Concerts @ Kent Town. Wesley Uniting Church, Kent Town. 14 Aug 2019
There is much to like about Concerts @ Kent Town. The ambience is calm and the music is enjoyable, at times stirring. Moreover, the program often includes gems that are infrequently heard in a concert environment. Today’s program was certainly of that ilk.
Organist David Heah ‘s program was eclectic and showed off the capability and beauty of the Dodd pipe organ as well as the diversity of sound scapes able to be produced. Heah’s selection included comparatively recent compositions as well as pieces that have delighted audiences for many years.
Grayston (Bill) Ives’ 1982 composition Intrada is quintessentially English and was commissioned for Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee. It goes without saying that it is regal, but it also includes thematic material that is almost reminiscent of folk tunes, and Heah expertly draws this quality to the forefront. Sibelius’ Intrada Op.111a was composed for Swedish royalty some fifty years earlier and it too is majestic. Heah uses the Dodd to full effect and his registrations create the desired orchestral feel inherent in the composition.
Buxtehude’s Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne in C, BuxWV137 is altogether quite different and Heah’s light handed treatment allows the melody in bass line to be clearly heard.
Heah’s performance of Jehan Alain’s Choral Dorien is sublime. It is contemplative and almost mysterious as its tonality changes and reaches for something almost unattainable before fading into the nothingness.
The concert also featured bass baritone Alex Roose. His warm and beautifully articulated voice was perfect for Ralph Vaughan William’s song cycle Songs of Travel. The cycle is based on poetry from Robert Louis Stevenson and is almost an English response to Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer, or Schubert’s Winterreise, but without the robust Germanic ambience.
Roose is sensitively accompanied by Damien Mansfield on piano who never dominates and allows Roose’s fine voice to gently fill the Wesley Uniting Church. Roose’s warm smile is also the perfect accompaniment to some of the more sensitive songs, such as Let beauty Awake, and there is every sense that Roose well understands the text as well as the music – he is a consummate story teller. His rendition of In Dreams sees a convincing and clear performance of difficult chromatic passages, and his vibrato in The Infinite Shining Heavens is almost creamy!
Roose has an enviable performance history and he was the State Opera of South Australia’s Emerging Artist in 2018. Emerging? Roose has well and truly arrived and we need to hear much more of him.
The concert rounded out with a blistering performance by David Heah of Charles Villiers Stanford’s Postlude in D. If one was in any doubt about the capabilities of the Dodd organ, they were quickly dispelled. Postlude is flamboyant but grounded in traditions even though for such a relatively short piece it changes tonality frequently. The audience left stirred!
Kym Clayton
When: 14 Aug
Where: Wesley Uniting Church, Kent Town
Bookings: Closed
Musica Viva. Adelaide Town Hall. 22 Jul 2019
The famed Choir of King’s College, Cambridge is synonymous with choral excellence. Quite simply, it is a superior ensemble that routinely demonstrates the very best that the sung human voice can offer. There are many outstanding choirs in the world – Adelaide can boast its own Adelaide Chamber Singers – but few can lay claim to nearly six hundred years of continuous tradition from which exudes profound respect for authentic performance and for the very practice of choral singing itself.
Entrepreneured by Music Viva, the choir is touring Australia and is presenting two separate programs, depending on the characteristics of the performance venue. Because the Adelaide Town Hall is fortunate enough to house a mighty J.W. Walker & Sons pipe organ, Adelaide enjoyed a program that featured robust organ solos as well as principal works from the English choral catalogue. (The same program will only be played in Perth and Brisbane.)
The concert begins (and ends) with two different settings of Psalm 122, I Was Glad. At the start Purcell ‘s 1685 setting gave the choir opportunity to meticulously handle spiky rhythms and diverse dynamics. At the conclusion of the concert, Hubert Parry’s 1902 setting allowed the choir to show the near capacity audience exactly what they are about: superb musicianship, deep understanding of the nature of the text being sung, strong voices with clarity, articulation and control across all registers.
As good as the bookends of the concert are, the excitement in the program lies in a world première performance of Singing the Love – a setting of Psalm 100 – by much loved Australian composer Ross Edwards. Edwards was present at the performance and introduced his composition from the podium. In his usual shy and self-effacing manner, he hinted the composition was as much ‘joyful noise’ as anything else! Noise? Anything but! Yes, it is very different at times, and its contrast with the more traditional pieces on the program couldn’t be more stark, but its innovativeness and references to Australian idiom, and the freshness that it evoked from the choir makes it a highlight of the evening.
The generously long program featured many other favourite pieces from the choral repertoire. There are additional pieces by Purcell, Finzi’s melodic yet discursive Lo, the Full, Final Sacrifice which again demonstrated the choir’s ability to beautifully balance the dynamics across the full quarter-hour of the piece, and Wesley’s The Wilderness that highlighted the breadth of individual vocal talent in the choir. Stanford’s For Lo, I Raise Up, demands robust singing over a thunderous pipe organ but then turns on a dime and features the delicateness of a boy treble. It is also a highlight of the program.
And then there’s the organ! Henry Websdale gives an authoritative performance of Bach’s chorale prelude Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist, BWV671, while Donal McCann thrills the audience with a rousing rendition of the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Organ Sonata No 3 in A. It is hair raising stuff!
The choir looked resplendent in their suits and academic gowns, but traditional decorum flew out the window when they performed an encore with an arrangement of the Beach Boys’ I Get Around. It whipped up the audience and many were heard to be quietly whistling it as they left the auditorium when the evening came to a close.
Kym Clayton
When: 22 Jul
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 12 July 2019
The fifth Master Series concert of the current season marked Maestro Nicholas Carter’s last appearance as principal conductor with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. The program he presented was uncompromising and one of contrasts, and it left us in no doubt of his talent and that his star is in the ascendant.
As he has done before, Carter arranged his orchestra with the first and second violins on opposite sides of the Adelaide Town Hall stage. It has the effect of highlighting the separate voices of the two parts, and where it is not necessary for the performance of Dvořák’s Violin Concerto in A minor, it is a must for Bruckner’s sophisticated Symphony No.5 in B flat, but more on that later.
Violinist Grace Clifford, who is the ASO’s first designated Emerging Artist in Association, was soloist in the Dvořák. We have come to expect excellent technique and bright and crisp performances from Clifford, and this occasion was no exception. In the first movement she coaxed without demanding fortes, and the carefully executed crescendi were exquisite. In the interconnected second and third movements we saw her deliver delicacy without sentimentality and balance it with the joyous lyrical robustness of the ever popular main theme of third movement.
The Bruckner is a brute of a thing. It is likely the most intellectual of all of his symphonies, and it tests the listener as much as it does the orchestra and the conductor. After accepting a parting gift from ASO Managing Director Vincent Ciccarello, Carter addressed the audience from the podium and acknowledged that Bruckner is not everyone’s cup of musical tea, and that many scratch their heads about his fifth symphony as they ponder the whys and wherefores of its structure. Carter aptly compared the composition to a pilgrimage in which one deals with multiple contrasting emotions, realisations and truths as one grapples with fundamental existential questions. To emphasise contrasts and to bring questions and their answers into stark relief, Carter arranged the orchestra and balanced their acoustic dynamics to produce antiphonal effects. It again demonstrates the care and understanding he brings to his readings and why he is much appreciated by Adelaide audiences
Bruckner’s fifth comes in at around eighty minutes, but it didn’t feel like that. The performance almost has a timeless quality about it, but just enough time for it to carry the listener to all manner of places and to ponder ‘what’s it all about?’
Thankfully it is au revoir to Nicholas Carter and not adieu, for he will be back in a guest conductor capacity in 2020.
Kym Clayton
When: 12 July
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Wind Orchestra. Concordia College. 6 Jul 2019
If a concert is successful, then part of the credit must go to the artistic directors who programmed the event. In the case of the Adelaide Wind Orchestra’s latest concert, the programme had everything: traditional Sousa march tunes, a reimagined anthem, evocative modern compositions that challenged preconceptions of what a wind orchestra is capable of, and superb musicianship and dizzying technical mastery.
This concert, dubbed Thunder and Lightning, had it all.
It is clear from the outset that conductor David John Lang knows what he wants in each of the six pieces. From Sousa’s ever popular The Thunderer, Lang coaxes precise phrasing and superbly synchronised tuttis. (When it’s otherwise, wind ensembles can almost evoke feelings of profound grief!)
Jess Langston Turner’s You’ll Come Matilda (Endlessly Waltzing) is an intelligent reimagining of the iconic Waltzing Matilda. It involves much percussion and the five percussionists are almost run off their feet as they transition through the various instruments without missing a beat, literally (one did wonder whether the physical location of the instruments was optimal). The almost formless final section evokes the watery mystery of the billabong and is greatly enhanced by the carefully crafted intonation of the entire ensemble.
Morton Gould’s Symphony for Band is an excellent showcase for the talents of the orchestra. There are well controlled extended crescendos that are dynamically finely balanced. The percussion again displays sparkling clarity. The muted trombones and trumpets are especially sweet.
Roshanne Etezady’s Shoutout gets its Australian premiere, and it is indeed a surprise. On occasion it seems to channel the great American composer John Adams as it relentlessly pursues a central theme in a minimalist way but with almost cacophonous results. This cannot be said for Sarah Byron’s superb reading of Ingolf Dahl’s Concerto for Alto Saxophone, however! Lang opines from the podium that for many in the audience this performance is what brought them out on a cold winter’s evening. High praise indeed and he isn’t wrong.
Byron’s performance alone is worth the price of the ticket. Her intonation is precise, her fingering in the very high altissmo passages is apt, and her control of overtones is near perfect, though perhaps with some early tentativeness. Lang ensures that the ensemble never dominates, and the overall acoustic balance between soloist and ensemble enhances the performance. Lang’s treatment of the spiky rhythms in the middle movement is most pleasing.
The concert returns to where it started out with a dreamy performance of the second movement from Ira Hearshen’s Symphony on Themes of John Philip Sousa. Based on Sousa’s The Thunderer, Lang is able to evoke a sonic landscape that traverses feelings of mystery and contemplation through to national pride. Stirring stuff!
The Adelaide Wind orchestra has again come up trumps with a well-designed and fabulously executed program that once more demonstrates that we have a world class ensemble in our midst.
Kym Clayton
When: 6 Jul
Where: Concordia College
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 28 Jun 2019
The fourth concert in the ASO’s Master Series served up a world premiere sandwich, and it was ever so tasty.
For its world premiere performance, Israeli composer Avner Dorman’s Double Concerto for Violin and Cello sat comfortably between Elgar’s double treat Chanson de matin and Chanson de nuit, and Tchaikovsky’s monumental Symphony No 5. The chansons and symphony are rooted in romanticism, replete with lush and strongly proclaimed melodies that are developed with interest and clear intent. Similarly, Dorman’s Double Concerto has plenty of melody but the real interest lies in its witty dialogue between the violin and cello. At times they echo and double each other, which then gives way to pursuit and escape while the orchestration all the time provides a substantial and inventive frame for the violin and cello’s pursuits.
Pinchas Zukerman on violin and Amanda Forsyth on cello know each other very well on a range of levels, and their understanding of what makes each other ‘tick’ was especially evident in tonight’s incisive performance. It was a delight to see their superlative musicianship in action, both separately and as a partnership. They fed off each other and the whole was greater than the sum of their individual parts. Dorman was sitting in the audience and his appreciation of Zukerman and Forsyth’s musicality was abundantly clear. Although Dorman knows his own score inside out, he surely would have gained deeper insights into his own creation because of the adeptness and acuity of Zukerman and Forsyth’s performance.
Benjamin Northey conducted the concerto. He was careful to establish and maintain an aural balance between orchestra and the soloists, and allow the violin and cello to be prominent and clearly heard where appropriate. He also allowed the dramatic tension in the dialogue to flow through to the various sections of the orchestra resulting in acuity of attack with much of interest to hear and see. Northey’s reading now becomes the standard against which future performances will be measured.
The repertoire is not awash with double concertos for violin and cello and the majority are post-romantic. Dorman’s contribution is a significant one.
Zukerman swapped his violin for the conductor’s baton as he led the ASO in the Elgar and in a passionate reading of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 5 in E minor. This symphony is perhaps Tchaikovsky’s best known if for no other reason than the famous horn melody at the beginning of the second movement, which was superbly executed by principal horn Adrian Uren. Zukerman was perhaps a little more casual in extracting the most from the moments of relative peace and calm in the first movement, but by the time the fourth was well under way his knowledge of the composition and his command of the orchestra was abundantly clear. A glance here and a barely perceptible gesture there was all that was needed for the orchestra to unleash its musical forces and leave the audience warmed and very well satisfied.
Kym Clayton
When: 28 Jun
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed