Frontier Touring. Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre. 21 May 2024
This might be one of those times I despair for the Australian concert scene to ever make a full recovery post-Covid. I think it will, but it is a long haul when Gladys Knight plays her farewell gig to somewhat less than a full house. Gladys Knight is class, all class. She is 80 and she still has the voice; even if she doesn’t have all the moves she’ll give it a try. This was not a pension-me-off tour, not by any means. I’ve seen Brian Wilson when he couldn’t remember his own name, let alone why he was on stage or why the Beach Boys were singing his songs. Gladys Knight was not like this.
But I get ahead of myself. Local singer songwriter Sean Blackwell was the opening act, supported by his brother Drew and singer Kirsten. So that’s two acoustic guitars and three vocals to spread a little magic over Sean’s countrified but not-too-folksy tunes. He starts with Holiday, and this man can sing. The guitars hit a groove and lock into it, and this signals the only real problem. Occasionally brother Drew will provide a layer in the sound with some lovely string finger work, a filigree embellishment, but all too often they hit the spot in 4/4 time; one, two, three and strum down hard on the fourth. Vocally, it’s similar. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus, chorus, chorus. Blackwell needs an arranger to work over his songs. Set closer Smile is the bees knees.
After a longish pause and some slow handclapping from the crowd Gladys Knight is led onstage. She doesn’t care that she’s 15 minutes past advertised start time and if she does she does not show it. She’s been performing for so long she can work the crowd to her way of thinking inside three minutes and that’s about what it takes before she is milking the rapturous applause.
Gladys Knight & The Pips began performing in the early 1960s, continuing through the 1970s and ‘80s with a number of record companies: firstly, Fury Records, then her career really taking off with Motown (from 1966, with Nitty Gritty, I Heard It Through The Grapevine, Neither One Of Us) and then going stellar with Buddah Records (from 1973) then Columbia. Popular opinion has it that Knight came into conflict with Diana Ross, and that her career may have suffered as a result. Nonetheless, she stayed classy, and the move to Buddah brought riches – Midnight Train To Georgia, Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me, I’ve Got To Use My Imagination all being featured numbers in a set which was a pastiche of so many of her hits.
And the voice! At 80 the voice remains good, not strong but strong enough, not perfect but unmistakable; she could pull a note and tease it out, holding it until the crowd acclaimed her skill. It’s a trick she used once, twice, thrice, and only a performer with clarity and such good timbre could expect to get away with. She may be slower, she may have needed a chair after 40 minutes onstage, but this was the real McCoy.
All too soon we got to the downplayed opening chords of …Grapevine, signalling the terminal phase of the concert, but not before we’d had a superb sounding Licence To Kill, from the James Bond movie of the same name, the nine piece band blaring into the riff, guitarist briefly coming to the fore. For me this was a highlight, I am much more a fan of punchy and upbeat soul music than I am of the more assured r ‘n’ b or funk. The latter stages of the set explored more of the beautiful gospel which brought us to these latter interpretations, and for a few minutes it seemed Knight let down her guard, moving away from a tightly scripted performance to briefly interact with her three back vocals in a slow motion call and refrain during a cover of Donnie McClurkin’s Stand. Another highlight for me.
And then the inevitable conclusion: Midnight Train… was always going to gently take us away at the end of the show - as an evocative and quintessential American song which says so much about aspiration and love. Although originally recorded by Cissy Houston, it remains a fitting tribute to a performer of such unique stature such was the gloss she was able to give the number in its recorded version. Classy to the end.
Alex Wheaton
When: 21 Mar
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Continuing around Australia and New Zealand until 4 Apr: Details
Adelaide Festival. Adelaide Town Hall. 15 Mar 2024
Every now and then, one is fortunate enough to experience the truly sublime in a concert. It happens infrequently, but when it does, the experience is transformative and becomes etched into one’s memory, indeed soul. Víkingur Ólafsson’s performance of JS Bach’s The Goldberg Variations as part of the Adelaide Festival is one such event.
Ólafsson hails from Iceland where he received his initial musical training, and later attended and graduated from the prestigious Juilliard School in New York. In his mid-twenties he established and started recording for his own indie-record label (Dirrindí). He has since embarked on a stellar international career as a concert pianist and has amassed an impressive array of important awards, accolades, and enthusiastic reviews. He is one of the finest pianists alive, and his performances are underscored by acute understanding of the music he plays and the ability to play it with crystal clear clarity and resolute purpose. He is indeed remarkable.
Bach’s Goldberg Variations comprises a theme (the so-called “aria”), thirty variations centred on the bass line (of the aria rather than its melody), and finally a recapitulation of the aria. It was composed originally for a two-manual harpsichord, and Bach indicated those variations to be played using one hand on each manual. (Indeed, they were composed with that in mind, but they are playable on a single manual instrument or piano, but with attendant difficulty.) Ólafsson swept these difficulties aside and gave a masterful display of exquisite technique and made the cross-hand work look easy.
The Goldbergs, as it is affectionally known, is one of the pillars of the keyboard repertoire, and many pianists have recorded the work or performed it or both. Some examples are famous, such as recordings by the legendary Glenn Gould who shot to fame with his iconic 1955 recording. Since then, the Goldbergs have been re-expressed in many different instrumental arrangements – some work, others don’t – but those that do keep the counterpoint clear and unfussed. In 2018, the Australian Chamber Orchestra performed an arrangement in the Adelaide Town Hall by Bernard Labadie for a baroque ensemble. That arrangement worked well. In 2022, pianist Andrea Lam performed the Goldbergs in the Adelaide Town Hall and Paul Grabowsky followed with his own improvised version (!). In the 2008 Adelaide Fringe Festival, Grabowsky joined forces with Clemens Leske Jnr to present the same program. The audiences admired Grabowsky’s extemporisation but made it reasonably clear that they preferred the Goldbergs ‘as written’.
The popularity of the composition remains solid, and the near capacity audience at the Town Hall to hear Ólafsson’s interpretation bears testimony to that.
Dressed in an elegant blue suit, the blonde headed Ólafsson took to the stage, bowed to the audience, sat at the Steinway, placed both hands at the centre and gently caressed every white key as his slender hands moved in retrograde motion across the full length of the keyboard. A not so private communion with the instrument that would produce magic for the next eighty minutes at his and Bach’s ministering.
The aria was played with simplicity and no fuss. After Ólafsson coaxed the tender melody he almost immediately went into the first variation. Later, the eighth variation saw his fine hand-crossing work on show, and one could almost see the delineation of the sinews and tendons in his hands as he weaved the fingers of both hands together. No loss of evenness. Persistent clarity. The repeated voices in the canon variations were acutely articulated, and the mathematical logic inherent in Bach’s scripting was laid bare before our ears. Before we were even are aware of it, we were at the last ‘variation’ which stands in contrast to the others. It is an explosion of energy, humour, and joie de vivre. It can be tempting to inject too much ‘life’ into it thereby risking the balance of the entire performance, but Ólafsson kept his head and segued into the repeat of the aria as if he was calling on an old friend.
Ólafsson can rightly consider The Goldbergs to be an ‘old friend’, as he is part way through a world tour in which he is giving in excess of eighty consecutive performances of the work. One can only wonder at what other intricacies and understandings he will discover in the work as his relationship with it deepens and matures (if that were even possible!).
At the conclusion of his performance, Ólafsson took multiple bows to the adulation of an ecstatic audience that rose as one to its feet. He spoke gently and thanked the audience for gracing his Australian debut, and that he couldn’t possibly consider an encore. How does one possibly top The Goldbergs? Perhaps the repetition of the aria was indeed Bach’s own prescription for an encore?
Víkingur Ólafsson’s performance of JS Bach’s The Goldberg Variations was simply astonishing.
Kym Clayton
When: 15 Mar
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
★★★★★
Recitals Australia. Esmond Choi, Piano. North Adelaide Baptist Church. 24 Feb 2024
A pair of stunning piano recitals by Adelaide pianist Esmond Choi has introduced Adelaide audiences to some quite incredible contemporary piano music.
The feature works in these recitals were George Crumb’s Metamorphoses Book I (2017), performed on 21 February, and Metamorphoses Book II (2019) on 24 February. Each book comprises ten short pieces totalling approximately 45 minutes’ duration.
Choi was inspired to perform Crumb’s Metamorphoses on hearing of the legendary American composer’s death, at age 93, in 2022. Choi is to be thanked for bringing Crumb’s unique and complex music to Adelaide, as it is so rarely heard.
Each book is subtitled Ten Fantasy-Pieces (after Celebrated Paintings) and each piece is intended to characterise a well-known painting by a significant artist, for example Paul Klee’s Landscape with Yellow Birds, Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night, Marc Chagall’s Clowns at Night, and Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory.
The pieces might be expressionistic, meditative, or agitated, and Crumb provided the performer with instructions as to the mood of each piece. For example, No. 6 of Book II, which refers to Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (Lady in Gold), is to sound “metallic, glistening, iridescent”, and No. 7 of Book II, which references Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, is to sound “savage, apocalyptic”.
The performance is to be accompanied by projections of the paintings, and these were shown on a large screen. As well as the piano, the instrumentation includes various percussion instruments and a toy piano. The performer must sing or whistle at various moments, and the piano is at times prepared with various objects and its strings plucked or stroked — Metamorphoses draws upon a wide range of sonic effects to characterise the artworks.
These are immensely challenging compositions for the pianist, and Esmond Choi demonstrated prodigious technical skill, great concentration, and most of all, a deep appreciation of both Crumb’s music and the artists’ oeuvres.
In the first recital, Choi’s performance of Book I was preceded by insightful renditions of two pieces by Olivier Messiaen from his Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus (1944) and Galina Ustvolskaya’s Piano Sonata No. 3 (1952). Ustvolskaya, who was championed by Shostakovich, is little known now, and her unique music is dark and disturbing. It was worth attending this recital just to hear Choi’s finely nuanced performance of this sonata.
In the second recital, Choi’s performance of Book II was preceded by Franz Liszt’s brief, unusually quiet and ultimately haunting Nuages Gris (1881), Messiaen’s Je Dor, Mais Mon Coeur Vieille (from the Vingt Regards), Toru Takemitsu’s Litany – in Memory of Michael Vyner (1989), and the piano transcription of JS Bach’s Nun Komm her Heiden Heiland (BWV 61). This recital program honoured the passing of Crumb through these elegiac meditations on death.
Choi’s accomplished readings of these diverse and demanding works, combined with his thoughtful programming, made these recitals unforgettable.
These recitals were presented as part of Recitals Australia’s classical music festival within the Adelaide Fringe, comprising ten concerts by recipients awarded the Recitals Australia Elder Conservatorium Fellowship Program. As well as being a Fellowship recipient, Choi is a master’s candidate at the Elder Conservatorium in the University of Adelaide.
Recitals on the Fringe continues with performances from Haiwei Yang, Piano, Katelyn Crawford, mezzo-soprano/soprano, and Gemma Vice, flute, until the 9th of March.
Chris Reid
When: 24 Feb to 9 Mar
Where: North Adelaide Baptist Church
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 9 Feb 2024
The ASO’s first Symphony Series concert for the year carried the title Majesty and the program included three works: contemporary Scottish American composer Thea Musgrave’s Rainbow, Tchaikovsky’s monumental Piano Concerto No.1 in B-flat minor, Op.23, and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No.3 in A minor, Op.56 (Scottish). Majesty might describe aspects of the Tchaikovsky and the Mendelssohn, but the term doesn’t easily describe the Musgrave.
Stephanie Eslake’s program notes draw a longish bow at linking the three compositions and she interestingly refers to the Tchaikovsky as being the “elephant in the room”. It was performed by Ukrainian born Australian pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk with such explosive flair and joie de vivre that the audience erupted in spontaneous and sustained applause at the end of the first movement. So, what made it so special?
Gavrylyuk has been described by Roger Woodward as “…the most compelling pianist of his generation” and his performance tonight of the Tchaikovsky was just that: compelling. Gavrylyuk and guest conductor Douglas Boyd set a fast pace and the elegance inherent in the piano part, especially in the first movement, could easily have been obscured in the deluge of sound. In less capable hands, that likely would have happened, but Gavrylyuk was able to articulate critical phrases and have them rise above the might of the orchestra. Watching him perform demands one’s full attention: he unleashes novel interpretations; his body language sensitively announces every emotion he feels in the music; his artistry and musicianship at the keyboard is to be marvelled at. He's the full deal. Of the three movements, the second was performed in a more conventional way. When it was over, the audience to a person knew they had heard something special. Elephant in the room? Indeed.
Musgrave’s Rainbow is unashamedly programmatic in nature, and paints a soundscape of the emergence and disappearance of a rainbow through a rainy storm event. The orchestral colours are diverse, and there is an underlying sense of chaos out of which transient melodic motifs rise and fade away as quickly as they arrived. The piece was composed in 1990, and this performance was the first by an Australian orchestra.
Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony was composed some years after he toured Scotland, and as Eslake puts it, it is a “gripping memoir” of his travels. That does not mean to say the piece is infused with hints of Scottish tunes, for it is not. Rather, it is Mendelssohn’s response to some of the things that he saw, including the crumbling grandeur of Holyrood Abbey where Mary Queen of Scots was crowned. As he walked around Scotland it is not hard to believe that Mendelssohn would have been impressed by the rugged and wild natural beauty of the landscape, and as in Musgrave’s Rainbow, Mendelssohn’s Scottish recalls nature at its awesome best. The ASO’s woodwinds were at their very best throughout the concert.
Kym Clayton
When: 9 Feb to 10 Feb
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Grainger Studio. 2 Feb 2024
The Adelaide Symphony orchestra’s 2024 program includes a number of themed series, including the Sanctuary Series, so named because the music is presented as an immersive experience that focusses upon the deeply relaxing and meditative qualities inherent in the program. Indeed, the audience can choose between standard seating or yoga mats and has no choice about how and when to applaud the orchestra – applause is forbidden, and one’s enjoyment is expressed through silent but deeply felt appreciation. The ASO has been presenting such programs for several years, and there is one more in August this year. They are popular, and deservedly so. The pomp and circumstance of traditional orchestral concerts is stripped away, and it’s all about giving flight to one’s own personal response to what is heard.
Fragmentation featured four compositions, all of which are based on lyrical ‘fragments’ to create larger works. In some respects, each is like a dream, where the source musical material is deceptively simple and comparatively brief but seems more expansive.
The highlight of the program was a beautifully rendered performance of Graeme Koehne’s The Persistence of Memory. Receiving its world première in 2014 by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, it was written in memory of Guy Henderson who served as principal oboe of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for some 31 years (1967-1998). Written for oboe and string orchestra, it begins delicately with a single violin and cello which announce a hauntingly serene melody that is soon taken up by the ensemble and developed by the obo, played most beautifully by Joshua Oates.
Interestingly, the Koehne was enveloped by Wagner. The concert began with an Australian première performance of Salvatore Sciarrino’s recent composition Languire a Palermo (Languishing in Palermo), composed in 2018. It is constructed around a melodic fragment composed by Wagner during a visit to Sicily in the early 1880s and is described by Sciarrino as capturing the “sounds of Sicily”. It is an eclectic work but unforgiving: its success turns on precise phrasing, managing delicate changes in contrasting tempi, and purposeful dynamical balancing. Conductor David Sharp managed most of these demands.
The Sciarrino gave way to a lush performance of Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll. The piece had almost enigmatic and deeply personal significance for Wagner himself, but this didn’t entirely come through and the performance perhaps lacked a little heart.
The Koehne was followed by Gavin Bryars The Porazzi Fragment composed by Gavin Bryars. Towards its conclusion, the piece quotes a brief unpublished piano theme composed by Wagner, but which was never used by him. Like the Koehne, the music is nostalgic and lamenting, but intensely soothing and an entirely appropriate conclusion to a satisfying and immersive concert.
Kym Clayton
When: 2 Feb
Where: Grainger Studio
Bookings: Closed