Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Master Series 3. Adelaide Town Hall. 1 May 2015
We human beings like structure in our lives, including our music, but we also like to strike out and throw the rules way. First and Last, the third concert in the Master Series by our own world class Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, served up a satisfying sandwich of rule breaking and invention wrapped between two slices of comforting orderliness.
The rule breaking and invention was provided by contemporary Scottish composer James MacMillan’s remarkable Viola Concerto. Co-commissioned by the ASO, this was the Australian premiere of what is a remarkable composition. It’s not a concerto in the traditional sense. Yes it does have three movements, but that’s about where its connection with the ‘traditional form’ ends. There is no clear use of the usual theme/ development/ variation/ recapitulation approaches that we have all grown fond of – the very things that allows us to ‘understand’ a piece of music. What we have instead is “pure music” – three separate pieces that are inward looking and self-sufficient. The programme notes ask the audience to ponder how successfully MacMillan has added to the concerto genre and also to the viola repertoire. My response is that I don’t particularly care about the first question, but the viola canon has been well served, and at the hands of viola genius, Lawrence Power the result was spectacular.
Each movement of the ‘concerto’ is its own universe. The first has at times a bluesy de-tuned Gershwin feel to it. The second is often mournful and has long languid melody lines that evolve into a fluidity and energy that is reminiscent of John Adams single movement violin ‘concerto’ The Dharma at Big Sur. The third features an exciting musical duel between the soloist and the orchestra’s principal violas and cellos, almost with a ‘dueling banjos’ dramatic feel to it! The concerto abruptly ends, but the audience was on its feet in an instant. MacMillan and guest conductor Mark Wigglesworth were brought back for no less than four bows. All richly deserved.
MacMillan provided an imposing presence on stage. He is a tall man and holds his instrument with strength and authority. He is active on stage, and takes in all that is around him, frequently eyeballing the conductor and members of the orchestra. The lines of communication are palpable. His technique is undeniable, even dazzling, and the viola takes on a whole new dimension for us.
Great programming ASO. Well commissioned!
The first piece of bread for the evening was Haydn’s first symphony. I’ve never heard it before and it comes in at around 11 minutes. By comparison to the viola concerto that followed it, and Dvorak’s New World symphony that finished the evening, it is almost insignificant, but it had its charm. Interestingly the first movement at times gives unusual prominence to the violas by separating them from the usual bass accompaniment. A clever piece of programming by the ASO to lead us into the viola concerto!
The MacMillan was not everyone’s cup of tea, but the Dvorak certainly was. It is uber melodic and the Goin’ Home melody in the Largo movement is universally known and well loved. To my ear Wigglesworth took the adagio first movement a little more slowly than is usual, and it worked a treat. It gave opportunity for precise phrasing and for the interesting rhythmic structures to come to the fore. Peter Duggan’s cor anglais solo was superb and it was quite fitting that Wigglesworth should offer up his gorgeous congratulatory flowers (from Tynte florist) to Duggan at the conclusion of the concert.
There is remarkable depth to the ASO, and it was again a joy to see and hear talented artists unleash the music rather than just play the notes. Hugh Kluger is a relatively recent addition to the bass section and with his comparative youth he played the Dvorak with sassiness and attitude. Invigorating to watch, as it is to watch them all.
Wonderful concert. I’m still humming the Dvorak, though for the life of me I can’t recall a melody from the MacMillan, but the sense of excitement persists!
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Master Series Two. Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 17 Apr 2015
French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie and guest conductor Maestro Yan Pascal Tortelier demonstrated a rare sympatico to produce a richly textured and thrilling performance of Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor. Dressed in very smart and distinctive formal wear, Lortie assumed the stage with great anticipation and from the moment he leaned into the decisive opening chords, it was clear that his reading was going to be special; and it was. Lortie carefully applied considerable forearm weight when it was needed in the first and second movements rather than striking the keys to produce a percussive effect. The beginnings of his phrases were beautifully controlled and exquisitely in time with the orchestra. He and Tortelier frequently looked at and into each other. Their communication was intense and meaningful. Although Lortie was enthusiastically applauded by the audience at the end, much credit was also due to Tortelier.
If we were ever hesitant to extol Tortelier’s talent, his reading of Sibelius’ Symphony No.1 in E minor put all doubts to the sword. The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra has an affinity for Sibelius, having recorded all his symphonies in 2010 and presented a Sibelius festival back in 2007, both under Arvo Volmer. Tortelier capitalised on the deep understanding the ASO has for Sibelius but he also made it sound fresh. He allowed the rich melodies to soar – sometimes almost with overwhelming force – but did not allow them individually to assume more importance than they should. They each had their moment in the Finnish sun, but there was no room for rapaciousness! The composition is grand in its conception and each section of the orchestra gets a work-out, but none more so than the strings. It was a pure delight to watch the principals at work, and guest concertmaster Elizabeth Layton and associate Cameron Hill combined in another superb partnership to ensure the intense and almost unbridled emotion was abundantly evident, but kept in check. Not even a broken string on Ewen Bramble’s cello could put a dent in the proceedings; congratulations to Sarah Denbigh for swapping cellos with him and for somehow managing the remainder of the performance with a hurt-but-not-out instrument!
The programme began with a spirited performance of the Overture to Beatrice et Benedict by Berlioz, and the evening gently faded to a satisfying conclusion with the thought provoking and almost anti-climactical final bars of the Sibelius.
Well done ASO. A great concert.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Augie March. Her Majesty’s. 26 Mar 2015
It is several weeks on from the Ides of March, now it’s time for the Odes of March. Augie March, that is - back from a seven year hibernation for a national tour featuring their 2014 album Havens Dumb. Led by the prodigiously talented, singer songwriter Glenn Richards, Augie March appeared on the Australian music scene in 1998 and released their first album Sunset Studies in 2000. Now fifteen years and five albums later, they are here to remind us what an embarrassment of musical riches/Richards they have to offer.
They are a quirky bunch. After an excellent set from the very promising Adelaide trio, Cosmo Thundercat, Richards and the band wander onstage at Her Majesty’s in search of bass player Edmondo Ammendola. There is an awkward delay until his shambling arrival and Richards, never entirely comfortable as the frontman, finally gathers the band, and the three member Arnold Horns, to open with Hobart Obit.
“I tried to care for you the best I could /We mapped it out and reconfigured the old neighbourhood/But time is a bastard , time is a vial of petty sands,/the body’s a basket emptying to the niggardly hands/of Aeon for his array of strung out decay…”
With three-part harmonies crooning around him Glenn Richards unfurls the first of his many densely laden lyrics sung in his melodic pitch perfect vocal, with gently chiming guitar from Adam Donovan, Ammendola’s deep thrumming bass and David Williams anchoring the band with his steadying drumbeat. It is a sweet pop rock sound – echoes of Crowded House and perhaps, in their keening vocals and esoteric lyrics, the hugely under-rated UK band Turin Brakes.
With very few exceptions Augie March songs don’t just jump into the brain pan and stay there. They are intricate, trickling threads of voice and word, chord and beat, there are hooks but they don’t have simple choruses, or the kind of repetitions that become immediately memorable.
Interestingly, in the Havens Dumb songs there are repetitions of line between songs- “Time is a bastard, time is a vial of petty sands ..” from Hobart Obit, reappears in Bastard Time and in the album’s splendid opening songAWOL, regrettably excluded from the Her Majesty’s setlist. A Dog Starved gets a go instead – Donovan’s guitar taking on that sweet rheumatic Gretsch sound George Harrison gave to the world. In fact there is a fetching White Album feeling to the whole song, or perhaps, given Richards’ tempus fugit preoccupations -All Things Must Pass.
Peering down at his setlist, printed in a pygmy font that is too hard to read, Richards, somewhat haltingly, leads into a selection from Moo You Bloody Choir, The Cold Acre, Kiernan Box’s gentle piano intro followed by the swing waltz rhythm of yet another melancholy Augie March treasure – “My heart is a cold acre, my chest is a cold acre…” Then two early compositions, The Good Gardener (On how he fell) and Here Comes The Night, both from Sunset Studies follow, the band in stride with two fine songs, reminders that this band started well and stayed that way.
Glenn Richards is justly proud of Havens Dumb, the album that brought the band back together. Gathered over several years they recorded 30 songs, the musicians living in different parts of the country emailing each other their overdubs as the project progressed. We get three more of the new songs –Bastard Time, Villa Adriana – inspired by Richards’ long-awaited first trip to Italy- and the pungent Definitive History.
I am not sure what the title, Havens Dumb, quite refers to but, in part, it is a harsh appraisal of the present state of Australian civic and public life. Definitive History is scathing- “’The same smug expression, same false cheer,/same air of predation-“Stranger welcome” .. just not here, just not here, just not here/ All men are like mice, all men are mice, it just doesn’t pay to be nice,/Take all before you/Definitive History.”
Unfortunately the lucid rage of the lyrics is buried under a surfeit of sound. Kieran Box unleashes a loud grating sample of a violin chord which starts to sound like an unattended car alarm, with the Arnold Horns blasting away and the rest of the band competing for attention. More’s the pity that the refrain is lost in transmission – ”O one for the mother, one for the dad/One for the treasurer, one for the plasma screen and don’t forget/ the developers dream,/ a plot to bury them all at the edge of the sprawl-/ Definitive history.”
The early classic There is No Such a Place reminds us that there are few Australian songwriters who can write such plangent melody. This is an amalgam of Paul Simon, Don McLean’s American Pie and Vincent, or more recently the Finn brothers , Elliott Smith and Elbow. But, as always, Augie March sound like a lot of musicians and none of them. They are unique in the best way, because they evoke so much other music that stands in the wings watching them appear – and, as their song reminds us - disappear.
The set concludes with the full-tilt galloping tempo of This Train Will be Taking No Passengers and, of course, an encore featuring One Crowded Hour. It is their signature hit, and yet another wistful meditation on the theme of time, and past love, featuring yet another gnomic Glenn Richards question and response -“what is this six stringed instrument but an adolescent loom ? And one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin.”
Concluding with the downbeat, mildly querulous Never Been Sad, Richards and his staunch, enduring band wind down the show. It has been one of fits and starts, distractedly re-tuning instruments, gazing into the audience, bemused by the lighting blackouts, mulling over Charlie Brown meaning of life questions. As an inner sigh from Glenn Richards becomes accidentally audible, he disarmingly asks- “Am I really tired, or really old?”
No slick patter from Augie March, no smoothly engineered show, none of the easy complacency befitting a veteran band who after seven years of self-imposed exile have returned with an album as good as any produced in this desolate period in Australian music. Instead they played fifteen or so songs of beauty and tangled feeling. It was one memorable hour and a half, ramshackle, often musically exquisite and a reminder that Augie March are a great Australian band. “Thanks very much folks”, Richards diffidently concludes, “that’s us.” And a fine thing they are too. Let’s hope, for all our sakes, that there will be a next time.
Murray Bramwell
When: Closed
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Festival Theatre. 27 Mar 2015
The proms are a jolly affair and a real money spinner for the ASO. Every Anglophile and closet Anglophile posing as a music lover is there. It’s always a bumper crowd and everyone has a ball, right from the curtain-raising lusty rendition of God Save Her Maj through to that favorite old belter Pomp & Circumstance No. 1 that sends us all home glad that we were spawned from the loins of Mother England!
Throw in a few perennial favorites like Zadok the Priest, Crown Imperial, Jerusalem and Rule Brittania! and it almost doesn’t matter about whatever is left on the program, because we are nearly all three-parts inebriated with nostalgic patriotic fervor and we have all sung our fill in the choral mosh pit that was once the theatre.
However, it does matter what else is on the program, and it seems to me that pieces such as Ronald Binge’s Sailing By and Karl Jenkins’ Exultate Jubilate shouldn’t really get a guernsey at such an event, but hey, I’m not the programmer, and technically demanding anthems like Zadok really need to be sung (and conducted) with more discipline than they were. But, these are minor grizzles.
The evening began in high expectation with the brightly decorated stage full to overflowing with a hybrid choir of around 100 (comprising the Adelaide Philharmonia Chorus and the Marryatville High School Concert Choir), the mighty ASO, and… joy of joys… the colossal Silver Jubilee Organ! Flags (apparently hung incorrectly, according to a purist who has nothing else in the world to worry about) and Britannia bunting adorned the stage and guest conductor Guy Noble owned it all; his humorous and irreverent badinage had the audience howling with laughter. He then nonchalantly flicked his right wrist and set the snare drum into action welcoming the fanfare team of the South Australian Police Band onto stage and kicking off the performance. Whether one is a monarchist or a republican, it was electric stuff.
Despite the low brow nature of the evening, there was still much fine musicianship in evidence as one would expect from the ASO. The woodwinds were especially fine, with Geoffrey Collins on flute and Celia Craig on oboe giving object lessons in tonality. Martin Phillipson’s ‘horse’ trumpet in the Ascot Gavotte was highly entertaining.
The highlight of the evening was Greta Bradman’s performance of the chilling aria Casta Diva from Bellini’s opera Norma. This particular aria is demanding and sits in a not entirely comfortable register for a soprano, but she sang it with style, accomplishment and great conviction. It is an aria that needs to be ‘sold’, and sell it she did. Bradman’s voice seems to get better and better. Her performances of You’ll Never Walk Alone from Carousel and I Could Have Danced All Night from My Fair Lady were froth and bubble but they demonstrated the power and artistry of her voice.
And to bring us all back to earth at the end, an encore of Waltzing Matilda brought the best and worst out of our collective voices, but who cares – after all, it is the last night of the proms, and we can get back to normal next week!
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 20 Mar 2015
In CEO Vincent Ciccarello’s own words, the Masters Series is the ASO’s “core business” and the first concert of the 2015 series was an absolute blinder! The audience attended with high expectation, and were not disappointed. They left fulfilled and elated. The evening was a glorious celebration of musicianship, virtuosity, and lush orchestration.
Benjamin Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from the opera Peter Grimes are eery and foreboding. The awkward rising intervals of the first movement evoke melancholia and in time give way to the tempestuousness of the fourth. Guest conductor Garry Walker walked the fine line between unrepressed emotion and tight control. (This was even more evident in the Mussorgsky at the end of the evening.) However, occasionally the winds lagged just slightly behind the strings by a mere fraction of a beat –slightly annoying– but strangely it added to the sense of anticipation.
Sarah Chang played the Bruch G minor violin concerto with astonishing sensitivity. It is a lyrical composition and Chang treated the melody line as if it was her own voice and as if she was in an animated conversation with every other instrument in the orchestra. Chang was pure theatre to watch: her gesture and long sweep of the bow were almost theatrical, but the sound production was altogether sublime. She has tremendous technical skill and brought all of it to bear in what was a highly moving reading. Walker graciously allowed Chang to take center stage for much of the richly deserved standing ovation. It was her triumph, as was her performance of Ravel’s Tzigane after the interval. She expertly flaunted the full spectrum of violinist tricks and techniques and almost danced on the stage as she communed with Ravel’s testing dance rhythms. When it was over she spontaneously applauded the mighty ASO, and she was right to do so – the orchestra and Walker were at the top of their game.
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition was originally composed as a piano solo but it is better known in its orchestrated form, especially the version by Ravel. It is so popular – the ASO last performed it in 2011 – that it is easy to forget that the composition is extremely difficult to play well; either the piano or fully orchestrated version. Walker was able to extract the full gamut of emotions that the piece offers: jollity, carefree abandon, deep introspection, pathos, and rampant zeal. Success in achieving this lies in uncompromising precision, and that is exactly what the ASO demonstrated but with adamant and deeply felt musicality. It was a treat to hear the saxophone (Damien Hurn) on the concert platform again – an all too infrequent event – but the highlight of the performance was the Con mortuis movement in which the oboes and strings almost invoked a dimension beyond this world and echoed the Britten with which the evening began.
A wonderful start to the season.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed