Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Festival Theatre. 5 Aug 2016
The fifth in the current Master Series by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, this concert was an evening of impassioned and lush melodies in the form of a Czech sandwich with a German filling. The bread comprised Smetana’s ever popular overture to his opera The Bartered Bride and Dvorak’s majestic Symphony No 7 in D minor. The ever so satisfying filling was Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D at the hands of American violinist and Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic , Noah Bendix-Bagley.
All three compositions are clear favorites with Adelaide concertgoers and have been performed by the ASO within the last five years. Guest conductor Johannes Fritzsch had the measure of the acoustics of the Town Hall and took each piece at a fair pace and with uncompromising attention to well-defined phrasing. This allowed the sudden and contrasting changes in dynamics and rhythmic structures that are features of each composition to come through clearly, and the overt romanticism of each composition never dissolved into sentimentalism.
Making his debut in Australia, Bendix-Bagley gave a masterful performance of the Brahms. He played it with strength and assurance, and Fritzsch gave him room to make articulate and authoritative statements at the beginnings and ends of every difficult technical passage. Bendix-Bagley earned spontaneous applause from the audience at the end of the first movement and took the opportunity to quickly re-tune his 1732 Cremonese violin ready for the onset of the soulful adagio second movement before moving without pause into the gypsy-infused allegro giocoso final third movement. At the final stroke of his bow, the audience burst into rapturous applause that earned an encore from Bendix-Bagley in the form of Bach’s Partita No. 3 in E, BWV 1006, which he played at an unhurried pace that laid bare his undoubted technical mastery for all to appreciate and admire.
Dvorak’s seventh symphony is the perfect choice to follow the Brahms violin concerto, for in it there seem to be the faintest echoes of the gorgeous tunes around which the concerto is constructed. Did one sense Maestro Fritzsch occasionally insisting that the orchestra play rubato to expose these quasi quotations? Whether this be fanciful or not, the result was an immensely satisfying reading that clearly captivated individual musicians in the orchestra as well.
Kym Clayton
When: 5 Aug
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
