ANAM ChamberMusic Festival
A brilliant way to finish the year — four concerts of chamber music played by the talented students of the Australian National Academy of Music. And three of my favourite pieces were included. Even now, four days later, Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet is running through my head.
The first piece provided a bit of nostalgia for me, because I had played it several times years ago and love it. Jan Dismas Zelenka has rightly earned the title, ‘the Czech Bach’. He lived at the same time as Johann Sebastien Bach: Zelenka 1679 — 1745, J.S. Bach 1685 — 1750. His music is different from Bach’s — possibly more influenced by a folk tradition, but it has similarly rich harmonies and ingenious use of fugal themes. I was pleased that on this occasion Trio Sonata number 6 was performed on conventional rather than Baroque instruments (with the exception of harpsichord). The parts, for two oboes, bassoon, harpsichord and double bass are technically challenging even with modern day key systems. I try to imagine how the players of the early 18th century wind instruments managed. Their oboes and bassoons were made with very few key coverings — similar to the recorders we know today. The ANAM players gave an enlivened and thoroughly satisfying performance.
In keeping with the theme of Bohemia, we heard a Piano Trio by Smetana, unfamiliar to me, and then the String Quintet in G major by Antonin Dvořák.
First of three concerts the next day started with Francis Poulenc’s Sextet for Piano and Winds. The ‘winds’ are flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn — essentially a wind quintet and piano. I was familiar with a couple of movements of this piece: the middle movement, a Divertissement: Andantino and the final Prestissimo movement (very fast). Poulenc was self-educated musically as his parents thought he should join the family business. Many of his works are playful and irreverent although, particularly later in his life, he wrote more serious religious music. He joined five other young French/Swiss musicians, Les Six (Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud and Tailleferre) who reacted against the impressionism of fellow countrymen Debussy and Ravel.
We then heard Instruments III by Morton Feldman (1926 — 1987) for flute, oboe and percussion. I pitied the wind players — they blurted out sounds at each other — the oboist had to play oboe (and cor anglais) with a mute, which distorted the sound and tuning.
The next piece I did enjoy, by a composer unknown to me, Amy Beach (1867 — 1944). Amy Beach was the first female American composer of large-scale art music, having written a symphony. When she married, Amy had to agree to live according to her husband’s status (he was a Boston surgeon) — this meant that she had to agree never to teach piano and she gave only two public recitals a year, the proceeds of which went to charity. After her husband’s death in 1910 she would go in summer to the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, where she could meet other women composers. The piano quintet we heard is thought to have been influenced by Brahms, with its lush textures. The piece is for string quartet and piano. During her lifetime, Amy — a very accomplished pianist — would often play the piano part at public performances.
In the afternoon we were treated to some superb chamber works, starting with Rachmaninov’s Trio Elégiaque in G minor (violin, cello and piano) and then moving to one of my favourite pieces of music, Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet. I had heard a fantastic performance of this work in Adelaide earlier in the year and although this was superbly played, it didn’t quite live up to my recollection of Konstantin Shamray and the Australian String Quartet https://wordpress.com/post/jenniferbryce.net/2635 This was perhaps partly because the cellist kept tapping his foot quite loudly on the bare wooden floorboards! It was nevertheless wonderful to hear this work of underlying rebellion.
The Shostakovich was followed by Stravinsky’s Octet (flute, clarinet, two bassoons, two trumpets, trombone and bass trombone), and then Janáček’s Mladi, for flute, oboe, two clarinets (one bass), bassoon and horn. This piece was composed near the end of Janáček’s life and in 1925 (he died in 1928) it was awarded the Prize of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
The final concert was subtitled ‘A Soirée in Vienna. It opened with the Mozart Horn Quintet, the horn part ably played by Stefan Grant. We then moved to a piece new to me, Poem for String Quartet by Rebecca Clarke (1886 — 1979). She was a violist and is described as one of the most important British composers between World War I and World War II. Clarke ended up living and working in America when she was thrown out of the house after criticising her father for his extra-marital affairs. She used a male pseudonym to tie for first place with Ernest Bloch in a competition sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. At the time, the idea that such music could be written by a woman was inconceivable.
After a short interval we heard Webern’s Langsamer Satz (slow movement), composed in 1905. Webern is recognised as a follower of the ’12 tone’ approach to composition, whereby in a piece no one note in the chromatic scale is favoured (no key note or centre). But the system wasn’t put into use until the 1920s, so this string quartet, composed when Webern was twenty-two was harmonic and tonal.
The concert concluded with a brilliant performance of Schubert’s Quntet in A major (‘the trout’). I love this piece and have heard many live performances, but I felt that this was utter perfection. The music is still ringing through my head. Liam Freisberg, who led on violin, did a magnificent job. Ben Tao played viola, Noah Lawrence cello, Paul Oakley double bass and, especially outstanding, Leo Nguyen on piano.
February 12, 2023
Too Jazzy: The Melbourne Composers’ League
The Melbourne Composers’ League was formed in 1997. It promotes the indigenous and art music of Australia in an Asian Pacific context. Over the years it has presented 640 works in concerts, including 544 compositions from Australia and 92 from the Asia-Pacific region. Over recent years I have attended several of these concerts. The concert held on Saturday 11th February was the best I have been to so far.
This concert presented recently composed music from Australia, Thailand and the Philippines. ‘Too Jazzy’ is the title of the final item on the program. One reason why this concert came over so well was the excellent performers: Michael Kieran Harvey, piano, Tristram Williams, trumpet, Peter Neville and Hamish Upton, percussion and Nic Synot, contrabass. It was held in a venue with excellent acoustics: The Church of All Nations in Carlton, Melbourne.
Trumpeter Tristram Williams was kept very busy, and the program started appropriately with a trumpet fanfare composed in 2021 by Andrew Batterham. Several minutes long, the fanfare culminates in what the program describes as a ‘mash up’ of two styles: grand processions and fast, exciting statements. Tristram had a rest during the next two pieces: Brendan Colbert’s Alter(n)ations for piano and vibraphone, and Annie Pirotta’s Musical Experiment with Phonesthemes. Then came Weerachat Premananda’s Panchromatic of the North Winter Wind Dance, for Trumpet and Piano, composed in 2022. Weerachat Premananda is Professor of Music Composition at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. I had naively expected this music to sound very ‘Asian’, with gongs, bells and little cymbals but it was far more international in flavour punctuated with loud short discords from piano and trumpet. Inspired by the Lantern Festival of Lan Na, the program notes told us that ‘the two instruments move characteristically and independently whilst the music preserves the uniqueness of the tradition’.
Next came a very challenging piano solo, L’architecture du cosmos, by local composer Andrián Pertout. In fact, I wondered whether anyone other than Michael Kieran Harvey could have played it, it is so technically demanding. It is a hommage to composer Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928 – 2007). I listened to the piece prior to reading the program and thought I could hear snatches of Franz Liszt and Debussy, which indeed were included along with other composers — Stockhausen , Bertrand, Ravel and Ornstein. Quite apart from marvelling at Michael Kieran Harvey’s virtuosity, I thoroughly enjoyed the music.
A piece for Trumpet, Piano, Percussion and Contrabass by Australian composer Joseph Giovinazzo followed, a homage to jazz fusion. The title, Miles of Blue in Green is a play on the composition of renowned jazz trumpeter Miles Davis’s Blue in Green. It uses the same instrumentation as the Miles Davis Quartet.
After interval we heard a work by Filipino composer Ramon Pagayon Santos. This piece, Abot-Tanaw IV, scored for Trumpet and Percussion, aims to simulate the different techniques in a kulintang (gong) ensemble. I was amused by the next very energetic piano solo composed and performed by Michael Kieran Harvey, entitled Lawyers Are Lovely Misunderstood People And We Should Be Much Kinder To Them. In the program notes Michael Kieran Harvey said: ‘After years spent tussling with a particularly gnarly legal issue for my wife and I, Craig Mackie jokingly asked for a piece of music with this title as payment and this is the result.’ This was contrasted by local composer Eve Duncan’s Winter Persephone, based on the myth where Zeus and Demeter’s daughter Persephone is to be abducted by Hades to the Underworld. In response, grief-stricken Demeter caused many years of famine, which prompted Zeus and Hades to allow Persephone to return to her mother — but, she is offered a single pomegranate seed and eating it condemns her to go back to the Underworld each winter.
I expected Bruce Crossman’s Fragrant Rainclouds of Love, for Percussion and Piano, to be a gentle piece but there was interesting use of ‘Stopped piano’, where, with a device, the piano sound is blunted and after some sonorous ‘fragile’ sounds there is eruption to ‘climactic jazzy extemporization-like’ sonorities. At the close of the piece, percussion in particular suggests ‘whisperings of young lovers’.
The final piece, ‘Too Jazzy’, for Flugelhorn (played by Tristram Williams), Piano, Contrabass and Percussion by Scott McIntyre was indeed ‘jazzy’. The composer says he is intrested in the harmonic elements of jazz. Apparently the opening interval is a Major 14th — which I’d never heard of before. The piece was constructed around particular modes, each tied to a specific player in the group.
This was a fascinating concert. Do we realise how many talented composers are working in Melbourne, quite apart from the guests who contributed from the Asia Pacific?