Dvorak, R. Strauss, Ford: Lawrence Dobell (clarinet), Matthew Wilkie (bassoon), Roger Benedict (viola), Sydney Symphony, Richard Gill (conductor), Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, Sydney, 15.03.2007 (TP)

 

Dvorak, Symphony No. 6

R. Strauss, Duett-Concertino for Clarinet and Bassoon

Ford, The Unquiet Grave for Viola and Chamber Orchestra

 

The Sydney Symphony’s Meet the Music series, with its earlier start times and spoken introductions to the music, is aimed at a younger audience than the orchestra's other concert series, but this does not equate to a dumbing-down.  If anything, Meet the Music is one of the more exciting subscription series on offer.  In each programme, you are guaranteed to hear a piece by an Australian composer.  Most programmes also feature works that are not often heard in concert.  This programme, the first of the Meet the Music season for 2007, was true to form.  It featured a pair of infrequently heard works from the European canon and a relatively recent piece by Australian composer, Andrew Ford.

 

That piece was The Unquiet Grave, a compact viola concerto in one movement.  The piece takes its title from an English folk song, which Ford deconstructs note by note, phrase by phrase, in a series of quasi-variations.  The theme is hinted at throughout, amid the dissonances and fleeting tonality, and something of its modal flavour lingers constantly in the background, like a ghostly presence.  It is only in the final bars, though, that the viola states the theme in full.  Although Ford's idiom is quite distinct, this “variations and, only then, theme” approach to an old song reminded me of another work for solo viola – Britten's Lachrymae on Dowland's galliard of the same name.  An unconscious reference, perhaps?

 

Ford makes fascinating use of harmonics to generate much of the disquieting atmosphere of The Unquiet Grave.  Though the orchestral forces are small – a bare minimum compliment of strings and a skeleton staff of winds and brass – Ford employs a large battery of percussion instruments, asking his sole percussionist to flit from tubular bells to tam-tam, from vibraphone to crotales, from bass drum to marimba.   Each percussion instrument is allowed to ring out, with the harmonics emerging from the percussion and from the harp taken up by the strings to produce an eerie mist of sound. 

 

Roger Benedict, the Sydney Symphony's principal viola, navigated the fragmented solo part with skill.  His warm, dark tone suited the uneasy questioning of Ford's writing and his intense concentration was especially impressive in the hushed cadenza at the very end of the piece.  It was the aural equivalent of watching a single guttering candle in a pitch black room.  Only after this did the theme of the folk song emerge, a fragile statement, before the music was allowed to die on Benedict's bow.  That is how the concert ended.

 

It began with a joyous account of Dvorak's sunny sixth.  After a genial first movement, the interplay between woodwinds, horns and strings in the second was lovely, and Gill’s tempi were just about perfect.  He took the opening of the third movement a shade too fast, so that articulation became somewhat blurred in the helter skelter.  Though marked presto, this movement is based on a the rhythms of a Czech folkdance, the furiant, and needs a certain lightness of step.  The finale was boisterous and the final chords exultant.  This was a performance of high spirits and delights, and one that again prompted the question: why is this symphony so seldom played?  It is so delightfully tuneful and dramatic that it is difficult to understand its neglect.  Well done to the Sydney Symphony for programming it.

 

Between the rollicking fun of Dvorak’s symphony and the shadows of Ford’s concerto came Richard Strauss' neoclassical Duett-Concertino for clarinet and bassoon, a work of his old age.  Lawrence Dobell and Matthew Wilkie, the Sydney Symphony's principal clarinet and bassoon respectively, brought a light operetta feel to their solo parts; Dobell’s clarinet coy and capricious by turns, pursued by the warmly insistent voice of Wilkie's bassoon.  The reduced orchestra supported them admirably and revelled in Strauss' perfumed harmonies, with some lovely sweet-toned playing from concertmaster Dene Olding in particular.  This is a piece of charm and chocolate-box prettiness, and the performance matched it so well that the teenager next to me was moved to crack open his box of Malteasers half way through the slow movement.  He seemed to enjoy the concert, though.  I certainly did.

 

Tim Perry