Some familiar, some unfamiliar: Music review by Fraser Beath McEwing
They were presented in equal quantities at last night’s concert.
Alexander Gavrylyuk
On the familiar side, we heard Prokofiev and Grieg while the unfamiliar belonged to Rautavaara and Cheetham. We were also treated to highly acclaimed piano soloist, Alexander Gavrylyuk, now an Australian citizen but Ukrainian born, playing a concerto written by a much-loved Russian, demonstrating, perhaps, that music knows no borders.
The more Australian composers I hear in the Fifty Fanfares Commission the more I look forward to the next one. I dip my lid to whoever thought of the idea. The one we heard last night could hardly have been more Australian. Deborah Cheetham was one of the ‘stolen generation’ and has become a decorated opera singer, composer and educator. In 2014, she was awarded the Order of Australia [AO] for “distinguished service to the performing arts as an opera singer, composer and artistic director, to the development of Indigenous artists, and to innovation in performance”. She is currently a professor of music at Monash University in Victoria. Her composition for the Commission was titled Ghost Light.
This revealed itself as the work of a mature, sure-footed composer, able to draw on the resources of a fully stocked orchestra (eight bull fiddles) to produce an instantly
appealing tone poem that could have passed as a movement from a symphony. It has gone into first place in my unofficial Fifty Fanfares compose-off.
After a late switch by Alexander Gavrylyuk, we were treated to Prokofiev’s Piano concerto No.1 in D-flat major instead of the Rachmaninov second. I heard Gavrylyuk play and record this Prokofiev concerto with Ashkenazy conducting the SSO in 2009. He was a rising star pianist then but now is regarded as being among the world’s best. Notwithstanding my memory being eroded by time, I was eager to compare the two versions, separated by13 years.
In a word, Gavrylyuk’s performance last night was simply stunning. He owned the Prokofiev from the fist octave hammer blows that announced his towering technique. But this was more than the feats of a remarkable keyboard athlete. There were noticeable refinements in the delivery and an interpretive assurance that placed this performance in a class of its own.
The Peer Gynt play for which Grieg wrote 90 minutes of incidental music began as a poem, but attracted so much literary criticism that author Henrik Ibsen, in a fit of pique, turned it into a play with 40 scenes – which made it very difficult to stage. It worked much better when both film and stagecraft had developed sufficiently to take it on. Nevertheless, it was served up as a play in 1876, with Grieg’s descriptive music accompanying it, and was a resounding success. Suite No.1 Op. 46, drawn from the score, has become so familiar to today’s audiences that hearing it almost feels like putting on a pair of favourite slippers.
The SSO produced a rewarding Peer Gynt, with great depth of feeling in The Death of Ase. Anitra’s Dance was sharp and playful while the Hall of the Mountain King finished in a shower of commendable craziness. However, Morning Mood seemed in a rush to get to midday and lost some of its charm as it sped past.
Fraser Beath McEwing
I’d venture to say that not many members of SSO audiences would be familiar with Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, (1928 – 2016) making an Australian performance of his Symphony No. 7 akin to a premier. Composers as contemporary as this can often pose challenges to audiences when they become assaulting and unworldly, but Rautavaara’s 7th Symphony was relatively digestible – as long you allowed for sometimes confronting orchestral colouring. The symphony was like a gallery of abstract art converted into sound. As such, every listener will experience it differently. It calls for a big orchestra with beefing up in the percussion with a glockenspiel, xylophone, marimba and vibraphone.
Although I haven’t seen the score, I would judge this to be a difficult work to conduct, being full of elongated phrases with many interjections, along with cross currents of sound that take the listener on an emotional, often perplexing journey. In some ways, this is film music without film. All credit to conductor Benjamin Northey for keeping it under control and allowing its harmonic richness to flow. The final movement’s big climax fades to a point that seems beyond silence.
I liked the way Northey conducted the SSO at his last appearance on April 22, 2021 and nothing has changed. It is heartening to see a boy from Ballarat make it to the top in classical conducting. Northey has earned his stripes as chief conductor of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra in New Zealand and he recently became the principal conductor in residence of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Before emerging as a conductor, Northey did stints as a pit accompanist, composer, arranger and recording session musician.
Footnote
It’s goodbye, with thanks, to the Sydney Town Hall for SSO concerts. My next review will come from the Sydney Opera House concert hall which has been refurbished and improved acoustically.
SSO Sydney Town Hall concert 1 June 2022
