Much more than a 10-day festival of chamber music concerts, the Australian Festival of Chamber Music (AFCM) has been broadening its appeal and target markets in recent years. The 2024 AFCM offered a widely diverse program that included talks and lectures, conversations, masterclasses and special events. A new addition, the community Festival Garden supported main stage activities with a free program of outdoor events, designed as much for a local and family audience as for regular concert attendees. The outreach program also took chamber music to Far North regional centres, with workshops and performances this year by the Zaza Road Quartet.
The Concert Conversations program is one of the enduring and most popular events of the Festival. Instigated by former Artistic Director, Piers Lane, it has grown exponentially over many years. Audiences love the format of the Artistic Director conversing with musicians, where we learn about their musical backgrounds and lives. Under Artistic Director Jack Liebeck, the program includes short musical presentations, where artists may also get to play what Liebeck calls their “guilty pleasure”, a work they particularly like, however quirky and bizarre that may be. The whole provides a daily fun morning before the serious business of concerts begins.
The conversation on 1 August involved pianist Piers Lane, clarinettist Julian Bliss, cellist David Berlin and percussionist Timothy Constable. This proved to be a fascinating introduction to these artists, with Bliss and Berlin both new to AFCM this year. There was much sparring and repartee between Liebeck and Lane, who are old friends. Indeed, it was Lane who first brought Liebeck to Australia and the AFCM back in 2007.
The guilty pleasures included Lane’s glorious rhythmic slinky foxtrot ‘Nocturne’ by Robert Constable and Tchaikovsky’s ‘Valse Sentimentale’, played beautifully and with a depth of feeling by Berlin. Bliss’ clarinet shone with perfect intonation, demonstrating phenomenal breath control in Sidney Bechet’s jazzy ‘Si Tu Vois Ma Mère’, while Constable gave his guilty pleasure as one of his own compositions – two songs from his Vanish in the Air cycle, which were well-received.
Stephen Johnson is a marvellous addition to the Festival as a composer, presenter, musicologist and broadcaster. He presented his world premiere composition on the theme of ghost stories, Unquiet Sleepers, while also popping up as an entertaining pre-concert presenter with juicy titbits about the composers or the works we were about to hear.
With an extraordinary knowledge of classical repertoire, he also gave talks in the “Illuminate Series” on Chamber Music Explained and Musical Form, with many insightful offerings. Additionally, his talk on Arnold Schoenberg’s masterpiece, the tone poem ‘Verklärte Nacht’ (Transfigured Night) was an in-depth examination of this important transformative work, with its powerful and moving narrative, illustrated with extracts from recordings.
Later in the day, ‘Verklärte Nacht’ was offered as part of the Musical Transfigurations concert, played in semi-darkness to create the eerie ambience of the narrative of the dark woods. Richard Dehmel’s poem that inspired Schoenberg‘s tone poem was recited before the string sextet of violinists, Liebeck and Benjamin Roskams, violas Brett Dean and Katie Yap, and celli, Christian-Pierre La Marca and Umberto Clerici delivered this dark, melancholic work.
Moving back and forth between sparkling melodies and brooding gloom, the musicians played brilliantly and delivered a finely textured and layered reading that brought out the emotional nuances of the score. Special mention should be made of Dean’s ravishing viola, which represented the female protagonist so beautifully. The audience was spellbound and this proved to be one of the highlights of the Festival, with a spontaneous and long-lasting standing ovation.
Read: Australian Festival of Chamber Music offers an impressive and diverse 2024 program
The 2023 festival presented Mahler’s fourth symphony in a chamber version with great success and Liebeck decided to repeat that in 2024 with Symphony, No.1 in D major, Titan. Expertly arranged by Iain Farrington, this chamber version with only 15 players, based on a core string quintet with minimal woodwind, brass, percussion and a harp, delivered an exemplary work with a judiciously colourful musical palette and expert sonority. It was an astonishing and powerful rendition.
What really worked with this truncated arrangement was our ability to hear each distinctive instrument, something that is often lost in a full-scale reading of the work, where woodwind and strings can often be subsumed within the whole. Here individual woodwind voices were perfectly delineated, while even the harp could be heard clearly despite the orchestra playing fortissimo.
Leader Adam Barnett-Hart worked enormously hard to produce a full string sound with a mere five players, while conductor Timothy Constable gave an energised and powerful reading of the score jumping enthusiastically about the stage as he encouraged his minimal forces to give their all, which they did. A remarkably impressive and first-rate performance that succeeded on every level.
Other performances that stood out, from a high-energy program of many firsts, included Bach’s two glorious solo works for violin and cello, both included in the Baroque Temptations concert. Jack Liebeck played the solo ‘Partita No.2 In D minor’ for violin, considered one of the most difficult works for the violin, and gave an astonishingly strong and considered reading across the three movements, including the final huge ‘Sarabande Giga Ciaconna’, virtuosic in scope and breath-taking with its double stops and speedy bowings in the highest of registers.
Appearing in his first AFCM, acclaimed cellist Umberto Clerici offered the ‘Suite No.3 in C major’ for cello. The many dance sections were lovingly played, the gorgeous tone of his instrument offering a warmth and beauty that made this work leap off the page. These were two finely crafted performances from virtuosic players of the first order.
Read: Concert review: Wonderful World, Townsville Civic Theatre
The English baritone Roderick Williams is a master of vocal delivery, especially in the Baroque repertoire in which he specialises. He is also a marvellous presenter with a modulated speaking voice, wonderful communication skills and an easy manner that charms audiences. Across the Festival he presented a wide variety of works, including songs by the Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge, Schubert’s Song Cycle Die Schöne Müllerin, Schumann’s Song Cycle Myrthen, Op.25, Henry Purcell’s Don Quixote: ‘Let the dreadful engines of eternal will’ and Beethoven’s only Song Cycle An die ferne Geliebte for voice and piano.
He gave each a marvellous and focused reading, with impeccable diction in whatever language his songs were sung, demonstrating his gift as both communicator and singer. A welcome addition to the AFCM family.
The Australian Festival of Chamber Music Festival was held from 29 July to 3 August 2024 in various venues in Townsville including Civic Theatre and The Pavilion, The Ville-Resort Casino.
