★★★★★
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
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Grainger Studio. 8 Dec 2023
“Welcome to this unique listening experience…” is emblazoned across the large projection screen high above the orchestra, and unique it is. Gone are the usual rituals associated with a performance by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra: the orchestra files into the auditorium in silence, as does the conductor (David Sharp), to no applause; the lights are dimmed; half the audience are recumbent on yoga mats (many having just finished work and have come directly to the Grainger), and the another half sitting in ‘conventional’ seating; talking is at a minimum, and only in hushed whispers; the projection screen advises us there should be no applause, for anything, that latecomers will not be admitted – not even at a ‘convenient‘ pause in the program, and that anyone leaving the auditorium for whatever reason will not be readmitted.
Rules, rules, rules. But we all accept them (indeed, we welcome them!) and know they are essential preconditions for what will be a very different and intensely relaxing musical experience. And the delightful program all but guarantees it.
With the audience settled, the lights dim, and we become aware of our own breathing and hearts beating. We all become more acutely aware of silence, which is such an important element of any music. The silence itself becomes music (think John Cage’s composition 4’33”), and then the gentle strains of The Swan of Tuonela are uttered by the orchestra. It is part of Jean Sibelius’ tone poem Lemminkäinen Suite, Op.22 and includes one of the best-known solos on cor anglais ever written. The harp has a key part to play as well, and the total effect is painfully soothing.
Where the plaintive and enigmatic sounds of the cor anglais voice a swan in the Sibelius, the oboe voices a cuckoo in Frederick Delius’s On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring. The elevated and almost-lonely sounds from the oboe conjure images of solitude in a leafy and dappled-light forest, and one’s sense of relaxation becomes even more heightened.
Erik Satie wrote three Gymnopédies, and the ASO performed two of them: No. III - Lent et grave, and No. 1 - Lent et douloureux. Originally written for piano, they are spectacularly well known and have been arranged for various ensembles. The original piano versions are beautifully written: they are sparse with every note chosen for a reason; nothing more is needed, and nothing that is included is superfluous. The arrangements used by the ASO preserved the simple beauty of the melodies and rhythms, but for this reviewer the arrangements became ‘busy’ at times and self-conscious. But the deep relaxation continued, and the combination of harp and piano was elevating.
Like the Gymnopédies, Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte was also originally written for solo piano, but it is better known in its orchestral version (which Ravel himself wrote.) It works best when played slowly, as the composer intended, and conductor David Sharp did just that. A few initial shaky notes by the horns did nothing to detract from the dreaminess and fragile beauty of the piece.
The concert rounded out with a soulful performance of Arvo Pärt’s Lamentate. This is very contemporary work (composed in 2002) and is written in Pärt’s so-called ‘tintinnabular’ style (his term) which is substantially grounded in arpeggiated tonic triads with tonally divergent and sometimes beautifully dissonant motifs from other keys. Again, comparative sparseness of harmonizing notes is important, and a sense of fragility pervades even though there is contradictory overall sense of backbone and substance.
David Sharp seems to have an affinity for minimalist compositions, and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is on a winner with its Sanctuary Series. Just as the ASO’s matinee concerts in the Elder Hall are lunchtime oases, so too the Sanctuary concerts are twilight havens from which to escape the working week.
Kym Clayton
When: 8 Dec
Where: Grainger Studio
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Wind Orchestra. Elder Hall. 25 Nov 2023
The Adelaide Wind Orchestra is a musical gem on the Adelaide art music landscape, and they will soon be playing on the world stage at the prestigious International Conference of the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles to be held in South Korea in July 2024. In fact, the Adelaide Wind Orchestra is one of only a few ensembles world-wide to be invited to perform. Yes, the Adelaide Wind Orchestra is that good, and their recent concert – entitled Smoke and Mirrors (named after the opening piece of the concert) – demonstrated why they are held in such high regard internationally.
The program followed a standard structure to be expected from regular symphony orchestra: an overture to open followed by a concerto, and finishing with a symphony. The overture Smoke and Mirrors, by American composer Erica Muhl, is a stand-alone work (it is not an introduction to a larger work), and it is very exciting. Muhl says of her composition that it is a paraphrase of musical ideas from many of her compositions arranged in achronological order. As such, the piece comes across as being somewhat episodic and lacking a cohesive schema, but the episodes are just electric! At times it is sci-fi inflected and futuristic in the thoughts it evokes in the mind of the listener, and at other times it is inward looking and brooding. The various sections are sometimes linked by exceptionally melodic and surprising statements from flutes and chimes. When it was over, guest conductor Kate Mawson took a restrained bow, and one was free to draw breath again!
Smoke and Mirrors was followed by an astonishing performance of Jennifer Higdon’s remarkable Percussion Concerto. Originally written for a full orchestra (that is, with strings as well), the composition won the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and it’s easy to see why. In any concerto, there is an obvious dialogue between the soloist and the rest of the orchestra. In Higdon’s composition, there is a three-way dialogue between the percussion soloist, the percussion section of the orchestra, and the rest of the orchestra itself, and the result is fascinating. However, the main interest from an audience member’s perspective is watching the sheer theatricality and physicality of the percussion soloist at work. On this occasion it was Sami Butler, who is the Associate Principal Percussionist with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, and his performance was electrifying. (Why hasn’t the ASO itself programmed this work? Why?)
Butler had numerous instruments set up in four locations across the full width of the Elder Hall stage. Let’s face it, marimba, xylophones, drum kits etc all take up a lot of room, and Butler had to move quickly and precisely between them over the duration of the single movement work. The nature of the music is eclectic. Like Smoke and Mirrors before it, the concerto doesn’t have a structure that a listener can easily latch onto in order to try and find meaning. Very soon, the listener abandons all attempts at this and lets the myriad of musical ideas take over and transport them to an almost otherworld sonic landscape all the while marvelling at Butler’s sublime musicality. His purely solo sections – we might call them cadenzas – were totally absorbing, and the emerging smiles on the faces of the members of the orchestra were only exceed by those of the transfixed audience.
Connor Fogarty’s Symphony for Wind Orchestra stood in stark contrast to the overture and the concerto. It frequently presents musical ideas that remind the listener of other things. Fogarty, in his program notes, states that the second movement is inspired by John Adam’s iconic piece Short Ride in a Fast Machine, which indeed it does, and the final movement evokes Shostakovich. Throughout, the playing by the orchestra is first-rate: luscious sounds from the tubas and other bass instruments, mournfully beautiful phrases from the woodwinds, delicate linking motifs from the harp that provide connection and meaning, sweet clarinets, lively flutes, expectant oboes, cheerful but majestic brass, and percussion of course to thread the various elements together.
Fogarty was in the audience and graciously received appreciative applause from the audience as well as from the conductor Bryan Griffiths, who did such a splendid job bringing the entire concert together.
Yes, the Adelaide Wind Orchestra is good, and they will be featuring music by Fogarty and other Australian composers, including Anne Cawrse, David John Lang, and Holly Harrison in their performances in South Korea. They deserve the support of the South Australian art music loving public, and you can start by visiting their website.
Kym Clayton
When 25 Nov
Where: Elder Hall
Bookings: Closed