Botanic Park. Foundation Stage. 9 Mar 2018
On the opening night of WOMADelaide 2018, Anoushka Shankar sits comfortably upon the Foundation Stage. Diminutive and softly spoken, she cuts a tiny figure on the huge stage, but as she starts to play her presence resonates out to the audience. She is a picture of strength and peace as her fingers dance across the sitar.
Shankar last appeared at Womadelaide in 2010, when she joined her father on the main stage for a magical performance that sadly, will not be seen again. Since then she has released four albums, received three more Grammy nominations and defined herself as an artist and activist in her own right. She has taken the sitar and classical Indian music to new levels and new audiences with artistic collaborations as diverse as Sting, Herbie Hancock, Karsh Kale, Rodrigo y Gabriela, and Joshua Bell.
In her return performance, Shankar performs instrumental pieces from her latest album, Land of Gold, co-written by Manu Delago and featuring extraordinary works with MIA, Vanessa Redgrave and German-Turkish singer/songwriter Alev Lenz.
Shankar brings the complex music to a live stage brilliantly armed with her sitar and an accompaniment of supporting musicians on double bass, keyboards, Indian shehnai and percussion. The more traditional pieces are raw and emotive, the soaring shehnai combined with the sitar evoke a deeply primal and meditative response. These sit surprisingly well next to Shankar's experimental works, which are edgy, electronic tracks with sharp beats and high-pitched strings. The latter matched with equally intense light shows that maximise the impact of the music.
It is a spellbinding set that showcases Shankar's talent as a composer, musician and thinker; more than an artist, she will be a mark of her generation for a long time to come.
Nicole Russo
Selby & Friends. Elder Hall. 11 Mar 2018
Beethoven by Ballot is the first in Kathryn Selby’s chamber music series, Selby & Friends, in 2018. Last year’s subscribers voted as to what they would like to hear in today’s all-Beethoven concert, and they chose Allegretto for Piano Trio in B-flat, WoO. 39, the joyful and melodic Violin Sonata No.5 in F Spring, Op.24, the passionate Cello Sonata in A, Op.69, and the ever-popular Piano Trio in B flat Archduke, Op.97. (Actually, Selby chose the Allegretto, not the subscribers, because she wanted to start the concert with something for the entire trio.)
Kathryn Selby is a consummate musician, and her right hand is pure gold. In the Allegretto she extracts clarion-clear bell sounds from the Steinway with almost imperceptible effort, and this exquisite delicateness is echoed by Grace Clifford on violin. All the while Clancy Newman keeps sentinel-like watch over the performance space with a sideways glance towards Clifford while keeping Selby in his peripheral vision. The communication between the three is palpable.
Clancy retires temporarily from the stage leaving Selby and Clifford to play the Spring Sonata. Again, Selby’s command over the gentle right hand melody line is almost transcendent and Clifford responds with beguiling refinement that radiates youthful innocence. Clifford’s phrasing is exquisite, with gently singing melodic lines almost rising out of nothing.
The Cello Sonata, to my ear, is one of the high points of the chamber repertoire, and today’s performance is world class. Newman is aggressive in the first movement and he circles the second as a wrangler does a spirited horse in the process of breaking it in. His body language is fiery and poetic and his cello sings with articulated passion. Selby controls the pace and the syncopation and works with Newman, hand in glove, with each having their turn in the limelight in a true partnership. Their performance is as much an outstanding visual experience as it is aural.
The concert rounds out with a fine performance of the famed Archduke trio. The relative tempos of the four movements need to be well controlled, and when they are the contrasting moods and rhythmic and tonal complexities come to the fore. Selby establishes a well-considered allegro tempo from the outset that allows the violin and cello in the second movement to be well articulated and have a lightness that sometimes is missed.
“Chamber music at its best” says the advertising promo, and that is not far from the truth. This is an outstanding concert at every level, but for my taste the bravura performance of the Cello Sonata is the standout.
Kym Clayton
When: 11 Mar
Where: Elder Hall
Bookings: Closed
Australian String Quartet. Adelaide Town Hall. 15 Feb 2018
Glass, Dean and Mendelssohn. Interesting bed partners, and without them being placed into context, the programme could easily have failed. It didn’t, and the concert was an outstanding success, on a number of levels.
In her opening remarks to the audience, cellist Sharon Grigoryan remarked that Brett Dean’s String Quartet no 1 Eclipse was “difficult to play and difficult to listen to”, and she was right. The piece was Dean’s deeply personal response to the so-called Tampa crisis of 2001 which saw the captain of MV Tampa rescue a boatload of refugees in the Indian ocean and his subsequent showdown with the Australian Government. How does one respond musically to such an event? How does one respond to hearing such a piece of music? One thing is for certain, Dean’s response is complex and not pretty, and knowing the composition’s provenance makes it compelling to the listener.
The near ‘eclipsing’ of the humanity of the refugees by the Australian Government is made evident through the strident and eerie music, and the members of the ASQ brought their misery and dire predicament to life again.
Dean’s quartet was preceded by a near hypnotic reading of Philip Glass’s String Quartet No 3 Mishima. This quartet is also a programmatic composition, but knowing ‘the story’ makes little difference to one’s enjoyment of it. Glass is Glass. His music is minimalist, it is beguiling, it is melodic, it barely has a narrative, and it can be anything you want. The ASQ played it on a pale blue dimly lit stage, and they seemed to float before our eyes. It was a perfect prelude to the story of the Tampa that followed without a break.
Following the interval, Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in D op 44 no 1 returned us to normality. The lush melodies and obvious classical structures allowed us to push Tampa aside, and all with the world became good again. But after we had left the auditorium the doubts came creeping back into one’s mind: the lilting but incessant melodies and rhythms of Philip Glass were pushed aside by the jarring and stabbing sonorities of Brett Dean, and Mendelssohn was unable to give us traditional comfort.
What a remarkable concert from a truly outstanding ensemble of beautifully matched musicians.
Kym Clayton
When: 15 Feb
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Von Hertzen Brothers. Music Theories / Mascot Label Group. 15 Dec 2017
Finland is an interesting place. It’s an extreme kind of country, with great, extreme people to match. It’s no wonder they punch above their weight with rally and formula one drivers, and the Russians were never able to invade. Along with extreme sports stars, Finland is famous for some extreme music acts, and the Von Hertzen Brothers (who actually are brothers) is one such band that are able to fully flex their musical prowess playing progressive metal.
From the opening sounds of their latest album War Is Over, you know you’re in for something special. There’s all the signatures necessary for a good progressive album, including complex keyboards, soaring virtuosic guitars, shredding, thumping drums, complex time signatures, and more layers than a homemade lasagne, but more than other progressive releases, this one has a touch of the extreme that only the Finns could bring to an album.
Like neighbouring Swedish metal, there’s something almost mythical or ancient about the music here. It’s not necessarily that its more virtuosic or more metal than say a Dream Theatre album, but there’s a certain quality here that the Brothers have brought to the table.
Like all good progressive albums, you’re taken on a journey, and there’s a definite sense of cohesiveness throughout the album, yet interestingly, many tunes conform to a more rock time limit, and all stand well on their own too, which for a progressive album, is an interesting dimension.
Don’t get me wrong, there are 12 and 8 minute epics bookending the album here too, but perhaps the meat in the sandwich helps to make this more accessible for a less-than-progressive head, which for the longevity of the musical style, could be a very good thing! Either way, the Von Hertzen Brothers have done well with War Is Over, making something that is a great balance of light and shade, of gentle and extreme, and something that fans of progressive metal and casual rock will equally enjoy.
Luke Balzan
The Von Hertzen Brothers formed in 2000 and is comprised of Kie von Hertzen on guitar/vocals, Mikko von Hertzen on guitar/vocals and Jonne von Hertzen on bass guitar/vocals. War is Over is their seventh studio album.
Track Listing
1. War Is Over
2. To The End Of The World
3 .The Arsonist
4. Jerusalem
5. Frozen Butterflies
6. Who Are You?
7. Blindsight
8. Long Lost Sailor
9. Wanderlust
10. Beyond The Storm
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 1 Dec 2017
Aptly styled “Beauty and Defiance”, the last in the current season of the ASO’s Master Series was nothing less than a triumph. At one point, it brought the large audience to its feet, but more on that later.
Why ‘beauty’, and why ‘defiance’? Each of the three compositions on the programme had elements of both, and they all exalted the irrepressible and ultimately triumphant potential of the human spirit.
Sergei Rachmaninov wrote four piano concerti and pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk has now performed the first (in June 2016) and the second with the Adelaide Symphony. Of the 2016 performance, this reviewer described Gavrylyuk as thrilling his audience with outstanding technique and evocative interpretation. As then, tonight’s performance was drenched in moments of fragility that were boldly contrasted with athletic, almost ferocious displays of intense romanticism played with uncommon virtuosity. Gavrylyuk’s performance was to be seen as much as it was to be heard: his entire body lived every delicate note and crashing chord; his face looked upwards into the infinity of space as the melody soared aloft; with flourishes of his arms he traced the phrasing of Rachmaninov’s achingly beautiful melodies. Flowery language perhaps, but it was indeed an inspired performance and within a fraction of a second of the final note the audience stood and stamped their feet and wolf-whistled and cheered. It was the reception a rock star would have appreciated, and the memory of the event will linger on. (I can almost hear people in years to come saying “were you at the Adelaide Town Hall there when Gavrylyuk played Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2?”)
The tone poem En Saga Op.9 (A Fairy Tale) is one of Sibelius’s early orchestral works and shows the composer at work mastering the craft of orchestral colour and texture. Despite its title, it does not have a program and Sibelius described it more as a revelation of his own character. In history it was composed at a time when Finland was forging a national music identity that likely did not please the ‘Russian Bear’ that was trying to integrate Finland both politically and culturally. Although not a defiant musical response to political events, En Saga is as much a mirror to Sibelius’s psyche as it is to history. Principal horn Sarah Barrett beautifully introduced the first main musical idea and later led the section in a quality display of hand-stopped notes. The later themes included classy performances by Imants Larsens (viola), Celia Craig (oboe) and Dean Newcomb (clarinet).
If En Saga is apolitical, then Shostakovich’s Symphony No.5 in D minor, Op.47 is most definitely not. It was written during the time of Stalin’s ‘great terror’ and Shostakovich lived in fear and in anticipation of being arrested for being a dissident. Whereas ‘the state’ wanted music and cultural expression that was (falsely) indicative of good times and a satisfied and relaxed populace, Shostakovich was more intent on musically depicting the act of rising above pessimism and gloom and suppression.
The popular symphony is broad in scale and is scored for a large orchestra, including not one but two harps, piano, celesta and a full percussion section. The full stage of the Adelaide Town Hall was almost filled to overflowing. Conductor Nicholas Carter confidently led the orchestra and thoughtfully managed the dynamics throughout: no section was ever louder or softer than it should be. This was perhaps signalled by him not using a baton in the two middle movements, in which he allowed the waltz like rhythms, scatty raucousness and extended and beautiful melodies to be coaxed rather than being forced.
It was a memorable concert and an emphatic conclusion to this year’s Master Series. The 2018 series looks full of promise as well, so get your tickets!
Kym Clayton
When: 1 Dec
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Editor's Note: Review ammended 05/12/17 to replace Adrian Uren with Sarah Barrett, after a correction was notified.