Dean, Walton, Lutoslawski: Michael Dauth (violin), Sydney Symphony, Hugh Wolff (conductor), Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, Sydney, 03.05.2007 (TP)

 

Dean, Komarov's Fall

Walton, Violin Concerto

Lutoslawski, Concerto for Orchestra

 

Brett Dean was one of four contemporary composers commissioned to write an “asteroid” for Sir Simon Rattle's 2006 recording of Holst's Planets with the Berlin Philharmonic.  (The others were Mark-Anthony Turnage (UK), Kaija Saariaho (Finland) and Matthias Pintscher (Germany).)  His response was Komarov's Fall.  Although the four asteroids were performed as something of a suite at their premiere and on the subsequent EMI recording, Dean's asteroid is well worth hearing as a piece of music in its own right.

True to the commission, there is an asteroid call Komarov.  However, Dean's music is concerned not with that rock, but with the unfortunate Soviet Cosmonaut for whom it was named, a man who was sacrificed in the political point scoring that attended the Cold War's space race.

There is elegance and an eeriness to this piece.  When conductor Hugh Wolff began beating, it seemed that nothing happened.  Then single notes from the strings began to punctuate the silence, in imitation of telemetry signals, the sounds of signals from satellites.  The only percussion Dean calls for in these early bars was the delicate rustle of aluminium foil.  An agitated rhythm was then tapped out on the woodblocks and began to permeate the orchestra, building through woodwind chatter into massed percussion, but falling away as a gentle lyrical passage began, representing Komarov's goodbye to his wife.  (She had been brought to ground control for a final farewell when it became obvious that Komarov would die when his Soyuz I spacecraft re-entered the earth's atmosphere.)  Goodbyes said, the agitation and anger built again to a strident climax before the nothingness of destruction, high voices climbing ever higher, while low voices sank to the depths.

This performance of Komarov's Fall was recorded for the Sydney Symphony's new Sydney Symphony Live label.  It will appear on a disc dedicated to Dean's music, alongside Dean's Viola Concerto with the composer as soloist, and Twelve Angry Men for twelve cellos.  No release date has yet been set, but it will be worth picking up when released.

After the excellence of the opening item came a beautiful but flawed performance of William Walton's ripe Violin Concerto.  Michael Dauth, the Sydney Symphony's co-concertmaster, painted Walton's flowing lyrical melodies with a burnished tone and heavy vibrato, but was taxed by the unforgiving virtuosic writing in the more rapid passages, particularly in the second movement.  In these passages, his projection, pulse and tuning suffered.  For all his glow and romance, his playing also felt a little too straight at times, as he refused to linger over the ends of phrases and played the off-kilter waltz section of the second movement tidily but without much salt spray tang.  

Hugh Wolff kept orchestral textures light and sparklingly transparent, revealing the full extent of Walton's skill as an orchestral colourist, as motifs moved from one instrument to another.  The orchestra's playing was very impressive and the complex time signature changes were handled neatly.  There were a couple of oddities in pacing, with Wolff seeming to hold the tempo back in places, building slowly to the brass oration towards the end of the first movement's development and slowing things down again in the big tuttis in the finale.  There were also a couple of balancing issues with the brass, which at times overwhelmed Dauth.  The interplay between trumpets and violin in the final stages of the third movement was all fanfare, with the violin's commentary completely drowned out.

After interval Wolff and the orchestra treated Sydney to a ritzy, razzle dazzle performance of Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra.  The Intrada gripped from the first bars, Wolff conjuring an elemental vitality from the strings, and shaping the folk song fragments with power.  There was energy aplenty in this reading.  The Sydney Symphony strings dug deep, the brass blazed, the tam tam crashed.  But not all was power and might.  Concertmaster Dene Olding played his solos sweetly, and crystalline textures contrasted with thicker sonorities, enhancing the pleasures of both.  The second movement was light, almost whimsical, with spidery violins, sharply etched pizzicato passages and proud brass in the Bartokian chorale.  The Passacaglia's opening pizzicato bass line was like the tiptoeing of giants; the Toccata that followed was lean and muscular.  Hugh Wolff again proved a master of orchestral balances and textures.  The real stars, though, were the musicians of the Sydney Symphony, whose virtuosity made Lutoslawski's score sparkle.

 

Tim Perry