Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 19 Sep 2014
Wow! Double wow! What a concert! It demonstrated the depth of the orchestra’s ensemble, the programming was immensely enjoyable and included a surprise or two (see below!), and the conductor and soloist were spectacular.
Immediately prior to the performance pianist, Robert Levin addressed the audience from the stage and reminded us that improvisation was the norm in Beethoven’s day and that often only the first and last notes of cadenzas were notated by the composer with the expectation that the soloist would improvise the intervening bars. Levin asked members of the audience to write down some snippets of Beethoven’s music during the interval and he would select some of them and improvise a fantasy in the style of Beethoven.
American pianist Robert Levin performed Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.1 with great passion and bravura. Maestro Nicholas McGegan whipped the ASO into action and Levin asserted his authority almost immediately. The cadenza in the first movement was an object lesson in improvisation, although its energy, complexity and zeal was almost at odds with the rest of the movement. The second movement largo was particular beautiful and the dialogue with the clarinet was as tender as two young lovers in the first flush of romance. Levin set a cracking pace in the final rondo movement and McGegan clearly enjoyed the challenge as he patiently waited for the final note in the final cadenza to sound so that he could bring the orchestra back in to finish the concerto with a flourish. The audience loved it.
After the interval Levin selected at random some of the snippets of Beethoven’s music that members of the audience had written down. Predictably ‘Fur Elise’, the opening bars to Beethoven’s fifth symphony and ‘Ode to Joy’ featured, which Levin graciously didn’t reject, and he also selected the opening bars to the first Piano Sonata. He then sat at the keyboard and proceeded to improvise for ten full minutes and the result was impressive, very impressive indeed. Each theme was clearly evident and Levin wove them together with apparent ease. The audience greatly appreciate Levin’s pianistic skills, and the ASO is to be congratulated for scheduling this rather special part of the program.
McGegan then led the ASO in the runaway that is Symphony No.8. It exploded out of the blocks, and with the exception of the second movement, which is still marked allegretto scherzando, the pace and sheer volatility of the piece are relentless. In the wrong hands it can easily turn to musical mush and it takes discipline from the conductor to ensure that the texture remains clear. McGegan passed the test with flying colours, and he was particularly well served by the horns in the third movement.
At the start of the evening we were treated to a rousing performance of the Leonore Overture No.2. Like Leonore No.1, which was performed last week in Beethoven Fest 1, it has an episodic structure but we can hear how it is clearly approaching Leonore No.3, which will be played next year in a Master’s Series concert. The off-stage trumpet work of Matt Dempsey was particularly fine.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Recitals Australia. Elder Hall. 15 Sep 2014
Recital Australia's latest concert in its "two pianists" series was a feast of French composition and exquisite pianism. To have one world class pianist perform on an Elder Hall Steinway is pure joy, but to have two is like having all your birthdays at once!
Roy Howat and Emily Kilpatrick, who happen to be husband and wife as well as musical collaborators of considerable note, performed a carefully chosen selection of duos and solos by Ravel, Chopin, Debussy, Chabrier and Poulenc. The narrative of the program was about interconnected French invention and exploration of dance. French piano music has an immediately recognisable and distinct style of its own. Absent is the gravitas and obvious on-your-sleeve emotion of the German and Russian traditions. It is also more delicate and, arguably, more finely structured rendering it less forgiving of a heavy or racing hand. The situation is compounded for two pianos and four hands!
In the austere but acoustically pleasing surrounds of the Elder Hall, Howat and Kilpatrick sat comfortably at the two adjacent Steinways, which, incidentally, Howart helped choose for the Elder Conservatorium. Their performance style is not characterised by flamboyance. Rather it is contained and the focus is squarely on the music and their musicianship, which they both have in abundance. Kilpatrick would occasionally look at Howat's hands as if to strengthen the already strong interconnection with her own. Their timing, synchronicity, and finely balanced dynamics was a hallmark of the entire concert.
The highlight of the program was their inspired interpretation of Chabrier's exciting 'Trois valse romantiques'. Howat and Kilpatrick's imaginative dynamic shading, tightly-controlled unrushed tempi and attention to well-researched expression made for an on-the-edge-of-your-seat listening experience as the focus of attention alternated backwards and forwards from one performer to the other. Howat's ability to produce the most perfect bell-like sounds with his right hand in the uppermost register of the piano was a sheer delight.
Howat handled the requisite accuracy and fast tempo of Chopin's ‘Waltz in A-flat, op. 2’ with apparent ease. They unleashed the inherent fun and humour of Poulenc's duo ‘L'Embarquement pour Cythere’, and the achingly beautiful hurt in Debussy's ‘En blanc et noir’ was laid bare. For sure, Howat and Kilpatrick have a deep intellectual understanding of their repertoire, and the technical skill to perform it.
Mark de Raad and the rest of the board of Recitals Australia are to be applauded for entrepreneuring such a unique concert. Programs of this nature with artists of the calibre of Howat and Kilpatrick are rarities and are to be greatly cherished. Having said that, it was disappointing to see so many empty seats. Adelaide, please embrace these opportunities - they are all too rare.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Elder Hall
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 12 Sep 2014
Beethoven is arguably the best known and most loved composer of them all. His music has made an impression on us all, and even those who would who would rather clean the Christmas Pageant chalk off King William Street with their tongues than go to an orchestral concert know some of Beethoven’s music. I remember my first introduction to his music when as a lad I was totally struck by Schroeder in a Charlie Brown Xmas TV Special sitting at his baby grand piano playing the opening bars to the Moonlight Sonata. I remember my first Ninth Symphony and my first Fifth. I remember Clemens Leske and Beryl Kimber in an Elder Hall lunch-time during university days introducing me to the excitement and exquisite boldness of the Kreutzer Sonata, and if I thought about it I’m sure I could recall other exquisite memories of Beethoven moments from the recesses of my mind.
So to Beethoven Festival 1, one of the key events in the festival that the ASO has ever so carefully and thoughtfully curated.
Conductor Nicholas McGegan took the Symphony No.1 at a comfortable, no-surprises, traditional pace, and the phrasing and articulation of the orchestra was first rate. Beethoven broke many of the established classical rules in this composition, and McGegan was able to remind us of this with his no-fuss approach to dynamics and thoughtful tempi.
The Symphony was followed by the Leonore Overture No. 1, which is less substantial and enjoyable than the Leonore Overture No.3, which is a crowd pleaser.
Natsuko Yoshimoto again demonstrated that she is a world-class violinist and her heartfelt performance of the Romance No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra was sublimely melancholy. McGegan ceded much control to Yoshimoto and she repaid his trust in spades.
Quite probably the audience was mostly looking forward to Stephen Hough performing the mighty Piano Concerto No. 5 “The Emperor”. I was! Hough is an imposing looking musician. He is tall and slender, and has a tight steely gaze. He is exciting to watch – there are dramatic moments as he attacks the keyboard, almost with Lisztian arrogance, and as he earnestly looks around at members of the orchestra as if to say that he is with them and we’re all in this together. The adagio movement was played with serene simplicity and Hough extracted crystal-clear bell-like tones from the upper register of the Steinway that gave an uncommon lightness to the performance. His rubato and attack in the extended cadenza almost drew the audience to their feet before McGegan had a chance to extract the final crashing chord from the piano and orchestra.
The appreciation of the audience was thunderous, and Hough, McGegan and the members of the ASO looked mighty pleased with themselves, as they should.
Beethoven Festival 2 is next week, when we will be treated to Leonore No.2 (not No. 3 dammit!), the first piano concerto performed by the great Robert Levin, and the pure explosion of exuberance and joy that is the Eighth symphony. Bring it on!
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Entertainment Centre. 30 Aug 2014
It’s not just the times that are a-changing. Things have Changed. Bob Dylan is back on stage in Adelaide and his opening song, Academy Award winning theme tune to the 2000 film Wonder Boys, tells us – “People are crazy, times are strange/I’m locked in tight , I’m outta range/ I used to care but things have changed.” Except, with Bob, the more things change, the more they also stay the same.
He’s been locked in tight for a long time now. The so-called Never Ending Tour (a tag he himself ridicules) began in 1988 and notched up 2000 concerts by 2007. Seven years, and hundreds of performances further on, and Dylan is now 73 and still on the road. Still hidden in plain sight, still that Alias character from Sam Peckinpah’s western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
Dressed in a broad brimmed hat and black and grey patched suit Dylan has become the song and dance man he once whimsically called himself. The songs are drawn from the deepest wells in popular music. And the dance, well, he’s got some moves, you might call them a sardonic, slow jive.
Dylan doesn’t play guitar nowadays, instead it’s piano, not that tinny electric from last tour, but a half size grand. Or else he stands at the microphone and croons wolfishly, biting at the lyrics here, gliding lightly through the octave there. His voice is gravelly, sometimes it sounds utterly shredded, but often he moves it with startling invention and with such emotive phrasing that you have to catch your breath.
The set continues with “She Belongs to Me” – from Bringing it All Back Home, 1965- transition folk rock: Highway 61 to arrive in a few months and the thin wild mercury sound of Blonde on Blonde the following year. The band is relaxed – bassist Tony Garnier is settling back. Dylan’s longtime MD, he doesn’t have to explain the ways of God to the other musicians any more. On this year’s tour the set list is tight and relatively unvarying. The band is well-rehearsed. No more having to guess which song Bob has launched himself into, re-engineering the tempo and the intro.
“She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist, she don’t look back.” Charlie Sexton is playing some sweet phrases on lead, but it is Dylan’s haunting harmonica, clarion from another century, which reminds us that it is not quite fifty years since many of us bought that album, and marvelled at “Mr Tambourine Man” and “Maggie’s Farm”, and even more at “Gates of Eden”.
After “Beyond Here Lies Nothing”, it is on “Workingman Blues #2” where things really start to lift. Dylan’s voice is surer and the latter day, hard-luck lyrics have a post-GFC edge to them. He’s standing at the mic – in fact there is a cluster of four of them, designed, you start to think, to obscure Dylan’s face; like the strange, shadowy stage lighting which was intriguing for those us in the front rows, but baffling, and at times frustrating, to some of my friends seated much further back. But that’s Bob – locked in tight, outta range - hidden in plain sight.
The little-known “Waiting for You”, another movie soundtrack song, gets the cowboy waltz treatment. Donnie Herron on pedal steel, Bob on piano – it is the first of several wistful ballads. The mood changes with the jaunty “Duquesne Whistle” and the mephistophelean “Pay in Blood”, both from last year’s Tempest album.
The first half closes strongly – with a slowed down, expertly phrased reading of “Tangled Up in Blue”, the band playing melody with an almost modal insistence, Bob adding more heraldic harmonica, to be followed by “Love Sick”, his bitter blues. Sexton supplies the keening lead, while the excellent Stu Kimball’s rhythm guitar has a relentless dread to it. This is from Dylan’s late masterpiece – Time Out of Mind, shades of W.B.Yeats’s Last Poems: The Circus Animals’ Desertion, Crazy Jane on the Mountain and Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad?
“High Water (for Charley Patton)” opens the second half. Featuring Donnie Herron on banjo – alas, volume not high enough in the often bass heavy mix. Dylan makes the lyrics echo with prophetic import, just like it is so easily done, out on Highway 61.
Returning to Blood on the Tracks for a deftly simple twist on “A Simple Twist of Fate” again he adds crooning harmonica highlights. The band regroups for a thumping version of “Early Roman Kings” – Early Roman Hoochie Coochie Men, more like. Listen to Kimball’s driving chords, George Recile’s dead-arm drum and Bob barrel-housing the piano, it is drawn from the clear springs of Muddy Waters, and is a reminder that Dylan has always played great blues.
With the sprightly string band melody of “Spirit on the Water” Bob tells us we can have a very good time and with the creepy ballad, “Scarlet Town” and its grimly hypnotic banjo riff, he reminds us that the world is also too much with us - and it doesn’t wish us well.
Perhaps though, it is the melancholy of regret that falls most heavily on the night. In “Forgetful Heart” (why can’t we love like we did before?) Dylan takes the schmaltz of a cowboy ballad and, accompanied by Herron’s mournful violin, turns it into something far less generic. Instead it sounds heartfelt, personal, as if he is running out of aliases, and certainly running out of time.
It is the same with his closing song, again from Tempest, the slow strummed, half-crooned, half-spoken “Long and Wasted Years”. “For one brief time,” he dreamily recalls, “I was the bang for you. Maybe it’s the same for me as it is for you.” Sexton plays his trickle-down riff over and over as Dylan, still masked by shadows and microphones, delivers like a disembodied voice on late night country radio – “so many tears, so many long and wasted years.”
The encores follow briskly. “All Along the Watchtower” – Businessmen they drink my wine, ploughmen dig my earth - has long been his anthem, gloriously reframed by Jimi Hendrix, but long since reclaimed by Dylan and his band - with its rousing guitars, paused for Sexton’s duet with Dylan’s rhythmic piano, before Recile’s drums roar back into urgent warning –“outside in the distance a wildcat did growl /Two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl.”
As for the whole tour, “Watchtower” is twinned with “Blowin’ in the Wind”, Dylan at the piano, his weary vocals turning the earnest exhortations of his most famous protest song into perplexed questions that seem lost in time and context. Things have changed. Without the guitar, Bob Dylan is no longer the folk troubadour. Now he’s the Lonesome Hobo, the Wicked Messenger, the Jokerman – take your pick.
For his loyal audience, ageing with him, he is a Beckettian figure of rebuke. Alone and remote in his eccentricity and his undoubted genius, he has long told us he is not the one we want or need. Yet we still yearn for his approval, his benediction. People ask – did he speak to the audience? What performer, after all, does not warmly acknowledge his or her fans, admirers, cult followers? But of course he didn’t speak, except to announce the interval. Mr Godot is not coming today or any other. In his concert, with a masterful band, Mr Dylan has given a great deal of himself, but, as always, he is hidden in plain sight. He’s locked in tight. Things have changed. And nothing has changed at all.
Murray Bramwell
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Entertainment Centre
Bookings: Closed
The Moldau – My Homeland. Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Adelaide Town Hall. 29 Aug 2014
This concert, the ASO’s seventh in their 2014 Masters Series for 2014, was deeply satisfying and immensely enjoyable for three reasons: appealing programming, outstanding conducting, and prodigiously talented youth.
The programming was excellent and comprised three superb examples of nationalistic composition. Smetana’s ‘Ma vlast: Vltava’ (The Moldau) is a full-on crowd pleaser and everyone ‘knows’ it. Its sweeping melodies stir something deep within and it is exalted by Czechs as something that captures the essence of their country. Guest conductor Christopher Seaman handled the shifting dynamics with great care and ensured that when the orchestra played fortissimo key instruments still shone through decisively. His style was almost understated with no exuberant and over embellished gestures, but his control is palpable.
Richard Strauss’s ‘Tod und Verklärung’ (Death and Transfiguration), Op 24, is a broody and complex work that can be considered a herald of post-romantic German music. I adore it and get lost in its multifaceted expressions of joy, pain, hope and giving over to the unknowable, which are all indicated by the highlighting of various instruments – including harp, viola and tuba - as they state, restate and takeover various melodic fragments. Again Seaman extracted the full dynamic range from the orchestra but the music never lost its texture or dissolved into a sonic blur. There was always clarity.
Sibelius’s ‘Karelia Suite’, Op 11, is a sumptuously melodic piece that is revered by the Finnish people, and like ‘Ma vlast’ stirs passions of patriotism. Seaman was in his element with this piece – his enjoyment of its inherent joie de vivre was clear for all to see. The third movement (alla marcia) is the one that people quietly hum to themselves as they leave at the conclusion of a concert but Seaman extracted something additional from the first (intermezzo) that wasn’t too far from being hummed as well! Again, his masterful control of the dynamical shading allowed the colour of Sibelius’s superb orchestration to shine through.
As satisfying as the Smetana, Strauss and Sibelius were, the highlight of the evening no doubt was sixteen-year old Grace Clifford’s performance of Beethoven’s mighty and ever popular Violin Concerto. It is a challenging composition and requires technical skill and musicianship, but it is not ‘flashy’. It possesses elegance and simplicity in its structure, and is loved and well known by countless concertgoers who are alert to anything that sounds too ‘different’. Grace is the very recently crowned 2014 ABC Symphony Australia Young Performer of the Year, and she served up a performance that had a number of differences to excite and stir the audience. She took the work at a measured tempo with clearly articulated phrasing that allowed her to expose the intricacy of the score. In later years, when her strength has fully developed, she might choose to take parts of the piece at greater speed but this can also blur the full impact and sharp beauty of the double stopping required by the score. Beethoven did not write any cadenzas for the concerto, and Clifford chose to play the well-known ones written by famed violinist Fritz Kreisler.
Grace Clifford demonstrated composure, nascent flair, and a clear understanding of the score. The audience loved her and deserved her three curtain calls and striking spray of Tynte flowers.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed