O'Connell the Music

SCHUBERT’S TROUT

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday September 26, 2022

Olli Mustonen

In one of the ACO’s more chaste excursions, five members of the ensemble participated in this latest series event in Brisbane: violinists Satu Vanska and Liisa Pallandi, viola Stefanie Farrands, cellist Timo-Veikko Valve and double bass Maxime Bibeau. Presiding over the program sat pianist/composer Olli Mustonen – a favoured guest of this orchestra and whom I’ve also heard presenting a Beethoven concerto or two with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra – not the happiest of memories. On this night, he led a string quartet through Milhaud’s La creation du monde, then headed an outline of his own Piano Quintet which has been heard here before. After interval, Pallandi dipped out and Bibeau came onboard for the big Schubert quintet.

As soon as the French ballet score began, it all came back: the pianist’s idiosyncratic attracting your attention with extravagant hand motions way above the keyboard, the insistent dynamic dominance of proceedings, and the eccentric singling out of notes for emphasis while others recede or disappear completely. Excuses can be made for the piano’s hogging attention: it represents the missing 14 other instruments in the original score, even if it doesn’t have all their notes entrusted to its care. In fact, what we heard was Milhaud’s own arrangement of the five-movement work.

You could shut your eyes and ignore the manual flamboyance easily enough. But you couldn’t ignore the jerkiness imposed on the central Romance where the phrasing’s sense disappeared. Nor was there a way of avoiding the insistent dominance brought into play during the Scherzo; half the time, the quartet might as well have stayed at home – a pity as, from what could be gleaned, the players were well-matched (what would you expect, given their professional relationship?).

Mustonen’s quintet of 2015, to its credit, gives room for the string lines to make a considerable mark. Still, the piano part has a good number of florid virtuosic flights in a work which shows that Shostakovich didn’t live in vain. You’re faced with aggressive passages of high energy in the opening Drammatico e passionate where percussive cascades are contrasted with lush common chords for the strings, the whole heading towards a powerful conclusion. The following Quasi una passacaglia: Andantino struck me as being a good deal more than quasi; it made a fine contrast to the preceding pages as Mustonen’s attention turned towards a more lyrical scenario. Still, the variants almost fell into predictability in some segments where the actual scoring sounded repetitious; so some firm explosions came as welcome interludes in a format that presented as eloquent and, in some ways, as traditional as some later chamber works by Britten.

Mustonen labels his finale Misterioso but that descriptor seems to apply to the strings which generate some suggestive textures. As in the first movement, the impetus comes from the piano which yet again reaches some eloquent clangorous heights and urges the movement into rhythmic ferocity. Both here, and in the passacaglia, you come across Mustonen’s tendency to write plain diatonic passages in direct juxtaposition with grinding dissonances; despite the latter, I suspect that you could analyse this quintet – well, a large part of it – along orthodox harmonic lines. Which is not to decry the composer’s language which is a stage further along the historical road than, say, Shostakovich’s Op. 57.

I had to move at the start of the Schubert A Major Quintet; a brace of biddies behind me continued to whisper/chat after the work had started – the sort of inconsiderate behaviour that makes me blind with fury. But you can’t take it out on the socially subnormal – well, not in mid-performance. Having settled further back in the Concert Hall, I found Mustonen tinting the opening Allegro vivace by continuing with his peculiarities, vide the piano’s statement starting at bar 40 which moved in and out of focus as his outline favoured some notes more than others. This in a piece where the contours are so lucid that you don’t really have to shape them. Still, the string combination – Vanska, Farrands, Valve, Bibeau – was an unalloyed pleasure for its direct speech and fluent delivery without dynamic abruptness, making the exposition’s repeat very welcome.

Farrands and Valve gave us a glowing partnership in their duet at the change of key to F sharp minor in the Andante‘s bar 24, and again at the reprise of bar 84. B ut then, this whole movement was delivered by all with persuasive eloquence. Across the following Scherzo: Presto, Mustonen had an unnerving approach to his part’s frequent fp markings – the first note firm, the second two in the group almost non-existent. But the movement’s outer segments held your attention for their inbuilt vitality and bite; this is, of course, the music that the Australian Digital Concert Hall uses as a prelude to each of its broadcasts.

On to the famous lied and its variations. An appealing grace of delivery from the strings prefaced a reading of considerable merit. Not that it was free of some odd piano passages but the first variation, where the tune is entrusted to the piano playing it at the octave, came over with unexpected equilibrium. Later, Variation III with its demi-semiquaver bravura for the piano was handled flawlessly, each note audible and sparkling. Mustonen pounded out his fortissimo (well, they are marked thus in my old Boosey & Hawkes edition) chords in Variation IV, making Valve and Bibeau surplus to requirements. But his articulation in the final Allegretto, where the piano is entrusted with the lied‘s triplet-happy accompaniment, made for sheer delight, this segment an interpretative gem with just the right level of optimistic buoyancy.

Yet again, the ACO string representatives delighted with their restrained resilience across the concluding Allegro giusto with Mustonen emerging and disappearing throughout, then giving a ‘straight’ reading with the delectable triplet chains from bar 135 to 170, and later across bars 371 to 406. Indeed, much of the versicle-and-response pattern of this movement worked very well, the respective dynamic levels of strings and keyboard telling reflectors of each other – nowhere more effectively than in the last sample from bar 457 to 465, with that uplifting brief gallop to the end that brushes away (temporarily) several reservations.

So, another unsettling recital (for me) from Mustonen. Not that there’s much point in rehashing old problems: he’s now 55 and set in his musical behavioural practices. Judging by the QPAC audience response at the end of the Trout interpretation, he has plenty of admirers and you can find it hard to kick overlong against the vox populi – never forgetting the incredibly successful careers of David Helfgott and Andre Rieu, among others too numerous to mention. You just have to admit your bafflement – as you do when faced with the ongoing presences of Eddie McGuire, Scott Cam, Karl Stefanovic, John Laws and their peers: that perennial gang of home-grown mediocrities, who happily stand as cultural gurus for Monday night’s crones in the stalls’ F row.

WEAVERS OF SONG

Miriam Allan & Erin Helyard

Elizabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday September 21, 2022

Miriam Allan

Finishing this year’s Great Performers series from the Recital Centre, Allan and Helyard’s program was broadcast by the Australian Digital Concert Hall network. The night comprised six Haydn songs, six Schubert lieder, a brief set of six variations by Mozart, another set of six variations by Mozart’s friend Josepha Auernhammer on his Der Volgelfanger bin ich ja aria, and three of the D.780 Moments musicaux. An unexpected, quickly applied encore turned up Mozart’s Abendempfindung, the composer’s longest song and a somewhat stagey finale to the Allan/Helyard musical partnership before the Australian-born soprano returns, I assume, to her home in England and the fortepianist lays down his mantle as the Recital Centre’s artist-in-residence.

The event proved to be rich in eloquence, neither artist handling the Haydn pieces with prissiness or studied restraint, such as we’ve heard too often from British female singers who have accepted the odd idea that this particular composer needs kid-glove treatment and the more sexless you can make your line, the better. That approach can’t work in something as rambunctious as The Sailor’s Song which came across with plenty of vim and bravado, a close cousin to Rule Britannia and that bulldoggie Henry Wood that appears at every Last Night of the Proms. Most of the other Haydn works enjoyed full-bodied handling, the set opening with She never told her love which, thanks to its powerful accompaniment solos, gave us time to adjust to the clangour of Helyard’s instrument. Allan didn’t have the happiest of openings, with a slight production falter on the first syllable; still, the piece came over with a firm blend of melancholy and regret, true to Viola’s intent behind her lines.

Another familiar song, My mother bids me bind my hair, gave us an opportunity to admire Allan’s breath control and line-shaping in a pretty substantial score; not to mention her attention to details like the quaver rests across And while I spin my flaxen thread. Helyard linked these opening three songs with improvised (I think) post-/preludes, taking us from A Pastoral Song to O tuneful Voice where Allan moved to a rich dramatic vein, reaching a climax with a cadenza at with a vestal’s care and preserving a sense of purpose through all those repetitions of that it may ne’er decay on the last page.

For the second bracket of three Haydns, Allan began with The Wanderer and a full Gothic interpretation, Helyard’s fortepiano ominously doubling the vocal line for a goodly amount of time. Not that this reinforcement is uncommon in these six songs; vide A Pastoral Song, and The Spirit’s Song, this latter matching The Wanderer for intensity, notably from the fortepiano’s impressive loud chords, e.g. bars 4 and 6, with Allan wringing as much drama from this scena as possible without falling into Grand Guignol overkill at those suspenseful fermata points. It made for a well-judged contrast with The Sailor’s Song that concluded the evening’s Haydn expedition with amiable buoyancy.

Helyard’s rendition of Auernhammer’s busy variations distinguished itself for a certain piquancy of address, one where the introduction of a decelerando or six broke up some predictable matter. However, each section had its original touches, although the return of the song’s last 10 bars finishing off each variation was a very welcome return to base camp. The performer’s precision was hard to fault, with only a left hand mishap at the start of Variation 6 raising an eyebrow – and the insertion of a final solitary bass G (well, it isn’t in my old Artaria edition).

A few mishaps marred the delivery of Mozart’s work – in the theme itself and in the first two variations. But Variation 3 sounded immaculate, spice added through some clever ornamentation. By the time Helyard arrived at the second half of the last variation, he felt comfortable enough to take liberties with the score and toyed with its demi-semiquavers and his instrument’s expressive capabilities. Not particularly taxing Mozart, but holding individual flights at every turn of the page, the whole finishing with a reassuringly even-handed coda.

For her Schubert bracket, Allan included three master-songs and three entertainments. She opened with Auf dem Wasser zu singen with firm undercurrents in play and a tendency to emphasize each bar’s heavy accents; hence, the pleasure to be found in her long notes on Tanzet, Atmet and Selber. In these operating conditions, the fortepiano depicted heavy water rather than the usual ripples. Another slight attacking flaw emerged at the noun in the first phrase of Du bist die Ruh, yet the following pages’ vocal line flowed past with compelling commitment and clear sympathy, the whole rising to a passionate highpoint at the first erhellt while its repetition was given with appropriate restraint. Both performers made a definite character out of Standchen, Helyard’s mandolin/guitar stand-in more percussive than the smooth burbling we are accustomed to from your everyday piano. It was hard to understand why Allan didn’t give full value to the first note of Ach! sie flehen dich unless it was to heighten the expostulation’s drama (really?). But the interpretation as a complete unit made a considerable impact for its hard edges (even if Helyard muffled/muted his postlude) and rich breadth of timbre.

Trauer der Liebe is a small semi-gem which moved slowly enough to give us a more concentrated exposure to Allan’s curvaceous phrasing. Helyard made a change into triplets for the third stanza, reverting to the regulation music in the 5th last bar, thereby keeping himself and us entertained in fairly bland surroundings. Minnelied, also a page long, was given straight, without any problems apart from something odd in the keyboard during the second-last bar of Stanza 1. Here is another charming lyric, in this reading a vocalist’s delight because of the accompaniment’s lack of distinction. Another three-stanza, one-page lied is Seligkeit, a familiar, sunny delight-in-life creation, treated to a bounce-rich reading with both musicians who freshened up their last run-through with some innovations.

The Schubert songs were divided in half by Helyard’s performance of the Moments musicaux Nos. 2, 3 and 4. Of these pieces, the No. 2 in A flat Major impressed me as one of the recital’s highpoints because of the player’s ability to shape repetitious phrases and clauses with a skillful malleability and his command of shape in its several sections, ending with a moving final 18 bars in A flat in which the repeated chords and their subterranean variants made for one of those occasions when Schubert takes you close to the ideal. For the familiar F minor Allegro moderato, Helyard inserted a piece of paper into his fortepiano’s bass reaches, thereby producing an occasional side-drum rattle, even if the declared intention was to imitate a bassoon.

I’d never heard in live performance the No. 4 Moderato in C sharp minor; having experienced it, I can see why it doesn’t attract keyboard players as much as its predecessor. However, the middle D flat pages were a small revelation, not least for Helyard’s careful outlining of their inbuilt grace and tenderness, And the final five bars of this moment are a fine and moving creation/summation, here realized with touching skill and empathy.

I seem to recall Helyard saying that he and Allan have been presenting this program for some time, this night in Melbourne the end of their mutual endeavours. I, for one, was very pleased to have heard the program which, despite my nitpicking, was packed with excellent music-making. The whole exercise served as a counter-argument to that trite observation about ‘those who can’t, teach’; both these musicians are distinguished teachers and, simultaneously, top-notch performers.

IN THE SHADOW OF WAR

Selby & Friends

Australian Digital Concert Hall

Elder Conservatorium, Adelaide

Wednesday September 7, 2022

Sophie Rowell, Timo-Veikko Valve, Kathryn Selby

Back on internet viewing in these post-COVID days (ho ho), the Selby & Friends franchise re-boarded the Australian Digital Concert Hall armada for this broadcast from Adelaide’s Elder Hall – one of the regular venues on the organization’s interstate touring schedule. Violinist Grace Clifford was scheduled to appear in this round but was injured, so her place was taken very ably by co-concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Sophie Rowell, revisiting her chamber music days when she led the Tankstream/Australian String Quartet. Valve has been an S&F regular cellist guest for some years now; just as reliable and informative here as he is at the principal desk of the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Two of the programmed works had direct reference to war. The Shostakovich E minor Piano Trio is a searing document decrying the evils of World War Two, with all the insight of a musician who partly lived through them by way of the siege of Leningrad. His use of Jewish-inflected melodies in the finale bore witness to the composer’s awareness of the Nazi obscenities revealed in the Allied armies’ march on Berlin. Matthew Hindson’s 1915 was written for the Benaud Trio in 2015 and refers to the state of mind of a young man who has enlisted, as well as depicting the loss and devastation that the Great War caused to so many. A different take, then, to the opening strophes in Peter Weir’s 1981 Gallipoli film where Mel Gibson and Mark Lee represented the popular vision that we have of this conflict by joining up with something approaching glee.

The program’s most lengthy work, Schubert’s E flat Piano Trio, was explained into bellicose context by several means. Two that stuck in my mind were the reminder that the composer lived in Napoleonic times. Yes, he did but it would seem that the conflict registered little on him; he was 12 when hostilities stopped and Austria partnered Napoleon during the invasion of Russia; after which, Francis I/II’s Empire was neutral until the French emperor was defeated and exiled. I’m not getting the picture of a young musician dodging rifle fire and/or conscription – or even having much consciousness of international or local conflict. The second proposition involved finding military suggestions in the trio’s Andante con moto. You might find a march there – a pretty slow one – but the suggestions to me across these pages are more aligned with the depressing trudge of the Winterreise narrator.

You can detect an earnest grief in Hindson’s short piece which commemorates the Gallipoli campaign from one aspect, one which has been adopted by this country as near-compulsory. The loss of close to 9,000 Australians in that Churchillian folly was – and is – a national disaster but one that should rouse more aggressive passions than sorrow, even viewed from this temporal distance. It may be that Hindson is speaking for the survivors, like Wacka in Seymour’s play The One Day of the Year, that character’s central soliloquy in turn speaking for those who fought on the Turkish peninsula through those soul-destroying days.

1915 is an elegy in C minor, not that distant in emotional colour from many other deplorations – neither as flashy as Britten, nor as depressing as Bloch. The composer has a fondness for using violin and cello in unison/at the octave and has constructed a well-shaped threnody that has a fullness of timbre alongside several relieving effects, like some quietly piercing violin harmonics, and the suggestion near the end of a bugle call hovering over the gloom. The piece occupies a clear-cut emotional territory, carrying out its mission of communicating the sorrow felt by families and any young man who blithely signed up only to face death and mutilation on all sides. In the end, as the historians tell us, it was a trade war in which Australia became senselessly if dutifully involved. Oh, well; now that the English Queen has died, any links with her fading royal house must surely dissipate, particularly when we’re faced with the absurdity of what will replace her.

Speaking of depression, the Russian composer’s trio is very well-known, particularly to those of us exposed to chamber music competitions where the work exercises a huge attraction to competitors, if not their audiences. Valve handled the opening harmonics solo well enough, although I wasn’t convinced by his octave leap in bar 5. Rowell displayed a fine firmness of attack at her high-pitched melodic outline 16 bars after the Moderato‘s opening. But the players all gave this section a fierce handling which proved most persuasive, thanks to its unanimity of purpose: the sense that the timbral fabric was of a piece, urged on by three consistent voices.

More ferocity blazed out across the Allegro con brio, Rowell setting a pace that proved exemplary; you were impressed by the prevailing level of energy but not swamped by a pell-mell rush. Selby followed a steady path, her note-chains positioned with care in a reading of feisty aggression – just as it should be, even given the trio-like relieving moments. In the following Largo, Selby gave the 8 dotted semibreves a considerable space in which to resonate, coming close to disconnectedness rather than portentousness. Rowell’s entry proved a relief for her warmth of colour in a lugubrious situation, excellently mirrored by Valve with both instruments close to a synchronised vibrato in the movement’s wrenching duets. The ensemble worked very hard to give full vent to the passion underpinning these pages, loosening intensity with fine discernment when realizing their two G Major bars leading into the finale.

I found the group’s handling of the Allegretto to be enthralling, particularly with those savage pizzicati before the piano’s arrival at bar 30 where the temperament changes from cute klezmer to vehement anger. Rowell’s use of rubato was consistent with Selby’s application of the same technique, offering variety to the regularity of pulse that typifies this segment’s opening. During these pages you became more aware of the excellent recording work carried out by ADCH technicians, each line clear and individual, even when Selby shifted into powerful top gear, throwing caution out the door and rarely faltering in her bravado. For once, we heard the conclusion in a proper context – without sentimentality or exemplifying frailty but loaded with strong despair and resignation. The effect was to bring the composer’s internal torment to the fore as he chafed against state restrictions and came to realize that his own country’s regime was of the same type which gave the world Treblinka and Majdanek.

There’s little to say of the big Schubert score’s treatment. It tired the performers, as you’d expect, but their balance and stamina carried them through, even across the work’s disappointing and lengthy final Allegro moderato. Fortunately, the players repeated the first movement’s exposition so that we could relish the delicacy of treatment given to the stretch from bar 48 to bar 90. Another telling extended passage came with Selby’s triplets and their sustained equanimity throughout the development. Later, Valve generated the shock of the performance at bar 298 with a remarkably gruff sustained G sharp. Slight section-interleaving pauses were employed, the emphasis on the work’s malleability (at least in this movement) with a suggestion of the composer’s Moments musicaux between bars 584 and 621, just before the main theme’s last statement.

As for the militarily suggestive Andante con moto, the players set up a stately march pace, the piece’s progress dotted with pleasures like a tender change to E flat Major in bar 41 and a further eloquent move to C Major proper at bar 129 with an ideally paced ritardando in operation across the last seven bars. The only flaw I encountered came at Rowell’s unhappy high E concluding bar 161, although the leap up to it is awkward. As for the canons at work in the Allegro moderato, you could not ask for a more mellifluous handling; later, you could superimpose a military flavour to the Trio‘s A flat waltz movement which broke through the gentle veneer of its surrounds with refined brutality.

Again, you heard moments of excellent craftsmanship in the finale. That trademark transference at the L’istesso tempo of bar 73 came across with illuminating lightness of attack; Selby’s repeated chords from bar 191 to bar 205 enjoyed a restrained resonance, yielding space to the strings’ octave melody; all executants contributed to a joyful Romantic surge across bars 264 to 273. But it was hard to maintain interest beyond bar 762 (!) when the main theme’s treatment smacked of filling in time; mind you, that’s just how that moment strikes me and there are plenty of others who see no fault in Schubert’s ‘heavenly length’.

Those of us unable to encounter Selby & Friends in live performance (the country’s north, west and extreme south) would have welcomed this broadcast, most importantly to hear that the body’s high achievement standards have not fallen off across the long interruption that has interfered with normal music transmission. Further, it is one of this ensemble’s splendid attractions that the Friends all fit so easily into Selby’s administrative and artistic frameworks.

FLINDERS QUARTET & VATCHE JAMBAZIAN

Sydney Mozart Society/Australian Digital Concert Hall

Concourse Theatre, Chatswood

Tuesday August 23, 2022

Vatche Jambazian

A program of familiarities offering no surprises: Haydn, Mozart, Brahms – and played straight through without an interval. Which would have been testing for the concentration powers of any intellectually frolicsome members in the Sydney Mozart Society, which organization sponsored the event, bringing one of Melbourne’s favourite chamber ensembles to the North Shore, then allying them with one of the Harbour City’s bright-spark pianists. We heard the last of Haydn’s Op. 20 set, that in A Major; then an a quattro version of Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 414, the earlier of the A Major couple; and the String Quartet No. 1 by Brahms in C minor (for a change of key). A most satisfying entertainment for the true musical conservatives among us – well, on paper.

But the reality was pretty rough and ready in its delivery style. Actually, that’s a bit too polite: a more proper estimation would be ‘scruffy’, with a cavalier regard for detail even as early as bars 8 to 10 in the first Allegro where Thibaud Pavlovic-Hobba‘s first violin semiquavers were smothered under some low-lying chord support. And it wasn’t much better the second time around, although by then both violins had roused discontent with some ragged intonational pairing further into the exposition. Throughout, the emphasis rested on a sort of rusticity with little polish or finesse applied, as in the aggressive opening to the recapitulation. For all that, I was disappointed that the movement’s larger second part wasn’t repeated.

It seems unfair to single out the first violin line but it is dominant in this work; so, when it falters, the performance’s ambience is weakened, as at the uncertain repeated E crotchets between bars 19 and 20 of the Adagio, and a poor assault on bar 21’s top F sharp. By about half way through, the reading’s aggressive style had taken over, become the norm and you reconciled with the Concourse’s lively acoustic. Second violin Wilma Smith‘s descending thirds starting at bar 65 proved uneasy in execution but Helen Ireland‘s viola striding arpeggios at bar 55 and onwards gave the work’s progress some welcome solidity. Something went awry with the first violin’s B sharp in the third last bar, marring an otherwise amiable resolution.

Once again, both violins were not sufficiently synchronised at a pivotal bar 8 of the Menuetto, although the repeat showed an improvement. In fact, this part of the work worked better than others because it could take some brisk handling, although I found the Trio‘s second half clumsily treated – a case of bucolic overkill. Fortunately, the final Fuga held some cerebral pleasure, mainly for its internal workings (even if these aren’t that strenuous), and for the moveable feast whereby the first subject’s four-semiquaver group enjoyed both regular and clipped handling.

When Jambazian joined in for the Mozart, errors still occurred, if not so prominently. The violin lines at the octave in bars 13 to 15 of the first movement sounded disjunct in tuning but the opening tutti as a whole showed improvement as the score moved forward. The pianist matched his quartet-orchestra in determination although he could pull out the lapidary stops as well, e.g. the 8 bar solo at bar 152, and the delicate figuration later beginning at bar 224.. Still, mistakes arose for no apparent reason with the B notes at bar 14 of the cadenza, and a mis-step further on at bar 32. Just as in the Haydn, the Allegro‘s closing bars came over as willing but ragged.

You could say that matters improved during the Andante; certainly, the violin duo worked to bracing effect in the unison bars 15 to 18, a passage that shone out for its singular eloquence, even if a repeat at bars 51 to 55 was less unified in pitching Jambazian observed a disciplined attack but the movement’s fluency was disturbed by a transmission blackout which had to be compensated for in a later viewing (the ADCH ticket purchase means you can review the whole performance for 72 hours after the initial transmission). I didn’t see what was gained by the arpeggiation of the E minor chord in bar 76: the melody restatement post-mini cadenza was proceeding amiably when this idiosyncrasy came up: slight but uncalled-for, I would have thought. Still, the post-major cadenza finishing-off was fairly clean.

Jambazian took a hearty approach to the Rondeau when he entered at bar 21, rising to hyper-metallic by bar 81. An odd error blunted the player’s output, e.g. bar 91, and the thistledown-light syncopations at bars 122-3 were over-emphatic. Mind you, the player sustained this style into his reading of Cadenza B which here prefigured Beethoven, although an inexplicable arpeggio flaw at bar 17 made the near-truculent flame flicker. Mozart’s light-stepping finale would have gained from less heavily-applied power from all participants; at the end, you wondered where the expected light and grace had gone.

A more suitable fit for the Flinders’ energy came with the Brahms C minor Quartet where flexing took over pretty early in the opening Allegro; luckily, the exposition repeat gave a better indication of the ensemble’s talents although that middle B in Smith’s bar 7 triple stop didn’t sit comfortably in the mesh. But, for all of the enthusiasm shown, the dynamic became overwhelmingly heavy, as at bar 52 and in the urgency of Brahms’ development which often bordered on hysterical. When the temperature cooled, strange things happened like a palpably wrong note in the violin 1/viola octave unison at bar 162. And moments that you anticipate with relish, like the wrenching violins’ duet between bars 178 and 181, misfired because of an absence of lyricism. Occasionally, Pavlovic-Hobba inserted a portamento that recalled a delivery style from a bygone age (he was alone, it seemed, in exercising this individuality), but he gave a splendid account of himself in the final burst of high-octane fervour across bars 231 to 239.

Not that you hadn’t noticed her until now, but Zoe Knighton‘s cello solo at bar 7 of the Poco adagio made for a welcome burst of moderately applied lushness. But the whole group came pretty close to fulfilling expectations right from the start of this romanze, notably in detailed work, like the alternating arpeggios across bars 61-63. Ireland’s viola emerged in fine voice during the following Allegretto molto; unusually effective in this busy, if not cluttered, environment. I admired the carefully shared switches between Pavlovic-Hobba and Ireland from bar 38, even if you might have asked for more vibrato on the sustained notes.

A firm and bold account of the finale’s opening statement – all two bars of it – prefaced the ensemble’s double-faceted interpretation which held some fine passages of play juxtaposed with others that were unsatisfactory because of faulty articulation and dynamics that held little common currency as the lines hurtled forwards. Still, that underlying impulse was maintained and a carefully outlined sweep from bar 219 to the concluding cadence made for a more impressive demonstration than might otherwise have been expected, given the push-through impetus that obtained for this movement’s more thickly-textured moments.

I’ve heard the Flinders at work for many years now – right from the start, in fact, when Erica Kennedy and Matthew Tomkins began the group in partnership with survivors Ireland and Knighton. Other changes to the violin personnel have come about over the years, although nothing nearly as drastic has taken place as it has with the Australian String Quartet where, in comparison, Nothing beside remains. We know that COVID has brought discontinuity to musicians on all sides and in all lands, but ample rehearsal preparation time has returned as a concomitant of public performance. Judging by this night’s display, the Flinders have quite a way to go before they reach the level of homogeneity that obtained in the group’s earlier years. This will be particularly important when the possibility/probability of programming transparencies like Haydn and Mozart arises, although it appears that the rest of the ensemble’s year is headed for a more meat-and-three-veg diet.

AUSTRALIAN FESTIVAL OF CHAMBER MUSIC: JAMES COOK UNIVERSITY OPENING NIGHT CONCERT

NEW BEGINNINGS

Australian Digital Concert Hall

Townsville Civic Theatre

Friday July 29, 2022

Peteris Vasks

I’ve been to the Townsville Chamber Music week, way back in the days when newspaper had money – and so did festivals. It must have been in the earlier manifestations; as it’s been going for 30 years, that would put it back in the middle 1990s, I suppose. The place struck me as rough and ready, and not just because of the off-duty military looking for a Saturday night fight in the centre of town. It was a laid-back sort of place; so much so, that I found myself walking in a land rights demonstration because I was labouring under the misapprehension that everybody walked in the middle of the road.. Was it held in July/August in those times? I just remember the weather being stinking hot so that walking around in search of venues was a major effort.

As for music, I recall a master class being given by a cranky Charmian Gadd, dissatisfied (and showing it) at the poor preparation of some participants. A major concert in the Civic Centre escapes into the dim recesses of the memory, but a reading of the Brahms Horn Trio in a church on Sunday morning was a valuable introduction to a work that I’d never heard till then.

For this year’s opening night concert, an impressive number turned up, even if (as with so many chamber music events these days) the patrons were mainly elderly. What they heard was varied in quality and very long. Pace Jack Liebeck and his administrative team, this initial program was a farrago in standard of works and standard of execution. As for us spectators-from-afar, the event proved to be slippery: even with the program notes, you didn’t know what was coming next, or – more importantly – why.

Artistic director Liebeck came on stage after the inevitable voice-over salute to First Nations peoples and gave a speech that might have been better prepared instead of the stumble that it turned out to be. He told us that the first piece, Nginda Ngarrini Bi Ngya by Deborah Cheetham, would/could not be performed because the composer/soprano was ill. OK; not the best of openings but bearable. He also told us that a visiting artist, Turkish cellist Jamal Aliyev, was also unavailable but his place would be taken by Michael Goldschlager, one-time member of the Macquarie Trio before that university took away its patronage of the ensemble. Actually, this change would have passed unnoticed by most because Goldschlager’s name led one published list of personnel for this opening night schedule.

So we started with the original second piece: Milhaud’s ballet La creation du monde, in the version for piano and string quartet minus the viola which is replaced by a saxophone – or not: this reading found Daniel de Borah on keyboard with violinists Elizabeth Layton and Natsuko Yoshimoto, cellist Trish Dean, and Paul Dean on clarinet. One recording with Previn as pianist uses a standard string quartet; some others go in for the clarinet-for-viola substitute. Whatever the reality, this version made for agreeable listening. testifying to the composer’s discovery of jazz and use of it to his fullest. No surprises besides some cuts to the original chamber orchestra score and, of course, the interest in seeing how Milhaud dealt out his gifts to this limited number of executants.

It’s of its time – 1923 – and to contemporary ears sounds rather dated, with lots of Gershwin-type flourishes and similarities, like the ghost of the Prelude No. 2 arising in the Romance. But the rhythmic blurts and syncopations present no problems for players of this calibre and the score is repetitious enough for you to feel unchallenged as it follows its comfortable, slightly swinging path through a slightly elliptical fugue to the precise vigour of the Final‘s fast episodes. For an ad hoc group, these players generated a fair interpretation.

Next came the Gran Sestetto Concertante, an anonymous arrangement for string sextet of Mozart’s magnificently assured Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola of 1779. Well, that was what the program promised but Liebeck forgot to say in his initial address, that the entertainment would feature only the middle Andante movement – so the Gran bit disappeared. For this oddity, Liebeck and Corey Cerovsek played the violin lines, Simon Oswell and Benjamin Roskams the violas, Elina Faskhi and Julian Smiles the dual cellos. This C minor gem was seen through with diligence and a tendency to hard-hitting, notably in those passages where not much is happening melodically and everyone is marking time (for example, bars 53 to 57, bar 126 up to the cadenza accompagnata).

Apart from these to chugging bursts, the only other faults to be heard came from Liebeck himself with a pair of squeaks: one in bar 27, the other at bar 112. It’s a fair arrangement, no matter who put it together: everybody gets a guernsey at some stage, particularly Faskhi whose first cello part enjoyed the initial violin solo and engaged with other gifts along the way. The absent orchestral parts – pairs of horns and oboes – provide chords and reinforcements mainly, with only a few points where either set breaks out into something else; so the loss in timbre seems minimal. Still, the colours are there in the original’s background and, if you know and love the sinfonia, you feel the lack.

A complete change of pace followed when mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean sang two numbers with pianist Kristian Chong giving her the blandest of supports: Cole Porter’s Begin the Beguine, and The Inchworm from Frank Loesser’s music for the King Vidor film Hans Christian Andersen. For the first, Betts-Dean’s voice held a plummy richness which worked against the seductiveness of the song itself, as did the all-stops power of the climactic So don’t let them begin the beguine. However, it was a pleasurable change to hear a real voice giving this song an airing, after nearly 90 years of scungy, slovenly readings from every Thomasina, Dick and Harry. Similarly, in the Danny Kaye song, this singer made the leaps accurately, the song very flattering to her production technique and her expressive ability. Nice to hear, but stretching the definition of chamber music.

A festival minor specialty followed in Berio’s Opus Number Zoo, a wind quintet that asks its performers to speak the text as well as play the score. In four movements, the work carries its heavier messages lightly, here performed by flute Alison Mitchell, oboe Emmanuel Cassimatis, clarinet Dean, bassoon David Mitchell, and horn Peter Luff. As the music originally comes from Berio’s younger days, you look in vain for anything resembling the chamber music for which his name resonated as an innovator – Circles, the Sequenze, Thema (Omaggio a Joyce), Recital I. Much of it sounded uncomplicated, with the possible exception of The Fawn movement where the despair at man’s inhumanity to man is more stringently expressed.

But it’s very quick and full of action as the musicians shared the spoken lines, rather than having one player laden with textual responsibility. By and large, the necessary legerdemain (in the odd-numbered movements) was maintained, and the work held some surprises; for instance, it took me a while to realise that Mitchell was playing an alto during the last Tom Cats piece. I suppose the work appeared as a precursor to the evening’s finale, although Rhoda Levine’s libretto/poems were superior to pretty much everything spoken during the Saint-Saens.

After an extended interval (meant to be 20 minutes, according to the transmitted communication, but stretching out for at least half-an hour while the Townsvilleans re-discovered their seats/the building), we heard the night’s best music-making when the Goldner Quartet performed Peteris Vasks’ String Quartet No. 3. Right from the start, you were aware of the ensemble’s security, even in the linear balance that obtained in the short hymn-like chord chains above or below a drone that framed the score’s discussion. As the initial Moderato progressed, the Goldners’ settled personality reassured, their mutual confidence a gift to the music itself.

This reliability came into higher focus in the following Allegro energico where rough open fifths and dislocated rhythmic pulses demonstrated these musicians’ preparation and integrity of interpretation, even turning the two folksy interludes into something more impressive than bucolic dross or fiedel whining. Speaking of twos, the group generated a pair of powerful highpoints in the threnody-like Adagio. Even more telling skill came across in this movement’s polyphonic webs: tough writing where material is packed together with weight that approaches suffocation.

In his finale, Vasks brings in bird imitations – simple trills and susurrations that meld with the opening movement’s hymn chains. A burst of folk-music stamping, then back to the hymn+trills; some more Latvian hoedown before a hohepunkt, and the work fades into silence through its opening material. Vasks suggests that his work is linked to the twin concepts of Christmas and peace; his vision is a personal one in that this feast-day is pretty fraught, and his prospects for a universal armistice remain open-ended. So, while affecting in its emotional language, the quartet is unsettling, despite its luminous final bars, disrupted by a ridiculously prominent cough from a patron during the second-last bar (where do they dig these people up?)

We came, at last, to the Carnival of the Animals. The two pianists whose work is central to the score were Chong and Daniel Grimwood. Mitchell and Dean returned as woodwind soloists; the string quintet comprised violins Layton and Brigid Coleridge, viola Oswell, cello Goldschlager, and double bass Phoebe Russell. In charge of the percussion, Jacob Enoka played xylophone and possibly a glockenspiel for the original’s glass harmonica; to be honest, I was looking at the score for the entire performance. Damien Beaumont provided the prefatory verses to each movement, and I wish he hadn’t; I don’t know who wrote them but the effort was misplaced because of a lack of wit, rhyme, and self-restraint (a few of them were longer than the music they preceded).

This wasn’t the cleanest of renditions, but I suppose you’d have to expect that with necessarily insufficient rehearsal time to prepare this deceptive work. Something odd happened in the contrary-motion glissandi in bar 11 – or was it simple clumsiness? Nothing disturbed the Lion’s March or the Hens and Roosters. The Wild Asses piano duet only came apart at one obvious point; then Chong supplied a deftly graduated support of triplets for Russell in the Tortoises pages. Elephant and Kangaroos passed painlessly.

Aquarium proved delicate although someone had problems settling into the first bar’s rhythmic mesh. Personages with long ears is marked ad lib; both violinists took full advantage. In the pretty simple Cuckoo in the deep woods, the pianos were out of sync at about bar 8/9 and the last chord failed to impress as a united effort. Mitchell skittered through Aviary without dropping a note, as far as I could tell. Chong and Grimwood went for broad humour in Pianists, deliberately hitting wrong notes and getting out of time with each other; for me, the fun lies in the executants’ ability to become automata.

Fossils brought Enoka’s xylophone into the sound-world, even though that instrument’s part is repetitive and simple. Then Goldschlager played a sensitive, restrained The Swan, although some stretches to the line’s top notes were achieved with effort, like the top D just before Figure I in the Durand edition. And the Finale bounced along with no apparent flaws, apart from a disjunction six or seven bars before Figure 7. The night ended at 10:45 pm, leaving me satiated, but not in a totally satisfied way.

As I say, this program was a mash-up, not helped by a lack of determination in certain pieces, especially the final offering. It was hard to avoid the impression that this program lacked any cohesion; it was as though pieces were being given on spec, to see how they would go. Somehow, the whole exercise struck me as provincial, rudderless, pitched at an unnecessarily low level (typified by Beaumont’s twee commentary). You have to hope that later events prove more coherent in their essentials; we’re all celebrating that we’ve been allowed out of detention, but that shouldn’t mean that, as a fine entertainer once said to us, anything goes.

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The above was written before I looked at upcoming programs in the festival. Now that I’ve seen what’s on offer, I’ve been too harsh: those over this weekend also have an everybody-in ambience, as though available participants dictate the events – which is as strange as Liebeck’s request for patrons to vote on their favourite piece of chamber music, with an aim of programming the most acclaimed works at the next festival. My money’s on the over-familiar like the Archduke and the Trout – anything with a nickname – the American, Dumky, Spring, Kreutzer. I’m almost prepared to lay money that Hindemith, Bartok, Schoenberg, Stravinsky will not get nominated. In fact, my gamble would probably extend to any living composer.