Adelaide Festival. Anthony Marwood. Elder hall. 2 Mar 2026

 

Shadow and Light features esteemed British violinist Anthony Marwood in concert with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra as part of the Adelaide Festival. The program comprises two works only: an arrangement for string orchestra by Marijn van Prooijen of Dimitri Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 68, was paired with Ralph Vaughan Williams’ enduring and much-loved tone poem The Lark Ascending.

 

Elder Hall was close to capacity, and the audience were largely there for one reason: to again experience Marwood’s crystalline artistry. A frequent and warmly welcomed visitor to South Australia, with close ties to Ukaria, Marwood has cultivated an audience that responds instinctively to his artistry. Quite simply, there can never be too much of him.

 

This reviewer adores Shostakovich, and admires his symphonies and chamber works, especially the string quartets, but had not previously heard van Prooijen’s arrangement. (A number of Shostakovich’s string quartets have been arranged principally for string orchestra over the years by other arrangers, especially by his friend Rudolf Barshai.) Van Prooijen’s reimagining is exceptional. It successfully maintains the intimacy of the original quartet while leveraging the power of the larger ensemble and harnesses the resonance and depth of the double basses that add harmonic dimension and weight) without ever merely ‘thickening’ the texture or losing the ‘conversation’. Lines remain lucid; counterpoint breathes.

 

The arrangement not only preserves harmony, it also gives each section a clear and substantial melodic role. This is most evident in the second movement, when Marwood’s Stradivarius rises with unforced authority above an unbarred chordal tapestry from the ensemble. The third movement provided opportunity for the violas and cellos to have their eloquent say. The result was not an enlargement of the quartet so much as a deepening of its expressive palette.

 

Marwood is sublime in The Lark Ascending. He elicits the faintest of sounds from his instrument: they seemingly materialise from silence itself and build as they mellifluously wind their way through the majestic acoustic and architecture of the Elder Hall. Marwood directs a fine dynamic balance throughout the piece, with the woodwinds and horn always complementing and never detracting from the aethereal strings.

 

As a lunchtime concert of barely an hour’s duration and shaped by a musician at the height of his powers, Shadow and Light was a temporary and blissful haven from a troubled world.

 

Kym Clayton

 

When: 2 Mar

Where: Elder Hall

Bookings: Closed