Category Archives: Live Performance

Roger Smalley: 60!

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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.


Die Winterreise (Schubert/Zender)

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Die Winterreise (Schubert/Zender)

Steve Davislim (tenor)
with WASO New Music Ensemble
Roger Smalley (conductor)

Winthrop Hall

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

 

 

 

It takes a good deal of courage to tinker with an established masterpiece. It’s an enterprise fraught with hazard and it seldom works well. Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s piano work Pictures at an Exhibition is a superb exception to the rule. Hamilton Harty’s dreadful, thick-textured re-visiting of Handel’s Water Music is its antithesis – as are Stokowski’s vulgar transcriptions for orchestra of some of Bach’s organ works.

So one listened with particular interest to Hans Zender’s reworking of the piano part of that greatest of song cycles – Schubert’s Die Winterreise – for voice and orchestra.

Let it be said at once, though, that, some occasional weakenings of concentration aside when synchronisation was less than ideal, Roger Smalley and his instrumental forces brought unfailing seriousness of purpose to a tricky task, no mean achievement, given the difficulties posed by the score.

This was no small enterprise. But was the game worth the candle? With the exception of a few lieder, in which the essence of the song’s enshrined emotions was faithfully preserved, I would have to say not really. Too frequently, there was a fussiness about the arrangements, a detail-overload that tended to get in the way of the music rather than allowing its message to reach the listener untrammelled as I’d imagine Schubert might have wanted it to. In stead, the transcription reminded me of a Christmas tree, the branches of which are so festooned with baubles that they sag under the weight rather than remaining straight as they do in their natural state.

I am convinced, though, that this was no casual re-ordering of Schubert’s masterpiece; an undertaking of this complexity must surely have been a labour of love. But after the most careful attention to the performance, I am not persuaded that it is of equal worth to the original, let alone an improvement on it. Surely, the purpose of such an initiative is to provide a listening experience at least as satisfying as the original. In The Post, for instance, the orchestration lent a curious ponderousness to the music. And, earlier, in A Backward Glance, the instrumentation could not match the restless buoyancy of the piano original.

But there were meaningful moments in individual lieder, where there was evidence of imaginative inspiration. The last two lieder of the cycle are a case in point. Here, Zender’s orchestration engaged the attention in a most convincing way, underscoring, as it did, the suggestion that the traveller, exhausted as much in mind as in body, hallucinates as he looks into the sky and sees not one sun but three – and this evocation of mental disintegration was as powerful in its way as intimations of despair beyond despair in The Hurdy-Gurdy Man that brings the cycle to its close.

I admired, too, the way in which the instrumentation gave point and meaning to Dream of Spring to which tenor Steve Davislim brought an altogether fitting sense of tenderness. Throughout, in fact, Davislim sang with great expressiveness although his diction was not always clear.

Now Schubert, as is well known, had a penchant for going on too long (as do some critics). But in Winterreise, he got it right, gloriously so. In every sense – melodic invention, evocation of mood, duration – it’s an unsullied exercise in perfection.

However, by its very nature, an elaborate orchestration of this sort cannot be played with the agility and fleetness that a single accompanying keyboard instrument is capable of in the right hands – and this was much apparent in a good deal of this orchestrated version of the cycle which unfolded in so protracted a way with its added instrumental preludes here and there, that it got in the way of, rather than enhancing, listening pleasure. This was a winter’s journey that took too long. This was all the more so due to an interval midway through the cycle (could this have been due to the requirements of the ABC Classic FM which broadcast the performance live nationwide?) which noticeably diluted the atmosphere so painstakingly built up in the first half of the work.

A program note mentions the conventional presentation of the cycle – wo gents in tuxedos and a Steinway grand. At more than few points during the performance, I longed for just that. Having instrumentalists walking around the auditorium or walking OUT of the auditorium – and then tracing their steps back to the platform mid-performance – was at first surprising, then unsettling and ultimately exasperating.


Copyright 2003 Neville Cohn

Australian Doctors’ Orchestra

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Australian Doctors’ Orchestra

Winthrop Hall

 reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

This would have had to be one of the most novel concert experiences of the year: a performance by an orchestra made up entirely (well, not quite entirely) of medical doctors. (For form’s sake, let it be placed on the record that the ranks of the Australian Doctors’ Orchestra were on this occasion strategically strengthened with a handful of local worthies who are not medical people but very skilled instrumentalists).

These enterprising medical folk gather each year for their big symphonic bash in one or other of Australia’s larger cities. On even the most cursory examination, there’s little doubt that many of these medicos are as versatile as they are gifted, for much of the time as handy with a fiddle bow as a stethoscope. At the same time, it would be an exaggeration to suggest that this was a peerless effort. It wasn’t – and it would have been both unfair and unreasonable to expect it to be.

The word ‘amateur’ has lost much of its original meaning with its connotation of engagement in one or other pursuit purely for the pleasure of it and without expectation of remuneration – rather than current understanding of the word with its implications of the second-rate, the below-par endeavour. But there are still those who see ­ and are seen – as amateurs in the positive sense – and this was abundantly evident at the ADO performance.

It’s a splendid initiative, a once-yearly coming together of doctors to make music with all proceeds going to selected deserving causes. Since its inception in 1993, the ADO has raised funds for causes as worthy as research into cancer, neuroscience, melanoma and glaucoma as well as for Hobart’s Tascare Society for Children and the Fred Hollows Foundation.

The Perth concert – the first by the ADO on the west coast – benefits the Cancer Foundation of W.A.

Stars of the concert were mezzo soprano Elizabeth Campbell and bass Bruce Martin, the former polished as always in the Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen and Softly Awakes My Heart from Saint Saens’ Samson and Delilah. Martin was in fine form in a Mozart aria ­ and both came up trumps in La ci darem, la mano from Don Giovanni. And in response to warm applause, brought the house down with that hilarious duet about the Indian doctor involved in healing in Darjeeling whether of halitosis, thrombosis or psychosis.

Smetana’s The Moldau from Ma Vlast is no pushover for any orchestra. I wondered how an ensemble that meets so infrequently would fare in this much-loved and difficult work. I’m happy to report that the ADO came through with most banners flying. There were some weakenings of concentration among the flutes and other fluffs here and there – but these were minor blemishes in an otherwise commendable effort.

© September 2003


Australian String Quartet with Michel Dalberto (piano)

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Australian String Quartet with Michel Dalberto (piano)

Perth Concert Hall

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Mrs Siddons, that greatest of English actresses of the 18th century (and immortalised on canvas by Joshua Reynolds), was said to have had a voice of such beauty and authority that when, on one occasion, she asked for a beer at a tavern, the bartended collapsed in a faint. So far as I know, no-one keeled over at the Concert Hall but the quality of sound produced by the Australian String Quartet was very much in the Siddons category. Certainly, its presentation of Mendelssohn’s Quartet in D minor from opus 44 produced a range of tonal colourings that constantly diverted and delighted the ear.

As well, although there were thought and consideration behind even the meanest phrase; there was nothing in the least academic or dry about the presentation.. On the contrary, there was throughout a sense of adventure and spontaneity about the playing, a remarkable feat of musicianship that allowed the work to flash into life in a way that augured well for the remainder of the program.

The chief joy of the evening was the ASQ’s account of Janacek’s Quartet No 1, known as the Kreutzer Sonata from Tolstoy’s novella of the same name. The composer identified strongly with this story of illicit passion because at the time, then aged 70, Janacek was infatuated with Kamilla Stosslova, a women decades his junior and married to boot. And it was into this composition that Janacek poured his unrequited love for Mrs Stosslova. The ASQ was entirely up to the challenge here, invariably successful in drawing out the work’s enshrined emotions that oscillate between lyrical refinement and an almost palpable sensuousness.

Throughout the work, the ASQ expounded Janacek’s idiosyncratic compositional argument with a musical logic that was irrefutable, thereby drawing the listener ineluctably into the composer’s unique sound and mood world. The finale was exceptionally fine with pizzicato sounding as if ripped savagely from the bodies of the instruments.

Ace French musician Michel Dalberto, who had earlier played Ravel’s Concerto in G with a skill bordering on genius, joined the ASQ in Cesar Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor, a work for which the composer reserved some of his loftiest musical ideas. And the five players, as if drawing inspiration from a shared musical consciousness, were entirely successful in conveying the grandeur and nobility that informs so much of the work.

Performances by the Australian String Quartet have now become an important and much anticipated feature of Perth’s music scene.


Slava and Leonard Grigoryan (guitars)

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Slava and Leonard Grigoryan (guitars)

Octagon Theatre

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Classical guitarist Slava Grigoryan has visited Perth on a number of occasions, invariably performing with expressiveness and technical finesse. At the Octagon Theatre, he was joined by his younger brother Leonard in a
recital that would have tested the mettle of the most adept and experienced of musicians ­ and both came through with banners flying.

The brothers Grigoryan are not the only sibling guitar duo on the international concert circuit, of course. There are other, longer established, ensembles I have heard in the past. But what places the Grigoryan siblings in a special category of excellence is that, unlike other similarly constituted ensembles, there is nothing in the least mechanical about their co-ordination. More often than not, the strictly, indeed implacably, metronomic approach to rhythm favoured by some other guitar duos can all too easily sound rigid and emotionally cold. There was not a hint of this in the playing of Slava and Leonard. In fact, the subtle nuances of tempo that informed their playing mark them as musicians as much as virtuosos.

True, there was some tendency early in the evening in an extract from Mompou’s Variations on a Theme of Chopin for earnestness to take precedence over effervescence. But by the time the duo launched into Piazzolla’s Tango Suite, the guitarists were firing on all pistons. And despite some occasional loss of definition on the part of Leonard, the sizzling intensity brought to bear on the climaxes that dot the Deciso and Allegro movements made for rivetting listening. As well, ceaseless vigilance regarding precise intonation was another factor contributing to listening pleasure although in the slow movement, one felt a need for rather more imaginative treatment of the notes.

How refreshing for once to hear a guitar compilation so markedly off the beaten track instead of the more usual fare by Albeniz, Barrios and Sor. A case in point was two movements from Retrato by the Brazilian composer Radames Gnattali. The siblings were in stunningly agile form in rapid ensemble work, achieving a brilliance that swept all before it. Here, the brothers staked an irrefutable claim to be considered in international terms ­ and all the more notable when considering that the younger Grigoryan is still a teenager.

Violinist Paul Wright made a guest appearance in ensemble with the elder Grigoryan in extracts from Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango in which both musicians succumbed to the Muse in a way that would surely have drawn approving nods from the composer had his shade hovered over the proceedings at a crowded Octagon. This was wonderfully evocative playing as guitar and violin explored the music’s contrasting moods of sultriness, passion and world-weariness.