Original Transcriptions for Piano

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Cameron Roberts (piano)

TTP: 63’00”

MOVE MCD404

 

Goldberg Variations (Bach)

Cameron Roberts (piano)

TTP: 68’00”

MOVE MCD 309

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

MCD404 is one of the most satisfying recordings I’ve heard in some time. It brims with good things.

 

All the transcriptions on this CD are by Cameron Roberts himself. Certainly, he shapes to the demands of whatever he plays like fine wine to a goblet. His taste is impeccable, his physical command of the piano is remarkable. Refinement of style  informs every moment of this recording.

 

Vivaldi’s Summer from The Four Seasons is a high point of this collection with Roberts working wonders with this much loved work. Magically silvery tone in the high treble informs the second movement which is transcribed and played with such artistry as to assume an identity that is quite unique and able to stand proudly in its own right. At its most extrovert, the playing has a Lisztian grandeur.

 

Roberts’ version of Rachmaninov’s song How Beautiful it is Here! is given marvellously lyrical treatment, each note clothed in gorgeous cantabile tone. The same composer’s The Morn of Life, Sleep is a model of introspection.

 

Is there a more hackneyed work in the American canon than Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue? Here, though, Roberts demonstrates a mastery of style and an heroic physical command of the instrument which, at climaxes, generates massive waves of noble sound. Bravo!

 

The Largo ma no tanto from Bach’s Concerto for two violins is another gem which leaves little doubt that Roberts is a born Bach interpreter; this offering cannot be faulted.

 

Tchaikowsky’s 1812 overture runs for more than a quarter hour – and every moment of it makes for thrilling listening.

 

This compilation is a stunningly fine example of the transcriber’s art.

 

ROBERTS  is in Olympian form in Bach’s Goldberg Variations which comes across as a chaplet of near-faultlessly fashioned pianistic gems. Variation 8, for instance, has a delightfully spiky, buoyant quality, Variation 10 is memorable for its emphatic rhythms – and there’s a wondrous clarity and control in Variation 11. Variation 12 is in the best sense danceable – and the bold, abruptly peremptory quality of Variation 16 could hardly have been bettered. A dainty, graceful account of Variation 17 makes for sheerly beautiful listening – and the intricate delicacy of Roberts playing in the20th variation calls finest Brussels lace to mind.

 

There’s no lack of virtuosity when called for: Variation 23 is given refreshingly forthright treatment – and Variation 23 is informed by fantastic agility and precision.  Variation 30, though, calls for a more paean-like quality.

 

A bonus takes the form of three transcriptions of Bach originals: Aus liebe from the St Matthew Passion comes across as an essay in achingly poignant terms – and the darkly bodeful despair that is the essence of Es ist Vollbracht from the St John Passion is as much an instance of the transcribers art at its highest as it is a profoundly probing interpretation.

Waiting for Godot (Beckett)

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His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth(Australia)

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Although the prime focus of pre-season publicity and advertising for Waiting for Godot was Sir Ian McKellen, (quite understandable bearing his huge celebrity in mind) it would be fair to say that on-stage honours were shared equally by the four main players. Indeed, having experienced a number of productions of Beckett’s masterpiece, each with its particular strengths (and weaknesses), I would unhesitatingly place this presentation at the forefront; it riveted the attention – and for all the right reasons.

 

I cannot too highly praise the skill which each of the players brought to the production; their ensemble was flawless. The four brought priceless skill to their acting.

 

As Pozzo, Matthew Kelly was superb, a towering figure (in both histrionic and visual terms) who came across as the apotheosis of cruelty, an incarnation of callousness, not least through his indifference to the plight of the unfortunate Lucky. The latter, played by Brendan O’Hea, gave the performance of his life. Literally bowed down by the weight of the heavy bags he carries, his hopelessness and defeat would surely have moved even the most indifferent of theatregoers. His death-like pallor and bedraggled, colourless hair made him wraithlike.

 

For almost all the time he’s on stage, Lucky utters not a syllable. But, when he does begin to talk, one could sense an almost palpable initial relief on the part of the audience willing him to have his say. But, as ever, when the luckless Lucky finally opens up, there’s a seemingly unstoppable torrent of muddled, incomprehensible verbiage, so much so that – and this invariably happens – one begins heartily to wish he had never opened his mouth.

 

As Estragon and Vladimir, McKellen and Roger Rees respectively were beyond reproach. A facial gesture here, a flick of the wrist there, a frown, a smile, a snatch of  song and a softshoe shuffle, a chuckle, a sigh: these were the minutiae of a magically matchless offering where the impact of the whole was far greater than the sum of its constituent parts. Have audiences ever before encountered a more engaging couple of hobos than those given us courtesy of McKellen and Rees?

 

Young Craig Hyde-Smith did well as the messenger of the mysterious, ever-absent  Godot.

 

During intermission, I overheard a playgoer bitterly complaining that Godot was a play about nothing. Perhaps so – but I’d any day watch this ‘show about nothing’ with its myriad subtleties and veiled meanings than the one George Costanza had in mind in the Seinfeld TV series.

 

Sean Mathias worked wonders as director. Lavish laurels to set designer Stephen Brimson Lewis for dreaming up an altogether appropriate visual environment for the playing out of Beckett’s masterpiece with what looked like the a dark brick wall of some huge industrial building as a backdrop with, on either side of the stage, a representation of a crumbling, double storied mansion with, stage centre, a tree, bare but for a very few leaves, all, for the most part, bathed in the curious, greyish-silver light design of Paul Pyant.

David Tunley at 80

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by Neville Cohn

 

He has turned 80 but he brings to his life in music an energy that would wear out many half his age. “I can’t imagine retirement in conventional terms. As long as my mind remains clear, I’m sure I’ll be using it in one way or another”, said this most amiable and industrious of dons.

 

Emeritus professor David Tunley, steeped in the musical tradition, is hard at work on his eighth book – on that most celebrated of all Australian pianists, Eileen Joyce. “It’s not so much a biography as a study of her artistic development since her childhood in Kalgoorlie,” explained Tunley who is collaborating on the book with colleagues Victoria Rogers and, for the first chapter, Jean Farrant “who has researched the musical life of that city in considerable depth.

 

“While researching Joyce’s early days in Kalgoorlie, I discovered that before little Eileen came to Loreto Convent in Perth, one of her piano teachers was a brilliant pianist Rosetta Spriggs. And while looking into this, I discovered to my surprise that Leah Horwitz,  a fellow student in my days at the Sydney Con, was the daughter of the very same Miss Spriggs who was later to marry, becoming Mrs Horwitz. A telephone call to Brisbane, earlier this year, got Leah and me talking together for the first time since student days of 60 years ago”.

 

One of Tunley’s most vivid recollections is of hearing Eileen Joyce perform when he was a music student at the Sydney Conservatorium.”Years later, I met her when she came to Perth for the National Eisteddfod and again when she received an Honorary Doctor of Music (for which I wrote the citation) from UWA”.

 

In the most positive, indeed indelible, ways, Tunley has made his mark on music in W.A.. The much loved York Winter Music Festival was his brainchild as was the Terrace Proms which on one Sunday in the year brought vibrant life and music to an otherwise drab weekend wind tunnel. Tunley also founded the University A Capella Choir which was later renamed University Collegium  Musicum.

 

Much of Tunley’s life has been devoted to the music of France. “I have a special love for baroque music, especially the French baroque”. His book on the French Cantata has been internationally hailed. Indeed, Tunley’s work in French music has been so distinguished that France has honoured him by appointing him a Chevalier in the Napoleonic Order of Palmes Academiques. Closer to home, the Order of Australia and the Australian Centenary Medal have also come his way.

 

“I’m afraid I spend much more time at the keyboard of my computer than on that of the piano”, said Tunley. “As for writing, I take advantage of what time is left from what seems to be an endlessly busy life, for I am also involved in voluntary work and, of course, time with the family is more important than ever”.

 

 

 

 

One of Tunley’s dearest wishes is that UWA School of Music and the music department at the W.A.Academy of Performing Arts “pool their wonderful resources to create a single institution that could meet the varied needs of the many gifted students we have in W.A.”

 

Another of Tunley’s hopes is for greater government support  “to underpin the extraordinarily fine achievements in recent years by our orchestra, opera and ballet companies.

 

“These and other artistic resources are the very life-blood of our cultural community. Yet the WASO still lacks a home – and the opera and ballet companies need more room. It may be difficult to convince hardheads that it is not money that makes a city great – there are plenty of rich but soul-less cities around the world to confirm this.” Tunley points out that a much stronger underpinning of our cultural life is needed by governments and philanthropists to transform our boom state into Australia’s cultural centre.

 

At an 80th birthday tribute concert for the Royal Schools Music Club at Callaway Auditorium, a small army of musicians gave performances of works from Tunley’s pen as well as a bracket of French vocal delights from the 18th and 19th century, music typical of the material that Tunley has researched and written extensively about with a distinction that has earned him international plaudits.

Lebensraum (Israel Horovitz)

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Downstairs at the Maj

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

It’s a preposterous notion, a gratuitous awarding of German citizenship with all rights and entitlements to six million Jews from around the world to somehow assuage the limitless grief and pain that the Holocaust caused. It is a thought-provoking “what if…….”

   photo: Belinda Dunbar

 

 

One of the nazis’ most odious policies was that of ‘lebensraum’, a ferociously violent and cruel colonisation of vast areas of conquered lands to enable the German people to have as much territory as needed for the expansion of the so-called master race. In putting this into practice, millions of innocents, primarily but not exclusively Jews, were butchered on an industrial scale.  

 

Three actors, portraying literally dozens of people, provide an absorbing theatre experience on this most unusual theme. I cannot readily recall a play that makes such extraordinary demands on its players, not least because the characters are of all ages and backgrounds coming from a wide range of countries necessitating the use of numbers of linguistic accents. And apart from the opening moments of the play when the German accent adopted was quite unconvincing, the players delivered impressively on this count through a lengthy work. True, there were some minor fluffs – but in the wider context, this gave an added dimension of reality to the proceedings.

 

All three actors – Vivienne Garrett, Brendan Hanson and Craig Williams – delivered remarkably credible impersonations of a daunting number of characters. On this level, the production was a tour de force.

 

I particularly admired the skill with which animated conversations between two people were held –  but featuring only a single actor. Craig Williams was impressive in this, with a rapid exchange of hats the only prop in a hugely skilled episode, an animated conversation between two people, courtesy of one actor. 

 

An American couple with a son take up the offer as does an outrageously camp gay pair from France. There’s also a very old Holocaust survivor living out his last days in a remote spot in Australia. He, too, turns up. He finds himself a job in Charlottenburg (whence he fled years earlier) as carer for a very old, bed-ridden and now-helpless former piano teacher, the very person who dobbed his family in to the Nazis because he and his siblings ‘wore pretty clothes’. He was the sole survivor. He exacts an unusual revenge.

 

Back to the Americans: the man of the house finds a place in the work force quickly as a wharfie – he’s a hard worker, impresses his boss and is soon offered a promotion. Then his boss gives him a supervisory role. There’s growing resentment from German-born workers as more hardworking Jews from abroad are welcomed to the country and given jobs. There are ugly scenes. As this happens, I dare say that the notion of a 21st-century revisiting of the Holocaust takes up a lot of wishful thinking  on the part of displaced German workers.

 

There’s also young love between a young American fellow with a German lass.

 

Horovitz’s play consist of many, often very brief, scenes that call for considerable skill on the part of the actors to ensure a smoothly unfolding play.  And that was gratifyingly apparent, so ensuring that the impact of the play as a whole was greater than the sum of its constituent scenes, directed with gratifying attention to detail by Lawrie Cullen-Tait.