Kirill Gerstein

Musica Viva. Adelaide Town Hall. 20 Jun 2024

Kirill Gerstein’s performance was underscored by patience and deep respect borne out of profound understanding of the music he played. From the opening phrases of Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61, with its heaven-seeking ascending arpeggio over five octaves, we know that Gerstein is in full control and empathetic with the composer’s intent. He is at one with the music behind the notes. The complexity of the Chopin is tamed with a stillness in his approach – it’s as if the caged complexity that is impatient to be freed is somehow calmed before release. Gerstein allows the inventiveness of the piece to unfold and unencumbered by strict metronomic timing his interpretation hints at the piece’s intrinsic jazz inflections.

Every live performance of any piece of music is always a unique experience – never to be heard that way again – but Gerstein takes it to another level as he gives us brief moments of stillness to pause and prepare for a different listening experience. With the final cadence of the Polonaise-Fantaisie completed, Gerstein promptly but gently rises and steps away from the piano: his work is done, and the music speaks for itself. From the perspective of the audience, it is altogether a different experience.

With little fuss, Gerstein sits again at the piano and resumes his carefully designed program. A contemporary work by American jazz pianist, composer and arranger Brad Mehldau follows – Après Fauré No. 3: Nocturne – and it is selected to lead into Nocturne No. 13 in B minor, Op. 119 by Gabriel Fauré. The jazz influences of the Mehldau prepare us for the complexities of the Fauré but not entirely for its vehemence and tortured sadness. Gerstein respects the intensified emotion and checks any longing to play with overly demonstrative exuberance.

Francis Poulenc’s delightful Three Intermezzi follow, and Gerstein’s fingers caress the piano’s keys throughout with a lightness and tenderness that is the perfect salve for any angst caused by the Fauré. This is followed by a spirited reading of Liszt’s Polonaise in E major, S. 223 No. 2, and Gerstein’s beguiling lightness of touch in the right hand makes us more acutely aware of the nationalistic feelings the Polonaise form can stir in us.

The second half of the program began with more Chopin. Again, Gerstein demonstrated his deep understanding of form, and his reading of the Fantaisie in F minor, Op. 49, was a delight: lightness of touch, moments of stillness and introspection, and a lush and fulsome approach to the piece’s glorious melodies.

The penultimate work on the program is a new work by highly regarded Australian composer Liza Lim AM. It was commissioned by Musica Viva through the Hildegard Project. Entitled Transcendental Étude, it might be assumed that the piece is taking a nod at Liszt, but Lim suggests in her program notes that the work is trying to get at something more tangible – striving for freedom. The work is at times dense and has an air of urgency, but Gerstein imbues its insistence with a measured patience. The composition keeps itself in check but none of its emotion is lost. If anything, it is amplified, and we are left in a state of contemplation at its almost abrupt ending.

The program is rounded out with a lively reading of Robert Schumann’s Carnival of Vienna, Op. 26, which is redolent in dance rhythms and light-hearted hummable tunes. Gerstein plays the multi movement piece with contained élan and ensures coherence and balance. Above all, he is patient and allows the composition’s highlights to emerge as intended by the composer without being rushed or being blurred by unnecessarily emphasising music that plays more of a supporting than a leading role.

It has been said that Kirill Gerstein is a poet of the piano. This concert is indeed a demonstration of that.

Kym Clayton

When: 20 Jun

Where: Adelaide Town Hall

Bookings: Closed

Old Worlds and New

Adelaide Baroque. Nexus Arts. 31 May 2024

In staging Old Worlds and New, Adelaide Baroque presented a rare and utterly delightful concert of medieval and early renaissance style music.

Adelaide Baroque is renowned for its thoroughly informed and authentic performances of music of the baroque era, and its members frequently collaborate with other musicians. For this concert, members of the Adelaide Baroque Orchestra, led by violinist Ben Dollman, were joined by the Early Modern Trio of Aaron Brown (violin, rebec), Philip Griffin (oud, guitar, tzura) and Tunji Beier (hand percussion), together with Maryam Rahmani (santur, kamancheh and voice).

Aaron Brown is a specialist in medieval music and composes music drawing on medieval forms and flavours, as well as performing some original pieces. This was the era of Moorish Spain — Al-Andalus — where Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities coexisted and whose culture spread through Europe to the middle east.

Brown takes the danceable rhythms of medieval music and recreates them as modern jazz rhythms. His Ecclesia is based on Sequence for St. Ursula by the legendary abbess and composer Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179), and it combines sequences of solos for violin, oud and drum supported by the strings of Adelaide Baroque. The gentle sounds of Maryam Rahmani’s santur, an instrument similar to a hammer dulcimer, can be heard throughout.

Brown’s Lament for Tristan, based on a troubadour song drawn from a fourteenth century Tuscan manuscript, opens with a mournful, characteristically medieval violin solo that segues into a hypnotic contemporary jazz piece performed by the ensemble. The style of music shifts back and forth between eras as Brown performs another solo in contemporary style, and there is a jazz guitar solo by Philip Griffin.

In many works, the arrangements for the ensemble create dialogues between instruments, and involve sequences of alternating instrumental solos in the manner characteristic of jazz ensembles, but the style of the music never loses its medieval, often courtly flavour. The sound of the early violin is quite different to that of its modern counterpart, and Brown also uses a rebec, another early bowed string instrument. The use of traditional instruments in contemporary music adds to this most seductive and unique musical hybrid.

Kalenda Maia, by troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (c1155 – 1205) is in the form of the estampie, a medieval dance, and features solos for violin and recorder. Cominciamento di Gioia (Origins of Joy), arranged for recorder, played by Brendan O’Donnell) and a small frame drum, played by Tunji Beier, is from another, anonymous, estampie.

The slow, meditative A Chantar, by Beatriz, Contessa de Dia (1140 – 1212), was originally a vocal work, but is arranged for santur and oud, accompanied by tinkling percussion. Rahmani also performed a delightful solo on the santur to accompany her own voice in her Improvisation on Traditional Persian Melody.

Brown’s Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream begins with Philip Griffin reading a text from the Book of Daniel in which Nebuchadnezzar dreams of the great tree that shelters the world. The music that follows the reading is based on the opening melody of the thirteenth century Play of Daniel, a liturgical drama written by students of the Beauvais Cathedral in northern France.

The concert booklet provided extensive details of the nature and sources of the music and its historical context, and Brown’s compositions and arrangements are based on extensive research. This enchanting concert provides just a taste of the kinds of music that might have been heard in the medieval era, and so the concert constituted an absorbing history lesson.

The performances throughout were excellent. The whole ensemble combined wonderfully, sharing a common appreciation of Aaron Brown’s finely crafted compositions which bring medieval music into the contemporary era and continue the evolution of musical composition and performance that characterised medieval times.

Chris Reid

When: 31 May to 1 June 2024

Where: Nexus Arts Venue

Bookings: Closed

Symphony Series 3: Grandeur

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 12 Apr 2024

Grandeur was the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s third concert in its flagship Symphony series, and it was very satisfying.

The ASO’s Symphony Series usually follow a tried-and-true format, along the lines of an introductory piece, by concerto and a symphony. The pot boilers get rolled out, because the audience love ‘em and they keep ticket sales ticking over, and occasionally there is a new composition. Grandeur didn’t follow this format: there was no symphony or concerto, although there was a new composition (a world première in fact!) and another modern piece (an Australian première) which were both uncomfortable bedfellows for the two high baroque pieces that were performed (one of them was indeed ‘grand’!) There was no obvious narrative to the program although Stephanie Eslake’s entertaining and instructive program notes tried to create musical glue where there really wasn’t any to bind the program together. Her notes were more a post hoc intellectual exercise than anything else.

Experiencing Grandeur was akin to sitting down with one’s own collection of CDs and sampling at random. But that can be enjoyable, and Grandeur was too.

Dobrinka Tabakova is a contemporary Bulgaria-British composer, and her recent composition for small string ensemble Barbican Glade was commissioned to to mark London’s Barbican Centre’s 40th birthday. The ensemble and conductor were already on stage as the audience entered the Town Hall auditorium and they began the concert without any acknowledgement. Esteemed British conductor Stephen Layton drew the purest unfussed tremolo-free tones from the strings and the overall effect was drone-like, almost inscrutable. This was an Australian première, and it would seem reasonable to expect that Barbican Glade will grace our concert halls again, and again.

In stark contrast, this was followed by JS Bach’s Cantata No.51 Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen! (Exult in God in every Land), and it was sung by the ever-popular Australian Soprano Sara Macliver. Although Macliver was overpowered at times in the first Aria section, her glorious voice perfectly joined forces with the orchestra for the second, third and fourth sections, before she was joined by principal trumpeter David Khafagi and they both excelled in a coloratura climactic final Alleluja.

As the first half of the comparatively short program began with a première, so did the second with Before the Law by Adelaide composer Jakub Jankowski. In this case, the ASO commissioned the work, and this was its world première! And what a remarkable work it is, and like the Tabakova, it deserves to be heard again, and around the world. Jankowski has set to music an extract in the form of a parable from Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, in which a protagonist seeks to gain access to law and legal process but is thwarted in doing so by a ‘gatekeeper’. The message is that the legal system is too difficult for an average person to negotiate or indeed fully comprehend. This is all very topical with high profile national and international court cases being splashed across our daily newspapers almost on a daily basis. Why Jankowski chose this as source material is not known, but the parable has been referenced in a number of other artistic works , including by American composer Arnold Rosner who arranged the text for a baritone singer and orchestra. Rosner’s work is excellent, but Jankowski’s version is altogether different. It features a soprano voice (Sara Macliver again) who sings the text associated with the protagonist, and the gatekeeper as well as a narrator. The three voices are differentiated through various musical choices: instrumentation, tempo, dynamics, and rhythm. In particular, Jankowski has the the soprano voice the gatekeeper through an electric megaphone, which gives the text a raucous and cruelly authoritative character. Macliver’s clarity is suboptimal on a few occasions when she is again stretched by the full orchestra, and it becomes necessary to consult the printed program for the words she is singing. But her performance is electric and her powerful and lyrical voice can easily be heard above the swelling orchestra. Jankowski doubles the voice with wind instruments in the composition’s latter stages and the effect is made even more eery and distant as the soprano is joined by seemingly detuned brass as she slowly leaves the stage making ‘white noise’ sounds into the megaphone. At times it sounds other worldly and Kafka’s message of unreachable justice rings loudly in our ears.

Jankowski’s Before the Law is as theatrical as it is musical. It thrives in the concert hall and would likely be less impactful as a recording, but it can be heard again on ABC Classic radio on 3 May at 1pm. This reviewer will certainly be tuning in. It deserves to be listened to again. Jakub Jankowski has already had a number of compositional successes, and this is another.

Jakub Jankowski is one to watch out for.

The program finally became “grand” with a well-articulated reading of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks. The Fireworks has all the musical hallmarks of a so-called ‘pot boiler’: it’s fun to listen to, and to watch, and it has memorable tunes that easily become ear worms. Unfortunately, we don’t hear it all that often in our concert halls. Layton controlled the might of the orchestra to preserve the tight phrasing and control the rapidly changing dynamics that are needed for this piece to truly take flight and soar it did.

This was a perfect concert program for Layton: major vocal works, Baroque, and British-infused compositions. He did it so well.

Kym Clayton

When: 12 Apr

Where: Adelaide Town Hall

Bookings: Closed

Symphony Series 2: Horizons

Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 22 Mar 2024

The physical horizon is almost mystical. It is always there, but always out of reach and ever changing and morphing from one reality into another. And so was the musical program for the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s Horizons concert, the second in this year’s popular Symphony Series. The eclectic program featured Mendelssohn’s concert overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Op.27, Bruch’s ever popular Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor, Op.26, Sofia Gubaidulina’s Märchenpoem (Fairytale Poem) – a highlight – and Debussy’s La Mer. So many musical colours, textures and changing moods! But the plethora of styles and the episodic nature of the program’s narrative was almost a weakness, but not quite!

The concert began with Pudnanthi Padninthi by Buckskin and Goldsmith (arranged by Mark Ferguson), which is now the customary musical Acknowledgement of Country. With a different conductor leading the orchestra almost every time it is played, it invariably has a different ‘feel’ each time. This gives one pause to reflect about the music itself and the changing nature of country and the unique relationships between it and those who walk it and call it home.

Goethe’s two poems Calm at Sea and Prosperous Voyage were the inspiration for Schubert’s song Meeres Stille (Calm Sea), D.216, Beethoven’s cantata for chorus and orchestra Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt, Op.112, and Mendelssohn’s overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Op.27. Mendelssohn’s non-vocal setting is evocative of the deep fear and apprehension sailors experience when becalmed at sea, and the joy when this gives way to winds that propel one towards the emerging land in the horizon. Although it never feels as satisfying as Mendelssohn’s popular Hebrides Overture, South Korean guest conductor Shiyeon Sung led the orchestra in a balanced reading that was at times jaunty, with the woodwinds in fine form.

Emily Sun was the soloist in Bruch’s Violin Concerto No.1, and she brought the audience to its feet at its conclusion. The heart of the concerto is the adagio second movement and Sun allowed the elegance of its simple melody to come to the fore. Sun and Shiyeon Sung never allowed it to become oversentimental, and Sun’s fine technique was especially on display in the final movement with elegantly controlled double stopping in the first brisk dance-like theme.

Sofia Gubaidulina (b.1931) is one of the most significant Russian composers alive. Throughout her long life, she has earned many accolades, awards, and prizes, and her prolific musical output ranges across orchestral, concerto, vocal, instrumental, and chamber compositions, as well as numerous (Russian) film scores. For tonight’s concert the ASO chose Gubaidulina’s orchestral tone poem Märchenpoem, which she wrote for a children’s radio program based on a Czech fairy tale, The Little Piece of Chalk. Although the Bruch concerto was the audience’s favourite for the night, Gubaidulina’s Märchenpoem came a close second, and Shiyeon Sung captured the piece’s vivacity and allowed all featured instrumental voices to shine.

The concert concluded with Debussy’s La Mer, which brought us full circle to the nautical theme enunciated at the start of the concert in the Mendelssohn. La Mer was not fully appreciated when it premièred and was criticised for lack of obvious form and melody, but that is perhaps precisely what is needed to evoke thoughts and feelings of an ever-changing ocean and shifting horizon. Again, Shiyeon Sung allowed each of the three substantial sections of the composition to speak for themselves without over labouring the changing harmonies and episodic melodies.

This concert can be enjoyed again on ABC Classic at 1pm on Sunday 21 April. It’s worth enjoying again to reflect on the fact that the concert features a female virtuoso soloist, a female conductor, a female concertmaster, and a significant composition by a notable but underperformed (in this country at least) Russian female composer. Well done ASO!

Kym Clayton

When: 22 Mar

Where: Adelaide Town Hall

Bookings: Closed