Compassion – Songs with Orchestra. Adelaide Festival Theatre. 7 Feb 2014
Playing to a near capacity Festival Theatre audience (and that’s no mean feat), Lior demonstrated in spades why he is one of Australia's most successful singer-songwriters. Backed by his own three piece band (they were excellent) and the musical might of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra under the passionate baton of Nigel Westlake (one of Australia’s best composers and arrangers), Lior bared his soul and showed us why the very best songs are those that are driven by sincere and meaningful lyrics.
His songs have the ability to touch every single member of his audience in quite personal ways. The most poignant was about his grandfather, but my mind filled with fond and distant images of my own. The power of a good song.
Lior is of Middle Eastern heritage, and the spirit of both Jewish and Arabic cultures (interesting bedfellows!) seasons his music and his poetry, but it does not dominate. His musical structures are still very much part of the western tradition, and he accompanied himself on guitar, which he clearly plays well. Able to sing over three octaves with little vibrato and equal sureness and strength in both the upper and lower registers, the result is quite stirring and always appealing, although bordering on being tonally and metrically repetitive to a western ear that is not accustomed to eastern influences.
Lior was joined for several songs by oud virtuoso Joseph Tawadros. The combination of oud and guitar was musically deeply satisfying. It was East meets West.
The major work of the concert was ‘Compassion’ – a cycle of seven songs written by Lior and orchestrated by Westlake. They drew on range of religious and philosophical texts and were all sung in Jewish or Arabic. They were hypnotic and Lior’s performance was hand in glove with the Adelaide symphony. The second and fourth songs, which were about the getting of wisdom and the nature of compassion, drew heavily on the expanded percussion section in the orchestra and had you on the edge of your seat. For those of you who are ‘into’ Mahler (a strange comparison I hear you say), imagine the hammer strikes in the last movement of his mighty sixth symphony being amplified ten score times and filled out with all manner of other percussive instruments time and time again. The rhythms were compelling, and Lior’s voice sailed gloriously through it all. Full marks to the audio engineer - although I’m not sure the orchestra needed as much amplification as it received, especially in songs that featured broad and sweeping melodies from the strings. At times the orchestral sound was at risk of having much of its texture removed.
This collaboration of Lior and Westlake is pure genius. It is sublime.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: Closed
