Never trust a man who doesn’t drink (unless he’s your AA sponsor) and never trust a woman who doesn’t wear shoes. Or at least that is this critic’s prejudice. It’s not so much that one has a mistrust of women in general (obviously not, and the same shoe-attitude would apply to men) or that one is particularly against a lack of footwear (although to be fair, if the unsoled person was neither on a stage, nor at home, nor in an aquatic situation, then I’d be a tad perturbed) but rather it’s the bluntness of it all, the proclaiming of a non-conformity so trivial that the mere act of mentioning it overshadows its initial significance.
Perhaps it’s less to do with the musicians/performers themselves, and more to do with the marketing departments, who, in a bid to be different from the competition, clasp at minor quirks; or maybe it’s just an exasperation at the performer’s need to be ‘special’ and a slight envy towards their success in that endeavour, such that one ends up thinking, ‘If I’m part of the herd, then, gosh darn it, you will be too’.
Whatever the case, where other audience members may think the prospect of some barefoot action delightful, this critic instead indulged in an internal groan and built himself up to humour what was to follow. Never mind that, earlier in the month, one had the great pleasure of hearing Broadway star Idina Menzel sing her barefoot heart out with the Sydney Symphony. No, prejudices wouldn’t be half as fun if they had any touch of the rational about them. But once again, at this latest concert of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, I was won over, much to my delight at the time, and perhaps much to my annoyance upon reflection. (It’s never nice to be proven wrong, although I don’t think I ever believed that not wearing shoes was in any way indicative of a lack of talent – it’s more of a personality-to-personality issue.)
Patricia Kopatchinskaja was the ‘barefoot fiddler’, although considering the length of her slacks, perhaps the term ‘baretoed fiddler’ may have been more appropriate. She plays a violin made by Giovanni Francesco Pressenda in 1834, for those of you playing at home, and she was guest director and soloist for the evening, Richard Tognetti presumably somewhere that wasn’t the City Recital Hall. Kopatchinskaja is an energetic presence on stage – perhaps even more so as it was the last concert of the series that this critic attended – and she sways along with the music while adding an exaggeration here and there to direct her colleagues.
We began with Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K.546. In this performance, the adagio, while not feeling superfluous, nevertheless came off as musical roughage to be consumed before the main event. The program tells us that, ‘even at the time of composing the Fugue, Mozart felt it needed an introduction’, and that, five years later, he returned to the problem and ‘provided it with an introduction matching it in significance and weight’. That may be so, but in this performance, while there was certainly some weight, there was not so much significance. Thankfully, things picked up during the Fugue, with the most prominent aspect of the interpretation coming from the energised entrances of each of the string sections as they entered again and again into the fray, although the piece, while excellently played, only built itself up to a resolute enjoyment (as opposed to merely thinking ‘this is starting to get good’) right near the end.
What followed next, however, was masterful. Bach’s Concerto for Three Violins in D major, BMV 1064 doesn’t exist, in a way. Instead it is a reconstruction from a concerto in C major for three harpsichords, which the German musicologist Arnold Schering gleamed that ‘many of the figurations in the solo harpsichord parts looked like they were original intended for violin’. Further research has lead to it being ‘almost unanimously accepted that the concerto started out as a triple violin concerto in D major’. (Talk about a musical identity crisis.)
Joining Kopatchinskaja as soloists were two others from the ranks of the ACO, Helena Rathbone and Rebecca Chan. The piece itself was interrupted at the beginning of each movement with some improvisational moments – the first interlude involving a harpsichordist whose name I cannot find in the program, the second had a string quartet, and the third, if memory serves correctly, had the bass take charge. They were diverting, though one cannot say if they enhanced the experience. (They certainly amused all those on stage, however, the orchestra littered with knowing smiles.) But it was the main affair, with the three violins interweaving and taking over from each other, where the interest lay. Indeed, the experience of seeing these three musicians at the top of their game, and hearing such exuberance, made the concert one to remember; there was such a fullness of sound, such an expert layering upon layering of it all, that one could not up be but caught up in the joy and beauty of it. Top stuff.
After the interval came a short piece from Maxime Bibeau who came out by himself to introduce and demonstrate the new double bass made available to him, an instrument made by Gasparo da Salo in Brescia, Italy over 430 years ago. Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in D minor followed, with Kopatchinskaja proving herself charismatic and engaging – although the piece did not reach the former heights – while Ginastera’s Concerto for Strings, Op.33 was, while expertly played (it had the tautness that such modern fragmented pieces – or indeed, most pieces – benefit from), never quite agreed with this critic’s taste. (It seemed from the onset like a piece I would like, but it wasn’t until the finale that I warmed to it.) One could not have asked more of the performance, however.
Two encores followed, one a rondo from a composer I can’t recall, and the other a piece of Piaszolla’s which I also can’t recall. (It wasn’t Oblivion however, but equally as entertaining.) Perhaps it was the profusion of bare feet in the rest of the orchestra, along with the dancing, that allowed such details to slip from the mind.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Barefoot Fiddler
Australian Chamber Orchestra
Patricia Kopatchinskaja (guest director and lead violin), Helena Rathbone (violin), Rebecca Chan (violin)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K.546
Johann Sebastian Bach – Concerto for Three Violins in D major, BMV1064
Felix Mendelssohn – Violin Concerto in D minor
Alberto Ginastera – Concerto for Strings, Op.33
City Recital Hall, Sydney
3 August
