Adelaide symphony orchestra. Symphony Series 6. Adelaide Town Hall. 12 Aug 2022
The sixth concert in the ASO’s current Symphony Series is titled Tragedy to Triumph, which perfectly describes the program in a nutshell. The program is heavy with gravitas, but it ultimately gives way to noble exhilaration. It includes a world première performance (Paul Dean’s Concerto for Horn and Orchestra) with masterful horn playing by Andrew Bain, and astonishing musicality from guest conductor Alpesh Chauhan.
As is now the norm, the ASO begins the concert with a performance of Pudnanthi Padninthi (The Coming and the Going) composed by Jack Buckskin and Jamie Goldsmith arranged by Mark Simeon Ferguson. It is performed as a musical Acknowledgement of Country, and this particular reading by Chauhan and the ASO was special in the way the piece’s innate and complex songfulness was completely revealed.
Lili Boulangers D’un soir triste (Of a Sad Evening) received its first performance by the ASO. The piece is dark – something in common with the rest of the program – and the inner strings (violas and cellos) feature prominently as they draw out a lamenting melody that finally surrenders to an immersive tranquillity announced on harp. Principal violist Justin Julian’s performance is especially evocative. Chauhan delivers an affecting reading that prepares us for the grim subject of the horn concerto.
Dean’s Horn Concerto is unsettling in its conception: it is a musical response to the horrific and awesome bushfires that ravaged our eastern seaboard in 2019. It’s not something we enjoy being reminded of, but the nobility and purity of the horn represents the dignity and heroic efforts of the firefighters who valiantly toiled against the odds and that is something worth celebrating, if in a perverse kind of way. Dean’s musical narrative is dramatic and is scored in three movements named Against The Current, Alone in the Dark…Waiting for the Fire, and The Bushfire. Against The Current is foreboding and invokes all the menace of Hitchcock films. In the second movement the horn heroically tries to cut through the awesome might of the orchestra, which is in full voice, but it gets lost in the lower register somehow commenting on the insignificance of a lone firefighter faced with the insurmountable odds of a conflagration that is inexorably bearing down. Long and unmodulated tones demonstrate Bain’s pure stamina, musicality and virtuosity on the horn and are a metaphor for the expansive simplicity of the Australian bush, and its ultimate fragility. The Bushfire is dramatic and starts with a virtuosic display on timpani by Andrew Penrose. It is unsettling and gives way to sonorous and shimmering strings that might represent both the pace at which the bushfire takes charge, but eventually is subdued.
The concerto is unashamedly programmatic, and knowing something about its narrative (through the informative printed program notes) greatly assists one’s appreciation, but this of itself doesn’t obviate the need for the music to stand alone as ‘pure’ music, which it does. Having said that, as has been said above, there are times when the concerto instrument – the horn – does get overshadowed by the orchestra.
When it was over, the applause was contemplative – not thunderous – until Brett Dean himself walked purposefully to the stage and offered his heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Bain, Chauhan and indeed to the entire orchestra. COVID did its best to defeat this world première, but all it could do was delay it.
The interval was followed by an emphatic and passionate reading of Shostakovich’s mighty Symphony No.10 in E minor, Op.93. It was during this epic work that maestro Alpesh Chauhan truly hit his straps. The music makes the emphatic statement that life is not necessarily easy and can be a slow and difficult grind. Shostakovich was subject to the tyranny of despotic leaders throughout his life and his retaliation continues to speak loudly and clearly to us as we too navigate treacherous paths in an around the roguery of clerical and civil leaders.
Chauhan is commanding at the podium. During the first movement of the Shostakovich, his baton was mostly confined to his relatively immobile left hand while he directed the forces of the orchestra with sparing movements of his free hand. Occasionally there was nothing, and then suddenly a stabbing gesture and a pointing of a finger, or a flaring of all fingers. Contained, controlled, and so pregnant with meaning. The allegro second movement and allegretto third movement saw the pathos and brooding strife of the first replaced by hope, with emerging decisiveness, and the finale saw the human spirit ultimately triumph in the face of dogged oppression. Chauhan felt it all, and he clearly enjoyed communicating this to the orchestra, which he profusely thanked – almost player by player – and the audience loved it.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
