pretty consistently despite some cluttered chordal writing.   During the busy wide arpeggios in the left-hand, a few notes are ‘dropped’ or fail to register fully.

Luckily, Brawn stays the right side of Chopinesque melancholy in the Abwesenheit, abstaining from going maudlin at the Archduke Rudolph’s absence which this interlude memorialises.   Still, a more pliable outlining of the movement’s rise and fall might have given the pages more humanity; for example, the right hand solos at bars 13-14 and later at bars 28-30 which come across as too self-regarding and prim.  To compensate, Brawn promises suspense with a cleverly arranged breath-holding in the change-over bars.  The Wiedersehen movement captures an admirable vein of delight-in-action, dodging any hint of hysterical relief at the money being back in town.   Brawn eases the tension – or Beethoven’s insistence – with a deft pause or rallentando at various points; for instance, in the stretch between bars 130 and 140.   But he gives the movement’s interior linear mobility its due, right up to the pause for reflection at bar 218’s Poco andante  –  which is actually a bit more than poco as the pace is pulled back considerably more than you’d anticipate.   Still, it gives the segment’s tolling thirds and sixths time to reinforce the quietly celebratory underpinning of this interlude before the exhilarating conclusion.

In the next disc of this series, Brawn performs five sonatas – No. 9 in E Major, the Pastorale No. 15, No. 24 A Therese, the alla tedesca No. 25, and the two-movement No. 27.   This current CD whets the appetite considerably because of the continuously fresh approach and emotional breadth of Brawn’s interpretations.

RETURN TO THE DANCE

Michelle Nelson

Move Records MCD 531

This is a short (41 minutes) disc consisting of some homages, pastiches, imitations, take-offs – apply whichever term you like – and several original compositions.   Melbourne guitarist Michelle Nelson has constructed and recorded a set of six works (well, five: the first and last tracks employ the same material in different guises) that are intended to link the old and the new as well as to bring art-music back into the popular domain.  The results make for soothing sounds but nothing to challenge or excite the intellect.

Nelson’s creations vary in their persuasiveness.  While the debt to other composers presents as obvious in the specified cases, Nelson’s melodic and harmonic material can be sledge-hammer in impact.   For instance, for the CD’s title (and opening track) we are referred to Gaspar Sanz and Santiago de Murcia; the former became more familiar than Murcia because of Rodrigo’s use of six dances from the Baroque composer’s Instruccion as the basis for the Fantasia para un gentilhombre concerto of 1954.  Even dipping a toe into the treasury of guitar music that both writers have left gives you a pretty good idea of the basis on which this sequence of three pieces – Danza, Minuet, Return – was constructed: harmonic orthodoxy, simplicity of melodic elements, a steady rhythm in each (reinforced by bongos with occasional bar chimes for extra colour from Mark Murphy).  Nelson uses these tropes in fairly basic adaptations; her imitations tend to be lacking in interest, deficient in bite and lyrical appeal.

The Return is a rephrasing of the main melody from the opening Danza, but it eventually gives up on melody as a contributing element and simply alternates a dominant/tonic sequence.  The first two parts have suggestions of the two Spanish masters but Nelson’s variants sound pretty tame by comparison with those of her forebears.

Like many before her, Nelson heads for the summit with The Guitarist’s Bach: Hommage a J.S. Bach.   This is a five-movement suite, starting with a clear reference to the E Major Violin Partita’s opening Preludio; but, where the master uses the two semiquavers-quaver as the kick-off for an invigorating moto perpetuo, Nelson settles in for a more moderate. ambling progression with a simple underpinning that alternates between A and E, while some awkward figuration passages dawdle on top.   The Courante that follows holds more harmonic interest at the outset with some gentle early 20th-century key switches – but these are very quickly passed through.   Too little interest blights the Sarabande which gets stuck in a repetitious groove far longer than Bach would have allowed himself.   The Bouree has some odd touches, like an asymmetrical two beats added on to the first half  that make the dance’s internal balance questionable, because these extras don’t appear in the dance’s second half.   As for the Gigue conclusion, the tune is fluent enough but any supporting notes are functional at best and the harmonising structure that is provided remains unadventurous.

Ice Crystals, five individual vignettes, acknowledge no obvious ancestry and strike a quietly original note.   Nelson sticks to her last with a predictable framework of operations and, once she puts her focus onto a particular gesture, she exploits it relentlessly, as in the spread-eagled chord of the first piece, and the Villa-Lobos-suggestive harmonics of the second crystal.   Then comes a piece that succeeds because Nelson uses her descending arpeggio figure in modulations and shapes the piece’s movement with a finesse suggestive of a post-impressionist prelude.   Although No. 4 maintains its three-chord rhythm for most of the time, it impresses for its limpidity and the atmospheric echo provided by the CD’s engineers, while the final member of this bracket seems to revert back to the disc’s opening track although the melodic trajectory has changed.

Platypus Rag involves Nelson’s guitar with a ‘taropatch’ played by Lesley Gentilin.  This latter is a ukulele commonly found in Hawaii; from what I can glean, the taropatch nomenclature refers more to its slack-key tuning than to the instrument itself.  The rag itself is amiable but short – less than 2 minutes.

Dances for the New World begins with New Volta, an updating of Elizabeth I’s favourite choreographic exercise involving a partner.   I’m not sure whether the revision offers much advance on the older style, chiefly because Nelson’s updating lacks even the small variety of divisions that a volta aficionado like Byrd provided.   Rock ‘n Rolan: Hommage a Marc Bolan puts a sedately stepping tune into the bass with an inverted pedal note (progressing after a while to a chord) to provide a petty superfluous root function.   As for its relationship to the British rock musician, I can’t make any worthwhile comment, knowing only two Bolan songs.   Mirage offers a pleasantly euphonious series of chords above a cantus firmus of one rhythmic motif; however, it serves the purpose of giving the New World target audience a reassuring outcome   –   there’ll be no change to the expected and predictable.

Finally, Return to the Dance IV involves electronics alongside a normal classical guitar and one of Yamaha’s silent guitars.   The work refers back to the opening track but is as static as much of the rest of the disc: happy to keep the bass constant and proposing little above it except repeated chord patterns which are subjected to synthesizer manipulation.  In the end, the track turned into tedium.  Yes, you found plenty of easy listening in this album, which is at its most appealing in the Ice Crystals tracks.  But the overall effect is to put your receptors into neutral; the CD is pleasant, but there’s not much going on.