Adelaide Wind Orchestra. Concordia College Chapel. 8 May 2015
The Adelaide Wind Orchestra (AWO) is a gem, and its repertoire is as imaginative as it is technically demanding. Tonight’s concert featured composers who are known for bending the musical rules to breaking point but not to the extent of sacrificing melody and interest.
Charles Ives’ Country Band March is at times raucous and strident and has all the hallmarks of a rollicking street band struggling with complex tonalities. It was perhaps played too loudly for the acoustic of the performance space, but it ultimately rewards with the soothing tranquility of an oboe line that was played beautifully.
Copeland’s El Salon Mexico is, apparently, influenced by the idiom of Mexican folk song but it retains the distinctive sound of Copeland and what we often think of as ‘American’ music. It features the customary harmonisation found in much folk music tradition as well as pitch sliding and call-and-response motives. The saxophone was especially pleasing. Percy Grainger was also famous for his documentation of folk songs, and Hill Song II has an Irish drone quality to it that demands utmost concentration and imagination from the ensemble to give it flight. The AWO gave the piece a sense of freshness.
H Owen Reed’s La Fiesta Mexicana is quite a remarkable and innovative composition. It takes the call-and-response device to a new level by featuring a smaller off-stage ensemble to respond to the ‘calls’ from rest of the orchestra on the main stage. The contrabassoon and bass-clarinet lines were superb, and the chimes and horn sections were bold, arresting and heroic.
Hindemith is an acquired taste and I’m afraid it often passes me by. (As a musically impressionable teenager I was bruised by a booming performance of his Sonata for Trombone and Piano.) However, his Geschwindmarsch provided the AWO with the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how the sound of diverse wind instruments can fit hand in glove when played by accomplished players and under the direction of a conductor (Peter Handsworth) who lives and breathes wind instruments.
The evening rounded out with an Australian première of Alan Hovhaness’ Symphony No. 4 which included harp and impressive display of extensive percussion (including vibraphone).
AWO concerts are a revelation: violins and other string instruments are not necessary to produce a full symphonic ‘feel’; its fun to see and hear an ensemble tune up to the tuba; a whole new repertoire becomes accessible; and it is enormously comforting to see an ensemble comprising almost entirely of talented musicians who are on the right side of thirty!
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Concordia College Chapel
Bookings: Closed
