Adelaide Town Hall. 13 Sep 2013.
Guest conductor Mark Wigglesworth demonstrated his enormous skill in a concert that was very much a mixed bag: the bookends were immensely pleasing, the in-between not as much.
Wagner’s ‘Prelude and Liebstrop’ from Tristan and Isolde: insistent and yearning gloriously melodic dissonance reaching towards climax and then gently waning into the mists of experience.
James MacMillan’s ‘Oboe concerto in three movements’: just dissonance, mostly without reason or resolution; a clutter of insufficiently developed musical ideas.
Beethoven’s ‘Symphony No. 7’: exhilarating and expansive lyricism insistently propelled forward by exciting rhythms, tempi and dynamics.
Wigglesworth achieved as good a performance from the ASO as has ever been produced, and the absence of the regular concertmaster and associate concertmaster seemed not to matter at all. His direction is very clear and precise and he communicates a great personal enjoyment of the music to the members of the orchestra. This was most evident with associate principal violist Imants Larsens in the Beethoven. I never tire of watching this exceptional young musician who plays with every sinew and muscle in his body as if it were another instrument.
Nicholas Daniel is an exceptional oboist and he essayed the obvious technical difficulty of the concerto with apparent ease. He too was a spectacle to watch and greatly appreciated, but James Macmillan’s score seemed to impress aficionados of the instrument more than general audience members. The dialogue between the oboe and clarinet in the second movement was an oasis in a jagged and harsh landscape. There is much ‘modern serious music’ to be enjoyed but this composition left many pondering what they had just heard and wondering whether it wasn’t just a little self-indulgent. Daniel’s encore of one of Britten’s lyrical Opus 49 Metamorphoses however was much appreciated.
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was the crowd pleaser. Wigglesworth took it at pace, but never too fast, and shaded the dynamics skilfully. Even though the composition is almost 200 years old it still startles and excites. It is both predictable and unpredictable. The woodwind, horn and brass were equally superb, and Robert Hutcheson on timpani was precision personified.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
