Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Festival Theatre Hall. 1 Jun 2013
If Beethoven’s 9th Symphony – the Choral Symphony – doesn’t rock your boat, then you are emotionally in a lazy orbit around an undiscovered minor planet that doesn’t support life.
The Choral is perhaps the pinnacle of the symphonic genre, the likes of which will probably never to be equaled. Certainly there are many other great symphonies but this one is special. When it premiered in 1824, it drew a line the sand. For many later composers it was the final word in the genre, and they were reluctant to essay a ninth themselves lest it should be their last. After all, Beethoven died before he ever wrote a tenth. Some argue that the ‘curse of the ninth’ began with Mahler, who, after writing his Eighth Symphony, wrote Das Lied von der Erde (performed by the ASO last year to great acclaim) but never named it as his ninth symphony. Mahler then composed what he called his Ninth Symphony and thought he had defeated the superstition, but died with his Tenth Symphony incomplete. But, it is just a superstition and there are many counterexamples.
However, I digress. Suffice to say Beethoven’s Ninth is something very special and it deserves to be held in awe for whatever reason.
The Choral Symphony lasts for over an hour, and it is an emotional roller-coaster ride from start to finish. The work constantly searches for its ‘home’ key of D minor even though it knows where to find it, but it plays hard to get. There are several simple but intensely beautiful themes that come and go and are revisited when we least expect them. There is deep solemnity in the adagio third movement (which I think conductor Arvo Volmer took a little too fast), and the crushing fourth movement rejects any resolution and boldly asserts the final, jubilant and euphoric ‘ode to joy’ theme.
Taking it all in is an intensely personal experience, and it is a complete adrenalin rush. The stage of the Festival Theatre was a sea of bodies – sixty or seventy members of the orchestra, a choir of nearly one hundred voices and four solo vocalists. It’s immense. The orchestra again performed masterfully under Volmer, and the woodwinds were especially fine. Carl Crossin’s Adelaide Symphony Chorus was right on the money. They dealt effectively with the uncompromising acoustics of the auditorium and were not eclipsed by soloists Sara Macliver, Sally-Anne Russell, Paul McMahon and Stephen Bennett who were all very commanding. Macliver’s fine soprano line sailed over it all and was a highlight.
The evening commenced with a world première performance of Graeme Koehne’s Fanfare Festiva, which was specially commissioned for this, the 40th anniversary of the Adelaide Festival Centre. Fanfare Festiva comes across as almost being flippant. It teems with sweeping pastoral phrases and I mischievously pictured in my mind the Marlboro man on horseback cantering across a prairie.
Koehne has also styled the composition a Fanfare for the Next 40 Years. What will the Festival Centre look like in the year 2053? Who knows, but I hope the gala celebration again includes the mighty Choral Symphony but performed in a new auditorium that is purpose built for fine music.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
