Tourism

There's a big push for local tourism with the waning of Covid in Australia but I'm not sure this can be called tourism.  Not sure it can even be called "on tour" because we just drove out for the day but it sounds cool.  Not that being on tour is such a comfy existence in the real world, but Musica da Camera's Sunday concert jaunt after each Saturday Cook concert is a pleasure.  And this was our 10th anniversary in Gunning; in the richly reverberant Shire Hall.  These out-of-town gigs are fun and, given it's a rehash of the program, they tends to be our best performances.  With Covid, the programs are shorter and we are doing two iterations in Canberra, so this was particularly satisfying as the third try.  Those missed repeats and poor counts and the like were fixed, and Rosemary took it slower and the works seemed to grow in intensity.  That surprised me.  So a pleasure it was.  The program was quite obscure, at least to me.  Rossini Viva Rossini was cute. Then Respighi Ancient arias and dances suite 3, the major ensemble work of the day, was somewhat odd and quite challenging.  Then Vivaldi Winter featuring a 15-yo violin powerhouse, a student of Rosemary, Fumiyo Yamamoto.  She also played the drastic dynamics of Sarasate Zigeunerweisen to finish up, with Alex Rowley Christmas suite for strings interspersed with its disguised carol quotes as a reminder that this unfortunate year of fires and hail and pandemics and Trump and more is coming to an end.  Good riddance.  But nice to do our little tour and to play with Fumiyo and just to neaten things up for this, the third and final iteration of this concert.  Until next year...

Musica da Camera performed Rossini, Reshigi, Vivaldi, Rowley and Sarasate under Rosemary Macphail (director) with soloist Fumiyo Yamamoto (violin) in two concerts at Cook and one in Gunning.

This is CJBlog post no. 2,300.

Discoveries

Our travelling circus reformed for the last of this year's concert weekends and again it was a great pleasure. And, I trust the audience considered it a musical success. This time, we featured visiting soloist Rowan Phemister on harp for a Handel concerto and a Debussy pair of dances. Yes, a varied pair, with the order of Handel and the C20th impressionism of Debussy. The Debussy was a pair of dances, Danse sacrée & Danse profane, so not obviously danceable in any contemporary sense. The other works were for the string orchestra, more Debussy and a Sibelius and one work that is another unusual find, perhaps not otherwise on the Net, that had one of our members converting the score in Sibelius from the hand-written part: Castrucci Concerto grosso op.3 no.4. Castrucci is largely unknown today, but Hogarth caricatured him and he studied with Corelli and played with Handel. He was a Roman violin virtuoso living in London. It surprises me that these discoveries remain, but they are not particularly rare given lots of hand-written music in store. The more obscure are in various libraries; ours was just a scanned handwritten score on IMSLP. So, another successful and satisfying Musica da Camera concert series, first up in Cook then reprised in Cooma for a small audience.

Musica da Camera performed Handel, Castrucci, Sibelius and Debussy in Cook and Cooma under under Rosemary Macphail (conductor) with soloist Rohan Phemister (harp).

A different experience

This was a concert by my string orchestra, Musica da Camera, and I was in the audience. It was a strange and lesser experience but inevitable. We went off to Europe, arriving back just the day before, so no time for preparation and Roger replaced sat in. The program was of "favourites", a term that has been used before for concerts led by a member. Not that the tunes are insignificant. This program included concerti by Vivaldi and Corelli and various shorter works by Elgar, Massenet, Sibelius, Delibes, Dvorak, Monti and Strauss. There were some serious faves here, though, with visiting young student Chantelle Bennett soloing on Massenet Mediation from Thais, a tune which is ridiculously well known, and everyone sitting in (read, clapping) for Strauss Radetsky March. It's interesting to see how involving is some activity, in this case, clapping along. The Strauss ended the program and had everyone livid with joy by the end. Obviously, it's another that everyone knows and it's an earworm. Elgar Salut d'amour was like that, too, although made no call for audience participation. This is a great little string orchestra and no less this day. There were a string of soloists (the Vivaldi concert was for four violins) and even an arrangement by leader Gillian. Some great, popular, memorable music and some committed playing, not least by Rosemary who sweated through a series of solos and features in the concert master's chair (standing). So, much enjoyed although I must admit I would have preferred to be playing.

Musica da Camera performed a concert of string orchestra favourites at Cook. Gillian Bailey-Graham (conductor) led the group with a string of soloists including Rosemary Macphail, Jocelyn James, John Dobson, Heng Lin Yeap and Chantelle Bennett (violins). Roger Grime (bass) sat in at the low end.

Mannheim comes to Goulburn

Someone asked me recently if any of my bands toured. Only Musica da Camera, which pairs Canberra concerts on a Saturday with Sunday concerts in a local town. This weekend we played the music of Mannheim, ie, early classical, under Christian Renggli and with viola soloist Justin Julian in Cook then in Goulburn's Catholic Cathedral with its presence and acoustics and it was especially satisfying. It was a magical performance (excuse me if I say it myself). The dynamics just melded together, the pace was relaxed so those difficult passages didn't race away as they can do, the intonation was shared and sweet, the various parts became more evident and the whole just sat. A great pleasure and obviously what this art aims for, but which can be elusive. From the program, "the Mannheim School refers to both the orchestra techniques pioneered by the court orchestra of Mannheim in the latter half of the 18th century and the group of composers of the early classical period who composed for the orchestra". Thus we learnt of the Mannheim crescendo, the Mannheim rocket and roller and sigh and the Grand Pause. And for the second performance, especially, they took on real life. Christian had gathered the program: two sinfonias (Gmaj and Ebmaj) from father of the Mannheim School, Johann Stamitz, a viola concerto (Dmaj) and an orchestral quartet by his (real) son Carl Stamitz, and a sinfonia (Gmaj) by FX Richter and sinfonia (overtura, no.1) by Franz Ignaz Beck. Justin Julian of the AYO and Sydney Con and more played a compelling performance on the concerto as well as sitting in for the viola section in the second half. It just all settled to a level of expected comfort so the pps were seriously quiet so the audience sat forward and those long crescendos didn't run out of puff. We felt chuffed and I wasn't uncomfortable that we got a standing ovation. This time, I felt the playing deserved it. So, something to watch and listen on my recordings over Christmas, but plenty more performances to come, in various orchestras and with Tilt. This is fun.

Musica da Camera played J Stamitz, C Stamitz, Beck and Richter at Cook and reprised at Goulburn's St Peter & Paul Catholic Cathedral. Christian Renggli (conductor), Justin Julian (viola soloist) and Rosemary Macphail (concertmaster) featured.

Tourists

Musica da Camera was on tour over the weekend ... to Cooma. This was a one-off concert of favourites. Rosemary Mcphail led us in a historical meander: Bach Brandenburg concerto no.3, Mozart Eine kleine nachtmusik, Grieg Holberg suite, Holst St Paul's suite and a couple of Brahms Hungarian dances (no. 1 & 5). There was some devilishly quick runs, not least the sequences in Bach, but still not as quick as in rehearsal (Rosemary was being generous). The Holst quoted some cute English folk music not least Greensleeves. The Hungarian dances were a buzz and the Mozart was a joyous pleasure. But the Grieg was my favourite with a few featured bass notes and some cool double stops but very tricky counting on the gavotte. A pleasant and decent audience and a town with some very attractive period buildings. I noticed a string of deco frontages on the main street as I drove in but Cooma dates back (gazetted 1849) so it features several architectural eras, even modernism arriving with the Snowies Scheme. The town deserves better than first impressions of tacky snow-themed service stations. Next tour is in August to Gunning on Sunday 20 August but locals can hear it in Cook on the Saturday afternoon. Unless you yearn for the country drive. Thanks to all for a great little concert.

Musica da Camera was led by Rosemary Macphail and performed in Cooma.

MdC playing Bach Brandenburg concerto no.3 at Cooma >
mvt.1 / mvt.2,3