Conductor Richard Tognetti. Image by Pierre Toussaint.
Giddy. I was giddy. Which was a problem. Not in the process of my departure from the City Recital Hall, mind you – I wasn’t stumbling down the stairs or being bewildered by the newly painted foyer (now a combination of a deep red/crimson and dark blue, although the inside of the hall looks the same). No, it was more that the first piece on the program – Sibelius’ ‘Symphony No.6 in D minor, Op.104’ was so utterly involving and sublime that I was done for the afternoon. Musically cooked, as it were – I could have left then and there and have been satisfied for a week. But a critic has his duties.
Before we even got to hear the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s marvellous take on Sibelius’ epic work, we were, however, treated to a little surprise. Rebecca Chan – one of the ACO’s violinists – came on stage with four of her fellow string friends, and introduced us to the very shy and very old violin newly acquired via the ACO’s instrument fund. It is a rare 1714 Joseph Guarneri filius Andreae violin, the ‘ex Isolde Menges.’ It was its 300th birthday as well, so there was some clapping for that too. Then, to demonstrate the instrument’s power – and what power it has under Chan’s able hands – we heard Sibelius’ ‘Serenade No.2, Op. 69’ with the violin taking a central and melodic role. Wonderful and beautiful, it was, but there were bigger musical fish to fry here, and so we waited as a very extended form of the ACO trundled onto stage.
This was reputedly the ACO’s most ambitious concert to date, and it certainly looked that way, with a wind and brass section spread across the back, a harp nestled in between the strings on the left, and the entire concert platform taken up with the orchestra. (If any reader regularly makes the visit to the Sydney Symphony’s ‘Mozart in the City’ performances, then the ACO’s orchestra was more sizeable that the slimmed-down Sydney Symphony on display in those.) One can only hope that more ambitious concerts follow next year.
When an orchestra and conductor are playing in such a way that you feel as if the composer is being interpreted in the only way possible at the moment, then you know you’re hearing a great performance, and such was the case with the Sibelius symphony. What conductor Richard Tognetti managed to pull from his orchestra was remarkable. The sharp swells in the volume were exact and full of impact, the momentum and inertia were always spot on, and the climaxes were so effecting that this critic’s posture was constantly being improved as I was pulled up in my chair and made to take notice. If you haven’t heard this piece yet, or been to this concert, then do so now on the strength of this one interpretation.
Giddiness occurred, and then one had to go back in to hear a piece almost twice the length after the interval – Mahler’s ‘Symphony No.4 in G.’ Here Richard Tognetti once again purely conducted (instead of leading the orchestra as concertmaster as he often does) except for the second movement, to which Mahler ascribed the note ‘death takes the fiddle.’ For this piece, the concertmaster usually has two differently tuned violins because the solo violin in this section (floating above the rest of the orchestra) is tuned a tone higher to give it an eeriness. On this occasion, Tognetti took over for this movement alone.
Giddy from the first half, however, most of the Mahler washed over me in quite a glorious way, but one couldn’t say that it was as involving as the Sibelius. The long slow movement, however, was a masterclass in the gradual unfolding of thematic material, and quite a special moment nonetheless. Soprano Kiera Duffy, coming out for the last short movement to sing ‘The Heavenly Life’ from ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’ was sweet and playful in tone, and a joy to listen to. As, indeed, was the whole concert. The ACO is pretty much always high quality, but this was one of their best.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Australian Chamber Orchestra: Mahler 4 & Sibelius 6
Conductor: Richard Tognetti
Soprano: Kiera Duffy
City Recital Hall, Angel Space
www.aco.com.au
16 – 29 June
