At the Adelaide Festival with Alan Slade
Most Jewish Australians will have heard of William Cooper (1860? – 1941), the Aboriginal political activist who, in 1938, led a delegation of the Australian Aboriginal League to the German Consulate in Melbourne to deliver a petition condemning the “cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi government of Germany”.
It was refused by the German Consul and finally accepted by the Consulate in 2020.
In honour of this astonishing act by the leader of an oppressed nation, four Australian music luminaries collaborated to produce the “Ngapa William Cooper” concert piece, which had its world premiere at the Adelaide Festival.
William Cooper
The performance on March 7 was held in a packed Adelaide Town Hall in the presence of the composer.
As a prelude to “Ngapa William Cooper”, the Australian String Quartet, established in Adelaide in 1984, played Bryce Dressner’s Aheym (Homeland) and Phillip Glass’ String Quartet #3.
The ASQ, Dale Barltrop (violin), Francesca Hiew (violin), Christopher Cartlidge (viola) and Michael Dahlenburg (cello), play on a matched set of string instruments handcrafted by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, the earliest being the cello (c. 1743), with violins (1748 and 1784) and viola (1783), on loan from Ulrike Klein’s Ukaria Cultural Centre.
Aheym was an energetic repetitive piece, described by the composer thus: “Aheym means ‘homeward’ in Yiddish, and this piece is written as a musical evocation of the idea of flight and passage. As little boys, my brother and I spent hours with my grandmother, asking her about how she came to America. (My father’s family were Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia). She could only give us a smattering of details, but they all found their way into our collective imagination, eventually becoming a part of our own cultural identity and connection to the past. Aheym is dedicated to my grandmother, Sarah Dessner.”
Phillip Glass’s string quartet #3 dates from 1985 and is based on his score for the film “Mishima”. The quartet is in six movements: 1957-Award Montage, November 25-Ichigaya, 1934-Grandmother and Kimitake, 1962-Body Building, Blood Oath and Mishima/Closing.
It was another impressive performance, ranging from energetic sectors with the melody tossed between the instruments to the restful finale. During interval, the podium was rearranged to accommodate a huge percussion assembly (skillfully and impressively negotiated by Rebecca Lagos (Principal percussionist of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra), internationally acclaimed pianist Andrea Lam on the Steinway grand, the ASQ plus double bass, played by Kees Boersma (also Principal with the SSO), Lior, Israeli-born Australian singer/songwriter and Dr Lou Bennett, Yorta Yorta musician, actor and academic researching Aboriginal languages and their retrieval.
Ngapa William Cooper was collaboratively written by Lior, Lou Bennett and Sarah Gory, with music composed by Nigel Westlake. Lior and Westlake had previously cooperated to create “Compassion”.
The seven-part composition and explanatory notes are comprehensively covered in the downloadable program at:
The performance was an emotional, moving experience difficult to verbalise. Lior and Lou Bennett blended perfectly with the complex musical accompaniment, enhanced with clever and effective lighting variations from stark spotlights to red and green floodlights.
Most, if not every, audience member described it as breathtaking and extraordinary. The blending of the First Nation and English words with the music was perfect. The percussion score must have extended Ms Lagos’ skills to the limit, with her having to dash from the xylophone on one side to the tympani and drum kit on the other, with cymbals, gongs and other rarely seem instruments in between. Some of the percussion scores even called for rustle of gum leaves, in which Lou Bennett joined.
The ensemble managed to create a sound of which a full symphony orchestra would be proud. The audience showed its appreciation with thunderous applause and a standing ovation, heightened as Nigel Westlake joined the performers on stage. If you get an opportunity to see this unique, outstanding collaboration, leap at it.
