Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 27 Sep 2017
At short notice, my ‘plus-one’ wasn’t able to join me for this concert but circumstances saw me give my spare ticket away to an engaging Costa Rican tourist whom I saw busily snapping away on his camera in the downstairs foyer of the Adelaide Town Hall and happily engaging with the theatre staff about the beauty of the building. He didn’t seem sure at first whether to accept my offer, but he did. During the interval we chatted and I learned that he was in town for the international space conference, and was presenting a paper on the performance of a machine in a micro gravity environment. Apart from his obvious intellectual prowess and exemplary English that would leave most Aussies in the slow lane, he also had a keen ear for fine music playing. I knew this when he commented that Amanda Forsyth played Beethoven and Chopin ‘with her entire body’. Amanda Forsyth of course is the cellist in the Zuckerman Trio, which is completed with the renowned Pinchas Zuckerman on violin and Angela Cheng on piano.
My new friend was of course quite right. Forsyth is one of the most talented and insightful cellists around, and her musicality and free spirit was on best display in Arensky’s Piano Trio No.1 in D minor, Op.32. Up until this performance I had never heard this work live, and all I could compare the Zuckerman’s performance to was my superb recording by The Lenore Piano Trio on the Hyperion label. The Zuckerman’s found something fresh in this delightful composition, and Forsyth revelled in having the lion’s share in stating the delightful and numerous themes. The scherzo waltz-like second movement zipped along with humour and flashes of virtuosic chutzpah from all three instrumentalists. Zuckerman himself makes it look so easy. Cheng is a picture of calmness and precision, while Forsyth looks and sounds commanding - almost nonchalant.
The programme began with Beethoven’s Sonata No.1 in D, Op.12 No.1 for violin and piano. He wrote ten sonatas for piano and violin, with the later sonatas eclipsing the earlier ones for popularity and musical daring. Zuckerman and Cheng were clinical in their performance: the many fragments in the composition were clearly and emphatically stated, some with more resoluteness than others, and the spotlight passed seamlessly backwards and forwards between them both. Equals, as it should be.
Chopin’s Cello Sonata in G minor, Op.65, is a troubled piece. It is almost as if Chopin did not ‘know where to be at’ with it. Where the Beethoven almost luxuriated in the freedom of loosely related musical ideas, the Chopin is a relentless search for a narrative. It’s there, but it takes concertation to appreciate its delicacy, and Cheng and Forsyth laid it out clearly before us. Cheng’s precise phrasing and finely balanced dynamics gave Forsyth the perfect aural canvas to clearly expose the subtlety of Chopin’s musical scheme.
At the conclusion of the concert, my new Costa Rican friend said his goodbye’s and left the Town Hall to return to his conference to ponder the intricacies of human kind’s engagement with space, but I suspect he did so with a different ‘music of the spheres’ at the front of his mind, at least for a while.
Kym Clayton
When: 27 Sep
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Town Hall. 16 Sep 2017
This is surely one of the best, if not the best, performance of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra this season, and it is the night principal Conductor Nicholas Carter loses his Bruckner virginity! (He announced on social media sometime after the concert that it was his “… first Bruckner tonight”!)
Bruckner’s Symphony No.4 in E-flat, which he himself nicknamed the Romantic, was revised on a number of occasions and not always by the composer himself. Tonight’s concert is the so-called Nowak edition (after the esteemed musicologist and Bruckner authority Leopold Nowak). It is an epic work and plays for around seventy minutes, making it one of the longest symphonies ever composed (though not the longest – that honor goes to Havergal Brian’s 105 minutes long Symphony No 1. The Gothic!).
Bruckner’s 4th is heavy lifting, and the glistening sweat on Maestro Carter’s brow is evident during the rapturous bows when it is all over; the applause is richly deserved. The composition features much use of the horns and brass, and it is fitting that Carter first acknowledges Adrian Uren, section leader of the horns. When horns have such a dominant role, there is always an air of tension and anticipation just before its first note is played. Will the pitch be perfect? Will pesky overtones get in the way?
Happily, Uren nails it from the first horn call over the tremoring strings, and keeps nailing it. The majesty and solemnity of the composition is never in doubt.
Celia Craig is outstanding on the oboe, as always, and Julia Grenfell on flute is sweetness personified. Peter Whish-Wilson has a ball on tuba and gives depth to the sonority of the performance. David Phillips on double bass clearly ‘grooves’ Bruckner and is a joy to watch.
The orchestra features a number of new faces – at least new to this reviewer – and to a person they perform as if they are seasoned members of the ASO: Caleb Wright and Michael Robertson on viola, Louis Cann on double bass, Liam O’Malley on trombone, to name a few.
Carter places the second violins on his right which produces a rich antiphonal effect that greatly enhances the heady richness of the music. A similar arrangement is used for the performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 in G earlier in the evening. At the keyboard is French virtuoso Jean-Efflam Bavouzet who gives a relaxed but highly assured reading of the ever-popular concerto. Dressed in a comfortable black lounge suit with open-necked shirt, Bavouzet beguiles us and amply demonstrates his deep understanding and familiarity with Beethoven’s piano music. Bavouzet applies considerable forearm strength and gives a robust performance, but one which includes the grace, lightness of touch, and delicate phrasing - as well as humour - that is also demanded by this composition. The empathy between Carter and Bavouzet is evident.
As cheekily mentioned above, this was Carter’s first Bruckner, and one hopes it is not his last, especially with the Adelaide Symphony. Bruckner’s 7th is scheduled for next June under the baton of esteemed English conductor Mark Wigglesworth, so perhaps, just perhaps we may have the beginnings of a full Bruckner cycle to play out over the coming years; fingers crossed.
This concert, however was a one-off! So much effort invested into just one performance. I feel so lucky for having been there, and the feeling from the audience is unanimous – it was indeed a special evening.
Kym Clayton
When: 16 Sep 2017
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Triggerfinger. Mascot Label Group. 17 Aug 2017
It’s an interesting experience to consider yourself a bit of a musical aficionado, keeping up to date with the best that rock has to offer, and then discover an exciting new band, only to discover that said band has actually been around for almost 20 years! That’s what happened to me with Belgian act Triggerfinger. I came across them on YouTube, excited to have found what I thought to be a new group of grungey troubadours peddling a fresh album Colossus, and as I did a bit of digging to see what other albums they had, expecting to see maybe one or two more, I found that they’d been around since the ’90s and had six long players under their belts!
I’ve got some catching up to do!
So, putting my lack of familiarity to the side, why was I so excited about hearing these guys? Well, their music is simply fantastic! They remind me of a rawer version of Queens Of The Stone Age, kind of more Kyuss but less fuzzy, and a bit more Zeppelin-esque balls, with Physical Graffiti-era complexity. The music is pure rock, with a raw vintage sound, but with a certain sincerity, not in a try-hard wanna-be-folk-band way. Guitars are fuzzy and psychedelic, with driving bass and drums, interludes of keys and other sounds rounding out the musical journey.
The vocals are quite clean over the raw rock, in a similar way to Queens vocalist Josh Homme, but singer Ruben Block has a unique voice that sits more somewhere between Jack White and Muse’s Matt Bellamy. It’s a great balance, helping the music sound fresh and familiar at the same time. The Belgian trio have got their sound just right, such that it feels bigger than just a trio, and they know how to balance light and shade across the album.
The rock heart is always apparent, but there are some great interludes and changes of pace too. The first single Flesh Tight is an obvious winner, while title-track opener Colossus sets the scene for the rest of the album. My only criticism of the collection is that it’s kind of short, spanning just over 30 minutes - but it’s such a great half-hour nonetheless!
Triggerfinger have apparently built quite the reputation overseas, including their European home as well as the US and Canada, but obviously not so much here in Oz. Let’s hope that Colossus helps to change that, cos these guys are awesome! Now, to buy some of that back-catalogue…
Luke Balzan
Triggerfinger is a Belgian rock band from Lier, Belgium, formed in 1998. The band consists of vocalist and guitarist Ruben Block, bassist Paul Van Bruystegem and Mario Goossens as drummer.
Track Listing
1. Colossus
2. Flesh Tight
3. Candy Killer
4. Upstairs Box
5. Afterglow
6. Breathlessness
7. That'll Be The Day
8. Bring Me Back A Live Wild One
9. Steady Me
10. Wollensak Walk
Shaman’s Harvest. Mascot Label Group. 6 Aug 2017
Like so many things in the modern world, the concept of rock music has become fractured and splintered into many different parts, so much so that sometimes it’s difficult to identify the origins of something. I’m very pleased to note that this is not the case for Missouri hard rockers Shaman’s Harvest.
I’ve been listening to these guys for a few years now, and have always appreciated their dark take on rootsy rock. Their new long player, Red Hands Black Deeds is a more-than-worthy addition to the band’s catalogue, and has an instant feel of familiarity about it, while remaining fresh throughout.
Doing a bit of research, it turns out this was achieved by taking a fresh approach to recording for the new album, where the guys enlisted the services of a new producer keen to shake things up until everything was outside the box. The result is fantastic!
I was interested to learn that Shaman’s Harvest have been around a lot longer than the seven or eight years that I’ve known of them, having first started way back in the ’90s! Their desire to take a fresh approach to this new album is understandable, and there’s a definite energy here. For me, the biggest plus is their embrace of all things aurally vintage. Apparently, the band (and producer) wanted to utilise only analogue equipment on the album, and the result is a fantastic raw vintage sound that makes it feel like a well-worn leather jacket, which retains that new-car-smell!
Stylistically, there’s a lot in here. Classic mid-western rock is at the heart (Missouri, bordered by Kansas to the west and Illinois to the east is fairly central US, but according to American logic, it’s very much the heart of the farming mid-west), with a rootsy, almost country-esque vibe going on… think whiskey-soaked denim, trucks, and vast farmland; like a northern version of Creedence’s southern roots vibe, or a rootsier Queens Of The Stone Age.
On top of that, there’s a very dark, bluesy streak supplemented by plenty of distorted guitars and heavy grinding bass. The overall feel of the album is reminiscent of a rootsier Alice In Chains, with hard-edged grunge prowess to match.
The mood does lighten on a few tunes, like the rollicking Off The Tracks, mellow Long Way Home, or gentle A Longer View, with plenty of balls-out rock on tunes like bluesy Soul Crusher, thumping So Long, and driving first single The Come Up. Be sure to wait for the “secret” track right at the end too; Hookers And Blow… I need say no more!
Shaman’s Harvest has done a great job with this one. Check it out now!
Luke Balzan
Red Hands Black Deeds is the sixth studio album by the American rock band Shaman's Harvest. It was released on July 28, 2017.
Sharman's Harvest is Nathan Hunt on lead vocals, Josh Hamler on rhythm guitar, Matt Fisher on bass, Derrick Shipp on lead guitar, and Adam Zemanek on drums.
Track Listing
1. Red Hands and Black Deeds (Prelude)
2. Broken Ones
3. The Come Up
4. A Longer View
5. Soul Crusher
6. Off the Tracks
7. Long Way Home
8. The Devil in Our Wake
9. Blood Trophies
10. So Long
11. Tusk and Bone
12. Scavengers
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 8 Jul 2017
Dedication is the fifth in the ASO’s Master Series for 2017, and it showcases Ravel, Saint-Saëns and Mendelssohn. If an exit poll was held, I am certain the audience would have voted overwhelmingly for Louis Lortie’s performance of Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No.2 as the hands-down favorite of the evening.
French-Canadian Louis Lortie was at the height of his lyrical powers in this performance of the ever popular melodic piano concerto. The piano takes centre stage from the outset in this melodic work and all attention is rightly on the pianist. Fittingly, guest conductor Christoph König’s style is restrained so as to support the soloist and not allow the orchestra to dominate. Lortie’s execution of the dynamics of the bridging sections in the first movement is superb, and the exchanges between him and König at the humorous end of the second are a joy to behold. The whole performance has a lightness and freshness about it and neither Lortie nor König read more into the score than was there. At the end the audience erupts into generous applause.
So, to the bookends of the programme, which are overshadowed by the concerto.
Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin was written by Ravel as a memorial to friends who died in World War I. It is light and reflective and was originally a piece for solo piano, but has been arranged in various guises for full orchestra and smaller ensembles. In my humble opinion it works better in its original form, and the orchestrated version isn’t so satisfying or ‘masterful’ that the ASO should repeat it so soon after its last performance, which was barely ten months ago! As is often the case, the ASO’s woodwinds are sublime and oboist Celia Craig deserves to be singled out when the orchestra takes its bows. As in the Saint-Saëns, König gave the piece a light touch and doesn’t brood over the minor keys in which it is mostly written.
The ASO last performed Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 - the so-called Scottish Symphony - a little over four years ago. All four movements are played one after the other with almost no break between them. They all feature march rhythms and fanfares and there is an overall underlying intrepid moodiness until the almost joyous flourish of horns at the very end. Adrian Uren and co. are terrific! König lays bare the melodic palette of the symphony and allows the underlying sweetness of the motivic material to have its way. This is assisted by his placement of the double basses and French horns not in groups but in single sweeping ranks: the basses on his right, and the horns across the rear.
An enjoyable but uninspiring concert.
Kym Clayton
Ps: Dear ASO. Please don’t reschedule the Ravel or the Mendelssohn for some years. There is so much other music that you haven’t played yet.
When: 8 Jul 2017
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed