John Chen (piano)

Leave a reply

Conservatorium Auditorium

reviewed by Neville Cohn

At his recital on Sunday, John Chen, the youngest ever laureate of the Sydney International Piano Competition, would have left no-one in any doubt of the form that netted him the top prize in 2004, aged a mere 18 years.

Drawing on a seemingly invincible memory, Chen took the listener through a notationally flawless reading of Ravel’s Miroirs. Few pianists, even the most virtuosic, are game to traverse this ferociously treacherous musical terrain in public. Chen, however, with the nonchalance of mastery, gave us a deeply probing performance that yielded musical wonders at every turn.

Whether calling up sound pictures of fluttering moths, evoking images of ocean-going ships or the Spanish-flavoured gestures of a juggler, Chen was immaculate in interpretative terms. It called to mind his glittering reading of Ravel’s Ondine that had made his previous Perth recital so memorable just after his Sydney win. Throughout Miroirs, one marvelled at Chen’s ability to draw on a seemingly limitless palette of tonal colours. It was a tour de force.

In Chopin’s Andante Spianato and Grand Polonaise Brillante, Chen was at his persuasive best. The velvet-smooth left-hand accompaniment in the Andante – and the solemn, mellow-toned tranquillity of the chorale section – could hardly have been bettered. And the skill with which Chen conveyed the hauteur that lies at the heart of every one of Chopin’s polonaises – and the diamond brightness which informed even the most rapid and complicated note streams – would surely have lifted the spirits of the most jaded listener as Chen conjured up one massive climax after another.

Since Chen gave his first recital in Perth shortly after his contest win, he has featured in innumerable recitals and concerto performances – but there was no hint at all here of familiarity breeding indifference. In fact, the sense of adventure that was such an appealing aspect of that recital was again very much in evidence at the weekend – and that augurs well for a career which is very likely to take young Chen to the forefront of fellow-pianists on the international concert circuit.

Later this month, incidentally, Chen will give a performance, broadcast by the ABC, of a new piano concerto by Roger Smalley who was in the audience to hear Chen’s keyboard wizardry.

An account of Mozart’s Sonata in C minor, K457 was less consistently meaningful. While his account of the notes was blameless and tone invariably pleasing, this curtain raiser did not yield the listening dividends one had hoped to experience. But in Schumann’s Carnaval – and after a quite routine account of Preambule – this young pianist surrendered to the Muse in the most passionately intense and virtuosic way. In section 13, which is Schumann’s tribute to Chopin, the playing in all its romantic sensitivity could hardly have been bettered. And the extraordinary agility and accuracy at whirlwind speed brought to bear on the Intermezzo was irrefutable proof of a rare musical gift which has clearly been guided by first rate instructors.

Chen, incidentally, is Malaysian-born. He was brought to New Zealand by his parents when he was eleven months old.

As encore, we heard more Ravel in the form of Pavane for a Dead Princess.

Copyright 2006 Neville Cohn


OPERA IN THE PARK

Leave a reply

OPERA IN THE PARK

Samson and Delilah (Saint Saens)
W.A.Opera Company and Chorus
W.A.Symphony Orchestra

Supreme Court Gardens

 

Reviewed by Neville Cohn

Despite competing events such as a concert at Leeuwin Estate and the Western Force versus Chiefs rugby match, some fifteen thousand spectators turned up for what has become one of the most loved Perth institutions: the annual Opera in the Park presentation in Supreme Court Gardens.

Seated on rugs or lawn, mums and dads with kiddies in arms or prams, surrounded by an agreeable clutter of eskies, picnic baskets, chicken salad and chardonnay bottles, were an exemplarily well behaved audience experiencing what for most would probably have been a first encounter with Saint Saens’ operatic treatment of the biblical story of Samson.

In passing, it’s worth mentioning that, despite the immense inherent drama of this ancient story (which, prior to Saint Saens’ work, was given at least eleven operatic treatments including one by Rameau to a libretto by none other than Voltaire) no one has so far succeeded in creating a setting that is fully worthy of it.

Seldom heard anywhere in the antipodes, the ancient story of the Bible’s muscle man and the faithless temptress Delilah is, for much of the work and especially in Acts 1 and 2 – dare one whisper it? – as arid and featureless as the desert sands that surround Gaza where the opera is set. Thousands of years later, Gaza is still very much in the news – and for all the worst reasons.

Stuart Skelton in the eponymous role was star of the evening, a tenor ideally suited to the role. For much of the performance, he produced the most agreeable stream of mellow sound in phrasing that was the hallmark of refined musicianship. Certainly, he adapted chameleon-like to the many interpretative nuances of the part. The closing moments of the opera were particularly affecting as Samson – his locks shorn by Delilah (an event that, oddly, is not mentioned in the work), his strength dissipated as a result and, in Milton’s chilling phrase ‘eyeless in Gaza’ – calls on the Lord who gives back Samson’s strength to bring Dagon’s temple crashing down on the Philistines.

Bernadette Cullen sang Delilah. Some occasional hardness of tone aside, she presented her arias with considerable expressiveness – but in Softly Awakes My heart, that most famous excerpt from the opera, strings sounded rather too thin and scrappy, the semiquaver accompaniment lacking that pulsing quality that is so crucial an interpretative requirement.

Acts 3 and 4 yielded some of the most satisfying listening dividends of the evening. The fake-Middle Eastern Bacchanale dance sequence – imitated again and again down the years by composers for trashy, Arabian Nights-type movies – came across in fine style. Laurels to Joel Marangella; his sinuous oboe line was heard to excellent advantage here.

Under Brian Castles-Onion’s direction, the W.A.Opera Chorus and vocal soloists did sterling work in making the listener aware of the cauldron of seething emotion that makes the closing Acts such compelling listening. Very much earlier in the piece, it was much to the credit of the choristers that they made the frankly tedious declamations that the composer gave to them sound better than they in fact are in operatic terms. Indeed, most of the choral work in Act I supports the argument, often put forward, that Saint Saens’ biblical epic might have had greater acceptance as an oratorio than as an opera.

But there are most certainly moments that make for the grandest of grand operatic effects. This is most powerfully the case with Delilah, towards the close of the work, relishing her moment of triumph after cutting Samson’s locks, with the High Priest (Bruce Martin) gloating over the muscle man’s downfall, only to have their comeuppance in the ruins of the temple.

For many an older member of the audience, this may well recall the closing moments of Cecil B. de Mille’s 1950’s movie epic starring Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr in the film’s eponymous roles.

Smaller roles were taken by David Dockery (Abimelech) and Robert Hoffmann (Old Hebrew).

 

 

Adding to the pleasure of the evening was an unexpected bonus for all during the interval: a white-clad, gracefully gyrating gymnast held aloft by a big, illuminated helium balloon sailing to and fro above the gathered, fascinated throng, the balloon’s track path controlled by ropes gripped by two hefty young fellows on the ground. (The previous night, this delight sailed across PIAF goings-on at Kalgoorlie, with Port Hedland next on the list.)

I cannot readily recall an Opera in the Park presentation that scored so well on so many counts. Presenting Samson and Delilah would have been a calculated risk. That so many attended suggests that it is not necessarily the case that only safe, top-ten operas should be presented at these events. Let’s have more works that are less frequently encountered here. What about Tchaikowsky’s Eugene Onegin, Donizetti’s Elisir d’amore or Smetana’s The Bartered Bride?

Copyright 2006 Neville Cohn


Noeleen Wright (cello) Cecilia Sun (fortepiano)

Leave a reply

Eileen Joyce Studio

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

 

Cello and piano recitals are rare in Perth. And all-Beethoven programs that pay the closest attention to the stylistic minutiae of the period are rarer still. So this presentation was listened to with particular interest.

Noeleen Wright has devoted years of thought and practice to resurrecting the performing styles of bygone periods, notably the baroque era. I cannot recall hearing her before in music of Beethoven.

With Wright playing on a copy of an early-18th-century cello, with Cecilia Sun at the fortepiano, we were taken on a journey back in time as we listened to music as it might have sounded in Beethoven’s day.

With a bow dipped in the stuff of high inspiration and drawn with unfailing confidence across gut strings – and with Sun’s aauthoritative if occasionally error-strewn support on the fortepiano (a copy of a Viennese model of 1806) – we heard three of Beethoven’s sonatas – opus 5 no 1, opus 69 and opus 102 no 2.

I cannot recall hearing Wright to better advantage. In a presentation that bristled with authority, she gave point and meaning to some of the most elusive music in the canon.

At its most assertive, this was playing that was in the best sense tough-minded – passionate even – with, at times, a grainy, gruff tone quality that sounded entirely right as it brought the works’ more extrovert movements to pulsing life. This intensity of expression was only occasionally paralleled in the fortepiano part in playing that tended to take up an interpretative position some little distance from the emotional epicentre of the keyboard part as in the Rondo from opus 5 no 1 where the insouciant nature of the writing was most apparent in the cello line.

In that most ferociously demanding of movements – the fugal finale to opus 102 no 2 – both Wright and Sun emerged at its conclusion with musical honour intact. This was no mean musical achievement.

Copyright 2005 Neville Cohn


Noeleen Wright (cello) Cecilia Sun (fortepiano)

Leave a reply

Eileen Joyce Studio

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Cello and piano recitals are rare in Perth. And all-Beethoven programs that pay the closest attention to the stylistic minutiae of the period are rarer still. So this presentation was listened to with particular interest.

Noeleen Wright has devoted years of thought and practice to resurrecting the performing styles of bygone periods, notably the baroque era. I cannot recall hearing her before in music of Beethoven.

With Wright playing on a copy of an early-18th-century cello, with Cecilia Sun at the fortepiano, we were taken on a journey back in time as we listened to music as it might have sounded in Beethoven’s day.

With a bow dipped in the stuff of high inspiration and drawn with unfailing confidence across gut strings – and with Sun’s aauthoritative if occasionally error-strewn support on the fortepiano (a copy of a Viennese model of 1806) – we heard three of Beethoven’s sonatas – opus 5 no 1, opus 69 and opus 102 no 2.

I cannot recall hearing Wright to better advantage. In a presentation that bristled with authority, she gave point and meaning to some of the most elusive music in the canon.

At its most assertive, this was playing that was in the best sense tough-minded – passionate even – with, at times, a grainy, gruff tone quality that sounded entirely right as it brought the works’ more extrovert movements to pulsing life. This intensity of expression was only occasionally paralleled in the fortepiano part in playing that tended to take up an interpretative position some little distance from the emotional epicentre of the keyboard part as in the Rondo from opus 5 no 1 where the insouciant nature of the writing was most apparent in the cello line.

In that most ferociously demanding of movements – the fugal finale to opus 102 no 2 – both Wright and Sun emerged at its conclusion with musical honour intact. This was no mean musical achievement.

Copyright 2005 Neville Cohn


Robin Wilson (violin) Kemp English (piano)

Leave a reply

Eileen Joyce Studio

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Is there a more beautifully appointed and positioned recital room in Perth – or Australia, for that matter – than the Eileen Joyce Studio? With its wood-panelling that covers three walls, the fourth all of glass and fronting a tree and shrub filled garden, it boasts as well an Augustus John portrait in pastels of Joyce and a number of watercolours of the great Australian musician as piano or harpsichord soloist with leading London orchestras at the Royal Festival Hall. Adding to the charm of the room are numbers of antique keyboard instruments including a chamber organ and a rare square piano. There is also a portrait in oils of Emeritus Professor Sir Frank Callaway in doctoral robes.

For all its charms, though, EJS was not an ideal venue for this recital. Despite its lid being raised only on short stick, a small baby grand piano proved annoyingly loud. But for all its substantial presence (perhaps the lid ought to have been entirely closed), it never quite overwhelmed Robin Wilson’s violin line.

The andante from Tartini’s Violin Concerto D86 was an inspired program opener, played very slowly but without losing a sense of onward momentum – a feat of real musicianship – with phrases shaped with unfailing finesse; it was like a consecration of the evening.

Beethoven’s Spring Sonata, too, gave much pleasure, music to which Wilson brought impeccable memory and, especially in the opening allegro, a line informed by a rich cantabile tone quality. Kemp English was an admirable piano partner, not least for managing to moderate keyboard sound sufficiently so as to ensure equitable internal tonal balance, no mean achievement in this lively acoustic. I particularly liked the rhythmic cut and thrust with which the scherzo was despatched.

Both the Tartini and Beethoven works were offered at so satisfying a level – clearheaded, stylistically apt and musically logical – that one looked forward with great anticipation to what was to follow. But the sure stylistic touch and choice of tempi that contributed to such splendidly musical playing in the Tartini and Beethoven works seemed largely to desert the duo in some of what was to follow.

Two pieces – Playera by Sarasate and Kreisler’s La Gitana -disappointed, the former too driven so that the inherent nobility of the music which, ideally, should border on grandeur, was almost entirely absent. Kreisler’s La Gitana, too, and Kroll’s delightful Banjo and Fiddle, that favourite encore of Heifetz, were taken at a speed too rapid to allow fine detail to be fully essayed and savoured. And Bloch’s Nigun, too, sounded overwrought at times.

Perhaps these rather intemperate presentations might have been due to the stress of the moment because on the CD which features Wilson and English, the playing of these pieces is very significantly closer to the emotional epicentre of the music.

But there was more than adequate compensation in other offerings such as the blues movement from Ravel’s Sonata for violin and piano, the violin line having about it a jazzy wail that sounded entirely right. The Meditation from Massenet’s Thais, too, was given an intensely expressive reading as was Rachmaninov’s Vocalise, the latter unfolding in a consistently meaningful way.

© Neville Cohn 2005