Concert-going

Despite my blog quietism, I have been going to a few concerts.  As much for my own future reference as anything else, these are those which I have not mentioned here so far.

SSO – 15 March

Joyce Yang played Tchaik 1; of the two obscurities, Dvořák’s Othello overture made a stronger impression than Tchaikovsky’s Fatum; Respighi’s Roman Festivals was the big finish. It’s too distant in the past for me to give any more informative or detailed comment.

SSO – 18 March

Joyce Yang in recital. I’m afraid despite her advocacy, I still cannot really warm to Bartok. It’s not just the idiom, I think it must be his personality. He is the composer of that kinky (and by contemporary standards also rather racist in the inscrutable oriental sense) Miraculous Mandarin, though I suppose he can’t be held entirely responsible for the ballet’s scenario.

SSO 5 April

Reinhard Goebel led the SSO through a rare excursion into earlier music. We got two out of three of the Water Music suites in what was claimed to be a more authentic sequence, though the lack of the first suite detracted a bit from that. The orchestra obviously warmed to Goebel but for me the venue is a bit big for some of this stuff. The revelation was the final Chaconne by Berton which is a bit of a calling card of Goebel’s.

Australia Ensemble 18 April

My friend P was following her son at a youth orchestra concert in Penrith, so I took my younger sister, visiting from rural WA.  My nephew (aged 12) also came.  He was a bit disappointed there wasn’t a trombone, since that is the instrument he is learning.  Faced with a Dvořák string quintet in the second half we let him play with his DS in the foyer.  The front-of-house staff offered him a free sandwich (more accurately, they are dinner-roll-sized little filled rolls) when they were clearing up.  I was shocked to learn he declined the offer.

SSO 2 May

This was a “Meet the Music” concert but it was also a program which notably drew out (if I may say so myself) the cognoscenti. The whole Dulwich Hill gang and their associates were there in force as well as other notables. The attraction was Thomas Ades conducting his own work Polaris (without the visuals commissioned from his better half to go with it on its first performance), matched rather well with the Lutoslawski Cello Concerto (Peter Wispelwey), Sibelius 6 and, less obviously, Beethoven’s Namensfeier Overture. The Lutoslawski and the Ades fared the best, though the effect of the Ades rather depended on not sitting too closely (as a friend of mine did) to one of the antiphonal gallery brass choirs.

SSO – 9 May Beethoven

Beethoven can still pack the house. This was also the first appearance (at least witnessed by me) since his appointment of Andrew Haveron, the new [co-] concertmaster.   It augured well. (Actually it seems from that link that Haveron is only here just now for a teaser and won’t be back for good until the beginning of next year.  It’s a bit like those government promises that phase in over a far-into-the-future period.)  Exceptionally, there were four men at the front of the first violins.

The concert opened with Weingartner’s arrangement of the Beethoven Grosse Fugue for string orchestra. This was testing for all and ultimately worth it, though I have to say there is something about a string orchestra which never really excites me. I know I’m showing my ignorance here but what exactly there was to arrange is a bit of a mystery beyond when to double the celli with the double bass and whether solo or tutti.

On the train home a friend offered the view that the Beethoven “Triple Concerto” is a “dud work.” I would say it is a bit at the “Wellington’s Victory/ Folk Song Arrangements” end of Beethoven’s oeuvre, but the thing about Beethoven is that in general (as you can see from the piano sonatas) he is almost incapable of writing a dud work. Is this the exception?

I think it is, at least when management yields to the the temptation (because 3 soloists are required) to field a local team. Mediocre or mediocre-ish works are just the pieces which require top-notch soloists. How top-notch they are or not is relative to the occasion: it is possible that Kirsty Hilton, Catherine Hewgill and Clemens Leske would make a good impression with a lesser orchestra, but we are used to better with the SSO. In the first movement, thunderous interjections from the piano kept making me (inwardly) ask “What’s up with grumpy?” Probably drama was intended but discomposure was the result.  When I did a bit of a you-tube browse afterwards I could find performances which had more dramatic tension (the absence of this is partly, I think, a result of Ashkenazy’s rather genial approach) in the first movement and quite a lot more what I would think of as aristocratic “Archduke”-ish polish.  They restored my faith in the work but showed up what this performance was lacking.

Fortunately, the Pastoral Symphony in the second half made up for this. Being Ashkenazy, it was a mellifluous and pretty straight down the middle approach (nothing unusually fast) but none the worse for that. I remain a sucker for muted strings and the second movement therefore remains my favourite.

It seems my subscription commitments to the SSO and the AE have effectively crowded out any more ad hoc concert-going.  I should try to do something about that because they are not the only shows in town.

To prove that, I also went, with my sister and nephew to see the touring production of “One Man Two Guvnors.”  It was expertly done though my having seen the original production as part of the National Theatre Live franchise somewhat took the wind out of its sails.  They enjoyed it without this impediment.

Don’t encourage them

ABC’s Limelight magazine is running a story in its upcoming April edition, promoted under the heading “Who is Australia’s best orchestra?”

It says:

A panel of 15 expert critics and professional musicians from around the country – many of whom wished to remain anonymous – was sent ABC recordings of live concerts by the six orchestras from throughout 2012. The judges were left blind as to which orchestra was which (each one received a label from A to F) in order to obviate any prejudice or hometown loyalty. All attempts were made to match repertoire between the orchestras, and to include a variety of styles, conductors and soloists in order to capture the range of each ensemble’s expressive power. Each judge was asked to review all the works performed by each orchestra and to provide an overall ranking of the orchestras from one to six.

The teaser then goes on to say that the SSO comes in first, the ASO second then the QSO. The MSO is (surprisingly) fourth then the WASO and, by “trailing by a large gap,” the TSO.

This whole exercise strikes me as pretty silly. As silly as drawing any serious conclusions from a review of a DVD of last year’s Handa Opera production of La Traviata. I mean, in an event where the atmosphere and the place are a crucial aspect of the experience, what would you expect of a DVD recording?

The main reason why I think it silly is because, unless you are contemplating moving cities for the sake of the orchestra, or, possibly, going for a job in one, the question is pretty irrelevant. In Australia you pretty well only have one [ex-]ABC orchestra to go to according to the city you are living in and, let’s face it, if you are wanting to buy a recording of “the best orchestra” you are not often likely to be choosing one of the [ex-]ABC orchestras.

Even if you lived in London with a choice of resident and regularly visiting orchestras, the question of “the best orchestra” is probably a pretty stupid one. Associated artists and repertoire would all play a part.

And how valid a guide, even with all these qualifications, are the recordings?

The first person to comment on Limelight’s puff piece, “arpasquill,” asked:

“Was patching work taken into consideration when listening to recordings?”

This drew a response from “RJStove”, who outs himself as one of the “panel of 15 expert critics and professional musicians from around the country.” You can possibly judge that for yourself. Stove has written a faintly Quixotic and decidedly tendentious book on Cesar Franck which tells us almost as much about RJStove as it does about its ostensible subject.

Stove says

“I can only say that I didn’t take patching work into account. To this day I don’t know which recordings had patches and which didn’t…Except on the few occasions when audience applause was included, we weren’t even sure whether a performance was done at a concert or in a studio. So the question of patches didn’t enter my own consciousness, anyway.”

Precisely.

There is a more indignant response from conductor and broadcaster Graham Abbott, including as follows:

The alleged strengths and weakness of the performances reviewed could as easily be attributed in many cases to the recording, the hall, how tired the orchestra was, and especially the conductor.

Abbott gallantly illustrates this with a comment which (see below) I can report after my trip to the newsagent is dealt out in the article to the MSO under his own direction, namely that it is “heavy handed in Mozart.”

With some justification Abbott complains:

most appalling of all was the press release sent out in anticipation of this tripe. “Australia’s best and worst symphony orchestras named in first ever blind-listening test.”

He accuses the magazine of a cheap stunt to sell copies by denigrating the orchestras in question.

I’d say the “cheap stunt” bit is a fair cop.

Obviously there are many variables. The choice of comparable repertoire probably deprives a smaller orchestra such as the TSO of the chance to show itself off to advantage. But, as I said, what is even the point of the comparison when few really have a meaningful choice between these orchestras?

The low ranking of the MSO seems odd, and is probably a bigger upset than the relegation of the TSO to the bottom of the class. (After all, they are the poorest and smallest of the ex-ABC orchestras.) I don’t like to give the comparison too much credit by responding to it but I wonder if the outcome for the MSO is a result in any way of their prolonged lack of a chief conductor. [Postscript after a detour to the newsagent, see below: nor did it help them to have Brahms' Tragic Overture conducted by Richard Gill counted as representative of their work.] The quality of recordings made in 2012 likely to have been adversely affected by their exile from the Hamer Hall for two years prior to its reopening in about August 2012.

Of course I’m curious to see how the Limelight panel have reached their conclusions, but I don’t intend encouraging them by buying the April edition. I shall read the article for free at the newsagent.

I did not see her passing by

Last Saturday to see the Australia Ensemble with my regular companion for these concerts, P.

The concert was billed as featuring Scottish accordionist, James Crabb, and I have to admit I was trepidatious. Despite the enthusiastic write-up by Professor Covell in the ensemble’s newsletter, I wasn’t too sure how I would feel about an entire second half of tangos and other squeeze-box numbers. I determined to keep an open mind.

Pausing outside the hall before the concert, P and I were surprised to see a security guard. He told us he was there because the governor general was expected. Later he asked us if we knew what she looked like because he was concerned that somebody was parking in a spot reserved for her. We told him to the best of our recollection. The car was moved on.

A little while later I spotted a a car with a furled flag and then a tallish chap in white dress uniform going through the crowd who was obviousy an aide-de-camp. Viceroyalty was amongst us.

The security guard asked us when we thought the concert would finish. P said she thought it would finish about 10pm.

The ensemble’s clarinetist, Catherine McCorkill, was indisposed. The newsletter announced that this went right back to Salome, last year, when CMcC played rather more E flat clarinet than she usually does. That’s the smaller, higher [-est, est?] clarinet, so I can imagine the angles for ducking your knuckle onto various keys might all be a bit more acute. Musician’s injuries are funny things – not in the ha-ha- sense of course, and not for the musician, but rather because of how the smallest physical injury can nevertheless have a big impact owing to the limited tolerances musicians play up against. The only silver lining is that at least CMcC sustained this shortly after she was appointed associate principal at the AOBO, though with modern reforms to workplace injury law that might not be such a comfort as once it would have been. Still, it would make things simpler than phoning in with an injury after a contract/guest engagement.

CMcC was replaced by Dean Newcomb, principal clarinet of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Dean is a milder-mannered player than CMcC, but then almost every clarinetist is.

The program was:

Vincent d’INDY (1851-1931):
Chanson et danses Opus 50 for flute, oboe, two clarinets, horn and two bassoons (1898)
Gioachino ROSSINI (1792-1868):
From Sins of Old Age (Péchés de Vieillesse) arr. Ian Munro for flute, clarinet and piano (1857-1868)
Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901):
String Quartet in E minor (1873) – 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth
A James CRABB gallery of music for accordion, flute, clarinet, two violins, viola, cello and piano, with works by:
Torbjörn Iwan LUNDQUIST (1920-2000) – Movements this was a kind of mini concerto for accordion and string quartet
César FRANCK (1822-1890) Prelude, fugue et variation in B minor originally for harmonium and piano written for two sisters
Jukka TIENSUU (b 1948)- a tango.
Antonín DVORÁK (1841-1904) Bagatelles, Op. 47, for two violins, cello, and (originally) harmonium
Astor PIAZZOLLA (1921-1992) the famous Tango Libertad but as an encore another more soulful number called “Oblivion” – these both arranged for accordion and the Oz Ensemble’s full complement.

From the point of view of the regular ensemble, the d’Indy was a bit like the proverbial nail soup – only Geoffrey Collins was a regular member. P thought the ensemble a bit ragged. I didn’t mind that, to the extent that I picked it up, because I find all such wind ensemble music utterly beguiling, even when written by an anti-Freyfusard monarchist and anti-semite..

The Rossini was pleasant enough. Part of the “joke” of the middle one, which sent up alpine melodies of the sort assayed by Rossini himself in “William Tell,” was that these things go on rather a lot, which it did.

Despite the big write up by Prof Covell in his notes I can’t say I really adjusted to the Verdi. It still sounded like Verdi, especially a little vocalish ornament which recurs at the cadences.

The second half commenced energetically with the Tunquist and my reservations were immediately overcome. Of the other pieces, the Franck was the most pleasant surprise, and “Oblivion” (the encore) the highlight.

Crabb plays an accordion with buttons rather than a keyboard. It doesn’t seem to have chords as an accordion does. He can command a wide range of articulation in the sense of duration and phrasing of notes. As far as I can make out, there is a limitation in that the pressure of the air applies to all notes at once, but within that limitation, manipulation of the bellows provides an enormous range of dynamics and vibrato and other expressiveness within the notes coming together. This can be rhythmically very compelling.

The only reservation which remains for me is that the reed sound of the instrument, especially its upper partials, remained pretty persistent and, to me, at times a bit too insistent.

Maybe we started late. The interval was a little longer than usual, though it never conforms to its advertised 15 minutes. Before embarking on the encore, Dene Olding observed that this concert had set a new record for late-finishing for the the AE. By the time we left it was almost a quarter to eleven.

On our way out we explained apologetically to the security guard that the late finish was unprecedented.

I never did see Quentin Bryce. Apparently (though I didn’t see her either) Marie Bashir was there.

New SSO co-concertmaster

News is recently out (here, currently in the news section, and here, pdf) that the SSO has appointed Andrew Haveron as co-concertmaster. He was here last May, and will start this May.

Haveron became joint concert-master of the Philharmonia Orchestra in London in 2012.  Obviously, he was out here trying out or testing the water pretty soon after that.

The news hasn’t exactly hit the broadsheets here but its announcement by Norman Lebrecht has led to an illuminating (or not) comment thread of speculation, ranging from  “Why did he?” (which given the early move from his previous position, seems a fair enough question to me, even if it is unlikely to be answered) to “How could he?”

On the SSO announcement one is invited to watch footage of Andrew performing with the Arensky Chamber Orchestra (rather than, say, the Philharmonia).

It might have been more fun if they had linked to here, albeit that it lacks any vision of Mr Haveron himself.

So when can we expect the vacant second principal cello position to be filled?

End of year

is almost upon us.  So I thought I’d mention a few things which I’ve been to which are so far unnoticed here.

I went to the Pinchgut Opera’s production of Rameau’s Castor and Pollux.

I’m sorry to say that I found the acting of visiting American Jeffrey Thompson as Castor almost insufferable, even if it be accepted that some of it was his own musical necessity. At one point, for no perceivable reason, he sat on the edge of the stage just behind Erin Helyard (the harpsichordist) and ran his hands over EH’s bald/shaven cranium. Something like this was done last year (or maybe the year before) as well but then at least it was funny and had a reason. I wouldn’t like it to become a running gag and for that matter I don’t think it is fair on EH, whether he minded it or not.

I sometimes wondered what the director, Kate Gaul, was thinking of, albeit that she had to operate within some constraints.

The realisation of the balletic element was problematic.   There were two rather fetching topless male dancers, and I’m not complaining about that. The women in the chorus, wearing vaguely Grecian drapery gym-slippy outfits, had to do rather a lot of stuff which maked them look like one of those early twentieth century photos of Druidic or Theosophic-ish groups doing something in the open air early in the morning.  Sometimes the urge came to just shut one’s eyes and listen to the music.

I found the second half, which seemed to prefigure Gluck and Haydn in its account of other worlds, more interesting than the first.

The orchestra was good. I went twice. This was something I had planned long before.

I wish I could say I enjoyed it more. Maybe the novelty to me of the French baroque has lessened, thanks in large part to Pinchgut’s own productions, which have also set a pretty high act for Pinchgut itself to follow.

I also went to two SSO concerts. The first of these featured Scott Davie playing the original version of Rhachmaninov’s fourth piano concerto, and Tchaikovsky’s Manfred.  The first was obviously a labour of love on SD’s part.  I enjoyed but was not really electrified by it.  Sometimes the verdict of history is right, and of course there are at least three better-known concertante works for piano by this composer.  Manfred excited me more when Caetani conducted it a few years ago.  This time it seemed a bit scrappy.

The second was billed as “Totally Tchaikovsky” (to distinguish it from Pique Dame as also being by Pushkin?) and paired the second piano concerto (also in its original version) with the fourth symphony.  I heard Garrick Ohlsson on the radio admit that the second concerto is an inferior work to the first, but all things considering that is not as big a put down as it might at first seem.  I enjoyed it and again on the live broadcast which I also listened to the next afternoon.  There were differences in approach between Ohlsson and Stephen Hough, who played this concerto here not so long ago.  I like to think that these match differences in their personality.

I have yet to see a publicity shot of Garrick Ohlsson that looks less than ten years old. The standard one looks as though it was taken more like twenty years ago, if not more.

One feature of the original version of the concerto is a kind of trio between the concertmaster, principal cello and piano in the middle movement.  I should concede (because sometimes I rail against her place in the orchestra’s publicity limelight that seems to only be rivalled by that enjoyed or hogged for the WASO by their grinning percussionist) that I enjoyed Catherine Hewgill’s solo in this very much.

The Tchaikovsky was on the mellow and warm side. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t have big moments, but it wasn’t as directly ominous as I have sometimes heard it, nor as angular.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard the second theme of the first movement edged into quite so gently. It was a distinctive approach.

Longer ago I went to the last of the Australia Ensemble concerts for the year.  The highlight of this for me (and I can’t say I was expecting this) was Ian Munro’s arrangement of Debussy’s Six epigraphes antiques. 

At the end of the concert, the retiring Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic) announced next year’s program. When he anglicized the “ř” in “Dvořák” a kind of electric frisson mixed with comfort of knowing better rippled round the hall. As is customary, rather splendid chocolates and slightly less splendid but alcoholic-if-you-wished drinks were given out in the foyer afterwards.

I’ll be back for more.

On Sunday night I went to a concert by Orchestra Romantique at Paddington Town Hall. I first heard of this in November from Wanderer. Now that I look I see that it was announced on facebook on June 16. I think I had by then given up on checking to see if anything was happening with this group. You couldn’t say this concert was over-publicized. Handbills were distributed outside Castor & Pollux but to little evident effect. By the time the concert was held, it had been announced as the orchestra’s final concert in its present form. Something smaller may or may not emerge.

The first half of the program was the Brahms double concerto. This was the draw-card for me. Kristian Winther (who also directed) was the violinist and Timo-Veiko Valve the cellist. Without a dedicated conductor (Kirsty Hilton also waved her bow from the leader’s desk in one particularly hairy bit) it was all rather strict-tempo, but I still enjoyed it. The early-music push of the previous concerts did not seem to be a particular issue. Maybe with the size of the band we were meant to imagine ourselves at Meiningen.

The second half was in honour of Beethoven’s birthday and featured a kind of running address by ["Lord"] Geoffrey Robertson on liberty and the enlightenment. It also featured rather a lot of namedropping on GR’s part, though some may feel he is entitled to it. Overall it seemed a rather long bow to draw from the “Turkish March” from Beethoven’s music written in 1811 for von Kotzebue’s play, “The Ruin of Athens” to GR’s proposed appearance before the European Court of Human Rights to argue for the return of the “Elgin Marbles” to Greece.

When GR ascribed the push to end slavery as one originating in “High Anglicanism” he had gone too far. Last time I looked (then, and since) the Clapham Sect and Wilberforce were evangelicals, which is usually thought of as being quite the opposite. Call me a pedant, but that’s the sort of historical howler that can cast a bit of a shadow.

This sort of talking is not really a drawcard for me. It just seems a waste of an orchestra to have it sit by idle. I realise that is an error because the orchestra’s time is not to be measured simply by its time on stage on the night – there also has to be rehearsal time. So maybe the talking was a way of padding the program out. Others enjoyed it.

It’s sad to see the orchestra fold (or even restructure into something smaller) but not really surprising. It was good to hear them while they lasted.

End of term

On Saturday with my old friend and former high-school English and drama teacher, Lw, to the Sydney Philharmonia’s concert, titled “An English Christmas.”

Lw had a spare ticket because V, who was in the choir, had thought she would not be singing, and so had booked a ticket for herself and Lw.

The title alone was the sort of thing which would otherwise have driven me away rather than drawn me in – it had the whiff of that shop in the Glasshouse where they sell marmite and other English staples.

The attraction was the second half, which was Britten’s cantata, Saint Nicolas.

The first half was structured round the movements of “Peter Warlock”‘s Capriol Suite, played by the Philharmonia [scratch, really] orchestra, led by Jemima Littlemore. As the suite has six movements this meant that there were six carols or brackets of carols – the last was Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols. The baritone soloist for that and at least one other number was the improbably youthful looking Alexander Knight.  He has bright red hair with a somehwat Dickensian peak at the front, which somehow added to the English-Christmas flavour.  He sounds just a bit too youthful for my ideal sound-image of the baritone soloist in this work, but he has admirable clarity of projection.

I have sung in choirs myself in the past, and so nearly all of the items were familiar to me – not really carols in the congregational or even secularish (Rudolf) sense, but choral numbers of the sort that the English choral-christmas industry (of which the Vaughan Williams must be a relatively early type) has churned out in such enormous numbers over the years.

The other soloist was Amy Corkery, last seen as the lesbian maid (OK: only joking about the lesbian bit) in Pique Dame.  Perhaps concerned at filling such a large hall, she let loose rather alarmingly at the top of her register.

Choirs filed on and off; the massed choirs (“Festival Chorus”) sang a few, easier, numbers; every one of the Philharmonia’s conductors got a guernsey.  It all felt just a bit like a school concert.

Apart from the Vaughan Williams Fantasia, my favourites were an arrangement of Michael Head’s “Road to Bethlehem,” (really an art song) sung by ”Vox” (the youth choir) and Britten’s Hymn to the Virgin (except that the semi-chorus seemed too big).

After interval, a woman came on to the stage.  That was ominous.  She announced herself as Sarah Watts, the president [?] of the Sydney Philharmonia Ltd.  The speech-day resemblance strengthened, as she welcomed the governor and the Minister for Citizenship and Communities, and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Victor Dominello, who was there with his mother.  He then gave a speech.  To give him credit, apparently he had been to all of the Philharmonia’s concerts in the year.

After waxing lyrical about our “much loved” governor Marie Bashir, Mr Dominello got a bit more political.  I became restive.  That’s not the sort of thing I come to a concert for!

It turned out that it was recently National Volunteers Week, a topic within VD’s responsibilities.  He extolled the virtues of the choristers as volunteers.  Lw (who is recently retired as a professional do-gooder for some Catholic organisation) and I exchanged glances.  Surely Philharmonia singers are not volunteers?  Well, they might be if they go and sing to some sick people at a hospital, but otherwise and at concerts such as this we both thought that they are people who love to sing.  They’re amateurs!

After that, Brett Weymarck jauntily taught us the hymns that the audience is required to sing as the congregation would in a Bach passion (once upon a time).  We had sheet music.  Oddly, he took us all the way through the “Old Hundredth” and then dealt most cursorily indeed with the more obscure “God moves in a mysterious way.”  Probably because the concert was already going to be overlength,

The cantata was OK though it didn’t quite live up to my expectations or recollections.  Perhaps the venue is too big.  The role of St Nicolas must be a rather thankless one, and it is certainly taxing.  Andrew Goodwin had a bit of a 78rpm wobble.  He has such a reputation and seems to have a successful career but I can’t quite see the basis for the general acclaim.

The cantata depicts the saints early life (Goodwin’s “God be glorified” a bit underwhelming here), then there is a sea journey with attendant miracle, and his crowning as bishop - after which we sang “All creatures that on earth.” There is a wonderful “Alleluia” when some pickled boys (it’s BB, remember) come back to life. Towards the end there is a “moving right along” chorus narrating a series of miracles and picturesque events.  My favourite is that “rising with the wrath of God” he “boxed Arias’s ear.” That’s Arias of the Arian heresy, by the way, and apparently it happened at the Council of Nicea in 325.  Then St N meditates on the meaning and end of life and goes to meet his maker.

That’s when you get “God moves.”  It’s a wonderful hymn, more Poetic than the hundredth psalm.  In St Nicolas, the point is that it starts quietly (those mysterious ways, especially death, rather on my mind as I had gone to two funerals in the week prior) and then builds up to the big finish.  That didn’t quite work out as it should have because everybody was too enthusiastic to join in and so it started too loud.  Brett forgot to tell everyone what “mp” meant on our music sheets, and the choir didn’t pay too much attention either.  Not that I suppose I can complain about them, given that they were volunteers.

Unnoticed notes

More for my own later benefit than anybody else’s, in between (still) the endless claims of looking for a suitable residence I have been to:

1. SSO – 7 Sep – This had a quiet half and a loud half.  First, Debussy, Prelude d’apres midi etc; Takemitsu, From me flows what you call time (for percussion soloists and orchestra, written for the centenary of the Carnegie Hall) and Copland 3.  I like the quiet the most and had I been able to I would have loved to hear the Takemitsu again.  So many gorgeous sounds, and the music also compelling.  The Copland was enjoyable despite some really scrappy fiddling in the Hoe-down rewrite (forgive me but I find hard to think of the symphony other than a a bigger version of Appalachian Spring).  Liked Robert Spano (conductor).
2. 18 Sep – OA dress rehearsal of Madama Butterfly - my old friend and former student Db’s mother doesn’t subscribe to the opera but she is a friend and picks up dress rehearsals and the odd rush ticket.  She couldn’t go to this so I got to go.  Probably the 6th or 7th time I’ve seen this (I still have an old American Express card with Cheryl in the title role) but first time from upstairs.  Japanese visiting soprano good as Cio-cio san and probably even better if closer for the acting bit; James Egglestone not yet really up to the mark as Pinkerton though at least he was credible when he took his shirt off; Michael Lewis having difficulties with some of the top notes of Sharpless and subsequently indisposed for the first night.  Dress rehearsals far from ideal way to see opera (all those people with desks and lights in the stalls and extremely chatty types in the lighting box behind us in the circle) but hey it was free and it was good to catch up with Db.
3. 21 Sep – SSO, Angela Hewitt, Mozart concerto 20 – not really brooding or romantic enough for me; preceded by Dutilleux Mystère de l’instant - tribute to Bartok (string orchestra, percussion and, instead of celeste, cymbalon) which was fascinating and the highlight (for me); followed by Beethoven 4.  Hannu Lintu conducted. I never really got into the groove of the Beethoven, in part because I allowed myself to be distracted by a bunch of Chinese nationals behind me who couldn’t sit still and had jackets and possibly other items of clothing made of incredibly noisy fabric.
4. 22 Sep – Australia Ensemble, with D and my old friend Ub on tickets usually used by my friend P.  Sculthorpe and Beamish on wind and water combinations (clarinet and piano and flute, oboe and harp respectively), then Beethoven Clarinet Trio.  It was a bit hard to relax in the Beamish because I was right in the line of sight of the harpist looking over her glasses at the music and concentrating rather fiercely.  This made me wonder if, rather in the way that people grow to look like their pets, harpists are possibly rather highly strung: it must be difficult to relax when the sound is all attack and you are endlessly plucking in the way that you must on the concert harp.  Schubert’s Death and the Maiden in the second half was pretty intense in a very satisfying way, especially in the second movement (based on the song).  Ub came away from the concert a convert to sitting up close – she had been to the AE once before but was either too tired or too far away and found it all too much.  I suspect on that occasion, given that I don’t remember running into her there, she may have slipped away at interval, and so missed the Schumann Quintet.
5. 24 Sep – SSO without the orchestra – Angela Hewitt on her own doing the Goldberg variations drew a full house.  In her program notes she discounted the old Forkel story about Keyserling having the music played to help him get to sleep.  Musicologists discount it because the published work lacks a dedication.  My own experience on this occasion backs them up for a different reason: I found it almost impossible to banish bits of it from my brain in favour of sleep afterwards (a common sign for me of a work making an impact is how it works me up).  Towards dawn and after a quarter of a sleeping pill, the general G-majorishness became oddly merged with the Sarabande from the G Major French Suite.  Then again, maybe things would be different once familiarity and domestic repetition bred content.

As I was saying

Don Aitkin, former V-C of Canberra University, also went to Opera Australia’s (or the Lincoln Center’s) production of  South Pacific recently.

As he said in his blog, riffing off the elsewhere-reported comment of a woman patron that “Surely this isn’t opera!”:

I too was a bit puzzled at the Australian Opera’s staging this Lincoln Center production. Did it need some quick coin? Is it trying to attract a new audience? Either would be an acceptable response, because the first rule of opera companies is ‘Survive!’

He judged the show “a great night out.”

And from the moment we emerged, cheerful, humming, holding hands, like so many other opera-going pairs, I’ve been thinking about where ‘opera’ starts and finishes.

What differentiated opera from other musical forms, and did the distinction matter? Professor Aitkin rather thought not. After all, Mozart originally wrote the part of Papageno in The Magic Flute for an actor who could sing a bit, and Rossini’s Barber of Seville and La Cenerentola are light-hearted pieces with little pretence to profundity.

Does anything in particular distinguish them from the best of what appears on Broadway? I can’t think of what it might be. What distinguishes them from the best of Gilbert and Sullivan? What, if anything distinguishes the best of G&S from Jacques Offenbach? Where does The Phantom of the Opera sit? And so on. I think these distinctions are artificial.

“All in all,” he concluded, “I don’t think there is much difference in the works themselves.”

This perturbed me. I have commented there but I will reproduce that comment here, which answers a bit more of the argument of the post but tries to address specifically this question of whether there is any difference between opera and musical theatre. Italics Aitkin; Roman, me.

Rossini’s La Cenenterola, the story of Cinderella, was another immensely popular fairy-story opera. Rossini’s Barber of Seville isn’t a fairy-story opera, but is a comic opera of the highest quality. Does anything in particular distinguish them from the best of what appears on Broadway? I can’t think of what it might be.

I can. La C and B of S require a classical orchestra and singers capable of the singing. Cinderella, moreover, is an archetypal fairy-tale plot. Do not underestimate the music of Rossini – he is a standout composer in this style. In Berlioz’s Les soirées de l’orchestre, set in the 1840s opera pit and ostensibly made up of conversations between the orchestral musicians (only the bass drum player never relaxes into conversation, which is an early equivalent of a viola joke), performances of Rossini pass without any conversation, because of the quality of the work.

The best of what appears on broadway is a commercial venture designed for long runs, aimed generally quite determinedly towards the middle brow (not simply in terms of plot but also the music) for that purpose; nowadays performed by actors/singers/dancers with microphones. It only requires a small orchestra. There is less music than in an opera because of the spoken parts. It does not need the resources of an opera company to put it on: witness that “South Pacific” is being mounted elsewhere than in Sydney by the Gordon Frost organisation.

What distinguishes them from the best of Gilbert and Sullivan?

In Gilbert & Sullivan, the vocal parts are relatively undemanding and the orchestration undemanding; they are not through composed and there is a lot of pretty dated dialogue; the music is tuneful but simple.

What, if anything distinguishes the best of G&S from Jacques Offenbach?

Assume you are not talking about “Tales of Hoffman” which is obviously different. Put broadly: the English Channel and about 20 years; inferior music (that is: even the best of G&S is inferior to Offenbach) and higher vocal accomplishment (in the Offenbach). Otherwise, perhaps not so much as in general the objects of Offenbachian satire are as obscure today as those of WS Gilbert’s, though generally we get less dialogue in Offenbach here.

Where does The Phantom of the Opera sit?

Nine miles from Gundagai. Or rather, on the coat-tails of Opera and on the way to the bank for Lloyd-Webber as copyright owner but obviously part of musical theatre. Actually, I don’t know why you ask that question at all.

I think these distinctions are artificial.

I disagree. They are distinctions principally about the resources which are necessary for a company to perform them. An opera company needs classically trained singers, soloists and chorus, able to sing without microphones. The fact that one singer in Magic Flute need not be (if he is in so small a theatre as that where Mozart initially conducted the work) does not detract from this. Unless they have multiple casts of soloists, they need to do their works in repertoire because the soloists cannot repeat the work every night. That of course is what makes things expensive as then sets need to be struck. The existence of a company helps sustain the art form because of the continuity of work and hence opportunity to develop levels of attainment that this entails.

Musical theatre/comedy does not require these things. Musicals are not something that only an opera company can put on and indeed opera companies are not necessarily suited to putting musicals on: as with SP, they probably need to hire a different chorus for a start because of the singing and dancing requirements and will generally not be able to draw on their regular roster of principals. which leaves them with the fixed cost of their chorus to deal with when the musical is running – perhaps OA was hoping to slot in 2013′s Brisbane run during SP‘s 2013 return period because the chorus would hardly need all that time to get ready for Götterdämmerung.

Whilst there are some silly operas and some straight-out funny operas (as you have mentioned – though Magic Flute is an exception in the repertoire which probably wouldn’t be there but for Mozart’s music, even such of it which was not cut from the latest OA production-lite), when they get dramatic they dig a very great deal more deeply than you can possibly say South Pacific does. SP is a great night’s entertainment (from which I too emerged in a glowingly good mood) for which you have to make a thousand excuses once you start to think about it. It really is hardly dramatic at all beyond some spectacle and comedy and its tunefulness. Those excuses or exonerations which are offered (oh, it’s so sound about racism for 1949) are pretty lame really.

I realise that’s getting towards a high-culture/middlebrow culture argument, which a comment here is hardly the place to embark upon. That’s why I’ve tried to concentrate on just the logistic and more straightforward aesthetic distinctions.

So I can’t join your enthusiasm in welcoming the prospect of annual two-month seasons of “musical comedy” by Opera Australia into the indefinite future. Maybe it has to be done (though I’d even prefer more wall-to-wall Puccini if that is what it takes or if that were possible on top of what we get already) but it’s a big pity that things must be so, if that is in fact the case.

-This last paragraph was a response to Professor Aitkin’s own final paragraph which was as follows:

So, let us look forward to the Australian Opera’s staging more revivals of the great musical comedies. It has put on, and very successfully too, some great G&S. If it makes a decent profit, even better! The 2012 South Pacific season comes to an end in a few days, but there will be two solid months of it in September and October next year — nothing else will be on offer.

The last sentence suggests the enthusiasm I attribute to him might more accurately be described as “modified rapture.” (That’s a G&S allusion, in case you missed that.)

CWG

That’s a little joke between D and me. It stands for “Concert was good,” which is what I usually say just after I have come in the door from a concert. (D comes to the opera but mostly not to concerts.) It’s part of our private (now less so, I guess, though not by much) vocabulary of acronyms, along with, for example, GST (MSG), MSG (GST), WG (“what gear?” dating from when we had a manual car and D exhibited reluctance to change down when taking corners), KD (keep distance: another plea by me from the passenger seat) and WB (old internet talk for “welcome back” in the days of IRC).

Actually there’s also SFU (STFU)as a response to things like WG and KD, but that is hardly special to us.

Tonight with some of the Dulwich Hill gang to the SSO to hear the same program I heard on Friday night.

I enjoyed it much more. Why?

One hypothesis: it was a Saturday and not squeezed in at the end of a working day.

Another hypothesis: I didn’t go with Dx, my hypercritical professional musician friend returning to the SOH after a long absence and a musical life in Europe.

A third hypothesis: I sat in the rear of the stalls rather than the front of the circle.

A fourth hypothesis: the orchestra played differently.

A fifth hypothesis: I was hearing the program for a second time.

These hypotheses are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I put the biggest weight on 3 and 5.

As to 1 and 2, I’m reminded of the legal realist aphorism that a decision depends on what the judge had for breakfast. It’s one reason why I’m glad I’m not a critic.

As to 4, my fellow Dulwich Hill gangsters expressed the view that the orchestra’s playing of a specific program doesn’t vary very much. Given what I’ve said about 1 and 2, that’s a hard thing to be sure of though in an overall way it is probably largely true. It is only incidental, but the masking tape had been removed from the panels closest to the circle since last night, so some things at least had changed.

As to 3, the sound of the orchestra was definitely superior in the rear stalls. The woodwind perhaps didn’t carry so well as they do to the circle, but the string sound certainly was much warmer and could balance the brass. The brass didn’t stick out in the way it did when I was upstairs.

5 mostly affected my response to the Carl Vine concerto. I knew where he was going and I could respond to it more familiarly. It’s no coincidence that many famous works have received a lukewarm reception at their first performance. I wouldn’t go so far yet as to predict fame for this particular work. Returning to (3), the piano sound in the stalls was definitely better. In particular I enjoyed the last third or so of the first movement and the whole of the middle movement, though the pianistic writing still struck me as not being particularly interesting. My fellow gangsters enjoyed it, though when I pressed them they didn’t go so far as to declare they would make a special effort to hear it again. It is an effective work.

I still would have liked to have heard all of Images (ie, Iberia as well). I really enjoyed the Brahms.

Reading between the lines

The home hunt and preparatory purging of possessions continue.

Meanwhile, on Monday to hear Piers Lane in the SSO’s piano recital series at Angel Place.

The program was:

Debussy: Arabesques 1,2; Gardens in the Rain (Estampes); Reflections in the water (Images) L’Isle Joyeux

Bartok: Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs Op 20

Liszt – Venezia and Napoli from Years of Pilgrimage (supplement to Year II: Italy)

Interval

Chopin the 17 “authentic” Waltzes in order of composition

Piers Lane likes to chat.  He came up to a microphone at the front of the stage between each bracket.  In the first half the volume was set too loud and he was plagued by feed-back as he spoke.  Is there a stage manager?  Shouldn’t some technician immediately adjust this?  It shouldn’t be up to the artist, who has a lot on his mind, to dash off stage between brackets and ask for this to be attended to.  Angel Place is not a cheap hall to hire and the SSO, for that matter, is not an amateur concert manager.  Whoever’s responsibility it is, this was an extremely unsatisfactory and quite unprofessional situation. 

In addition, I suspect because of the level the volume was turned up to, there was a distinct and unacceptable ambient hiss emanating from the PA system.  It deprived the room of a proper silence into which the music could resonate in the spirit of object falling into water which is supposed to set of the ripples inspiring Debussy’s Reflections.

The risk of this occurring is just precisely one of the reasons why I am not keen on concert talking.  The thing I particularly cannot understand is why in this post-valve era, speaker systems cannot just be turned off – even at the price of a momentary pop or click.  But no, they and their operators seem to be like diesel engines and their drivers, and cannot bear interruption.

Mercifully, in the second half the hiss abated (though not totally) and the feedback was cured.  It was such a relief and made a world of difference.  I’m guessing it was as simple a matter as turning the volume down but I don’t pretend to know if that was the case – that’s what I expect the people running the concert to know.

The program notes told us that the original first half offered by PL was a later Schubert sonata.  This was ruled out by the SSO because it had been heard in the series too recently.  If that was the true reason, I think this underestimates the preparedness of the audience to hear varied interpretations.  For myself I would have preferred a single work to balance the small works (albeit all of a kind) which the Waltzes comprised as the second half. 

I thought the best playing in the first half was in the Bartok, but it may just be because that is the piece I know and like least.  I’ll return to the Debussy later.

Lane divided the Waltzes into brackets of 6, 6 and 5.  This meant three chatty introductions.  These were quite interesting even if (to labour the point) for me they interrupted the spell.  However, Lane was not always a reliable informant.  He drew a parallel between Opus 18 (often entitled Grand Waltz Brilliante) and Weber’s “Introduction to the Dance” which is fair enough, and added that it was in the same key as the Weber.  The Chopin is in E flat major; last time I looked the Weber is in D flat major. They do share an introduction on the dominant – maybe that’s what he was thinking of.

Lane’s Chopin probably wasn’t playing which would have pleased Chopin purists – he is a bit short on aristocratic restraint, but for me it was at a level of polish way above pretty much all of the first half, and I don’t think it was the relief from the hiss which accounted for this. I enjoyed it. For an encore, he played a waltz by Dohnyani, which suited his natural exuberance and provided probably the most brilliant playing of the evening.

But back to the Debussy. Writing in the Herald about this recital, Peter McCallum had this to say:

“Lane’s finger work was fluid. He tended to avoid the exploration of very soft textures.”

Soft textures are a pretty big thing in Debussy. That’s really a polite way of saying his Debussy was too loud. At least, that’s what I thought. Mind you, such nuances seem to have been entirely been missed by the subeditor responsible for the headline to the review, which is: “Master’s nimble reading breathes life into Debussy.”

On Friday to hear the SSO, this time with Lane as soloist and Hugh Wolff conducting.

For a change, I sat in the circle, in rather splendid front row seats. I went with Dx, who lives in Europe and hadn’t been to the SOH for 4 or so years. The present state of the interior of the SOH struck him as very “tired,” and even allowing for the temporary nature of the current acoustic experiments, particularly daggy. “What’s with the masking tape across the panels closest to the circle?” he asked. He has a point. More specifically, he decried the utterly unsatisfactory piano sound. His diagnosis: there are no overtones; all percussion sounds are harsh with a bit of rebound (which includes the piano) and the piano itself always struggles to be heard over the orchestra. This necessarily constrains what a pianist can do when playing with the orchestra.

The program was:

Debussy Images, 1 and 2 (why not also 3?)
Vine – Piano Concerto No 2 (premiere)
Brahms – Symphony No 2

I’m going again tonight in my usual seat so I’ll give an acoustic second opinion after that. Suffice to say that the Vine did not strike me as particularly interesting writing for the piano – there was rather a lot of alternating hand work (that is, offset chords or octaves between the hands which are analogous to broken octaves) rather than figuration or interesting textures. It seemed copy-book/pattern-book stuff.

Peter McCallum said:

Carl Vine’s Piano Concerto No.2, receiving its first performance from Piers Lane, moved, like several of his works, from veiled shadows to bright light. Vine’s mould with concertos is familiar and successful with audiences. The first movement started with close-textured pianistic arabesques over lugubrious lower chords, moving to more sharply rhythmic straightforward music for the main section.

In the second, after some raw opening brass chords, Lane played dreamy arpeggios against a heavy, somewhat bovine tuba melody with a fleet central section on pizzicato strings and upper woodwind. The last movement reconceived some of the first movement’s ideas in broad daylight.

Lane’s professionalism communicated the work’s gestures with clarity and power.

In the letters column of the SMH, Peter Fyfe of Erskineville has complained:

Several paragraphs on the familiar work of a dead European, but only a couple on the stunning world premiere of an exciting new Australian piano concerto that was barely mentioned in the advertisements (”Wolff feasts on delicacy as intricate interpretation shows off its true colour”, August 24).

It is as if the Herald reviewer and the Sydney Symphony marketing department are conspiring to kill off Australian music. Shame.

Well, McCallum isn’t responsible for the orchestra’s publicity, but I think Mr Fyfe has failed to read between the lines. My gloss: Vine’s concerto made its appeal to the audience in ways that were fairly predictable and not terribly interesting and Lane gave it the performance it deserved.

I enjoyed it all, of course – why wouldn’t I? If I were a critic, I’d suggest that the brass in the Brahms was a little too – ah, how shall I say? – forthright and the whole effect was a bit on the Bismarckian Triumphlied side of Brahms for my taste.

Maybe I’ll feel differently after tonight’s second hearing.

[Postscipt: I did, up to a point.]