Tag Archives: Callaway Auditorium

Roger Smalley: 60!

Roger Smalley: 60!

Callaway Auditorium

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Birthdays are fun – even more so when gifts can be shared with an auditorium crammed with concertgoers, including friends, colleagues and former students, all gathered to mark the 60th birthday of composer/pianist Roger Smalley.

Gift of the evening was a striking new work by Cathie Travers played by the Australian Piano Quartet. The Tower is a substantial piece, a delightful and engrossing revisiting of the now almost vanished palm-court style of musicmaking but with a sensuous, smouldering overlay that places it firmly in some smoky Buenos Aires bar. With its affectionate obeisance to tango meister Astor Piazzolla, The Tower is a work which, whether darkly brooding or extrovert in zany fashion, will surely be a temptation to choreographers; it cries out for dance treatment with its irresistible rhythms, glowing harmonies and a sure feel for what works in tango-like terms. If this gem doesn’t make it into the standard piano quartet repertoire, I would like to know why. It certainly deserves to be there.

The greater part of the program was devoted to Smalley’s own music and began with his performance of a minuet he’d written when he was all of nine years old. His Variations on a Theme of Chopin is music of a very different stripe. It was given a stunningly virtuoso reading by Adam Pinto who steered a sure and nimble way through this musical minefield as, at the work’s many explosive climaxes, he hurled great chunks of sound into the auditorium. As well, we heard Smalley in his Piano Pieces 1 ­ V which have a Webernian brevity ­ and the Barcarolle, one of his most successful keyboard works.

Another Smalley composition that is almost certain to last is his Music for an Imaginary Ballet. Written for a battery of percussion ranging from marimba, vibraphone, brake drums and glockenspiel to cymbals and bass drum, its exotic, darting arabesques and trills sounded quite magical as Paul Tanner brought extraordinary mallet-wielding skills to bear on the score. And in Smalley’s Trio for horn, violin and piano, with the composer at the keyboard in ensemble with Darryl Poulsen (horn) and Paul Wright (violin), we were taken on a journey through often bleak and grimly austere musical landscapes, leavened by impish, treble traceries on the piano, splendid call-to-attention utterances by the horn and an overall standard of excellence we’ve come to expect of violinist Wright.almost as a matter of course.

A fascinating and crowded program also included Echo II, expertly played by cellist Jon Tooby with digital delays of two and a half and 5 seconds giving an intriguing ensemble feel to the proceedings.

Six Minutes for Smalley, described as a celebratory suite of one-minute- long birthday tribute pieces by half a dozen local composers, took longer than its allotted time and included delights such as a little samba played by Paul Tanner on marimba, vibraphone and brake drums ­ and another samba, played at the piano by composer Cathie Travers with Tanner providing rhythm accompaniment on two miniature sand shakers. Catherine Cahill did wonders on the clarinet, producing a stream of velvety smooth sound to bring Lindsay Vickery’s miniature tribute to life. As well, we heard husband and wife team Evan Kennea and Emily Green-Armytage in Kennea’s two- piano-tribute. And Darryl Poulsen directed French horn sound into an opened concert grand, with composer James Ledger demonstrating wondrous skill at depressing the piano’s damper pedal. Also in on the act were soprano Merlyn Quaife singing a haiku-type text to the accompaniment of two cellos played by Jon Tooby and composer Iain Grandage.

Throughout the evening, Smalley, who has over the years worked tirelessly to raise the profile of new music in the city, provided a linking commentary about the genesis of this work or that. It says much for the future of new music in Perth that such an enthusiastic audience turned out for this event on one of the year’s most miserably wet and gusty evenings

Copyright 2003 Neville Cohn.


Royal Schools Music Club 75th Anniversary Gala Concert

Royal Schools Music Club 75th Anniversary Gala Concert

Callaway Auditorium

 

reviewed by Edmund Percy

 

 

In years of concert going, I cannot readily recall an event that so warranted the adjective ‘gala’. How rare it is nowadays to encounter an audience in all its formal finery, a striking departure from conventional concert dress these days where such downmarket apparel as tracksuits and sneakers are far more often encountered than evening suits and evening gowns. Certainly, this sartorial splendour was altogether appropriate at an event marking two important milestones for the Royal Schools Music Club: its 75th anniversary year (no small achievement at a time when many other music societies have either vanished or are withering on the vine) and the launch of the RSMC’s Scholarship Fund. The importance of the latter ­ launched with customary urbane charm by Emeritus Professor David Tunley ­ can hardly be exaggerated. In a legendarily tough profession, practical assistance in the form of monetary grants is important. Professor Tunley pointed out that it is hoped to raise $20,000 in order to make available a sum of some $2,000 in alternate years.

A host of Perth’s leading musicians volunteered their time and expertise to the fundraising initiative. Roger Smalley was in fine form at the piano; his account of Poulenc’s Les Soirees de Nazelles was a model of its kind. From a bracket of lieder by Mahler (settings of poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn), Elisa Wilson took up an interpretative standpoint at the emotional epicentre of ‘Wer hat dies Liedlein erdawcht?’, singing as if the words really meant something. In the piano accompaniment, though, one felt a need for rather greater clarity of exposition and a closer identification with the mood of the music. Pianist Anna Sleptsova was a stylish and fluent soloist in an Etude Tableau by Rachmaninoff and also offered a performance of Debussy’s ecstatic L’Isle joyeuse. Dunhill’s Suite Op. 93 for flute and piano is typical of the composer’s rather bland style. Flautist Emily Gunson and Lisa Rowntree at the piano did their best to give point and meaning to a less than consistently inspired score. One would have hoped to hear the duo in a work rather worthier of their abilities. Paul Wright and Suzanne Wijsman played Ravel’s Sonata for violin and cello and at evening’s end, Elisa Wilson in ensemble with husband John Kessey (tenor) and with Tim Cunniffe at the piano, seemed positively to relish their presentation of the ‘Drinking Song’ from La Traviata, Romberg’s ‘Wanting You’ and riotously funny versions of ‘Were You Not to Koko Plighted?’ from The Mikado and ‘O soave fanciulla’ from La Boheme.

RSMC President Christine Sanders welcomed the audience that filled Callaway Auditorium to capacity, Club Patron John Winstanley at the piano accompanied the anthems in emphatic style and Co-Patron Margaret Winstanley proposed a gracious vote of thanks for a more than usually worthwhile evening of fine music and congenial company, its organisation a tribute to the dedication and logistical skills of the tireless Judy Thonell.