I’m not sure if it’s embarrassing for the musicians or not when it happens – although one assumes they give no thought to it, and this is purely the concern of a critic – but it’s a slightly strange feeling sometimes when you find significantly more enjoyment in everything but the title piece of a concert. This latest concert of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, entitled Brahms Piano Quintet, suffered from precisely this problem. You see, the Australian Chamber Orchestra is such a great ensemble that anything less than being consistently thrilling can be a disappointment, and the Brahms was, while thoroughly engaging in parts, not thrilling as a whole.
We began, however, with some of the best music heard in Sydney these past few months. The quintet of Richard Tognetti and Satu Vanska (violins), Christopher Moore (viola), Timo-Veikko Valve (cello), and Jeremy Denk (piano) took to the stage, and Tognetti gave a brief introductory statement before handing the microphone over to Denk, who explained the changes in the scheduled program that had been made, and what we were therefore to hear.
An arrangement of Bach’s by Tognetti, as it turned out, was to be interspersed with some Ligeti (the Ligeti, his Etudes No. 7, No. 10, No. 11, and No. 13, and Bach, his Canons on a Goldberg Ground, BWV1087). It was fantastic, which sometimes isn’t the case with these mix-and-match works (although the last one or two have worked rather well). It began with Bach’s slow start to his canons, was followed by an etude of Ligeti, and alternated twice more, taking a bunch of Bach’s 14 parts each time, and one (or at one point, two) of Ligeti’s pieces.
The Bach, originally for piano, was played as a quintet, while the Ligeti remained on the keyboard. They contrasted each other perfectly. Where the Bach was easily apparent structure and order, the Ligeti was pleasantly chaotic; where Bach was stately, Ligeti was sweet; where Bach was harmony, Ligeti was furious. At each switch one was left with a sense of loss, yet almost instantly was it replaced by an admiration for the other composer. Denk’s performance is to be lauded especially in the Ligeti, with the last etude in particular, subtitled the Devil’s Staircase (it keeps going up and up impossibly, like an Escher painting); a masterclass in unending yet varied tension – it was exhausting in a good way. So too was Tognetti’s arrangement, which added subtle colours and welcome force where needed.
After this – enough to satisfy this critic for the night already – we heard Ives’ Scherzo, ‘Holding your Own!’, a hurried and bustling work for the string quartet that led into Ives’ Piano Sonata No.2, ‘Concord’: The Alcotts, which imagines the Alcotts playing with a piano and putting onto the keys whatever piece of music takes their fancy. (Quotes of Beethoven’s fifth symphony, for instance, could be heard, among others.) Again it was Denk who brought the music home, and again the musicianship was extremely high. Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in F minor, BWV1056 ended the first half, and, with the sound of the piano (as opposed to the harpsichord you might expect from Bach), it was a quite fresh interpretation, taut in its outer movements and sublime at its centre.
Brahms’s Piano Quintet finished the evening, unfortunately. It is not that the performance wasn’t good – for it was. The ACO, with their characteristic exuberance, managed to squeeze as much excitement out of it as possible, stamping their feet in time to the music and, in a phrase, ‘really getting into it,’ but after the sharpness and angular perfections of what came before, the Brahms couldn’t fail but seen to be as smooth, as less vibrant, as more comfortable. (I must admit, though – in the interests of full disclosure – that I feel a tad gorged on Brahms of late, so perhaps the piece was merely not to my taste that night.) Perhaps if they had switched the order of the pieces, I may have enjoyed it more, but as it stood, I wished they’d chosen something else. But one can’t complain too much, for the first half was astoundingly good.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Brahms Piano Quintet
Australian Chamber Orchestra
Richard Tognetti (director and violin), Satu Vanska (violin), Christopher Moore (viola), Timo-Veikko Valve (cello), Jeremy Denk (piano)
Johann Sebastian Bach (arranged Richard Tognetti) – Canons on a Goldberg Ground, BWV1087
Gyorgy Ligeti – Etudes No.7, No.10, No.11, and No.13
Charles Ives – Scherzo, “Holding your Own!”
Charles Ives – Piano Sonata No.2, “Concord”: The Alcotts
Johann Sebastian Bach – Keyboard Concerto in F minor, BWV1056
Johannes Brahms – Piano Quintet
City Recital Hall, Sydney
20 August
(Pictured: The splendidly bearded Johannes Brahms)
