Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Festival Theatre. 14 Feb 2014
This year’s season opening gala was an all Russian program (apart from the encores) about love inspired music. After all, it’s Valentine’s Day. But, when is a concert a gala performance rather than just a concert? When it’s an event of course!
Exactly one year ago to the day I wrote a review of the 2013 ASO season opening and said, “So, what makes a gala concert? Is it just the musical programming: important but popular compositions played well by a large orchestra? I think not and I hope that the ASO management might give some thought to this. Future ‘gala’ concerts might be marketed differently. For example: patrons could be encouraged to dress up in their finery; to enjoy food and wine before, during or after the performance (special deals with restaurants around town?); a souvenir program that is fundamentally different to what is normally available; having the conductor speak to the audience from the podium; having mini musical ‘events’ in the foyer before the concert starts, and during interval, and at the end; and having the bar open when the show is over!”
Well, I don’t resile from any of that and so it was pleasing to see that the bar was open after last night’s season opening; that there was live music in the foyer and there was a little bit of repartee on stage from Vincent Ciccarello, the ASO’s new Chief Executive, and from Guest Conductor Garry Walker. But it’s still not enough – it’s still not an event and with tonight also being the opening of the Fringe Festival Adelaide audiences are definitely in event mode.
However, what did make the concert special was the dynamic personality and athletic pianism of Alexander Gavrylyuk, and especially his encore of the spectacular Concert Paraphrase on Mozart’s ever-popular Rondo alla Turca composed by contemporary Russian piano virtuoso Arcadi Volodos. Gavrylyuk’s performance was dazzling, and when he arched his back with the final flourish it was almost as if he was channelling the first ever pop star Franz Liszt!
Gavrylyuk and the ASO also performed Rachmaninoff’s emotionally charged Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, and throughout Gavrylyuk almost treated the piece as if it was a piano version of the Kama Sutra! He joyfully played and toyed with the score; he teased and caressed the keyboard and urged the music to heights of passion and then sat back and let it all calm down before inextricably driving it to crescendo. (Have I taken the imagery too far?) His phenomenal technique, timing and treatment of the dynamics and phrasing was just first rate, and he was expertly assisted by Walker who skilfully ensured that the piano was always the focus and never dominated by the orchestra.
Walker’s re-positioning of the brass to centre upstage and well away from the double basses, who were now able to stretch out in a single rank rather than two, seemed to facilitate precision synchronising of the brass and winds with the rest of the orchestra – not always easy in the Festival Theatre – but it did seem to smudge some of the individual instrumental ‘textures’ in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, which began tentatively.
The program concluded with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, a masterpiece of orchestral colour. Walker handled the ever-changing rhythms skilfully and the exoticness of Arabia took flight. The winds, brass and horn were in exceptional form especially in the final section, which depicts a shipwreck. Guest Concertmaster Elizabeth Layton musically embodied the Princess Scheherazade with her understated but delicately controlled and phrased violin solos. Walker is also quite athletic on the podium, and demands to be watched. This was most evident in the orchestral encore of Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances that rounded off a musically very enjoyable evening, even if it wasn’t a gala!
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Compassion – Songs with Orchestra. Adelaide Festival Theatre. 7 Feb 2014
Playing to a near capacity Festival Theatre audience (and that’s no mean feat), Lior demonstrated in spades why he is one of Australia's most successful singer-songwriters. Backed by his own three piece band (they were excellent) and the musical might of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra under the passionate baton of Nigel Westlake (one of Australia’s best composers and arrangers), Lior bared his soul and showed us why the very best songs are those that are driven by sincere and meaningful lyrics.
His songs have the ability to touch every single member of his audience in quite personal ways. The most poignant was about his grandfather, but my mind filled with fond and distant images of my own. The power of a good song.
Lior is of Middle Eastern heritage, and the spirit of both Jewish and Arabic cultures (interesting bedfellows!) seasons his music and his poetry, but it does not dominate. His musical structures are still very much part of the western tradition, and he accompanied himself on guitar, which he clearly plays well. Able to sing over three octaves with little vibrato and equal sureness and strength in both the upper and lower registers, the result is quite stirring and always appealing, although bordering on being tonally and metrically repetitive to a western ear that is not accustomed to eastern influences.
Lior was joined for several songs by oud virtuoso Joseph Tawadros. The combination of oud and guitar was musically deeply satisfying. It was East meets West.
The major work of the concert was ‘Compassion’ – a cycle of seven songs written by Lior and orchestrated by Westlake. They drew on range of religious and philosophical texts and were all sung in Jewish or Arabic. They were hypnotic and Lior’s performance was hand in glove with the Adelaide symphony. The second and fourth songs, which were about the getting of wisdom and the nature of compassion, drew heavily on the expanded percussion section in the orchestra and had you on the edge of your seat. For those of you who are ‘into’ Mahler (a strange comparison I hear you say), imagine the hammer strikes in the last movement of his mighty sixth symphony being amplified ten score times and filled out with all manner of other percussive instruments time and time again. The rhythms were compelling, and Lior’s voice sailed gloriously through it all. Full marks to the audio engineer - although I’m not sure the orchestra needed as much amplification as it received, especially in songs that featured broad and sweeping melodies from the strings. At times the orchestral sound was at risk of having much of its texture removed.
This collaboration of Lior and Westlake is pure genius. It is sublime.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Her Majesty’s Theatre. 7 Feb 2014
I’ve been a fan of US band ‘Live’ since my high-school days, and remember fondly receiving a copy of their seminal second album, ‘Throwing Copper’, not long after its 1994 release date. That album blew my mind. To this day it is one of my all-time faves and is an album that I am pleased to report is one of the ‘things I’d want on a desert island’ - should I ever be trapped on one! It’s a truly outstanding gem where every single song is a masterpiece, and it often enjoys high rotation on my stereo.
Obviously 20 years have passed since the album’s release, and ‘Live’ went on to record a swag of other great albums too. I was lucky enough to see them at least eight or nine times before the band’s demise, and have some very fond memories of Live’s live performance, centred on main-man Ed Kowalczyk’s commanding and charismatic stage presence.
Needless to say, when I heard that Ed was planning to return to our shores as a solo artist and perform tunes from ‘Throwing Copper’, I was more than a little excited. I’d last seen Ed play here a few years back, also in solo guise, armed with an acoustic guitar and playing a swag of his solo tunes and re-envisioned acoustic versions of ‘Live’ tunes. I guessed that this performance would follow a similar vein, and was pretty keen to check it out, but what I actually got to see blew my mind in more ways than I was expecting.
The evening’s performance fired up with support act ‘Lester The Fierce’, and Melbourne singer-songwriter Anita Lester opened proceedings armed only with an acoustic guitar and an amazing set of vocal chords. Her music was passionate and blues influenced, though it was also refreshingly non-generic, quite separate from the spate of female singer-songwriter hipster wannabes that end up sounding just like everybody else. There was a sense of sincerity in her music, which was most welcome. At times, she reminded me of Jeff Buckley, and her cover of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ was earth-shattering! Not a bad show, and certainly a worthy opener.
But it was Ed Kowalczyk that we’d all come to see and when he and his band took the stage and the opening notes of ‘The Dam At Otter Creek’, the first track from ‘Throwing Copper’, began to play we knew we were in for a special night. Ed was joined by a young guitarist, bass player and drummer, and surrounded by amps and electric instrumentation, this show was definitely not going to be a cruisy acoustic session; the guitars flared and Ed’s voice soared! It was game on, and all of a sudden I was transported back to the ’90s, like I was hearing ‘Throwing Copper’ for the first time. And it only got better from there!
The band quickly followed Otter with the classic chords of ‘Selling The Drama’, and it became quickly apparent that the show would not only going to include the classic tunes from ‘Throwing Copper’, but they’d be played in all their electrified glory in original album order, and with all the passion Ed could muster. And that’s a lot of passion!
By the time track three, the massive hit ‘I Alone’, started the whole Her Majesty’s Theatre audience was on their feet and dancing - and there we stayed right up to the closing tune.
Obvious crowd pleasers were the hits like ‘Iris’, a sensational version of ‘All Over You’ and the biggie, ‘Lightning Crashes’. While I do like that tune, its radio-popularity has lessened its effect on me, but tonight, it was like hearing it for the first time. Truly amazing stuff! Classic album tracks like ‘Shit Towne’, ‘Stage’, and ‘Pillar Of Davidson’ went down spectacularly well, and had the crowd singing along, dancing, head-banging, arm waving and just about every other kind of participatory gesture you can imagine. What a show!
Just like the album, things began to wrap up with the offbeat tune ‘Horse’ (also known as ‘Untitled’, since on the album it actually isn’t named!), and for the first time in the night, I didn’t know what to expect next, apart from more awesomeness. Ed didn’t disappoint, as after ‘Horse’, we were treated to a new tune from his latest solo album, ‘The Flood And The Mercy’. Ed was joined by Anita Lester (The Fierce) for the tune ‘All That I Wanted’, and it was a rather nice moment and great way to bookend ‘Throwing Copper’.
But it wasn’t over yet. Still armed with the semi-acoustic guitar from ‘All That I Wanted’, Ed continued the tunes with the classic ‘Live’ track ‘Run To The Water’, much to the pleasure of the crowd, and with that the main set drew to a close.
While ‘Throwing Copper’ may have reached album’s end, with a couple of bonus tracks thrown in, our show was not to end just yet. As the crowd roared to bring Ed and his band back, he succumbed to the calls and again took centre stage, blasting into a blistering version of ‘Lakini’s Juice’, the first single from Live’s follow-up album to ‘Throwing Copper, Secret Samahdi’. While I was secretly hoping this would signal Ed and his band playing the rest of that album (of course, to be followed by all of Live’s back-catalogue!), I guessed we were in for a smattering of different tunes from across Ed’s past. And I wasn’t disappointed; we got another newbie from ‘The Flood And The Mercy’, the new single ‘Seven’, before a fantastic high-energy version of ‘Heaven’, from Live’s ‘Birds Of Pray’ album.
Ed then demonstrated his song-writing prowess with a tune from his first solo track ‘Grace’ and then, like all good things, the show had to come to an end, but not before a rousing take on ‘The Dolphin’s Cry’ from Live’s ‘The Distance To Here’. Truly a brilliant tune, this was a perfect way to end a perfect show featuring a perfect artist playing the perfect album. What a night!
Luke Balzan
When: Closed
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: Closed