In front of the seats usually occupied by the choir (if there is one) hung the biggest screen yet to be seen in the Concert Hall, while on the darkened platform underneath sat the ACO and some special guests, namely Mark Atkins (didgeridoo) and Stephen Pigram (voice and guitar), as well as, for the Sydney concert only, Craig Johnston and Geoff Nicol.
The night opened with a non-amplified performance of a Tchaikovsky waltz to some extraneous footage, before the film started proper. Exploring the journey from pre-dawn to post-dusk, the cinematography was both beautiful and surprising, with the cameraman seemingly determined to go absolutely anywhere to get the right angle. There were the expected clips of the surging waves and the valiant surfers, while the muted grace that lay under the sea also was glimpsed. Perhaps most surprising was a section a little way into the movie, where the abandoned desert and townships were given the Blair Witch Project treatment – except, of course, with a much higher definition camera, though the eerie shaking still remained. This was accompanied by some music composed by Tognetti and Iain Grandage, filled with creepiness and discontent, while the scurrying of ants onscreen was heard offscreen with George Crumb’s Night of the Electric Insects.
Perhaps one of the most striking of the modern pieces of the night (for there were many traditionally classic works, such as Beethoven’s Cavatina from String Quartet in B flat Major, Op.130, which finished the concert, as well as pieces by Rachmaninov and Bach) was the world premiere of Grandage’s Immutable, with Atkins’ didgeridoo providing a thumping beat for the strings to play against, while also playing solo on occasion. It was a piece well received by an audience asked not to applaud at the start of the work, with a manic inertia and mystical expansiveness combined into one. The only nitpick that one could make of it was of what was on the screen when it was being played (and while the next few pieces also were being performed), namely a static painting or photograph (it was hard to tell) which was ever-so-slowly panned across, like a magnifying glass on newsprint. After the beautiful cinematography of the initial sections, this was a disappointment. But, thankfully, normal service resumed, and we were once again treated to the active scenes we had grown accustomed to. (One understands why, perhaps, such a static image was placed in the middle – to give the concert some more definite structure – but something else was required.)
There were more pieces of music than one could poke a surfboard at – 22 in total – and sometimes the music didn’t quite suit the image (or at least the mood of the image that one had personally imagined), but overall this was a concert/film to be relished.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
The Reef
Australian Chamber Orchestra
Richard Tognetti – Artistic Director and Lead Violin
Jon Frank Photographic Images and Footage
Mick Sowry Director
Mark Atkins Didgeridoo
Derek Hynd Surfer
Steve Pigram Voice
ACO2
TOGNETTI Heart of The Black Beast, Bathymetry
TOGNETTI/GRANDAGE Beyond
SEEGER “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”
RAMEAU Les Vents from Les Boreades
LIGETI Ramifications
CRUMB Black Angels (excerpts)
BACH Fugue from Sonata No.1, BWV1001
GRANDAGE/ATKINS Immutable
PIGRAM BROTHERS “Raindancing”
S. PIGRAM “Mimi”
KILAR Orawa
ALICE IN CHAINS Them Bones, Angry Chair
DEAN Peripeteia from Electric Preludes
SHOSTAKOVICH Allegro molto from Chamber Symphony, Op.110a
RACHMANINOV Vocalise
BEETHOVEN Cavatina from String Quartet, Op.130
Arrangements by Tognetti and Grandage
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
July 23
