MSO2008 Concert 3

It was another fortuitous free ticket that got Justina and I into the third concert of MSO’s Metropolis series, Music of Amber, featuring works by two of my all time favourites of contemporary music, Toru Takemitsu and György Ligetti. I was also looking forward to hearing, in keeping with my present enquiries into traditional Turkish music, Dances for String Quartet by Turkish born composer, Sidika Özdil.

I’ve not been to the Malthouse Theatre for some 10 years or more. Quite a disgrace given theatre has such a rich history in Melbourne and there’s a lot to see. So being at the Malthouse twice in two weeks was quite unique and becoming rather familiar… it’s one of many Melbourne cultural institutions that I had hoped to inhabit with my own works over a good many years.

The opening piece was Takemitsu’s Towards the Sea III, a work that would be as comfortable in the clouds as it would in a slow moving sea, the first couple of minutes perhaps the most thrilling for my ears. The moment at which the harp opened up in harmony with the flute, Takemitsu’s signature harmonies enveloped me whole, comforting me, so much so that for the remainder of the performance I drifted from sleep to that half-awake feeling one has in public spaces, careful not to drop one’s head too steeply.

Having spent much of the piece fighting sleep, being as I was still to overcome jet lag, it was the applause at the end of it that brought me back to the Malthouse and alert for Marcello Panni’s composition, Short.

Introduced by one of the two percussionists, Short fell short of interest for me. It did capture well the concept it had set out to attend, that of movements representing an imaginary film, and it was certainly brilliantly performed, but it was to be Ligeti’s Trio for violin, horn and piano, that would be the land-mark performance of the evening.

French horn player, Geoff Lierse, took the floor and led the audience into a light hearted introduction to what was to be a most exacting, strenuous work out for this brave trio.

Featuring Michael Fowler on piano, who added balls to an already pounding performance, each movement had me on the edge, alert, being surprised, charged, enlightened… brilliant!

I’m going to by pass Joseph Schwantner’s Music of Amber and discuss Dances for String Quartet by Sidika Özdil. But before I do, I must commend the violin and whistling parts, both performed by the violinists, which came across as eerie at times and enlivening at others. Certainly a unique technique that made Joseph’s work some how more linked to the traditional motifs I was expecting from Sidika’s composition.

Sidika was introduced to the audience by violinist, Isin Camakçioglu, who was clearly proud of not only being in her company, being of Turkish origin himself, I felt he was particularly wrapped to be performing in this piece.

Describing herself as a composer that stands between two cultures, adored by avant garde heavy weights, Sidika went on to describe each movement of Dances, pointing to a traditional fishing song from the Black Sea coast and how the 3rd movement, Dervish Dance, unpacked through a circular arrangement. However, I found her work entirely Western in harmony and form. I couldn’t make out any Turkish influences in any of the four movements. In that sense, she perhaps represents the Turkey, as Kudsi Erguner details in his autobiography, Journeys of a Sufi Musician, that denied its traditional roots in it’s quest for modernity.

I was entertained by Sidika’s composition and did want to talk to her about it and what it is she meant by standing in the middle of two cultures and how she sees this reflected in her music. But alas it was not to be… Maybe it was the second wine, or that I’d talked myself through all my questions and concerns about her work with Justina and just wanted to get back in front of a sound system and listen to the likes of the Taksim Trio or Selim Sesler, immerse myself again and again in the music that is carrying me to where I know not where yet…

MSO2008 Concert 2

I’ve returned to Melbourne’s winter season of music and what an astounding few weeks there will be ahead of me. It’s already begun with Saturday evening’s performance of three works by French composers performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Reibert De Leeuw.

This was the second of four concerts in their Metropolis series, Descent and Ascension at the Malt House Theatre.

The evening opened with the awe inspiring, delicate and yet powerful composition, Color, by Marc-Andre Dalbavie. The piece commenced with a such a restrained, barely perceptible chord of strings punctuated by single harp notes accentuated by light percussion and gradual introduction of piano strings being tapped by a small metal rod.

The piece swelled into a dense roar of brass chords shifting atonally against strings and reeds. The program notes refer to one critic describing Color as “monumental music, full of big chords and metronomic, obsessive repeated notes on a marimba and piano. Some of those chords shimmer in the air, only to be wiped away with a cloth of scatter shot string figures.”

It was terrifically inspiring to hear an orchestra perform such a work, certainly giving me a kick up the arse to work on those pieces I’d begun in the mid-1990′s (eg. Sensorium Connect) that would have such an score further underscored by a generative sound scape, largely shaped by a live re-sampling of the performance in situ…

The second piece, Henri Dutelleux’s Correspondences, was one of those heady avant garde pieces that was, in part, interesting to listen to, but hard to sustain ones focus on. It’s most redeeming moment was the final 24 bars or so which had the vocalist, Merlyn Quaife, near draw tears from my weary eyes as she hit a sublime note that drew the piece to a close… Supurb.

The final work, Peirre Boulez’s Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna, was a piece that was made to be heard on site. Although broadcast live, one had to be in the theatre to fully experience this work. Thoroughly enjoyed hearing various parts, like strings and horns performed above and to the left and right of me…

What I didn’t enjoy was how some Western composers tend to treat the percussion instruments of other cultures. For instance, there were two tabla’s, a conga and a darbuka, all three being struck by sticks! I found it alarming that we have these fine instruments that take great skill to perform with and we hit them with sticks!

That’s it for now… am so looking forward to the Toru Takemitsu, Gyogy Ligetti and Sidika Ozdil works this coming Wednesday evening and the performance of Messian’s End of Time at St Patrick’s Cathedral on the 21st of May… and then there’s the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Audacious series of new composers works on the 8th of June! Sensational!

Thanks Justina and Lawrence for the tickets…

Review: Memory Effect

From the first and only performance of Memory Effect, Small Black Box, Brisbane, 2002.

Photo by Andrew Kettle