Australian Chamber Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 7 Aug 2018
Bach’s Goldberg Variations (often simply referred to as ‘the Goldbergs’) comprise an ‘aria’ followed by thirty diverse variations and then a repeat of the original aria. The whole composition, which clocks in at around seventy-five minutes depending on the tempo taken by the soloist, is almost solely (monotonously) in the key of G, and the variations are based on the bass line of the aria rather than the delicately lovely melody line. It was originally written for a two-manual harpsichord but is better known and appreciated when played on piano.
Famed Canadian pianist Glenn Gould shot to fame with his iconic 1955 recording of the Goldbergs, which is relatively brisk and omits many of the repeats. Since then, the Goldbergs have been re-expressed in many different instrumental arrangements – some work, others don’t – but those that do keep the counterpoint clear and unfussed. Tonight’s arrangement by Canadian composer Bernard Labadie for string orchestra and continuo (comprising harpsichord and theorbo) does indeed work.
What’s a ‘theorbo’ I hear you ask? Well, it’s a bit weird, and this is the first time one has ever seen one. It’s from the lute family, and has two peg boards and fourteen strings. It’s a handful!
In the hands of Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra (with Erin Helyard on harpsichord and Axel Wolf on theorbo), Labadie’s arrangement shares the dialogue around and makes sparing use of tutti. The occasional use of knocked-cello percussion and pizzicato adds to the interesting palette of sound textures and allows the relationship between the voices in the original to be clearly heard. Having said that, Tognetti on violin makes the most impact with his artful performance of the aria, but that is entirely predictable – after all, the aria is the best bit, and it does bookend the entire composition. Having the first and last word is an advantage!
The Goldbergs dominate the evening’s program, but they are prefaced by three other compositions that don’t sit easily together. The highlight of the evening is Tognetti’s own arrangement of a set of fourteen additional variations to the Goldbergs written by Bach but not discovered until 1974. Entitled Canons on a Goldberg Ground, the composition uses piano rather than harpsichord and the whole thing has a modern feel about it, confirming that the Goldbergs sound so much better on piano than harpsichord.
Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet arranged for a small string ensemble have an almost supernatural and unsettling quality about them. The ACO plays them with an uncompromising tautness that keeps one leaning forward in one’s seat wishing for the music to resolve into something more soothing. This is followed by the first movement, Nightfalls, from Thomas Adès’ The Four Quarters. It too is unsettling with various sections of the ensemble striving to achieve prominence, but only with temporary success – like one star struggling to appear on the black canvas of a night skyscape but being replaced just as quickly by another. And with the fading of Nightfalls emerges the Goldbergs.
There is never a dull moment with the Australia Chamber Orchestra.
Kym Clayton
When: 7 Aug
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Presented by Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Mckinnon and State Opera of South Australia, in association with Adelaide Festival Centre. Festival Theatre. 15 Jul 2018
Apart from the stratospheric artistry of Korean coloratura soprano Sumi Jo and the irresistible charisma of Argentinian-Australian baritone José Carbó, what one loved about this wonderful concert was that by its end the opera-curious gentleman sitting alongside me was so completely sold on the artform that he was almost falling over himself trying to buy a ticket to the next operatic concert Adelaide has to offer; State Opera’s forthcoming Wagner gala! How good is that?
But who could not be swayed to distraction by Sumi Jo’s beautiful voice and consummate acting skills? She has an eye-wateringly busy performance schedule across the world, and has been recorded many times, but this is her first time to Adelaide and to see her in action is to truly appreciate her.
Sumi Jo is diminutive in stature, but she wears big gorgeous gowns and fills them out with an even bigger voice and bigger still characterisations. One could easily extol her vocal virtues and talk about her almost imperceptible vibrato in the highest registers, the purity and bird-song qualities of her tone, her dynamic control and her even strength across her full range. One could also draw comparisons between her talent and that of divas who have gone before her such as Sutherland and Callas. Above all, the thing that struck me is her ability to inhabit a song, word paint it and sell it hook, line and sinker to the audience.
Her program includes arias from Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette, Verdi’s Rigoletto, and Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. A highlight that enthrals and captivates the near capacity audience in the Festival Theatre is her performance of the Doll Song from Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. During the Doll Song the fan she uses as a hand-held prop self-destructs! As it did so Sumi Jo’s face broke into an infectious broad smile and she fell about laughing. Maestro Guy Noble brings the forces of the mighty Adelaide Symphony Orchestra to a halt and everyone enjoys the hilarity of the situation! With composure regained, Noble resumes and conducts them to the end bringing the audience to its feet cheering and wolf-whistling! Not too many stars can turn near-disaster into certain triumph!
José Carbó joins Sumi Jo in duets from Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Lehar’s ever-popular Vilja and Love Unspoken from The Merry Widow. Their chemistry is palpable. Carbó also gives a spirited performance of the iconic Largo al Factotum from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and a well-received emphatic rendition of the iconic Granada by Lara.
A highlight of the evening is Noble’s repartee from the podium. The man is witty and charming and knows how to add just enough lightness to a gala to stop it from being merely a concert.
This is a wonderful concert – one that puts a smile on your face from the very beginning and keeps it there well after you leave the theatre.
Kym Clayton
When: 15 Jul
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Australian String Quartet. Adelaide Town Hall. 5 Jul 2018
It is a sandwich with a Widman filling, but the main substance and real enjoyment is in the Beethoven bread.
The current national Season concert presented by the Australian String Quartet features Beethoven’s Op18 No 3 and Op 135 string quartets – his first (despite what the numbering might suggest) juxtaposed with his very last – and Jorg Widman’s String Quartet No 3.
Widman is a contemporary German composer, musician and conductor. As a composer he has a not unimpressive oeuvre and discography with him as instrumentalist or conductor. Since 2017 he has been the Edward Said Chair and professor of composition at the Barenboim–Said Academy in Berlin. His third string quartet, known as the Hunting Quartet, dates from 2003 and is something to be enjoyed as much by seeing it as hearing it. It’s a scream, literally! The music is punctuated by blood curdling whoops and screams from the musicians and the swishing of their bows, and importantly, silence. This is programmatic music and focuses on the excitement and ultimate terror of the hunt. Visually it is fascinating to see the various ways the musicians extract very strange and unsettling sounds from their instruments. If unseen, and only heard, and without knowledge of the programme, the composition is much less effective. To one’s ear, the composition is not entirely successful in appealing as pure music, but the audience receives it with great humour and appreciation.
The Beethoven however is a different kettle of fish.
Beethoven wrote sixteen string quartets and they can broadly be categorised into three periods. The Op18 No 3 comes from the earliest period and is the third quartet he ever wrote. His most popular quartets are from his middle period and include the Razumovsky Quartets. The quartets from his latest period are amongst the last compositions Beethoven ever wrote and they are amongst his greatest. They are intellectually demanding and distance themselves from the romanticism of the middle period. They are also substantially less popular from the others, but, in the hands of the right musicians they have an almost unchallenged transcendence. The Op 135, Beethoven’s last quartet and last complete composition, is a prime example of just that, but it is also different. At times it seems ethereal and playful. Its texture is often sparse and it has a simplicity and translucence about it (to the ear) that gives it great profundity. The ASQ manages the dynamics with great empathy and allow the mix of anguish, joy, mischievousness and friskiness to come through. The Op 18 No 3 is altogether quite different. It is much more reflective of the quartet legacy of Haydn and Mozart, and the ASQ deliver it with precision, taut vigour and humour.
Andy Packer, of Slingsby Theatre Company fame, was commissioned to ‘design’ the setting for the concert. He located the ASQ on a circular mat in front of a large off-white backdrop. A series of footlights are trained on the musicians that created larger-than-life jarring shadows of the players against the backdrop and the side walls of the Town Hall. The concert begins with a recitation from Beethoven’s Heiligenstadt Testament to underline that the Op135 was written at a time when Beethoven was totally deaf, and as it concludes the members of the ASQ one by one move to their chair and the house lights dim to leave the auditorium in darkness save the warm glow of the footlights on the musicians. This could have all been highly effective if it wasn’t for the tackiness of the backdrop, which looked like a series of bedsheets clumsily sewn together. It becomes a distraction. But the Beethoven put all that aside.
Bravo ASQ.
Kym Clayton
When: 5 Jul
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Australian Chamber Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 26 Jun 2018
Imagine living in fear that the forces of evil will knock on your door in the dead of night and secret you away to an uncertain fate far from everyone and everything you know. This feeling, this threat of terror, is at the very heart of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.1 in E-flat and Elena Kats-Chernin’s A Knock One Night. Including them on the same program is a stroke of genius by Director Richard Tognetti.
Steven Isserlis, one of the world’s very best cellists, gives an impassioned reading of the Shostakovich. He rarely looks at his sheet music, and when he does, he turns a bunch of pages at a time. He probably doesn’t even need it: perhaps the sheets are his version of Linus’ security blanket? When watching Isserlis play, one is not only struck by his wild mop of curly hair but also by his eyes, which are like black holes (in the cosmological sense). He captures the entire audience with his gaze, and there is no escape. You are his plaything until he has finished with you. You are transported to a different dimension and then perfunctorily returned when he has finished playing. In the case of the Shostakovich, we are taken to a very dark place indeed, where humanity struggles to remain buoyant. But the composition also has quite transcendent moments, and the dialogues between the cello and the clarinet, and then the horn and oboe, are painfully exquisite. It is fitting that Isserlis acknowledges the principal players during the bows.
The concert begins with a word première performance of Movements (for us and them) by Samuel Adams, whose father is John Adams, the famed contemporary American composer. The composition is unmistakably American, and to one’s ear there are reminiscences of Copland and Ives. Scored for string ensemble, it is grounded in robust melodies that evolve and move with compelling momentum towards its conclusion. Tognetti sets a fair pace for the work and keeps the orchestra up to the mark with his idiosyncratic beating of time with his violin bow.
Not only is Movements a world première, but so too is A Knock One Night, and it is particularly special to have the composer in the audience. Set in four movements, the composition explores the flight of a family from a home that has become unsafe, half way around the world to Australia. The second movement, entitled Knock, evokes the same dread that the Shostakovich does, but it resolves itself in the third and final movements with lush pastoral, carefree and joyous melodies.
The final piece for the night stands in stark contrast to everything that comes before it. Haydn’s Symphony No.104 in D (London) is his very last symphony and for many considered to be his best. As good as the Shostakovich was, and as pleasing as the Adams and Kats Chernin compositions were, the Haydn perhaps has an edge on them all. In the hands of Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the two hundred and twenty year old composition is imbued with an unexpected and astonishing freshness that surprises everyone. The orchestra plays it with smiles on their faces and with animated feet – it is joyous.
As the very large audience files out of the auditorium at the end of the concert, one concertgoer is overheard to say “Haydn to the rescue”. This may have been a backhanded compliment about the programming – which one thought was just perfect – but whatever was the intended meaning, it is clear that Tognetti and the ACO’s performance of the Haydn was absolute perfection.
Kym Clayton
When: 26 Jun
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
The Governor Hindmarsh. 23 Jun 2018
I’ve always got time for good rock music and for local bands who do their best to carry the rock music flame. Local crew Deflector are one such band who are building up a name for themselves, a steady following, and a growing cache of original tunes to boot.
Escaping the cold winter in the front bar of the Gov, Deflector attracted a decent crowd and were rocking everyone’s socks off! The four-piece play a decent mix of original tunes peppered with covers from mainly the ’90s, and an edge towards the more obscure.
With a killer guitar and vocals line-up, the band has a healthy dose of T-Rex style glam rock musical prowess, with Beatle-esque melodies, soaring guitars and a thumping funky bass. Covers of tunes like the Darkness’s I Believe In A Thing Called Love, Reef’s Place Your Hands, and Spacehog’s In The Meantime (what a killer song!) go down really well, exciting the crowd and getting them ready to soak up a bunch of original tunes. Interestingly, while the covers are obviously familiar and the original stuff less so, it’s the original music that’s most exciting and that showcases the band’s passion.
I’ve caught these guys a couple of times, and each viewing sees them stronger and tighter. As more original tunes make their way into the set, things will no doubt go from strength to strength. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing Deflector again!
Luke Balzan
When: 23 Jun
Where: The Governor Hindmarsh
Bookings: Closed