All is well

I ran into some fellow classical players and one had just started going to CSO concerts because she was approaching 35 and that's the cutoff age for cheaper tickets and another had played in Canberra for yonks and this was his first concert.  We'd been subscribers but missed gigs too often to maintain a subscription and then had got too busy.  But I was glad we got back for this one.  The music was Charles Ives Unanswered question, Elena Kats-Chernin Night and now, a flute concerto with Sally Walker, and Tchaikovsky Symphony 6.  Observations?  We were up the back so interesting to observe the lone trumpeter injecting into Ives, as an alternative voice.  Jessica Cottis had argued this was about a staid life and the alternative.  Then Elena K-C in 3 movements.  I found the first movement pretty steady and repeating, but it enlivened for the second and third movements, even if the flute could be lost amongst the great hubble-bubble.  Then the Tchaikovsky.  Apparently Tchaiks considered it his best work.  I was his last - he died ~8 days after the first performance.  It starts quietly, then a 5/4 waltz and a march and the quieter final movement.  I can't hear Tchaiks without marvelling at his ability to create glorious melody from the simple lines, then meld and mould it.  And the CSO did a great job, nice phrasing and movement and section play, and huge dynamics.  We were in the last row upstairs and i measured volume around 88Db down to a whisper.  And Jessica Cottis virtually dances on the conductor's podium.  Interestingly, the orchestra seemed to be well off her indications, but consistently so, so it all held together, so good.  They were recording, so many mics around the stage.  We left in some elation, and not just Megan and I, but also muso friends we saw afterwards..  Plenty of smiles so all good.  Very glad we went.

Jessica Cottis (conductor) led the Canberra Symphony Orchestra at Llewellyn Hall playing Ives, Kat-Chernin and Tchaikovsky with soloist Sally Walker (flute).

PS.  The following day I had lunch with Elena Kats-Chernin and it was a very pleasant outing.  We talked of music, of course, but not just.  Meeting musicians outside the concert hall gives you a chance to talk of other things.  It's a key pleasure when we host CIMF visitors.  We talked of family, home, history,  music and musicians and previous night's concert (the encore was Eliza's aria from Wild Swans), touched on politics, national and otherwise.  Perhaps more.   Such an interesting, wide ranging discussion and a pleasant interlude.  Elena, lovely to chat.

Astoroids and Flash Gordon

I can actually spell asteroids and the link to Flash G is tenuous but it amused me. This was the first concert of another season of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra. It’s our local orchestra, part-time, and they do a great job. They are also well liked in the community. I think I read the CSO is the only orchestra in Australia that has sellout seasons, and that’s with very little government sponsorship. CSO is not funded like a capital-city, ex-ABC orchestra, but it survives and I hope it thrives. That said, I was not enamoured by the program but enjoyed it none-the-less. First, Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain in the most common orchestration by Rimsky-Korsakov. Modest is an appeaaling name. So was the music, bold and mystical, threatening, dramatic and lots of fun. Then Mozart’s Violin Concerto no.5 performed by soloist Barbara Jane Gilby. She’s well known to Canberra audiences as the normal concertmaster for the CSO. Mozart is always perfect and this is a well known piece. I was amused by the weight of the horns and especially tuba which was so obvious when they passed the playing to the strings, relatively quiet as they were. It’s a piece that Barbara has played through her musical life, and she made her own take. Barbara encored with Massenet’s Meditations, all soppy, romantic, attractive and presumably the theme music for reams of period TV shows, and impossible to dislike. My favourite piece of the night followed the interval. It was Re-collecting Astoroids by Elena Kats-Chernin. The pun on the title is a reference to Astor as in Piazzolla as well as Elena’s approach to writing a piece dedicated to Piazzolla, collecting and recollecting but not quoting. This was a work in five movements. I thought I’d recognised several then I read the second movement quotes her own Peggy’s Rag. It’s not complex music, but the melodies are lovely and insinuating and I think it’s the orchestral colours that really attract me. I just find this more relevant to our times than the rural idyll although romantic themes of threat and danger may suit popular TV series. Then, to finish, the big show for the night. This was Liszt’s Preludes. Brassy, majestic, regal moving to romantic and trills and country idyll then film chases and action movies. Not his fault, of course, but Megan tells me this was used as the theme for the early Flash Gordon circa 1950s (?). I found it more interesting musically than Elena’s tune, more complex intersecting lines and counterpoint weaving through melodies, but sounding imperial European, so dated, to my ears. But, again, lots of fun, and we left laughing easily over the Flash Gordon connection. Congrats again to the CSO. It was an amusing concert and well received and well played. Much enjoyed.

The Canberra Symphony Orchestra performed Mussorgsky Night on Bald Mountain, Mozart Violin Concerto no.5, Kats-Chernin Re-collecting Astoroids and Liszt Les Preludes. Tom Woods (conductor) conducted and Barbara Jane Gilby (violin) soloed in the Mozart.

Eight seasons

I jest. It’s really just four seasons each from two composers. The seasons were the premiere of Elena Kats-Chernin’s Four [Australian] Seasons and Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires and the performances were in the Great Hall at Parliament House for the Canberra International Music Festival.

Kats-Chernin is a bourgeois favourite these days, given her comparative fame as the composer of the theme music for ABC RN’s Late Night Live. She deserves it. Her music is tuneful and very accessible and often memorable. Don Aitken commented that recent “classical” music has been written for the audience whereas a few decades ago it was written for fellow composers. Not sure of the truth of this one, but lots of straight music and music making is more accessible now, with conductors speaking from the podium and more movement and sexier images (viz. ACO) and more lyrical compositions. K-C’s seasons start with Spring and cover an Australian year with lazy, hot summers and the like. Spring felt right to me. I counted them off. I’m not sure I would have otherwise picked the remaining seasons, but the music was quite beautiful none-the-less. And I loved the piercing clarity of Anna McMichael’s solo violin. The work was a commission of Canberra author Barbara Blackman and was performed by Anna McMichael (violin), Elena Kats-Chernin (piano, composition) with the Canberra Festival Camerata under John Harding (director).

The other four seasons were from Buenos Aires and Astor Piazzolla. I’d heard the theme in his operetta Maria de Buenos Aires. I enjoy Piazzolla’s energy and attractive tunes and iconoclasm and I particularly liked his operetta for its odd but intriguing storyline and view of a city. But I find his music is pretty samey. A friend is a listener to AP and said after the performance that Piazzolla reuses his themes. Maybe it’s the nature of the bandoneon which was his instrument. But you have to love the vibrancy and passion of the tango and especially AP’s un-danceable version of it. It is truly a buzz. Again this was a work featuring a violin, although here it was interacting more individually, conversationally with other strings, especially viola and cello, and they had equally passionate, if shorter, segments. And was this passionate! Lara St. John stood to play (the musicians mostly did) and this was full body involvement: twists and bends, very unlike the concert hall, even unlike the jazz club. It was certainly a physical performance. But I liked her violin: all sorts of scrapes and effects, some lengthy unison pizzicato at one stage, big intervals, lots of slides, taps, the lot, and lovely, clearly ringing high notes, despite all the passionate performance. And were they harmonic slides on bass by Justin? Lots of passionate fury and very attractive melody, but again I didn’t catch the seasons. My AP-listening mate agreed these were more variations on a theme than identifiable seasons, and I think there were more than four musical segments. Whatever, this was vibrant and passionate and seemed to me to be epic and tragic at its heart. I don’t feel that way about the seasons, even the Canberra winter, but these are passionate people. Astor Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires was performed by Lara St. John (violin) with the Canberra Festival Camerata and John Harding (Director).

To the Moon and back again

The Canberra International Music Festival certainly is aiming high this year! I may jest, but they certainly are aiming to be a major festival, and what I’ve seen is impressive.

I’ve just attended the launch of the program for this year’s CIMF. It was a busy affair at Pialligo with plants all around and a crowd of classical enthusiasts. There were speeches by Don Aitken and Festival Director, Chris Latham (as well as nice wines, of course). The feature of the night was a presentation of sketches from a bigger work by Elena Kats-Chernin which will have its premiere at the National Museum during the festival. I say a sketch, because it’s to be played by goodly set of players, rather than just piano. Elena introduced the piece, discussed the various parts, and played one part and snippets from some others. It was a wonderfully intimate experience, which is perhaps enjoyed regularly by students, but not one most listeners get to experience. Much enjoyed. And it was surprising to me just how relevant and close this music was to the modern jazz that I mostly hear. There were some occasional chordal movements that were unexpected, but mostly they would have been at home in the music I know. Also, the interpretation was written as dots rather than improvised, but again, was not madly different from my jazz. I’d had this feeling with Marcela Fiorillo when she played Piazolla. Modern Western musics are increasingly intermingling, and also various world musics. This was just a confirmation to me. I found it very a satisfying piece and a very intimate and memorable experience.

BTW, CIMF has a few jazz events of note. One is a multimedia piece with film and jazz. It features an array of renowned Australian jazz players (Phil Slater, Matt McMahon, Carl Dewhurst, Simon Barker, Steve Elphick, Bill Risby) with several players who I think are from other fields (Timothy Constable, Michael Askill, Bob Scott, Chris Latham). The show is called “From the Earth to the Moon and back again”, and is a celebration of the International Year of Astronomy and the 40th anniversary of the Moon landings in 1969. A similar set of players also present the Sculthorpe Songbook, a show that reimagines Sculthorpe's music as jazz standards. There's also a History of Sound which features several of our local jazzers surveying the evolution of music for this year, Darwin's 200th anniversary.

Canberra International Music Festival

Elena Kats-Chernin on MySpace (listen)