Masters 4. Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 20 June 2014
From the perspective of an ‘ordinary’ concertgoer, one’s enjoyment of a piece of music is probably not enhanced by having an in-depth understanding of the context in which it was composed, but it can enrich the experience. The ASO’s ‘Bella Italia’ Master Series program featured three early 19th century compositions by three musical luminaries of the period: Schubert, Mendelssohn and Berlioz. Each piece was a response by the composer to some Italian influence: whether that be a particular Italian musical style, or the physical beauty of the country.
Schubert devotedly attended the opera and hungered to be a successful composer of stage works, but for the most part he never achieved that ambition. His Overture ‘in the Italian Style’ in C, D561, was largely an attempt to cash-in on the surging popularity of the lighter and altogether more jolly music of the Italians of the likes of Rossini. It stands alone as a concert item but it doesn’t go beyond being a curtain warmer for whatever is to follow next, which in the context of ‘Bella Italia’ was Mendelssohn’s much loved ‘Italian’ Symphony No 4 in A, Op90, commonly known as his Italian Symphony.
Curiously Mendelssohn was quite dissatisfied with his symphony, but it is now firmly a concert hall favourite. It is a relatively short symphony and is light and lyrical throughout. It abounds with hummable melodies that conductor, Arvo Volmer drew out in an exhilarating performance. He insisted the strings were gracefully phrased, and the woodwinds were right on the mark in the final Saltarello presto finale.
Berlioz is a master of orchestration and his ‘Harold in Italy’ calls for a large orchestra. Written at the urging of famed violinist Niccoló Paganini, ‘Harold’ is a symphony that features a principal viola. By comparison to the violin and cello, there are few frequently performed concert works for viola and orchestra (at least in Australia) and so it was a great privilege to hear famed Ukrainian born violist Maxim Rysanov perform ‘Harold’. [Going slightly off topic, his recordings on viola of Bach’s cello suites are quite sublime and he infuses them with freshness.] The viola is not as robust in its upper and lower registers as are the violin and cello, but in the hands of Rysanov the highs were brilliant and soaring, and the lows were comfortable and warming. Volmer ensured the weight of the orchestra was finely regulated to the viola allowing Rysanov to perform as if in a concerto.
The final movement of the work is a piece entitled ‘Brigand’s Orgy’, and musically it is almost orgiastic – excitement building on excitement, racing towards climax – but Volmer held it all in control and the result was exhilarating and as lush as the bright red roses that were presented to Volmer and Rysanov during the final bows.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Tim Freedman. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 12 June 2014
The Harry Nilsson story is as paradoxical as it is sad. He had great success; but his biggest hits were covers of other writers’ songs. He was a brilliant vocalist, but never performed live. His first album was ignored by everyone - except John Lennon and Paul McCartney. He had an eight album contract with RCA Records and was paid $3 million not to make the last three.
Tim Freedman, the other famous Whitlam, “does” Nilsson for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival- and he honours a great musician in the doing. Dressed in the signature Schmilsson tweed cap and sporting mutton chop sideburns, Freedman channels Harry, Brooklyn accent and all. Seated at the Playhouse Steinway, he opens with ‘Everybody’s Talkin’’, written by Fred Neil and theme song of the hit film ‘Midnight Cowboy’. The first of his string of cover hits, it is still Nilsson’s most famous.
But more intriguing is ‘1941’, autobiographical to the point of pain –“Well in 1941 a happy father had a son/ And by 1944 the father walked right out the door”; repeated in the final verse, where the dates are now 1961 and 1964 , and the father leaving is now Nilsson himself.
Freedman narrates the Nilsson story – and the legend. How he divided time between working as a computer analyst in a bank and writing and recording demos such as ‘Cuddly Toy’ – a “nasty song wrapped in sugar” and a hit for the Monkees.
And his creative collaborations with musicians like Randy Newman, at that point a little-known, but much admired, composer. Nilsson recorded ‘Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear’ for his 1969 album ‘Harry’ and then followed in 1970 with ‘Nilsson Sings Newman’, a whole LP of Newman songs, with the same mix of wordplay, irony and satiric deadpan which characterised Nilsson’s own musical style. Freedman delivers a memorable version of ‘Living Without You’ from that collection.
Perhaps it is Freedman’s account of Nilsson’s connections with The Beatles which piques our interest in particular. Dating back to 1967 and ‘Pandemonium Shadow Show’ (featuring ‘She’s Leaving Home’ and a virtuoso pastiche of Beatle sounds with ‘You Can’t Do That’) Nilsson became the Fabs’ favourite interpreter. Nilsson met up with them when he went to the UK – about the time that John met Yoko. He and Lennon became close pals, later for a time he played (as coincidentally, did Colin Hay) with Ringo Starr’s All Starr Band (and Ringo even paid to have his teeth fixed!)
But it was around 1974 when the Lennon / Nilsson antics became notorious in Los Angeles. Their Lost Weekend lasted for eighteen months and cost Nilsson his reputation and his health. Freedman uses Lennon’s raw Plastic Ono lament, ‘Isolation’ as litmus for that time. Nilsson’s huge success with ‘Nilsson Schmilsson’ is now evaporating, his refusal to perform live, and tendency to self-sabotage conspire towards his increasingly lonely decline.
Tim Freedman’s narrative is unsparing in describing how a great career is careening downwards, but the songs ever remind us what a clever musical spark Nilsson was. From the perky metronome of ‘Gotta Get Up’ to ‘The Puppy Song’, from ‘One’ (is the loneliest number) to ‘Without You’, the sheer verve and yearning of his melody and the sweetness of his vocals are here splendidly interpreted by Freedman. Nilsson has been done, with a little touch of Schmeedman in the night.
Murray Bramwell
When: Closed
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: Closed
The Benaud Trio: Elder Hall. 8 June 2014
Half the battle in any concert is to get the programming right, and the Benaud Trio gave an object lesson in just that with ‘Horizons’. It featured a very recent hip composition, some old favourites from the romantic repertoire and an encore of well-known James Bond themes that had been tweaked for a piano trio. Eclectic and utterly entertaining, for young and young at heart!
Nicholas Buc is a young Australian composer/ arranger/ conductor who already has an enviable list of credits across a range of genres, and his ‘Trailer Music’ was commissioned by the Benauds for their 2010 season. It is episodic in nature and was inspired by the two-minute musical grabs that are used to promote films. The individual sections were fused together to create an exciting whole that allowed the trio, comprising Amir Farid on piano, Lachlan Bramble on violin and Ewen Bramble on cello, to amply demonstrate their substantial technique and musicality.
Schubert’s ‘Notturno in E Flat’ is one of the most achingly beautiful pieces for trio. The Benauds captured all the tenderness it demands and played it at a sufficiently comfortable tempo to allow the tonalities to be distinct and to allow the dramatic impact of the middle section to come through, although the dotted rhythms were perhaps too accentuated on the piano.
Johannes Brahms ‘Piano Trio in C Major’ is a veritable treasure trove of lyrical themes. Brahms is a master of the art of variation and in this particular trio he serves up a richly varied musical menu for the trio. The violin and cello often play together in octaves as if to join forces to counter the force of the piano, and the Bramble brothers demonstrated a deep understanding of each other that gave their playing an ‘edge’. The syncopated rhythms of the second movement were at times under-stated but the sublime approach to the tense and nervy third movement blew this slight misgiving away. The phrasing in the finale was superb, and the whole thing came home with ecstatic but controlled exuberance.
The Benaud Trio are a joy to watch and hear. They are a relatively young ensemble, but they are already highly accomplished and well regarded. Their James Bond encore was brim with humour but was musically ever so tight. Whoever arranged it (Buc?) has produced an absolute gem, and demonstrates that the piano trio genre still has much more to say.
The Benaud Trio’s next concert in Adelaide is on December 14 and will feature the music of Astor Piazzola. That will be a test – Piazzola’s music is unforgiving in the wrong hands – but I’m sure the Benaud Trio is up for it.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Elder Hall
Bookings: Closed
Morgans Composers in Focus. Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 4 June 2014
“Bohemian Rhapsodies” was the second Morgans Composers in Focus concert for the season, and was generously sponsored by wealth management firm Morgans in alliance with CIMB. Had Mozart – the main event in the program - taken financial advice he might not have led such a ‘bohemian life-style’ and died in such strapped circumstances, but he certainly needed no advice when it came to composing, and his much loved ‘Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major’ was the highlight of the programme.
The locally esteemed music pedagogue Richard Chew introduced the programme and spoke eloquently about each composition and how they related, both musically and sociologically. A highlight was the insightful conversation he struck up with Howard Shelley about the Mozart and how Shelley might approach it as both conductor and pianist.
Bedřich Smetana’s overture to his very successful opera ‘The Bartered Bride’ was, unusually, written before anything else in the opera. As such it stands alone as a concert piece but also superbly foreshadows the style of the opera itself. It is spirited and rhythmic, and Shelley allowed its energy to erupt forth without compromising balance in orchestral colour.
Antonín Dvořák’s ‘Symphony No. 6 in D major’ was composed in 1880, some twenty years after ‘The Bartered Bride’ was completed, and it was a significant milestone in the ongoing development of the Czech national style for which the foundations were laid down by Smetana. Although the symphony demonstrates influences from the German classical-romantic tradition - one can hear hints of Brahms and Beethoven - it is rich with Czech folk tunes and rhythms. The ASO’s woodwinds and horns were magnificent throughout the sweeping melodies of the adagio second movement, and the clean violin lines in the scherzo third moment superbly complemented the woodwinds and brass. Again, Shelley allowed the force of the music to fill the auditorium but ensured complete clarity.
But, the main event was the engaging Mozart piano concerto, and the audience was delighted in Shelley’s pianism and his conducting from the keyboard with the score on an iPad! The allegro first movement introduces catchy and impishly playful tunes, and the allegro assai final movement is as bubbly and upbeat a finale as you will ever get, but the true drama lies in the broody adagio second movement which is scored in the somewhat rare key of F sharp minor. Shelley drew out the pathos and controlled the richness of the modern Steinway piano so that it didn’t swamp the delicateness of the musical material.
The audience’s fingers got a true work out at this concert! There were hundreds of finger tappers secretly pretending they were on the podium putting the wonderful ASO through its paces, and they loved every minute.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
The Zephyr Quartet. Queen’s Theatre. 25 May 2014
The Zephyr Quartet have a well deserved reputation for being at the cutting edge of contemporary serious concert music (or modern classical music if you will), and their latest concert adds to that reputation. Entitled ‘Between Light’, Zephyr invited five composers to write music in response to the somewhat vague theme of ‘light and dark’. In performance they included the additional elements of place and managed light (or its absence). The end result was five disparate short compositions for a classical string quartet (about 10 minutes each) performed in five separate locations within the stark and harsh confines of the hollow and hostile Queen’s Theatre (and you had to carry your seat from one location to the next) with five distinct atmospheric and empathetic lighting designs by master lighting designer Geoff Cobham.
Did I say concert? Perhaps ‘production’ or ‘event’ is more apt.
The string quartet is an unforgiving ensemble: inaccurate playing is immediately heard, and uninteresting music has nowhere to hide, whereas excellent technique and inspired writing can almost eclipse an orchestra in full flight. Zephyr’s playing is sound, very sound (excuse the pun) but the compositions as a collection were sometimes lacking in colour, depth and texture.
Lyndon Gray is a bassist and his ‘Lighter, Fluid’ strongly favoured the mellow register of the viola and cello in what felt like a semi improvised/semi through-composed piece that didn’t fully unleash the contrasting voice of the violin.
Tony Gould’s ‘Songs in a Gentle Breeze’ had a dreamy rhythmic feel about it with harmonious and nicely structured contrasts between the outer voices of the violins and cello. Cobham’s exquisite swirling lighting design amplified the mellifluousness of the composition.
Andrea Keller’s ‘Light, Dark, Depth’ was almost an inventive study in improvising on broken chords that emulated the contrasting states of being carefree and then being bound in seriousness. This was underlined by Cobham’s design that cleverly created a wall of light that begged to be broken with the hand (and some audience members could not resist the temptation), and light that danced through a smoky haze.
Stephen Magnusson’s ‘Dirt–Hue/Value/Chroma (Bound)’ (now there’s a title!) was the most obviously jazz inflected composition of the program and at times begged for a contralto voice to accompany it. At times it almost had the ‘feel’ of the fold-song inspired quartets of Béla Bartók.
Matt Keegan is well known for being a superb saxophonist and the performance of his composition ‘The Light Within’ was perhaps the most striking part of the evening, and the multilayered lyric was almost overshadowed by the lighting design (again, pun not intended!). Zephyr faced each other in a semi-circle and played in almost complete darkness expect for small point sources of light that danced above their heads like fireflies and bright electric heaters that syncopated on and off with the music.
Zephyr can be counted on to combine art-forms and toy with our multiple senses. What next?
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Queen’s Theatre
Bookings: Closed