Conyngham, Vaughan Williams: Michael Kieran Harvey (piano and synthesiser), Penelope Mills (soprano), John Bell (speaker), Female Voices of Cantillation (chorus), Sydney Symphony, Richard Mills (conductor), Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, Sydney, 22.03.2007 (TP)

 

Conyngham, Monuments – Concerto for piano, synthesiser and orchestra

Vaughan Williams, Sinfonia Antarctica (Symphony No.7)

 

There was an antipodean flavour to the Sydney Symphony's first Kaleidoscope Series Concert for the year.  It opened with Barry Conyngham's Monuments, a work based on the natural and man-made features of the Australian landscape.  After interval the programme moved a continent to the south for Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sinfonia Antarctica.  For both pieces, the orchestra was shrouded in semi-darkness and, while it played by lamplight, a large screen suspended above it matched images to the music.

Conyngham's Monuments was first performed by the Albany Symphony Orchestra in 1989, but had to wait almost 20 years for this, its Australian premiere.  It is a complicated piece, requiring an enormous orchestra, the strings of which are divided into two opposing bands, as in Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste.  Each movement begins with a depiction of a natural feature of the Australian landscape, followed by a contrasting section that describes a complimentary feature of human creation.  The first movement contrasts Uluru with the Sydney Opera House, the second the Great Barrier Reef with the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme, and the third the Apostles (a rock formation off the coast of Victoria) with an anonymous cityscape.

The most effective sections of the music were the first half of the second movement and the final section of the third.  The former evoked the underwater world of the Great Barrier Reef.  Water sounds from the synthesiser, the intoning of tuned percussion and slipstream harmonies from the strings and piano created an aquatic sound image.  Occasional flurries of notes passed like nervous shoals of fish in the deeps.

The depiction of the cityscape was markedly different.  Insistent ostinato rhythms from the percussion, pounding single notes from the piano and harsh interjections from the brass built into a jungle-drum frenzy.  This movement again brought Bartók to mind – this time his nightmare vision of the city in The Miraculous Mandarin.  The tone painting in the rest of the piece was less vivid, though no less energetic.

Michael Kieren Harvey tackled the alternately barnstorming, lyrical and pointilistic piano part with ease, standing up periodically to pound the synthesiser which was placed on top of the piano.  Richard Mills kept proceedings moving, with judicious tempo choices and clear gestures to the orchestra, which navigated its way through the score comfortably.

The Sinfonia Antarctica received a fully integrated multi-media performance.  Raff Wilson's skillfully assembled photo montage drew on the photographs of Scott's expedition taken by Herbert Ponting, who described himself as a “camera artist” and lived up to that title.  Wilson did not so much try to show the audience what the music was depicting at any one moment, as attempt to match the photographs to the mood of any given moment of the piece and to create a sense of a narrative.

Actor John Bell augmented the narrative by reading an introduction to each of the five movements. The words were not the brief quotations Vaughan Williams marked in his score, but selections from Scott's journals, again thoughtfully chosen and contrasted by Raff Wilson to show something of Scott's personality: his drive, his wit and his stoicism.

The Sydney Symphony's performance was wonderfully atmospheric, capturing the immensity of the Antarctic ice desert and the sense of mystery embedded in the score.  The first movement was majestic and foreboding, though Richard Mills' tempi were slightly quicker than usual.  Penelope Mills and the ladies of Cantillation, under the watchful direction of Paul Stanhope, made haunting contributions from a box above the cellos on the right of the platform.  The optimistic brass fanfare towards the end of the movement sounded like it was being played off-stage and brought a bright optimism.    The awe-inspiring third movement boasted some ravishing string playing, and gigantic chords from the Opera House organ, high above the platform.  The final movement, preceded by Scott's tense final journal entry, was doomladen and tragic.  Only in the final minutes was the pathos of the music dented, as the enthusiasm of the percussionist operating the wind machine got the better of him and he knocked it over with a thud amid the hush of the final bars.  Apart from this, and a couple of gaffs from the brass, the performance was glorious.

It was wonderful to hear a symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams live.  Eugene Goosens, then the Sydney Symphony's chief conductor, gave the Australian premiere of the Sinfonia Antarctica in 1953, within months of the world premiere in Manchester.  There was a second performance in 1969 uner Bernard Heinze.  This performance was Sydney's third encounter with this most atmospheric of scores.  Performances of Vaughan Williams' symphonies are rare in Australia, though his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and The Lark Ascending remain popular with audiences.  Perhaps the success of this concert will prompt the Sydney Symphony to give us more Vaughan Williams in coming seasons.  With Richard Hickox close at hand in the Sydney Opera House's Opera Theatre, a guest appearance from him conducting, say, the glorious Fifth would be most welcome.

 

Tim Perry