Newness

This festival is diverging and that’s good. A festival is a place of concentration, of musicians, of instruments, perhaps of styles, and it’s this that’s interesting me. Also, it’s intense – in the case of festivals like this, two or three concerts a day. It’s musically tiring and here it has me becomign aware of the things I really respond to. To some degree, it also means tuning out from things I normally love and admire, but just doesn’t excite me quite like normal amongst the abundance. Arcadia Winds was a group that tuned me in. Five young players, lighthearted chatter, very informative introductions (like identifying the key features to listen to in each of Ligeti’s six bagatelles), an uncommon format (wind quintet) and some excellent playing. Arcadia Winds were Musica Viva’s inaugural FutureMakers ensemble which gave them recordings and tours and time. They are friends who date back before ANAM, but they formed there. This time, their flute was a sit-in flautist from ANAM, Eliza Shephard. You would hardly have known she was sitting in – great job done there. And being young, they read their new music (a century old now but not baroque/classical) from tablets with bluetooth page turners. So everything was new. It’s not a new audience, but they were feted by plenty of admirers. I was one. They played Ligetti, Bartok, Szervansky wind quintets which I suppose are common enough in this format but fascinating and harmonically and aurally challenging despite Euro-folk roots. And a new Australian work but Lachlan Skipworth, which appears to have been written with them in mind. Whatever, this was a harmonically and tonally fascinating outing with an energetic group on the way up. Excellent stuff.

Arcadia Winds performed Ligetti, Bartok, Szervansky and Skipworth at Neil St Uniting Church. Regular members David Reichelt (oboe), Lloyd van Hoff (clarinet), Rachel Shaw (horn) and Matthew Kneale (bassoon) were joined by replacement Eliza Shephard (flute) for the day.

Eva Evita

Evita is not an attractive character and the politics of it all and even the musical itself has me in a quandary. She's presented as a grasping, self-important, self-serving person who yet has a connection with her people. She's a woman and they often get the bad rap. She drives her President husband to support the workers (or perhaps to use them) against the richer classes and seems to nationalise British-owned industry but leave the country's finances and welfare in tatters and her Swiss bank account (but not in her name) swelling. There's some history research needed here, partly because I never trust dramatic recreations of historical events and partly because I struggled to hear lots of the text anyway. Just nice to see the Italians saw through her, but they had the experience of Mussolini. Evita was fabulously presented by a large cast (44 cast members appeared for the curtain call and that's without the band of ~20 and sound and lights and backstage and the rest). It's a mega-success for Andrew Lloyd Webber (music) and Tim Rice (lyrics). I don't remember any text that was not sung. The music was constant and pretty interesting. I felt a previous work by Lloyd Webber seemed to have just a few themes appearing repetitively. This was more varied if still something like leitmotiv with melodies matching characters or sometimes situations or themes. The big casts were well used for some graphic scenes, of mourning or cheering peasants or complaining plutocracy. There were some amusing military scenes, too: a musical chairs that Peron wins through a trivial ruse at the end and some marching toy soldier song scenes. Evita was strong in voice and personality and Peron was decently-voiced and believable but Che (Guevara?) was ever-present and very strong in role and voice. Given the continual music, this was a great workout for the band and singers. I noticed how much I enjoyed the big scenes of big casts which professional productions will probably not afford. Whatever, this was a great show and I can only stand in awe that an amateur group could present it. And it's just one of many in the Canberra musical theatre scene this year. Great work.

Evita was performed by Canberra Philharmonic at Erindale Theatre. Key cast were Kelly Roberts (Evita), Grant Pegg (Che) and Tony Falla (Perón) under Jim McMullen (director), Casey White (musical director) and Eliza Shephard and Shasha Chen (choreography).

Thanks to Wikicommons for the pic of Eva Peron