The Australian Chamber Orchestra without Richard Tognetti at the helm can be a mixed bag at times (not that having Richard Tognetti on stage is an ironclad guarantee either, mind you.) So it was with some trepidation that I settled down for ‘Marwood’s Serenade’, where virtuoso violinist Anthony Marwood, hailing from London, would be leading the players in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House. I hoped for the best, and for the most part, I got it.
The first piece, Stravinksy’s ‘Divertimento’, was an interest-keeper to a high degree, with the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s trademark attention to punchy accents and tightly wound dynamics adding much to savour to the four movement work. Taken from the ballet ‘La vaiser de la fee’ (The Fairy’s Kiss), Stravinsky cobbled together parts of his own work (rather than taking one contiguous chunk), the ballet itself being cobbled together from not only Stravinsky’s own invention, but many of Tchaikovsky’s lesser known works for piano.
‘My only precept in selecting the music was that none of the pieces should have been orchestrated by Tchaikovsky,’ wrote Stravinsky. The story is based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Ice Maiden, although in the Divertimento one isn’t expected to follow along. The piece as played by the Australian Chamber Orchestra was gloriously and strong, like blizzard rather than cascading snowflakes.
The Dvorak followed with his Serenade for Strings in E major, Op.22. While it was finely played, it never quite transcended its own lightness. Which, admittedly, is perhaps an unfair criticism of a serenade, but after the vibrancy of the Stravinksy, the Dvorak was a rather mellow and rolling affair; some pleasure but not much bite. One thinks it would be appreciated more in a different program surrounded by different pieces.
After the interval came the mammoth for the afternoon – a piece previously unknown to this critic, namely George Enescu’s Octet for Strings in C major, Op.7. Enescu, Romania’s greatest composer, completed the forty minute work in 1900 when he was just 19, after having worked on it for 18 months. Comparisons can be made to Mendelssohn’s famous Octet, although Enescu specifically indicated that his work could be further orchestrated if the conductor so wished. And such was the case for us.
What jumps out at you most when listening to it – and no doubt was one of the reasons it attracted Marwood, who enthuses about the work in his program note – is not only the massive grandeur of it (especially for an Octet), but the ‘contrapuntal brilliance.’ And to hear the multiple lines written by Enescu, here interacting with each other and at the same time bolstered with the additional orchestration, is to witness the beauty that comes from the perfect whirring of a complicated mechanism. The climax of the work, too, while not quite having the same complexity (it being more of a war between two or three main voices), was nevertheless even more captivating – the kind of music that makes an audience member sit up in their seat.
Marwood himself was a genial but firm presence on stage – perhaps slightly less flashy than Tognetti (although Tognetti is far from flashy himself) – and the concert, overall, was a joy to listen to.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Marwood’s Serernade
Australian Chamber Orchestra
Anthony Marwood (lead violin and conductor)
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
3 December 2014
