Diary August 2023

cliveoconnell

NGAIIRE & QUEENSLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Princess Theatre, Woolloongabba

Friday August 4 at 7:45 pm

Here, the QSO is participating in Open Season, which is basically a government initiative in music and art (so music isn’t one?) run out of the Tivoli and the Princess Theatre and demonstrating how you can fuse anything, I suppose. Ngaiire is a First Nations Papuan New Guinean songwriter whose work is apparently not confined to any specific genre; which is nice to know because, whatever happens, you won’t succumb to any dashed expectations. What the orchestra is doing in collaboration is anyone’s guess but its forces could be amplified by a band of some kind; that’s usually my experience when fronting up to one of these cool-meets-conservative love-ins. Nothing like a program is set down so far but I’m sure the QSO will rise to the occasion with a spirited line in chords, melodies and rhythms that have been weltered to death over the past 600 years. Benjamin Northey conducts and you’d have to wish him well in what I feel – from bitter experience, and not just through this latest NAIDOC week – will add up to something eminently forgettable. Tickets are $79 if you want to sit down, $65 if you’re feeling the need to stand/dance/shuffle, with a reduction to $55 for 4ZZZ subscribers. I’ve tried logging on to the sitting-down Mezzanine option: it doesn’t work. Added to which, regardless of your mode of attendance, there is a ‘handling’ fee (handling what?) of $5.95 as well as a booking fee dependent on how you want your ticket(s) delivered. Good luck with all that.

BOHEMIAN SERENADES

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday August 7 at 7 pm

We’re applying a pretty broad definition of Bohemianism here. On the one hand, you have the free-for-all of Puccini’s opera; on the other, we’re concerned with the Czech Republic or its antecedents and the earth that it occupies/occupied. So we’re getting Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings and that’s great because the composer was a born Bohemian in the land sense; as far as I know he wasn’t a Beat precursor. As well, we have Josef Suk’s Meditation on the Old Czech hymn ‘St Wenceslas’; a palpable hit as Suk was another native Bohemian and, to keep it all in the nationalistic family, he married Dvorak’s daughter. Then we have a couple of outliers. Bartok’s String Quartet No. 5 gets the Tognetti treatment, arranged for his ACO forces which should be a fine test of ensemble, especially in the middle scherzo/trio. But this composer is all-Hungarian, although his work offers a worthwhile commentary on the Romantic Czechs with whom he is here allied. Tucked in the middle, like the Suk, we hear American writer Caroline Shaw’s 2011/14 Entr’acte which takes its genesis from Haydn’s Minuet and Trio from the Op. 77 No. 2 String Quartet in F Major, the composer’s last work in the form. Why is this here? Well, it’s a sort of dance, so it has some bearing on the Bartok and the Dvorak. And when I say ‘sort of’, the connection is very tenuous; but not everything has to conform to a standard, does it? Tickets are going for between $25 and $129 with a ‘handling’ fee of $7.50 – which goes to somebody for documenting your purchase. What a pity that nothing is actually being handled but a computer.

COSI FAN TUTTE

Opera Queensland

Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday August 10 at 7:30 pm

The least popular of the four celebrated Mozart operas, if the easiest to stage; the dramatic setting stays the same except for a change of costume. Nothing much happens, compared to the riotous action of Don Giovanni, or the fairytale surprises in The Magic Flute, or the Feydeau ins-and-outs of The Marriage of Figaro. Two idiots are tempted to test the fidelity of their women; it all turns out morally badly and I’ve seen productions where the happy reconciliation of both ethically bankrupt sets of partners is undercut by hurt rejection, no matter how jocund the Act 2 finale sounds, with its insistent claims that the happy man bella calma trovera. The two mutable young things, Dorabella and Fiordiligi, are sung by Anna Dowsley and Samantha Clarke respectively; their companions, Guglielmo and Ferrando, are taken on by Jeremy Kleeman and Brenton Spiteri. Don Alfonso will be Shaun Brown, Despina is Leanne Kenneally. The Queensland Symphony Orchestra is to be conducted by Zoe Zeniodi and the director is Patrick Nolan. It’s all great entertainment if the four main principals have interesting voices; otherwise, it can drag to the point of desperation. You can see it for between $75 and $165 with the usual $7.20 fee added on; but the concessions (Senior, Student, Child) are good value, for once.

CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Queensland Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Bank

Friday August 11 at 7:30 pm

Peter Luff, an associate professor at this Conservatorium, is directing an ensemble in a straightforward program featuring works that these young musicians might never encounter again in their professional lives. The night begins with Haydn’s Symphony No. 92, often called the Oxford because the composer is said to have conducted it in that city while receiving an honorary doctorate. Nobody is saying for certain that this is the one but it’s got the name and its academic pseudo-provenance suits this occasion. The night’s finale is Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony which occupied the writer, on and off, for 13 years or so. In the end, Mendelssohn didn’t propose the Scottish sobriquet but you can hear enough skirling suggestions to justify the title. The work is unusual in being played without breathing spaces between its movements. Between the symphonies, bassoonist Chris Buckley fronts the Ciranda das sete notas by Villa Lobos which plays around with the C Major scale in the guise of a children’s dance. The accompaniment is for string orchestra but the woodwind soloist dominates proceedings. Tickets run between $25 and $45 but there’s no booking/handling/penalty fee attached.

REEL CLASSICS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday August 13 at 11:30 am

Once again, the QSO is drawing a connection between its endeavours and those of Hollywood. We’re treated to a series of musical scores that accompany some outstanding films – and some pretty ordinary ones. But the best feature of this program is that each composer gets a single representation, so the range on offer is pretty broad. Nicholas Buc conducts and hosts. His fare begins with Monty Norman’s theme for James Bond, what you hear at the start of every film when the credits start; the online QSO literature promises ‘Music from James Bond’ but, as far as I can tell, Norman wrote only that one theme for the wavering gun barrel. Miklos Rozsa’s Parade of the Charioteers from Ben Hur will bring back memories of Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd indulging in their final romantic exchange of looks over the backs of sweating chariot horses. Next comes music from Gone with the Wind, attributed to John Barry; but it was surely written by Max Steiner – unless there’s another screen version of Mitchell’s awful novel that I’ve not come across since the 1939 original. Bernard Herrmann compiled his own suite of three sections from his soundtrack for Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Then come well-remembered images of Richard Todd leading his squadron to wash up the Ruhr dams escorted by Eric Coates’ Dam Busters March. And, while we’re on a British patriotic binge, what better than Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou’s Chariots of Fire theme; just the thing to make you want to run along a beach with a cluster of other Hooray Henries. Piling Pelion upon Ossa comes Maurice Jarre’s Overture to Lawrence of Arabia and its relentless combination of desert-longing and the responsibilities of empire. Do an about face for the Love Theme from Nino Rota for The Godfather which shows American-Italo sentimental corruption at its finest. A switchback and here comes Kenneth Alford’s Colonel Bogey March which is to the British Isles what the Radetzky March was to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was used in David Lean’s 1958 film The Bridge on the River Kwai to singular effect, a swaggering delight in a plethora of tosh – thanks, Alex Guinness. A real work by John Barry comes with his score (not all of it?) for Out of Africa; one of the better features of this tedious film. Back to the USA for an antidote to Rota’s glorification of the underworld; Henry Mancini’s Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany’s which celebrates fey idiocy with significant panache. Just in case you thought our own native land had been neglected, we’re treated to a rolling out of the Blue Hills Pastorale by Ronald Hanmer; not exactly film music but who needs Tina Turner belting out We Don’t Need Another Hero? Then, a return to Hollywood with John Williams’ March from Raiders of the Lost Ark – the only Indiana Jones film worth watching. Tickets are $75 to $130 with hefty discounts for children and students but the inevitable $7.20 booking swindle.

SPIRITED

Ensemble Trivium

Old Museum, Bowen Hills

Thursday August 17 at 7 pm

In this presentation, the ensemble has four participants: flute Monika Koerner, violin Anne Horton, viola Yoko Okayasu, and double bass Marian Heckenberg. You won’t find many scores that cater for all four at once, so this program is a hard-worked one, including a new composition by Brisbane’s own John Rotar. Written for flute, viola and bass, this work is called Bromeliad Dances, setting up a rush of floral visions that will probably not be realized, just as Cyril Scott’s Lotus Land disappoints (probably nothing to do with horticulture) and as the Waltz of the Flowers suggests humans more than plant life. As well, Koerner, Horton and Okayasu will present an arrangement of Kodaly’s 1920 Serenade for two violins and viola; not that there’s much re-organization involved. Also, three of the group will play Erwin Schulhoff’s Concertino for flute, viola and bass from 1925; a deft frivolity in which the flute changes to piccolo in the even-numbered of its four movements. Tickets range from $22 to $55, depending on your age and whether you buy at the door; whatever your classification, a 2% credit card fee applies, which is indicative of some performers’/venue penury but, at these prices, isn’t as bad as at nearly every other musical event in Brisbane these days.

DEATH AND THE MAIDEN

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Bank

Sunday August 20 at 3 pm

Obviously, this afternoon will come to a climax with the great Schubert quartet, a score that always grips you, even if the reading proves mediocre. Here, we have associate concertmaster Alan Smith, his wife violin Jane Burroughs, viola Nicholas Tomkin, and cello Andre Duthoit. They’re all QSO members and play together in what I presume is collegial bliss; more importantly, these four musicians are members of the Adina String Quartet which has been a unit for over 17 years. Before this masterpiece, we are treated to some novelties. First comes Etienne Perruchon’s 5 Danses Dogoriennes, composed as an instance of folk art in the composer’s imagined European country of Dogora and requiring a cello and five timpani (plus three woodblocks, apparently). Then we hear a new work (as yet unnamed) by David Montgomery, the QSO’s long-time principal percussionist. Reciprocity by Texas-born low-brass master James Meador follows, in this incarnation for associate principal trombone Ashley Carter and the orchestra’s Mr. Tuba in Thomas Allely. A final duo comes with West Australian Myles Wright’s Pair Up for marimba and trombone, presumably Montgomery and Carter. Going by the prevailing ethos, you’d have to think that Montgomery’s new work is also a duo, possibly for himself and principal timpanist Tim Corkeron who’ll be on hand for the Perruchon dances. Tickets range between $30 and $55, amplified by an outrageous $7.95 ‘transaction fee’ – a charge for nothing more than having the audacity to attend this recital, it seems.

CLASSICAL CONNECTIONS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Bank

Friday August 25 at 7:30 pm

Another small-scale concert from the QSO, conducted by Umberto Clerici, this event runs for 70 minutes without interval. The first two elements of the program are divertimenti: Mozart in E flat K. 166, and Bartok Sz. 113. The first is a five-movement decet for pairs of oboes, clarinets, cors anglais, horns and bassoons and dates from the composer’s 17th year, still in Salzburg. Not much here to cause the plaudits to rain down except its characteristic polish and some unexpected melodic oddities. The Hungarian master’s Divertimento was the last work he completed in Europe and a mild-tempered construct, a more idyllic work than the composer’s previous commission from Paul Sacher and the Basel Chamber Orchestra: the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. For this reading, Clerici is calling on the complete corps of 46 QSO strings, over double the minimum that Bartok specified to handle the score. The last component of this afternoon is Haydn’s Symphony No. 45, the Farewell, where the orchestra gradually denudes itself of players in the last movement until only two violins are left playing an exquisite, moving duet. The only problem I’ve encountered with this eloquent finale is the stomping off by some players where rubber soles should have been the management’s order of the day. You can buy tickets for between $30 and $75, with the traditional QSO charge of $7.95 for paying you the courtesy of taking your money.

FRENCH CONNECTIONS

The Queensland Choir

St John’s Anglican Cathedral, Ann St.

Friday August 25

At the time of writing, only a few details are known about this event. What is certain is that the Choir will be essaying two works: Faure’s Requiem and the Te Deum in D by Charpentier. Which version of the idiosyncratic Mass for the Dead will be used – 1888, 1893, 1900 – is uncertain, as are the identities of the soprano and bass soloist. Also, we don’t know the conductor’s name, although you’d have to anticipate that it would be the Choir’s regular director, Kevin Power. The only part of the Charpentier work that is well-known is the opening Prelude, a march that is popular among organists for post-ceremony wedding music. But it involves a smaller orchestra than the Faure: four woodwind, two brass, timpani and strings (not many). Finally, there are no details about the price of tickets or whether booking fees apply. Which means everything is remarkably up in the air still, about six weeks away from the performance.

ROMANCE

Queensland Youth Symphony

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday August 26 at 7 pm

These youngsters will have more than a cupful of romance before this night is over. Under conductor Simon Hewett, they begin with Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe Suite No 2, basically the last third of the ballet and featuring both a sparkling vision of dawn and a bacchanale several steps more persuasive than Saint-Saens’ effort 35 years earlier. It’s a fine display piece for everyone involved with one of your great non-Debussy flute solos near the start. After interval comes the Symphony No. 2 in E minor by Rachmaninov, very popular on ABC Classic radio – they seem to give it an airing once a week. And it was a favourite of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, thanks to Hiroyuki Iwaki’s enthusiasm for the score. It’s long but, thanks to the quality of its melodic inventiveness, never tiring. Guest Lewis Blanchard – well, sort of: he’s the QYS’s principal – will front Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, presumably in the easier version of 1948/9, adapted to commissioner Benny Goodman’s technical limitations. Not so much romance here, although the first movement of the two has its own lyricism which is generally obliterated after the cadenza linking it to the Latin American dance finale. Admission ranges from $18 (student) to $45 (adult) with nothing in between, and the usual QPAC excessive charge of $7.20.

Youth and experience in successful combination

cliveoconnell

MOZART

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday June 26, 2023

Australian Chamber Orchestra

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peaceful but predictable

cliveoconnell

ECLIPSE

Concordia Mandolin & Guitar Ensemble

Move Records MCD 612

The latest product by this well-known Melbourne group comprises works by well-known guitar/plucked instrument expert Michelle Nelson who was first guitar with the Melbourne Mandolin Orchestra across this century’s first decade, taking up the same position with Concordia in 2013. In fact, Nelson has been conducting a healthy professional life for 40 years now and has produced several additions to the Concordia repertoire – all of them, as far as one can judge from this CD, traditional in language and instrumental use.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. This composer is given to wondering how modern music composition (20th century) strayed so far from popular taste of the time. Yeah: it’s the same sort of thing I self-divert with when listening to the Gabrielis and Bach, Gesualdo and Chopin. Funnily enough, I tend to come down on the side of the benighted composer who finds little stimulating in the simple-minded. But, if you want to continue finding your inspiration in the folksy and the English bucolic, be my guest; just don’t wait around for praise on your originality.

This small CD (40′ 45″ long) contains four compositions: Bishops Spell, which is a musical portrait of musicians Ida (recorder) and Frank (mandola) Bishop; the title work Eclipse: Concerto for Mandola and Plucked Strings with soloist Darryl Barron; After the Fire, a rearrangement of an earlier construct expanded into two movements; and Jim Greer’s Jig. This recording was due for release in 2020 but universal infections got in the way; hence, its arrival now. So the family portrait was recorded at Move Studios in 2019, the concerto at the same venue in 2018, the two-movement new construct probably put down in 2022, and the jig recorded live during Concordia’s first post-lockdown concert at Christmas, 2021.

The Bishops’ family portrait begins with a jovial, folk-like tune (British Isles). Will Hardy‘s recorder answering the orchestra’s statements with variations, the whole featuring some extensions that seem to work against the four-bar phrase pattern that matters start off with. Still, the trend is to the non-adventurous, although the atmosphere is jaunty. That’s Ida dispatched. Frank begins more soberly – a slow 3/4 rather than Ida’s brisk 6/8, and the more meditative male enjoys a calm depiction from Darryl Barron’s mandola, even though it has to be observed that Ida is well-represented in this movement, having a definite melodic and descant function in turns. Furthermore, Ida has the last word.

The Family Life third movement has a percussive element as underpinning – just your normal hand-beaten drums (bongos?) supporting the two soloists as they work together through a four-square melody and its small-scale elaborations, It all sounds slightly medieval/Renaissance in character, as though the Bishops were early music enthusiasts; and, as I know from bitter experience, the interest in such complexes generally falls to the solitary woodwind line. Things move from the four-square 4/4 a little after the half-way point to a more meditative triple-beat interlude, before the drums return and we come together for a rousing estampie conclusion. As you’d assume Nelson’s language is eminently assimilable with nothing much to astonish anyone born before 1700.

The composer’s Eclipse concerto has three movements: Eclipse: Approach, Eclipse, and Eclipse: Release. I can’t argue for the shape of the first of these. It takes a firm stand at the start with some block chords, a strong melody based on an upward-rising arpeggio; the composer allows both soloist and orchestra to deal with both elements, then stops before moving into more lyrical territory. Nelson has an occasional habit of curtailing or extending her regular phrases but the working out of material is orthodox with a lot of pattern-work where the development section would be. A return to the opening second-inversion chord/arpeggio melody and we’re not long before the home stretch is in sight.

[As a completely oblique observation, I have to report that the strongest impression I have from what I’ve heard so far on this disc recalls nothing so much as Debbie Wiseman’s theme music to the BBC One production Shakespeare & Hathaway. It might be the suggestion of massed lutes that is produced by the Concordias, or the definite if unadventurous bass line, or the optimistic bent of both Wiseman and Nelson. But the aura is reminiscent of Stratford at its cleanest, as we see it in the series, despite the mandolin’s necessity to play tremolando much of the time.]

The middle slow movement starts out in the same key as its predecessor, the threnody melody articulated over a fixed bass note for the opening strophes. The soloist occupies a semi-prominent role before everything halts for a cadenza where the harmony stays pretty constant, apart from a chromatic frisson about the four-minute mark. The slow march recommences, working on three layers (eventually four when a sustained bass note is added) as the rhythmic level sees people playing with Beethoven’s ‘Fate’ motive. This leads to a climactic point, from which apogee the music dies out to an ambiguous conclusion – which is actually an imaginative depiction of the state in which an eclipse’s maturation leaves us.

The Release is very abrupt: we’re immediately back in clear skies with a slightly threatening march that, for much of its initial statement, follows an iambic metrical pattern. The first antistrophe appears to recapitulate a memory from the first movement, before we slow down for a more melancholy stretch that ends interrogatively before we revert to the march/strut. Another cadenza appears which owes something to Rodrigo although lacking that master’s quirkiness and timbral curiosity. Back to the iambic rhythm and a final reference to the first movement’s chord inversion, and this mainly-minor mode concerto ends with a unison/octave emphasis.

A minor quibble: Nelson entitles her first movement to After the Fire – Incinerat – as ‘burnt to ashes’. It’s a bit more specific than that as it means ‘he/she/it had burnt it (to ashes)’, the pluperfect of incinero. Not that it means anything to most people except those of us who sweated through six years of the language in secondary school, back in the days when they taught it. In fact, the afore-mentioned tremolando effect is atmospherically suggestive here, especially at the start where a free-standing flickering comes across very well. I’m not as enamoured of the guitar and bass solos that follow because they bring a touch of interruption, of unexpected voices in a bleak aural landscape.

Harmony Returns, the second movement, begins with a reversion to the expected. The ambience is TV soap comfort with a series of rising adjacent chords spreading the benignity until a tune arrives after a minute of preparation: an amiably swinging 6/8 melody which is well-established before a subsidiary figure enters for some more mercilessly predictable repetitions. Then it’s heigh-ho for the original lightly syncopated melody that has suggestions of something that could have been produced by/for Captain Corelli – a nostalgic Mediterranean travelogue, perhaps. As with much of Nelson’s output, it’s not so much a question of harmony returning but more an iteration of the fact that harmony never left.

It’s probable that the composer’s fire is one of the bush infernos that have swept across the country, but the post-crisis ambience that she has constructed is free from any signs of PTSD or shivers of reminiscence – at least, as far as I can tell. As for the CD’s finale, the jig in memory of Concordia member Jim Greer, it’s a pretty rough affair, compared to the preceding tracks. Attack is not as split-second as the group is capable of and the rhythm is heavy-handed; everyone sounds as though they’re not at ease with the work which, for some reason, ends on a chord inversion. Yes, it’s a live performance after a long epidemic-controlled cessation of activities, but the players’ assurance of address does not satisfy as much as in the three preceding scores.

 

 

Diary July 2023

cliveoconnell

RAY PLAYS TCHAIKOVSKY

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday July 7 at 7:30 pm

Nice to see the QSO administration being so relaxed with this guest artist. Violinist Ray Chen has returned to Brisbane where he spent some youthful and adolescent years learning his craft and sweeping various prize pools. He’s here to take on the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto: one of the most familiar works of its kind in the standard repertoire and a never-failing source of delight to observers as its executants generate rolling lyrical fabric and scintillating technical passages. The little I’ve seen (and heard) of Chen augurs well for this interpretation. Tonight’s conductor, Giancarlo Guerrero, is new to me but not to this city as he appeared here in 2018 to conduct the Shostakovich Symphony No. 10. This time around, he’s directing the same composer’s symphony No 8, nicknamed the Stalingrad in those halcyon days of misplaced trust before the end of World War Two. I don’t know where Guerrero acquired the reputation as a notable interpreter of the Russian master’s works – perhaps the result of too little research from the QSO’s publicity staff – but he’ll have little trouble with this C minor five-movement score that stands out among the composer’s output of 15 symphonies for its stark tension. Tickets range from $90 to $130 with some concessions available, whittled down by a booking fee that could teach the Reserve Bank a thing or two about financial outrage.

This program will be repeated on Saturday July 8 at 1:30 pm

CHOPIN’S PIANO

Musica Viva

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday July 13 at 7 pm

This entertainment centres around the composer’s Op. 28 Preludes, written in Majorca where Chopin, George Sand and her children retreated for health reasons – a disastrous venture, except in terms of Chopin’s creativity. The pianist for this dramatised venture is Aura Go who is complemented by actor Jennifer Vuletic in a staging of a book by Musica Viva’s director Paul Kildea, the exercise directed by Richard Pyros. From what you can make out from publicity shots, the instrument being used is not actually an imitation of the small local piano that Chopin used, but a modern-day grand. You’d have to assume that Go plays all the preludes and Vuletic does – what? Also from the Musica Viva publicity, both artists are dressed the same, so perhaps one represents the artist at work while the other represents his psychological workings. All fine, as far as it goes. Why was the choice made to feature women artists only? Is it an ironic comment on the late 19th century idea that the composer’s music was for females – too feminine, too delicate? Or is it a trendy transgender concept: every woman her own Chopin? This staging was first essayed in 2021, so this seems a bit soon to bring it back. Perhaps it’s very good. Tickets move between $15 and $109 (those cheap ones are Student Rush) and I can’t tell whether or not a booking fee is added on.

SUNSET SOIREE

Southern Cross Soloists

Foyer, Judith Wright Arts Centre, Fortitude Valley

Saturday July 15 at 5 pm

This entry is going to be short: there’s no indication yet as to what is being played here in this hour-long recital. The players are listed: Courtenay Cleary violin, James Wannan viola, Guillaume Wang cello, Tania Frazer oboe, Daniel Le piano. The possibilities are many, of course, although you might hope for Mozart’s Oboe Quartet, and you could pretty much name any piano trio, quartet or violin/viola/cello sonata and it could turn up. What I have observed about these Sunset programs given by the Southern Cross younger set is that they rarely contain a complete work; rather, these ad hoc ensembles offer movements from larger compositions. And the three artists listed for the previous exercise in the series are also playing in this one: Wannan, Wang and Frazer. Tickets fall between $30 and $48 without, as far as I can see, any booking fee/extortion.

DAY IN THE ORCHESTRA 2023

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio South Bank

Saturday July 15 at 7 pm

Here’s the ultimate in popular appeal: an invitation for selected community instrumentalists to play with the state’s leading orchestra in some regular repertoire. The assembled forces begin with The Mastersingers Overture by Wagner, move to Maria Grenfell’s River mountain sky for a touch of (currently) Tasmanian art, switch to the growling nationalism of Sibelius’ Finlandia, finally go for broke with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. Comes the day and the combined ensemble sits down to rehearsal – God knows how long it takes to get these four pieces into assimilable shape, but I’m sure conductor Richard Davis will be able to organize the works into position. Or perhaps there are a series of preliminary runs-through and we’ll wind up with excellent readings. In any case, if you were interested in participating, applications have closed and you’re reduced to the rank of spectator like the rest of us. Tickets range from $20 to $39 but the booking fee remains the same at all levels: $7. 95. To be fair, you’re getting about 50 minutes of music for your dollars.

FISH, CHIPS & WARM BEER

Ensemble Q

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday July 16 at 3 pm

We’re promised a boozy affair here, with running around, mugs clinking and all the frowsty fun of an English pub. Sadly, a lot of the music on offer militates against this nostalgic (for some) scenario. I’m not even sure about the suitability of the night’s first offering: Vaughan Williams Six Studies in English Folk Song which are mostly rather wistful and slow, apart from the last one (‘As I walked over London Bridge’). The set was originally for cello and piano but the composer authorised versions for violin, viola and clarinet. Next comes Vaughan Williams’ pupil Elizabeth Maconchy’s String Quartet No. 3 which some group played here last year; a 10-minute but somehow lavishly coloured work in one movement with five sections. Leaping from 1938 to 1991, we encounter Thomas Ades Catch Op. 4 for violin, cello, piano and errant clarinet which looks more amusing than its music actually sounds. Still, you’d only encounter this sort of thing in a particularly eclectic hotel. Malcolm Arnold’s Three Shanties require a wind quintet and make much more suitable ‘public’ music, in particular the first which makes play of ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor’. Frank Bridge’s Phantasy: Piano Quartet, another one-movement score, builds on the composer’s success in Cobbett’s Phantasie competition to have composers revisit ye olde Englishe methodology. This is matched with a score by Bridge’s most famous pupil: Britten’s Sinfonietta Op. 1, probably in its original scoring for five wind and five strings. Last comes an odd Australian composition in Frederick Septimus Kelly’s Elegy in memoriam Rupert Brooke for harp and strings, possibly in the string quartet version arranged by Richard Divall. This is definitely not pub/beer/chips music despite the composer’s devotion to all things British; its first performance was directed by Bridge and it’s become something of an Australian equivalent to the Barber Adagio. As usual, performer details are non-existent but ticket prices are not: $55 or $75, with a $7.20 fee for daring to book and (compulsorily) use a credit card.

DREAMS AND FANTASIES

Orchestra Corda Spiritus

Old Museum, 480 Gregory Terrace, Bowen Hills

Sunday July 16 at 3 pm

From what I can make out, this is an organization of enthusiasts who set themselves a high bar. For this program, they are following a predictable first-half format but change their pace after the concerto. To begin, we hear Weber’s Oberon Overture, which is a none-too-safe staple but we live in some hope. Guitarist Hamish Strathdee then takes the lead for Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez which asks for a small orchestra – pairs of woodwind, trumpets and horns, and strings (not too many). But the work is scored for transparence and nobody can deviate in pitch or attack. Then the players under Chen Yang take on extracts from Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and again you have very clean writing with nowhere to hide. No singers are involved, so that precludes Ye spotted snakes: my favourite from the whole set of 14 pieces. It will probably be the Overture, Scherzo, Nocturne and Wedding March, with the Intermezzo an optional extra. Tickets cost between $20 for students to $33 for an adult, with a few concessions in between.

FINAL FANTASY

New World Players

Brisbane Powerhouse, New Farm

Wednesday July 19 at 7:30 pm

Not sure about this one, but that’s only because this style/school/genre of music is out of my sphere; more attuned to my grandchildren’s tastes, I’m assuming. Final Fantasy is both a media organization and an apparently endless game, capable of limitless variants in action – and music. It’s hard for the venerable among us to take video games seriously; my one-time computer repairman/technician used to snigger into his Kleenex when he saw the games that I played – Solitaire, Super Granny, Turtix, Roads of Rome – and promise to lend a hand when I got into ‘real’ games like the sado-masochistic murderous futuristic warfare that seems to be the current stock-in-trade. But you can come across music for contemporary games on ABC Classic FM’s Game Show, so this sort of output must have gained some cachet with the powers-that-be. What is promised on this program are ‘classics and surprises’ from the music for Final Fantasy, performed by the New World Players under Eric Roth with ‘visionary contributions’ from writers such as Nobuo Uematsu and Arnie Roth (Any relation? Yes, indeed: father and son). To be honest, I’m not smitten with this soundtrack material; what I’ve heard of Meena Shamaly’s offerings strikes me as derivative beyond the realms of belief although I admire the way the man can pronounce the names and products of game show creators – such a change to the usual ABC announcers who fall to pieces when faced with a Georgian, Icelandic or Vietnamese composition/composer (but then, like Eddie McGuire, they never seem to rehearse their offerings). Seats are available at $85 and there is a ‘service fee’ of $6.90 – which seems a trifle odd as the site claims ‘no additional fee’ for having your ticket(s) delivered by SMS or PDF . . . but clearly, there is!

MUSICAL THEATRE GALA

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday July 22 at 1:30 pm

Yet another in the QSO’s understandable quest to get bums on seats, here with a selection of 21 excerpts from musical theatre. This time around, I’m recognizing more composers, which probably means that the program organizers have erred on the conservative side. Music and lyrics for Guys and Dolls were provided by Frank Loesser and we’re to hear the Overture, If I were a bell and Luck be a lady from that estimable show. Another three products come from Stephen Sondheim in the Night Waltz and Send in the clowns from A Little Night Music, plus Giants in the sky from Into the Woods. Still another treble will appear from Claude-Michel Schonberg: On my own, Bring him home, and Do you hear the people sing?, all from that strange digest, Les Miserables. Bernstein scores two numbers, both from West Side Story: the Cool Fugue from his Symphonic Dances arrangement, and Maria. Single honours are awarded to Jerry Bock for Vanilla icecream from She Loves Me; Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin represented by Corner of the sky; Come what may from David Baerwald and Kevin Gilbert for Moulin Rouge; the classic Anything you can do from Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun; and, from Jekyll and Hyde, Frank Wildhorn’s This is the moment – the solitary memorable item from that work’s score. But the night’s major contributor is Alan Menken with five numbers: Colours of the wind from Pocahontas; the Overture and Take as old as time from Beauty and the Beast (the latter in its ‘pop version’); from Hunchback of Notre Dame, Out there; and Somewhere that’s green from Little Shop of Horrors. The QSO’s direction falls to the evergreen conductor of such events, Guy Noble, and his vocalists are Martha Berhane, Ashleigh Denning, Daniel Belle and Jonathan Hickey. Tickets come between $90 and $130 with concessions as low as $30 for a child. But the surcharge is $7.20, which is a cover-all for multiple tickets.

This performance will be repeated at 7:30 pm

OTTOMAN BAROQUE

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday July 24 at 7 pm

The ABO has a habit of mixing its media. Who can forget its concerts involving groups like the Circa troupe or La Camera delle Lacrime where ambition sometimes met up with reality? On this occasion, the Brandenburgers are venturing where the Australian Chamber Orchestra recently ventured in trying to forge a link between the Baroque and Islam; I don’t think there’s much in it but stand to be corrected. Obviously, the entertainment’s main attractions are members of the Mevlevi Sufi Order from that conservative city Konya in southern Turkey. Pushing the local influence even further, the Brandenburg Choir will sing settings of poems by Konya’s own Rumi. We are promised Ottoman instruments ( the oud? ney? kanun?) and a recreation of the mystic ceremony which is the main purpose of these dervishes who aren’t concerned with display but with Islam. Which could be a problem with the ABO and its flamboyant director, Paul Dyer, who tend to be very concerned with the exercise of personality and that brand of Western music-making where the musician is set somewhere above the music by means of virtuosity or the exercise of craft. I don’t know: you could be transported but, for some of us, the whole thing is bound to be an entertainment more than an enlightenment. Will there be anything else, something to justify the Baroque tag? It’s not clear, nor is the length of this concert/meditation. Definitely worth a look, not least because this is the first appearance by the ABO in Brisbane for some time. Concession tickets start at $39 but the regular prices move between $59 and $102, with the usual QPAC add-on fee (for standing in the middle) of $7.20.

BEETHOVEN AND ELGAR

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday July 28 at 11:30 pm

Only two works on this program: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C and the Elgar Symphony No. 2. Soloist in the concerto is Dalby-born London resident Jayson Gillham whom I’ve heard play with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to fine effect. He’s made quite a name for his Beethoven performances, including an album of the complete concertos with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra under Nicholas Carter which at least got nominated in the 2021 Aria Awards. Elgar in E flat is the one with the Shelley quote on the first page: ‘Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight!’ – which invocation he goes on to substantiate at some length. The work is a too-fine farewell to the Edwardian decade, a generous encomium dedicated to and wasted on a doggedly unpleasant monarch. The night’s conductor will be Joseph Swensen who was (maybe is) a noted violinist, now translated into the Paradise of musical directors. I can’t see that he has any particular affinity with Elgar but he was principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra for ten years, now emeritus with that body. Here’s hoping he has sympathy with the work; otherwise patrons are in for a gruelling hour. But the Beethoven concerto is also substantial: the longest of the five, in fact. Tickets in the normal run of events start at $89 and rise to $130, concessions starting at $30 and the usual gouge of $7.20 still applies for taking your money.

This concert will be repeated on Saturday July 29 at 7:30 pm

A long time coming

cliveoconnell

DAVID JOSEPH: WORKS FOR STRING ORCHESTRA

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Zagreb Soloists, Ripieno Kammerorchester

Move Records MD 3460

This CD is a blast from the past; three blasts, in fact. Australian composer Joseph wrote two of the three works offered here in 1992, the other in 1999. Honourably aged, you may think, if not exactly ancien regime. But the recordings have not been available since their premieres, as I understand it. For instance, tracks 1 and 2 comprise the Chamber Concerto for Piano and Strings, , commissioned by the then-director (1992) of the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, violinist Spiros Rantos. Originally conceived for Rantos’ wife, Brachi Tilles, the first soloist was Michael Kieran Harvey. So far, fine. The score was premiered at Melba Hall in Melbourne University’s Faculty of Music. What we hear on this CD is a performance recorded in the former ABC studios at Waverley, Harvey as soloist with Rantos conducting his MCO. This must have taken place between 1992 and 1995, after which the ABC moved to Southbank.

As for the second work, Scheherezade was written for the Zagreb Soloists, one of Europe’s premier chamber orchestras. I’m assuming that the composition date of 1999 was also the year of the work’s first performance (which is heard on this CD), but it’s hard to be sure. In Joseph’s catalogue, the work appears as Study for strings, ‘Also known as : Scheherezade’, and an undated presentation of this work by the late lamented Academy of Melbourne under Brett Kelly is also documented, as well as appearing on a previous Move Records collection of Joseph’s music which was released in 2006. The remaining composition, Dialogues of 1992, was written for violinist Urs Walker and the Ripieno Kammerorchester of Winterthur. Its first performance under conductor Howard Griffiths took place on September 5, 1993 and what we have here is a recording of that occasion.

Now, the Chamber Concerto is written in three movements, according to the disc booklet: Toccata, followed by Poem of Love/Meditation. In the original, there were no musing moments but you take what you’re given. In the Australian Music Centre documentation, this work was actually written for the Rantos Collegium, which disbanded in 1996 or thereabouts. Somehow, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra was spun out of the Collegium – or did it really emerge from the dying throes of the Pro Arte group? Well, the orchestral group is strings, which could be sourced from any one of the three ensembles.

The Toccata is a hard piece to pin down. It follows an almost moto perpetuo chugging rhythmic pattern which is relieved for only a few seconds at two places. The harmonic language is dissonant, suggesting Bartok and Prokofiev, although the overall texture is reminiscent of Mosolov’s short-lived brutalism, or even the less sloppy moments of Messiaen’s Turangalila. For all that, the movement radiates energy, Harvey’s realization of the solo part both hard-edged and scintillating, the pianist addressing his work with unflappable authority and a determination of output that every so often leaves the strings in his wake.

I think I’ve found the separation between the second part’s two sections. For the Poem, we’re apparently in Messiaen-Land where the strings settle into an ascending or descending motif of two chords, Harvey’s keyboard offering a rhapsodic commentary. The impression is less firm in contour than the French master’s Chant d’amour excursions but much less populist, even if Harvey’s contributions suggest several of those Messiaenic modes of disposable musical income. And these pages are definitely proposing an emotionally benign state; if not the Turangalila garden of Sanskrit delights; rather, a calm and welcoming landscape in which the dissonances mutate with remarkable smoothness, a cleverly achieved absence of surface friction no matter what progressions are quietly taking place.

The Meditation, I suspect, begins when the piano sets off on a sequence of stately chords that pass up and down the keyboard from top to bottom against a shimmer of strings from which a solo violin emerges with a soothing if angular melodic line. The musing is carried out with something of a forced-march mentality behind it, as though the action itself rendered the mind active rather than flooding it with random impressions or metaphysical ephemera. You couldn’t call this section of the work vehement or threatening but the consciousness being exercised has a clear, if repetitive, path to follow. Yet again, the spectre of Messiaen rises up, mainly in the shape of the chord processional, but the uses that Joseph puts this sequence to is less aspirational, less grasping for the ideal.

Joseph’s Scheherezade is not the gorgeous panoply of Rimsky-Korsakov but seems more empathetically related to Ravel’s Asie, even if the colour is monochromatic. The work starts with a unison/octave melody that eventually takes on a mildly astringent harmonic coating, Joseph taking his theme (such as it is) from the slow movement (presumably the first Moderato of the two in the score) to Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 6 in E minor. The atmosphere remains fairly taut and menacing throughout with what seems like closely argued harmonic structures kept well-leashed; Joseph stays well away from sentiment and colour for its own sake.

You can find some Oriental flourishes, but they are pretty rare in a dour landscape. The composer insists on a hefty attack style (or perhaps that’s just the Croatian players’ reading) and the work’s progress enjoys a heavy-handed treatment with semi-tragic undertones; perhaps Joseph is less concerned with the narrator’s flights of fancy and more with the sad, if not downright tragic, extracts from the 1001 Nights. Just on a technical point, the writing is monolithic as far as string technique is concerned: the only pizzicati I heard came in the last minute; maybe there is a slight use of harmonics, although to me it simply sounded like high violin work; you won’t come across any behind-the-bridge or on-the-fingerboard work; the work’s progress is too slow to admit of anything as frivolous as saltando or staccato. In sum, this is a rather grim Oriental fantasy, more illustrative to me of the current situation in Syria, Gaza or Lebanon than in the head-in-the-sand images we have of life in Jordan or the smothering of gross cruelty in Saudi Arabia or the Emirates.

Finally, we come to the Dialogues, contemporary with the Chamber Concerto. This is the shortest work on the CD but not by much, coming in at 19′ 40″ minutes (not 9’04” as the CD booklet states), while Scheherazade stretches to 20′ 48″ and the concerto a few seconds less at 20′ 42″ in total. All one movement as a set of variations on ‘natural sounds – birds etc.’, this is an aggressively punchy work. driving and dramatic from the opening: its avian life is prehistoric, non-stop in its vehemence apart from a few short releases from about the 15 minute mark.

The performance is admirably committed, although you can hear a few discrepant moments that got away from conductor Howard Griffiths – the basses not quite in sync with an upper-string layer at a few dramatic passages. Further, the acoustic of the recording’s venue – St Peter Church, Zurich – is rich in resonance with a pronounced echo; this building’s high ceiling, tiled floor and richly wooded gallery contribute to a sound that can be overwhelmingly clear. Still, the memorable contribution in this reading comes from soloist Walker whose line is dazzling, vital, toweringly virtuosic. In all, Dialogues is the sort of score that should appeal to a body like the Australian Chamber Orchestra with its requirements for split-second discipline, an unyielding ferocity of attack, and a sustained convulsive power.

As matters present themselves on the web, Scheherezade is the most recent composition listed in Joseph’s output, if the Australian Music Centre information is any guide. This composer’s absence (of 24 years?!) from the lists is most regrettable, even if he has shifted his career path from music to law. These three works show a granite-hard assurance in their creative character, as well as a command of form and purpose that impresses mightily. Their re-discovery in the composer’s analogue recordings archives was a happy chance and we are the richer for their airing on this CD.

Command and kindness

cliveoconnell

GARRICK OHLSSON

Musica Viva Australia

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University, South Bank

Thursday June 1, 2023

Garrick Ohlsson

This splendid American pianist was last heard here in 2019, appearing then for Musica Viva and getting his Brisbane recital in just before we all said farewell to live performances for some time. He’s back for another national series, kicking off in this city with an eclectic program of Schubert, Liszt and Scriabin with a new Australian commission adding spice to the mix in Thomas Misson‘s Convocations. Ohlsson is also offering a second program in his alterative nights in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as for Adelaide and Perth; in that figuration he will play Debussy’s Suite bergamasque, Barber’s Piano Sonata, the Misson novelty, and a slab of Chopin – the rarely-heard Variations brillantes, the Piano Sonata No 1, and the B flat minor Scherzo.

Yes, it would be rewarding to hear all that last group from the only American to win the International Chopin Competition (1970), but I don’t think we missed out that much with what we heard on Thursday evening. Ohlsson opened with the Schubert C minor Impromptu – the first of the Op. 90 set and the one that most pianists leave alone. This was followed by the Liszt B minor Sonata. After interval came the Misson and a clutch of Scriabin works: the C sharp minor Etude from the 3 Morceaux Op. 2, the D flat Major Etude from Op. 8, the C sharp minor Etude of Op. 42, the Andante cantabile that heads the Two Poems Op. 32, and the bursting-at-the-seams Piano Sonata No. 5.

Towards which this whole recital was aiming, it seemed to me. Ohlsson entered into the work with a certain sobriety; those odd little gruppetti of 5 with the first note missing that accelerate through bars 7 to 11 were not as brusque as other interpreters make them, although their return at bars 161 to 164 and from bar 451 to the end showed a remarkable ferocity, especially this last which found the performer twisting to face the audience in an unexpected gesture of pianistic braggadocio. Mind you, he was probably elated to get to the end of the composer’s vertiginous acceleration that starts at bar 401 and – for once – doesn’t stop for a meno vivo oasis.

For all its ecstatic intentions, this one-movement sonata (the first in this shape of the composer’s ten) holds itself together with a remarkably clear chain of material gestures and rhythmic shapes. In fact, for all the much-touted dynamic and emotional excess allied with highly demanding pianism, the work is clear in construction as a whole, if you can get past the stretches of chord-rich hysteria. Ohlsson took us on a finely graduated investigation of the score’s stop-start progress, demonstrating an admirable command of the composer’s vagaries and realizing fully the sonata’s flashes of magniloquence, like the thundering rapid left-hand octaves that feature in the Presto tumultuoso esaltato of bars 146 to 156, or the full-bodied peroration that explodes in bar 433.

Overshadowing the performance was the interpreter’s ability to take us along with him through the constantly changing landscape of this construct, where even the jittery off-the-beat right-hand chords that emerge so briskly at the first presto (bar 47) change to a more hectic, driven impulse as at the prestissimo that starts at bar 329. Indeed, Ohlsson captured with excellent skill Scriabin’s vital combination of languid harmonic opulence and urgent neurotic compulsiveness, this schizophrenia keeping us involved in what is still a robustly contemporary language.

Speaking of robust, the night’s first half focused on the big Liszt masterwork. In my tender youth, I was able to pick out the four potential movements that are said to comprise this large canvas but last Thursday’s reading came across all of a piece; you can hear where the materiel changes and is brought back for re-examination (or re-iteration, if you’re feeling unkind) but Ohlsson has the knack of finding some unification in the work’s presentation. It may be his insight owes something to a sublimated virtuosity as this pianist melds the meditative into the stormy with ease, as after the two mini-cadenzas in bars 200 and 204 where he shifted gear into a powerful Allegro energico C Major outburst; or, less obviously, the slow-burn from the F sharp Major repeated chords of bar 363 to a powerful climax across bars 393 to 396.

But it’s exhausting to get through; certainly for the executant, and even for an audience sufficiently primed to endure Liszt’s flamboyance and relentless magniloquence. I thought that there might have been two extra Es in bar 311 as Ohlsson emerged from another recitativo before dealing with a further 16-bar-long superimposition of two melodic elements, but that impression might have been self-generated. There’s no smothering a sense of disappointment in the fugato that starts at bar 460 and follows a resolute path to bar 599 before we get to the last, lengthy agglomeration where the writing becomes more and more complicated. Not that this substantial patch of working-out found the interpretation lacking and, if you grew impatient with the modulatory chains, you had this pianist’s almost flawless security to treasure.

Ohlsson exercised his habitual calm control over the Schubert impromptu, specifically its eventual triplet underpinning which many an interpreter allows undue prominence. For me, the most affecting segment of this reading came with the (only?) theme’s transference to the left hand at bar 60 under gently oscillating right-hand triplets; here was excellent dynamic management and a carefully shaped phrasing ebbing into a C flat Major quiescence. Actually, you could pick out several examples of sterling responsiveness, if the occasional oddity (the right-hand chord of bar 112 which sounded as though it had acquired an extra note) countered by a melting Winterreise conclusion from bar 193 onwards, minor alternating with major in an ideal instance of Schubert having it both ways – despair and consolation fused into each other.

Of the Scriabin studies, little is left in the memory. For many of us, the C sharp minor etude would have been our first encounter with the composer as it appeared in an AMEB list book (List D?) many years ago and proved easy enough to negotiate for its straightforward Chopinism. I didn’t gain much from Ohlsson’s treatment although I suspect it was included as part of the pianist’s way of preparing us for the coming sonata’s keyboard brilliance. You could admire his negotiation of the chains of chromatic thirds in the D flat Major etude, chiefly because the texture remained pretty clear with few over-pedaled washes along the way. Ohlsson’s approach to the C sharp minor piece proved a good deal less sharply defined, but then the harmonic shifts are gradual and closely-argued, so that even the left-hand change of metre to duplet crotchets in the study’s centre and near the end tend to muddy already thick waters.

A clearer texture spoke across the Andante cantabile in F sharp Major with Ohlsson smoothing out the quintuplets that emerge unobtrusively in bar 11 and become a constant element for much of the piece’s remainder. Still, this is whimsical country with a dominant right hand holding all the trumps in a very amiable colloquy that concluded these prefatory gambits which at least served the purpose of demonstrating how reasonable and later-Romantic this composer could be.

Misson’s new work enjoyed an introduction from the composer who pointed us directly towards a religious interpretation of his title, going even more directly to the core by speaking of the aspirational, Heaven-bound nature of his work’s right-hand while the left-hand matter stays firmly terrestrial. The opening strophes to Convocations impressed as rather obvious in both intent and statement, but the following elaborations and episodes proved more intriguing, particularly some moments of liturgical reference – not full-scale chorales but close enough to give a support to the composer’s suggestions of an abstract synod. Both composer and interpreter showed obvious signs of mutual satisfaction at the work’s end, and the composition itself did serve the purpose of suiting Ohlsson’s performance manner of benign, unshakeable confidence.

High spirits and optimism in major keys

cliveoconnell

A BEETHOVEN ODYSSEY VOLUME 8

James Brawn

MSR Classics 1472

Here is the penultimate leg in this long voyage, Brawn has only two more works to release and the complete argosy comes home to Ithaca. For this CD, he has allocated four of the lesser-known elements in Beethoven’s output of 32 works, although each of them holds a world entire, even the F Major two-movement gem. It’s been a long time since I heard any of these in live performance; they’re usually the preserve of aspirants, as the big guns in the field go in search of more fleshy game. But each adds another facet or thirteen to this pianist’s insightful chain of interpretations.

None more so than the four-movement Sonata No. 13 in E flat Major, a quasi una fantasia companion to the more celebrated Moonlight Sonata No. 14. This particular work asks for an attaca between each segment, underlining the composer’s use of building-block inter-relationships, not to mention his looking backwards to the content of former pages, particularly obvious in the sonata rondo finale. Brawn opens his initial rondo with amiable expansiveness, giving full weight to those intrusive left-hand sforzandi at bars 6 and 7, then gently plucking out of the ether the C Major chords that surprise in the best Beethovenian style at bar 9, eventually attacking the central allegro with enthusiasm before taking us back to the four-square main theme and its gradual dissipation into three quiet bars of the home key.

It is hard to fault the following Allegro molto, either. This repeat-rich proto-scherzo enjoys an easy exposition, even when the arpeggios stop, and the syncopated version of the opening pages is persuasive if the whole passage is a tad blurred until the climax arrives at bar 132 where the off-the-beat right hand rings clear to the second-last bar. As in some previous sonatas, Brawn is free with his mini-pauses and phrase-pointing across the short Adagio, taking the rider con espressione with some interpretative amplitude, mainly in pausing before a bar’s first downbeat. Such an approach gives these 26 bars plenty of breathing space, if achieved at the expense of melodic fluency.

But the vivace finale runs past with an infectious head of steam; even the leaps at places like those between bars 31 to 35 are kept up to the mark and the handy treatment of this movement’s first (prime) subject are happily busy, rather than plodding as hefty semi-inventions. The performer maintains the light-footed humour and optimism by observing a style of attack that emphasizes Beethoven’s delight in movement, so that the episodes that touch on the minor (e.g. bars 131 to 138) come across with energy rather than weight. This is completely assured playing, a sunny conclusion to the sonata and in every way an atmospheric contrast with its opus number companion.

You might find the same in the following G Major Sonata No. 16 with its jaunty off-the-beat initial gambit that carries through the opening Allegro vivace‘s first subject. The exposition here is not all major-inflected, especially towards that section’s conclusion, but the development – as much of it as there is – definitely pursues a chain of minor modulations. Here you can enjoy Brawn’s unfaltering clarity, especially in those stages where the melodic operations transfer to the left hand, or those thinly textured but awkwardly placed pieces of mini-counterpoint (see bars 261-263). And this performer makes as much dynamic contrast as he can with the unexpectedly (or is it?) soft ending to the movement, as later he does in the sonata’s concluding rondo.

More of the contented Beethoven comes in the middle Adagio grazioso, Brawn following a fine vein of the adjective throughout with a clean observance of the left-hand’s initial arpeggio separated notes and allowing himself some metrical latitude at the end of elaborately decorated right-hand work (bars 10 and 12). He is not to be hurried in the two cadenza breaks, accounting for these brief rhythmic oases with quiet, measured placidity. Mind you, the composer is Romantically voluble throughout this Venetian arena, nowhere more so than in the plunging 6ths and 3rds of bar 107, but I admired the subtlety of Brawn’s restrained negotiation of some left-hand 7ths that are present but muffled, most obviously in bars 116 and 117. Small details like these send you back to pick up more occasions of delicate delivery.

The sonata’s conclusion is deceptive as it opens with a neatly balanced primary theme, then moves to play relentlessly with this tune’s opening mordent figure. Indeed, the composer occupies himself with subsidiary material, accompanying triplets and the like, before reviewing his amiable first idea, then moving into more hard three-part labour from bar 87 to bar 98: an instance of modulation working to little purpose. A lengthy period of footling leads to two brief adagio breaks before a presto coda that concerns itself almost exclusively with the afore-mentioned mordent shape. Compared to the preceding movements, this impresses as expanded beyond its dimensions, the working-out full of forward motion but lacking substance. Brawn treats it with an ease that recalls the first movement, following the triplet scale passages and left-hand melody announcements with a sympathetic response to each sequence-laced vagary.

Another four-movement sonata arrives with No. 18 in E flat Major, here distinguished by a musical sobriquet, ‘The Hunt’. This is an opus number companion of the preceding G Major work and shares its buoyancy of outlook, particularly in the even-numbered movements. You get the impression that its first movement is a stop-start operation, mainly because a ritardando is built into the opening gesture (see bars 3 to 6) and its reappearances. But these pages move forward with developmental purpose and the welcome presence – as in all the works on this CD – of whimsicality, here more contained than in its co-opus G Major’s opening allegro. Brawn keeps the pleasures coming smoothly, allowing only the smallest of independent gestures in the two irregular bars (54 and 177) and he negotiates his trills without cramming in extra oscillations (particularly the chain across bars 193 to 201), eventually opting for a piano final cadence.

He gives an individual transparence to the following 2/4 scherzo, one of the more infectiously pell-mell movements in Beethoven’s middle period sonatas. The initial theme and its restatements are not drowned in sustaining pedal melding but come across with excellent clarity. Some of the demi-semiquaver left-hand interjections from bar 42 to bar 49 are not as crisp as you’d like, although most of the later stretch (bars 147 to 154) are close to exemplary. Also, Brawn’s accounting for those abrupt fortissimo chords that punctuate passages of two-hand semiquaver work show a deft hand in supplying an apt dynamic level – just vehement enough not to drown out what follows.

Commentators speak of the Menuetto‘s standing as an unexpected throw-back to Mozart and Haydn – the sonata form’s courtly age. But this example seems integral to the work, standing as an easy break between two rapid-fire bursts of energy. The first third sets up a gentle, controlled environment through a simple series of splendidly interlocking four-bar phrases, before the gentle surprise of the Trio’s mildly vaulting chords, before the Menuetto‘s return and that touching calando conclusion. The whole is treated with clear sympathy and responsiveness: a model lesson in giving unassuming pages their proper respect.

As for the ‘hunt’ finale, Brawn maintains his presto pace convincingly, with just a hint of awkwardness in an odd spot like the left hand work in bars 135 to 138, and later, the preparatory pause before those 10-note chords at bars 307 and 317. But you find plenty of examples of exemplary skill, like the first over-the-hills-and-far-away burst from bar 64 to the end of the exposition, the relieving settle onto C Major at bar 120, and the ease of the crossed-hands single notes and main-motif statements between bars 280 and 299. This is a sustained example of rapid-fire playing but – as I’ve said before – articulated with admirable clarity and almost-unflagging impetus.

To end, Brawn gives us the shortest work on this CD in the F Major Sonata Op. 54. Compared to its predecessors on this CD, this score is decidedly odd. While the first movement opens easily enough, it soon (bar 24) takes a turn away from a slightly dour menuetto into aggressive contrary motion octaves in triplets for each hand; the two elements contrast and sort-of combine before the end. What presents as disparate in the first pages becomes more rational after the repetitions, yet the contrast is not really fused. I liked Brawn’s subtle force applied in the triplet-dominated pages, alongside a clipped approach to the opening material’s dotted-quaver-semiquaver repeated pattern. As across all four of these sonatas, you can rely on this pianist to give full measure to each note’s rhythmic value, even when the part-writing verges on the complex; everything is in its place and subsidiary elements are given as much care as dominant melodic lines.

Finishing this disc is a driving interpretation of the sonata’s Allegretto which many a pianist manages to turn into burbling. Not so here where the ceaseless semiquavers lead into a development of considerable tension across bars 23 to 99 – the movement’s core. Brawn keeps a cool head throughout the multiple modulations that Beethoven works on his one theme and carries us happily into a celebratory coda that keeps its head, despite a momentary indication of acceleration. An ending that borders on the over-wrought, if not as jubilant or as ferocious as the finales to its catalogue companions (the C Major Waldstein and the F minor Appassionata).

So what are we waiting for? Two late sonatas round out Brawn’s enterprise: the A Major Op. 101 and the B flat Major Hammerklavier Op. 106 – the first two in that late period sequence of five incomparable masterworks, setting the benchmark for Romantic (and beyond) pianism. It’s a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Diary June 2023

cliveoconnell

GARRICK OHLSSON

Musica Viva

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Thursday June 1

One day in 2020, it was Ohlsson appearing for Musica Viva; the next, it was COVID and we all fell down. Now the Canadian master is back, beginning another MV tour and presenting works by Schubert, Liszt and Scriabin. In Adelaide, Perth and the second recitals in Sydney and Melbourne, he’s playing Debussy’s Suite bergamasque, sonatas by Barber and Chopin and some other bon-bons by this last-named. Common to both programs is a new work commissioned for Musica Viva: Thomas Misson‘s Convocations. Yes, I know: sounds like Meale’s Coruscations of 1971, written before that writer changed his style for something old and predictable. What I’ve heard of Misson’s constructs is promising, dealing in advances in composition with integrity, not wallowing in the tried and sometimes not-true. Anyway, Ohlsson at Queensland Con plays the Schubert C minor Impromptu, Op.90 No. 1 – the one of the four that nobody touches. Then the Liszt B minor Sonata – a one-movement composition of high technical demands and a (for Liszt) high watermark of emotional compression. After the new Misson comes a fair sample of the Russian mystic’s creativity: three etudes from different sets (Op. 2, Op. 8, Op. 42), the first of the Two Poems Op. 32, and the Sonata No. 5: like Liszt’s, in one movement. Not that I’m an enthusiast, but we rarely hear a concentrated dose of Scriabin; you can hardly imagine better hands than these through which to have this experience. Prices of tickets range from $15 to $109, but I don’t know if that’s bumped up by the credit card usage fee/theft.

A BAROQUE TRIBUTE

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Brisbane

Friday June 2 at 7:30 pm

As I’m coming to expect, this concert’s title is not quite accurate. Stretching relationships and time-scales, it’s taxing to align some parts of this modest program with the Baroque. To open, the QSO strings under director/concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto will run through Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue K. 546, written about the time of the Jupiter finale and at a period when the composer was doing Bach research and arrangements. Tick for this one, then. Next comes real Baroque in a canon and fugue from the Art of Fugue, transcribed by George Benjamin; the canon is the one alla Ottava, the fugue is Contrapunctus 7 per Augment et Diminut. This instrumentation calls for flute, two horns, three violins, two violas and a cello. It doesn’t get more of the period than this. Now come the temporal outsiders, first with the Haydn Symphony No. 70 in D which can only be included in this tribute because its second movement is a double variation canon – and nothing spells ‘Baroque’ better than a canon. To finish, we have Stravinsky’s Concerto in D (‘Basle’) for string orchestra which – as far as I can see – fits into the program because its middle movement is an arioso. The outer ones don’t strike me as much more than the composer’s usual neoclassical style coming to an end during his freshly-naturalized period (1945 or thereabouts). This concerto is sprightly and direct and you won’t find any excrescences indulged throughout its brief length – not a trace of self-indulgence. Still, it’s a splendid test of precision playing. Tonight’s performance is sold out, but . . .

This program will be repeated on Saturday June 3 at 3 pm. Prices range from $30 to $75 with the usual outrageous booking fee which is close to $8.

LEON AND THE PLACE BETWEEN

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday June 8 at 10 am

A kids’ concert, pitched at Years 1 to 6; yes, Year 1 – it is to laugh. The story is by Angela McAllister, the music comes from Paul Rissmann, the pictures are by Grahame Baker-Smith – all UK creators and so terrifically relevant in the aftermath of watching two elderly and uninspiring marital defaulters stagger towards the thrones of England. Their tale is allegedly set in a circus, although one publisher’s website puts Leon and his siblings at a ‘magic show’; no matter the environment, our protagonist learns heaps about all those human qualities that make today’s young so repulsively assured enough as to express their ignorance loudly and to put their feet up on train seats. I know nothing about Rissmann’s products, although he has a strong connection with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and has appeared with several state orchestras, while his reputation in the UK is high as a presenter, raconteur, host, explicator and front-man for children’s music. It’s fortunate that he will be on hand to take us through this work, which will be directed by Jen Winley, the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra’s assistant conductor. Tickets are a flat $30 and, with each 10 students, a teacher gets in free. The whole thing seems geared to schools, presumably on the understanding that primary teachers can control their charges across this 50-minute-long operation. As I said at the start, it is to laugh.

THE LOST THING

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday June 9 at 10 am

The audience here is children in Years 6 to 10 and the QSO plus Voices of Birralee is conducted by Jen Winley from Perth. To those in the know, The Lost Thing is a picture-book by West Australian Shaun Tan; Scottish-born composer Paul Rissmann wrote a score to accompany the tale in this concert format, commissioned by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in 2020. I’ve seen some of Tan’s work in concert and you wouldn’t say it’s going out of its way to entertain, the illustrator/author’s monumental environment reminding me of a colourless Chirico world. Rissmann will be there to present – his own score, at least. It’s inserted in medias res with some intriguing surrounds. The QSO begins with Elena Kats-Chernin’s 2013 Dance of the Paper Umbrellas; then come Rimsky’s Flight of the Bumblebee, the Hungarian Dance No. 5 by Brahms, a Star Wars Suite by John Williams to end and a true oddity in Coleridge-Taylor’s Othello Suite: Dance, Children’s Intermezzo, Funeral March, The Willow Song, Military March – this last adding up to about 15 minutes’ playing time. The performance is meant to last for an hour, but Rissmann’s score only endures for 22 minutes, according to his catalogue of works. So you’d have to assume that the two performances on offer are presenting the full program, despite the QSO website not listing the above bevy of compositions for this Friday bridging-the-primary-secondary-gap experience. As with yesterday’s event, tickets are $30 per student.

This program – probably in yesterday’s format – will be repeated on Saturday June 10 at 10 am in a Family Concert when tickets will range from $39 to $49 with the credit-card fleecing fee of $7.20

OPERA SPECTACULAR

4MBS Festival of Classics

Main Auditorium, City Hall, Brisbane

Sunday June 11 at 3 pm

The city’s specialist serious music radio station presents this night – part of a long chain of events across May and June – that features a quartet of well-known soloists. Soprano Eva Kong leads the way and she is the only artist about whom a program detail might be gleaned as she is singing some Madama Butterfly – inevitably Un bel di, unless she is put into harness with tenor Rosario La Spina for the duet ending Act 1. And the meagre publicity blurb does mention ‘excerpts’. The other soloists are La Spina’s wife, mezzo Milijana Nikolic, and baritone Jose Carbo. The Ensemble Q Orchestra (love to see that when it’s at home) will be conducted by Tahu Matheson, currently working with Opera Australia, and filling in the gaps with an intra-number narration will be Matheson’s brother, Tama. Other details are unavailable but I’d anticipate that everything will be quite familiar; what’s the point of going spectacularly operatic unless you can wow your audience with arias (and that’s really all that’s promised) known by all and sundry? So I don’t think we’ll be hearing any Richard Strauss; probably no Wagner; Monteverdi will be absent from the feast, and you can be pretty sure that another innovator – Gluck – won’t be present, either Holding out for Berlioz? Not a chance. Here’s looking at you, Britten, but your time has probably not yet come at this kind of concert. Mozart? Maybe. All the same, you have to thank 4MBS for organizing an opera concert in a city where the art form is rarely performed. Tickets cost between $89 and $30 with a booking fee of $1.25.

TERRIFIC TRUMPET

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday June 16 at 11:30 am

What appears to be in play here is that the QSO is welcoming its newly-appointed principal trumpet, Rainer Saville. Great to see, although I think Saville has been in the ensemble for a while. Anyway, he’s taking on the Tomasi Trumpet Concerto, beloved of trumpeters for a host of reasons: it’s short, shows off technique, doesn’t call for any timbral insanities, covers a bevy of compositional styles without falling too heavily into that irritating pseudo-jazz French 1920s genre, has no melodies worth remembering, serves as a splendid instance of physical jerks with a just-long-enough central Nocturne to display arabesques, and boasts a flashy first-movement cadenza supported by snare drum, Filipino-Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski – a tender 23- year-old – escorts Saville through this flashy ephemera before turning to the Sibelius Symphony No. 2, which is exhibitionism of a different water: all those ice sheets, shadow-drenched fjords, pastel veils of the Aurora Borealis, and the rest of that Finnish malarkey. This score stands out from the rest of the composer’s symphonic output for its Romantic breadth and audience-pleasing accessibility, while asking its interpreters for a sobbing warmth of approach as well as stamina. At all events, the concert is scheduled to last for 65 minutes without interval.

With the addition of Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy-Overture Romeo and Juliet, this program will be repeated on Saturday June 17 at 7:30 pm.

FROM THE HEARTLAND: VIENNA TO BUDAPEST

Southern Cross Soloists

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday June 18 at 3 pm

If you take that title literally, it’s not much territory to cover. The trip takes 2 1/2 hours by car and you move from Austria straight into Hungary; hence, your compositional choices are geographically limited. This recital/concert ticks some of the expected boxes, as in Mozart’s last (and best-known) Horn Concerto K. 495 which here stands alongside the Viola Concerto by Bartok – well, the composer left sketches for completion by a friend and his own son. Anyway, that sort of takes in the two European capitals, even if the Hungarian master wrote his work in New York. Later on, we hear the Totentanz by Liszt: the original version for piano and orchestra involving double woodwind plus piccolo, double horns and trumpets, three trombones plus tuba, timpani and three other percussion, with the full string complement. Still, it’s a full Hungarian work, regularly played by Bartok and momentarily reminiscent of his Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Now we move a little further afield to the north-east of the Austrian capital with Two Moravian Songs by Pavel Fischer; the former first violin of the Skampa Quartet has organized a pair of folk songs for voice and string quartet, so I suppose these are what we’ll hear. Then we move to Poland for Lutoslawski’s Dance Preludes in the 1955 version for clarinet, harp, piano, percussion, and strings; folk tunes, they say, although nobody has identified which ones and the composer wasn’t giving his game away. Anyway, we’ve moved to Warsaw, 850-plus kilometres north of Budapest – so, a well-expanded heartland. As well, we have a homegrown novelty from trumpet virtuoso James Morrison in collaboration with the Southern Cross’s didgeridoo-in-residence, Chris Williams; they are producing a new work, as yet nameless. That’s a big program and you can hear it for $85 (adult) or $35 (youth) with a credit card fee of $7.20. Why didn’t Chalmers and Albanese do something about this unjust impost in their mealy-mouthed budget, instead of wasting time on avaricious gas companies and the under-privileged?

QSO FAVOURITES

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday June 24 at 1:30 pm

What the QSO thinks of as ‘favourites’ seem to be selections. For instance, this program launches itself with selections from the Suites 1 and 2 from Bizet’s Carmen, compiled after the composer’s death by Ernest Guiraud. The first collection is better suited for orchestra as it includes the Prelude and all three entr’actes, while the second comprises transcriptions of sung numbers only. The occasion concludes with selections from the three suites from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet. Conductor Umberto Clerici has 20 numbers to choose from, although it has to be observed that the best collection comes from Suite No. 1. As some sort of filler, the QSO presents the Main Theme and Love Theme from the Ennio and Andrea Morricone score for Cinema Paradiso. OK, although why this should be a favourite is a bit of a mystery. Central to the entertainment is Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez which is a melodic feast and spirit-lifting in its outer movements. Soloist will be Karin Schaupp, a Queenslander since her 8th year. It’s great to see that the orchestra takes pleasure in this particular score, especially as its instrumentation is lean: your normal double woodwind, pairs of horns and trumpets, strings. But its high attraction for me is that the orchestra sparkles when everyone is on board. And I’m so pleased that the nonsensical legends about the Adagio being a Civil War lament or an elegy on the bombing of Guernica have been put to rest.

This program will be repeated at 7:30 pm.

PIERS LANE

Medici Concerts

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday June 25 at 3 pm

The popular Brisbane-raised pianist is here presenting a recital of works by Chopin and Rachmaninov, the central work being the Russian composer’s rarely-heard Variations on a Theme of Chopin. The scrap chosen for elaboration is the C minor Prelude No. 20 from the Op. 28 set and the interpreter has to cope with 22 variations in all; you can hope that Lane will work through them all, rather than following a widespread practice (allowed in later editions) of cutting out some later parts of the work. At all events, on either side of this exhibition, we hear a selection from the Chopin preludes and another collation plucked from the ballets Chopiniana and Les Sylphides. The first comprises five works orchestrated by Glazunov: the A Major Polonaise, the F Major Nocturne, the D minor Mazurka from Op. 50, the C sharp minor Waltz, and the Tarantelle. Les Sylphides has 8 numbers, beginning with the same polonaise but ending with the Op. 18 E flat Major Waltz. In the middle come the A flat Major Nocturne, two waltzes in the G flat Major and the C sharp minor recycled from Chopiniana, a pair of mazurkas (Op. 33 No. 2 and Op. 67 No. 3), and not forgetting the A Major Prelude. Pick your poison but I’m betting the Tarantelle won’t get an outing. And it’s no use asking why the big Rachmaninov in the middle: it’s his 150th birthday this year and even a work written when he was 30 (surely not juvenilia) should enjoy a dusting-off.

MOZART

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday June 26 at 7 pm

Topping up on a previous (2015?) Mozart symphonic excursion featuring the last three in the catalogue, artistic director Richard Tognetti and his band of renown move back a little to present three more, each with a nickname. The night opens with the Symphony No. 31 in D, called the Paris because it was premiered in that riotous city and enjoyed favour right from the start. Only three movements but a big orchestra with double woodwind – all four of them – with pairs of trumpets and horns, strings and timpani. Another D Major follows in the Symphony No. 35, Haffner, written for the semi-noble family of that name and using the same instrumentation as the Paris composition but expanded to four movements with the use of a menuetto surviving from the earlier Haffner Serenade. To conclude the triptych, we hear the Linz Symphony No. 36 in C, written in that town during a stop-over in late 1783. It also has four movements and differs from the others on this program by lacking flutes and clarinets. Fleshing out the symphonies, which last a bit over an hour, the ACO will play the Ballet Music from Idomeneo K. 367: Chaconne, Annonce, more Chaconne, Pas seul, Passepied, Gavotte, Passecaille. This uses the same Paris/Haffner forces and lasts about 19 minutes – thereby pushing the concert out to a solid length. As for tickets, they fall into a tight range between $94 and $129, with the customary booking fee of $7.20. Still, it’s been a fair while between drinks, the ACO having called in here last on March 13 and the group’s appearances are to be treasured in this shrinking age for serious music-making.

Unusual, expert group

cliveoconnell

AMONG THE BIRDS AND THE TREES

Adam Walker, Timothy Ridout, Anneleen Lenaerts

Conservatorium of Music, Griffith University

Wednesday May 3, 2023

Anneleen Lenaerts

Latest in the Musica Viva national tour recitals, we heard the instrumental combination set-up for one of Debussy’s final sonatas: that for flute (Adam Walker), viola (Timothy Ridout) and harp (Anneleen Lenaerts). This program had a sort of innate sense, its major elements the Debussy work and two later works employing the same ensemble: Gubaidulina’s The Garden of Joy and Sorrow, and Takemitsu’s And then I knew ’twas Wind. Along the way, each musician contributed a party piece or two. In the first half, Walker made an eloquent case for Georg Benjamin’s Flight; Lenaerts indulged in a transcription of Jardins sous la pluie from Debussy’s Estampes trilogy; Ridout too played a transcription with the Fantasia No. 7 in E flat by Telemann, a piece originally for violin. After interval, Walker and Lenaert collaborated in Messiaen’s Le Merle noir (originally for flute and piano), before Lenaerts yet again indulged in another Debussy piano transcription with Clair de lune from the Suite bergamasque.

Best of all, as far as this audience was concerned, was this last which served as some reassurance in a foreign landscape. The night’s finale, Debussy’s trio sonata, is not well known because of rarity in performances – although why that should matter in these happy times of perfect recordings, I don’t know. But the composer’s best-known piano solo enjoyed sensitive treatment, the long-arched drooping melody picked out with finesse while much of the accompanying figuration came over the space to this hall’s rear. It made a pleasing preface to the sonata which gained much from a compelling collaboration between these artists who demonstrated a reassuring awareness of their relative positions, specifically in the rambling first two movements.

It’s a composition that, for two-thirds of its length, radiates a loose warmth in a setting where everything is thematically controlled but the content seems to spill from one segment into the next. More than the transformations and subtle timbral changes, the moments that have always attracted me are those where the instruments mesh in something close to equality: the first movement Gracieux five bars after Number 2 in the Durand score; later in the same movement the brilliant wash four bars after Letter 4; and the soft fall to the movement’s conclusion beginning at Number 6. These were delivered with excellent balance and idiomatic responsiveness, highpoints in a reading welcome for its cool warmth.

The pleasures continued in the following Interlude, notably the energetic outburst that begins with a harp glissando six bars after Number 10, which peters out five bars after Number 12; here was an invigorating, light-filled centre to this movement that is languid at either end. Not to mention Lenaerts’ supple support through the duets and imitations that follow Number 14; on the verge of lushness, but eloquent. As for the Final, this was handled with an unexpected percussiveness, the harp making forceful work of the left-hand F quavers that mark the opening of each bar up to Number 16. I liked the heavy-footed discursiveness that sets in four bars after Number 18, and the joyous bolt towards home that begins straight after that nostalgic look-back to the opening Pastorale. A work that has so little of the doctrinaire about it and which proves a welcome experience after each live performance.

About Gubaidulina’s composition, I’m not sure what to report. These players had the score’s measure and the various incidents passed with apparently easy ensemble, but the language evades me, being on the cusp of dissonance but inserting, especially towards the end, common chord arpeggios. The work begins arrestingly enough with what appear to be single-string harp glissandi, producing an approximation of a sine wave. But the Eastern inflexions promised as part of the composer’s inspiration passed me by, as did the relevance of Francois Tanzer’s poem from which Gubaidulina took inspiration, although Ridout read it for us beforehand in English and German. But then, this set of verses moves beyond the other poetic source – Iv Oganov and a wealth of garden/flower imagery – into general prospects of the world at large . . . and there, I’m lost.

As usual with Takemitsu’s work, And then I knew ’twas Wind takes a melody or a motif and toys with it; the fascination lies in hearing or trying to trace the multiple torsions. This composition – like Gubaidulina’s, based on a poem (in this case, by Emily Dickinson) – sets up an expansive landscape where flute and viola slowly emerge after the harp has set up the focal flourish, and you’re carried forward on the poet’s fitful gustiness. The product presents as more ‘constructed’ than either of the two other trios programmed, while the Japanese master makes an early reference to Debussy’s Sonata. But the palette is varied and crammed with pointillist touches informed by the opening 3rd and 7th intervals and a moving, oddly concordant conclusion.

The Japanese master’s music proved more accessible than Gubaidulina’s essayed fusion – possible for its placidity of utterance and contentment in a fixed number of colours, although the viola is taxed heavily with production shifts. Added to this, Takemitsu infuses his music with individual colour but without trying to make statements, or drawing attention to the technical skill of those involved. More than most of his contemporaries, this writer creates without self-regard or the desire to generate some sort of eclat; it’s a marvellous accomplishment, especially from a student of Messiaen, a master of look-at-me, watch-my-modes composition.

As for the party pieces, there’s little to say. Benjamin’s solo flute bagatelle of 1979 opens with some low glissandi, punctuated by abrupt blips, before we encounter some typical atonal birdsong outbursts. Then the composition moves into further episodes, alternating lengthy lyrics with busy chattering. It’s obviously a favourite for Walker who moved through its pages with high eloquence, even if the English composer is following a path well-established by his European peers. You could find the same enthusiasm in Lenaerts’ Debussy. The gardens suffered very little from this rain as the original’s bite was missing in the more formidable passages, such as the D flat Major arpeggio explosion at bar 47, the meteorological panorama starting with the long-awaited final change of key signature to E Major two pages from the end, and the percussive strikes of the last three bars – all present here but missing their characteristic cutting vitality.

Ridout’s Telemann transcription worked persuasively enough across its four divisions, the performer drawing out the unremarkable seven splits of the opening Dolce with a firm right hand, and being victim to less errors in the two faster movements than you might have expected, given the Allegro‘s high activity level. But I think the most outstanding of these fillers came with the Messiaen duo: a favourite for certain flautists, if (like so many of the composer’s bird-infested works) blessed with the most melodically adventurous blackbird in avian history. Here again, Lenaerts took on the piano part – with considerable success, although much of the piece’s interest lies in the cadenzas for flute before and after the first duet segment, with the final presto rush between both players as fine an instance as you will experience of metre-less rhythmic energy (perhaps).

Walker and Ridout have collaborated in recent years; Lenaerts has appeared at the same venues/festivals as her male colleagues but I’m unsure whether she has partnered either (or both) of them before. Yet, in this session one-third of the way through a 9-night program across the country, all three musicians displayed excellent ensemble across the focal trio compositions, bringing a high level of chamber music performance to audiences of an organization that has sponsored so successfully this corner of a shrinking serious music environment.

Young musicians in Rachmaninov tribute

cliveoconnell

ANAM ENCOUNTERS: IMPRESSIONS

Australian Digital Concert Hall

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday April 31, 2023

Matthew Garvie

In his opening talk, pianist Reuben Johnson proposed that this Australian National Academy of Music program was the brainchild of pianist Matthew Garvie and himself; the institution putting its members to work in the fullest sense – think of it, organize it, play it. Like many other keyboard musicians – well, specifically pianists – the two decided to observe the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rachmaninov. The Russian master’s natal sesquicentenary, as it were, and we enjoyed some examples of this composer’s work, framed by a couple of dubious superimpositions.

Johnson began with some Bach; because that’s what you do, I suppose. Exactly what relevance you were meant to see between the presiding genius of Western music and the popular pianist/composer seemed difficult to detect. Yes, all European writers worth the name who entered the craft from the post-Baroque on owe a massive debt to Bach, whether they know it or not. Exactly why Rachmaninov should be singled out escapes me; he played Bach, yes, but not very much, if his discography is any guide; his only transcriptions were the Preludio, Gavotte and Gigue from the E Major Partita for violin – a fairly obvious source to raid. Did he learn his counterpoint from Bach? You’d have to think that Taneyev put his student through some of The Well-Tempered Clavier; whatever the case, his part-writing presents as full-blooded from the start (e.g., the C sharp minor Prelude).

At all events, Johnson worked through the English Suite No. 2 in A minor. Then Garvie led us into the second Op. 39 set of with Nos. 1, 8 and 9. Alongside violinist Harry Egerton and cellist Shuhei Lawson, Garvie presented the first Trio elegiaque in G minor, the (slightly) younger work in one movement. Then we enjoyed two bon-bons; first, with a four-hands transcription by American pianist Greg Anderson of the Rachmaninov Vocalise; then a nationalistic swoop in Miriam Hyde’s brief Toccata for Two of 1973 which might have owed some debt to the sesquicentennial boy but struck me as more Prokofiev-lite.

Speaking of the percussive, Johnson’s Prelude to the suite proved aggressive with a persuasive thrusting aspect, leavened with some eloquent dynamic intensity. In fact, the approach moved beyond a rattling martellato at certain points, like the sudden Romantic retrospective at bar 95 and beyond, with more hefty piano timbre emerging in the bass Es at bars 152-154. The Allemande‘s fluency occasionally faltered, as at the opening to the first half’s repeat; the bass crotchet B of bar 11, also in the first half, was fumbled at first attempt. I also started noticing the player’s unexpected arpeggiations on fulcrum chords, letting them speak in both upward or downward directions, No problems with the Courante, apart from a missing A crotchet in bar 21 of the 2nd repeat.

Johnson’s reading of the suite’s Sarabande followed the usual pattern of loading in the ornaments on the repeats, using Les agrements de la meme Sarabande the second time around; well, there’s no point arguing with City Hall. He employed a well-deployed piano dynamic and delicacy of touch, in much the same way as he inserted subtlety of attack into the repeats of Bourree 1; indeed, the complex of both bourrees made for a dramatic journey, the more arresting for Johnson’s abrupt switch back to the minor for the Bourree I repeat. Yes, Bach obviously planned the effect but it’s a pleasure to see the contrast achieved with such success, alongside a forward reference to Rachmaninov in the final 8 bars of Bourree II‘s second-half repeat. After which, the Gigue was something of a let-down, mainly for a momentary lack of rhythmic definition, the impetus being slightly disrupted at those points where both hands have mordents (e.g. bars 7, 9, 11), especially in the dance’s second half (bars 52, 54, 56), The spirit was certainly willing . . .

Enter Garvie with his Rachmaninov triptych. It’s hard to make much sense of the first etude-tableau in C minor: phenomenal athleticism but not much else to hang onto. The performer worked through it with technical heels flying, even if he showed a penchant for emphasizing bass notes – well, the bass clef in general – while the right-hand filigree was left as just that. Better (music and performance) came in No. 8 where Garvie demonstrated a laudable control of idiom and technique with an effective luminous atmosphere when the dynamic level was light, as at the G Major meno mosso in the movement’s centre.

No. 9, the last in the opus number, enjoyed a powerful interpretation, evenly spread apart from some disappearing right-hand semiquaver duplets in bars 18 and 20. And I appreciated the dynamic extremes achieved across this score’s canvas – the abrupt jumps without mediation between loud and soft, all leading to a driving final 6 bars – and the later treble-clef clarity, complementing its secondary status during the first of these Rachmaninov forays.

As usual, the piano part proved too loud for both strings in parts of the G minor Trio No. 1, right from the start when both violin and cello take their turns with the first theme (bars 20 and 24 respectively), and even later at the bar 79 outburst where Garvie announced his scale outbursts with over-wielded authority. Both Egerton and Lawson sounded at their most comfortable in the canonic duet from bar 135 to bar 142, the latter producing a rich, exposed thematic restatement at bar 168. But these performers displayed a reliable fidelity to dynamic direction throughout this score, enduring some blistering obliterations from Garvie. Possibly, the musicians might have benefited from more rehearsal to get their output levels into closer synchronization; they knew where they were headed, certainly, but the reading lacked coherence of effort, it seemed to me. They might all be attending ANAM but that doesn’t mean they group up regularly.. I’m not sure of previous experiences with Lawson but I’ve heard Egerton in recent times playing towards better results.

So we came to the two inserted encores. The Vocalise arrangement for Garvie and Johnson had the four hands interweaving; well, mainly Johnson reaching between and across his partner’s operations for some bass notes. I assume that arranger Anderson made this criss-cross organization for recitals with his long-time (over 20 years) partner Elizabeth Joy Roe because it involves – as was pointed out – quite a bit of choreographic organizational preparation. Both artists here worked happily together through this elaborate treatment which looked more complex than it sounded. And the Hyde toccata made an excellent counterweight with a brisk tempo and a communally bouncy application. Still not sure how Hyde fits in here but this small gem summoned up a smile or two after a solid whack of aggressive gloom and strong-armed melancholy.