The Sydney Symphony’s concert titles – those summations of two hour’s worth of music into little more than ten, seven, even five or less words, like using a person’s name alone to describe their soul, their personality, their multitudinous and complex essence that swirls into the magic that is them – are often quite sinister, I think. Brevity is often a cause for much ambiguity, however, so what I see as having sinister possibilities no doubt strikes someone else, like looking at a Rorschach inkblot test, as very gay and upbeat.
Fate and Festivals: Tchiakovsky’s First Piano Concerto, was the name of the concert in question, and to me, at least, it strikes my mind as suggesting something very dark indeed. I imagine news reports, for instance, talking about a fateful carnival, where the Ferris wheel came off its axis and mowed down legions of children and their parents, blood mixed with fairy floss spread along the tragic ground. I imagine distraught relatives mourning the fateful day, sobbing to the camera, making statements such as, ‘they just wanted to have fun,’ and ‘oh, the humanity of it all!’ But I’m dark like that sometimes.
Which is not to say that there wasn’t darkness in this concert, that a apprehensive gloom didn’t fill the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House. We began, for instance, with Dvorak’s Othello – Overture, Op.93, conducted by Charles Olivieri-Munroe. Olivieri-Munroe has a quite interesting style of conducting – certainly most prominent in this overture – whereby he looks very highly strung, his arms and wrists and baton moving to their designated points and stopping exactly on the mark. Indeed, there seemed to be very little fluidity to his movements (not that this is necessarily a bad thing, mind you). The effect is completed with his dress – not the general suit but one with a tail to it – such that he comes off, perhaps, as a slight tyrant, and one imagines that if you put him charge of a kindergartner’s school musical, he’d have the kids in tears before the end of the day. (Of course, this is only when his baton is raised – taking his applause and walking on and off the stage, he seemed perfectly amiable.) Variety being a worthwhile thing, after all, he was a rather refreshing presence on stage. And his interpretation of Othello was much the same as his movements – tightly controlled, and prone to sudden outbursts of passion. It wasn’t the most successful piece in history, but its bluster was particularly entertaining.
Tchaikovsky’s Piano Conerto No.1 in B flat minor, Op. 23 came next, with pianist Joyce Yang taking to the stage. She wore a slinky silvery dress which sparkled and had diamond tessellations in the fabric, and because I’m a man who has very little interest in fashion, that’s about all I can tell you. Her performance, which excelled especially in the quieter moments (the mark of a good pianist often being whether they can keep the attention in the slower parts of a piece) was gripping, and the piece in its entirety – which, dear reader, you no doubt would have heard before, even if you don’t know it by name – had that energy and tension that makes a concerto great.
Interval came, hung around for 20 minutes, then left, and we continued with Tchaikovsky’s Fatum (Fate), a piece that went about twice as long as the ten minutes the program informed us it would be, yet never overstayed its welcome. Like the Othello overture before it, it had plenty of moments of grand bluster, but Olivieri managed the overall pacing much better. The last piece was Respighi’s Feste romane (Roman Festivals), which was a revelation of pure exhilaration, basically. Three trumpeters took their positions up the top of the choral seats at the back of the Hall, while a quite humongous orchestra blasted our ears with celebrations and festivities. The final movement, La Befana (Epiphany), was the highlight, with its musical ideas jostling for position at the fair, chaos that amplified upon itself until the end. Top stuff.
Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5
Fate and Festivals
Sydney Symphony
Charles Olivieri-Munroe (conductor), Joyce Yang (piano)
Antonin Dvorak – Othello – Overture, Op.93
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Piano Concerto No.1 in B flat minor, Op.23
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Fatum (Fate)
Ottorino Respighi – Feste romane (Roman Festivals)
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
13 March
