SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

'Sublime', Elgar, Vaughan Williams and others: Australian Chamber Orchestra, Richard Tognetti (Artistic Director/Lead Violin), Katie Noonan (Voice), Cameron Deyell (Electric Guitar, Angel Place Recital Hall, Sydney, 15.3.2008 (SW)
 

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’

ELGAR Sospiri

ELGAR Introduction and Allegro, Op.47

Songs by Tavener, Handel, Sting, Bowie, Cohen and others

As we find our way into Sydney’s Angel Place Recital Hall, for this concert of classical and  modern 'popular'  music, we are struck immediately by the sandy toned wood. An aural warmth encloses us as the lights move to a dim blue glow, centred on skeletal music stands and a wooden harp which complements the performance space.

A solo harp soon fills the void, lit only by a dim warmth that spotlights a single vocalist, sombre at the front of the orchestra. The light creates as many shadows as it fills, and her vocal entry follows suit, tentatively rising to the upper galleries in aural angelics. The Australian Chamber Orchestra strings follow the call into a breathtaking solitude, all eyes centred on the soloist, classical/pop diva Katie Noonan, her green and silver dress a dull sparkle in Martin Place’s musicological Ark.  Ms Noonan returns our gaze with a smooth echoing melody, rising and falling between octaves like midnight bird calls. Revealing the opening piece at this descriptive stage seems almost redundant (He Wishes for the cloths of Heaven by Tavener) and revealing the title of the program appears even more so. Though a very tall order to fulfil, the sound of this ensemble truly is ‘Sublime’.

True to Richard Tognetti’s introduction at the beginning of the concert, the orchestra continues straight through into Elgar’s “Sospiri” which translates to the English word ‘sighs.’ It becomes apparent from the coupling of these two pieces that this is where the vocal and orchestra ensemble will lead us: through the romance (and sometime treacheries) of sighs and the palpitations of the English heart.  Opening strings bring the audience to a quivering emotional dge as layered countermelodies are woven in delicate subtlety by the orchestra. The gracefulness with which the Australian Chamber Orchestra constructs this ether simultaneously draws us in and holds us at bay. So much so that when the piece concludes, the audience is slow to break the suspense with applause.

As the room quietens again, we hear the opening of Handel’s Si Pieta pi me non Senti from ‘Julius Caesar’ and Ms Noonan does a fine job of remaining unobtrusive in the centre of the stage. Even when the piece reaches her entry, her voice is nestled within the string lines. While there never anything less than a beautiful unity in this technique, occasionally Noonan’s timbre shifted and her notes rang out more than was justified by mere dynamic expression. Due perhaps to the acoustics or to the  amplification used in the concert, the presence of these timbrel inconsistencies made the  voice seem weak at times. The brighter notes might usefully be tamed, though the way in which Ms Noonan integrated herself into the totality of the soundscape (always in keeping with Mr Tognetti’s direction) was the mark of a true ensemble player. Even when there appeared to be no great visual communication between the soloist and conductor, it was evident that they were working as one.

The true subtleties of a performance sometimes lie in the visual realm and in the case of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the most prominent visual cue is how Richard Tognetti (both ensemble Director and First Violin), extends his body to its limits to raise himself up with  pointed bow in the air. Special mention should also be given to Christopher Moore (Principal Viola) for his enthusiasm, as he played to Tognetti’s bow-baton sometimes, and to Ms Noonan and Timo-Veikko Valve (Principal Cello) at others. Specifically, the next piece of this  Sublime program marked Mr Tognetti’s first obvious shift to ‘conductor’ from ‘leader’, using his bow to mark entries for the other strings. In the pre-show talk, the presenter referred on multiple occasions to the ACO as a ‘band’ rather than an ‘orchestra’  and after seeing Tognetti move throughout Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus, stretching (almost leaping) with modern exuberance, I began to see how the description made sense.

In the age that we live in, it becomes increasingly difficult to let our minds rest purely on the aural level. Rather than learn from  some early composers to listen so that many of them were then able to transcribe full scores from memory, we seem to have shifted to needing 'visuality' in music. Modern concert halls and revolving operatic sets washed in  bright colours often encourage this and sometimes we can hardly help but think cinematically about scores that lend themselves to visualisation.

Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro is the perfect example of such a piece, opening as it does with edgy and foreboding violins. The extraordinary cello/double bass involvement in the opening carries us between the violin melodies in an evocative and stirring manner [especially after Ken Russell's Elgar TV documentary from 1962. Ed] In contrast to well known performances of this piece on record, the ACO treated these lower lines with subtlety; rather than overplaying expressiveness, this took a back seat to the overall feeling of the introductory movement. Elgar’s piece actually fits perfectly into a program which centres on Katie Noonan's voice. The clash of cinematic inspiration against the more traditional string orchestra's Allegro underlined the traditional disturbance of using an operatic range in popular music, or contemporary instruments in a classical context.

Despite the fact that Tavener is a contemporary composer, it was Gustav Holst’s I Sing of a Maiden which seemed to be the first foray into a more modern tone, with vibrant strings and an anticipatory drone. A solo violin and double bass begin the piece, - the  interjecting Principal Violin, counterpointing itself against the drone  -  which then rises into multiple harmonies with using natural harmonics and staggered instrumental entries. There was the feeling of a sea voyage here as the staggered entries provide a subtle sway and perhaps an alternative title for the program might have been ‘An English Journey’, reflecting a journey from traditional English song to contemporary compositions. Certainly, this is where the second half of the concert seemed to lead us.

The first piece to illustrate this chronological transition was a version of Jenny Wren, recorded by Paul McCartney in 2006 for his album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. Katie Noonan invited guitarist Cameron Deyell onto the stage for the first time at this point but  unfortunately, his integration was less than smooth. As an instrumentalist of a different performance genre, he seemed to overpower the orchestra in volume, and where he pushed the beat, Tognetti appeared to be pulling it back – a common discrepancy between Rock and Classical performers. Despite this inconsistency, the guitar was very well played and tasteful, a small blessing in a situation which could so easily have been ruined by a crude rock guitar. Contrary to the guitar's contribution,  Principle Double Bassist Maxime Bibeau adapted very well to the pizzicato style of the contemporary genre and along with Cellist Julian Thompson,  played the inconspicuous accompaniment role extremely well through the entire contemporary repertoire. Overall, I enjoyed Katie Noonan’s performance of this song despite having been disappointed with Paul McCartney’s album when it was released. Whereas McCartney’s album could be accused of sounding trite and dated, Katie Noonan’s voice brought a folk freshness to the repertoire. She was in her element here, and her ‘scat’ singing worked well in  driving this notion home.

Many of these  a comments could be made for everything in the second half. After Jenny Wren, the guitar fitted much more snugly within the Chamber Orchestra setting with the Beatles’ Across the Universe. The vocals almost seemed to tie themselves to the solitude established in the opening piece by Tavener and Noonan’s classical training provided  all the versatility for which she is renowned. Following this song, Amy Winehouse’s Love is a Losing Game extended the orchestra into a more Funk/R&B based mode, with Cellist Julian Thompson using the wooden body of his instrument as the percussive drive. Nick Drake’s River Man brought out Tognetti’s arrangement from being the smooth, warm accompaniment of traditional cinematic scores into a more adventurous interpretaion. The electric guitar took a back seat in favour of the harp; a clever and successful substitution.

The real challenge of this concert was always going to be the performance of the ethereal and moving song, How to Disappear Completely by Radiohead.  The ACO and Katie Noonan rose to the challenge, using string harmonics and fragmentary pizzicato lines to bring out the sporadically   engulfing sound of one of Britain’s most successful contemporary bands. The harp substitution for the electric bass was a nice touch in the arrangement, but unfortunately the cellos  contributions altered the mantra-like feeling of the continuous bass line by syncopating the rhythm. The original recording shows how such continuity can act as a stable base for the more unpredictable instrumentation of the song, and altering this was, in my opinion, detrimental. With the assistance of some digital effects, Katie Noonan was able to pull off the smooth element of Thom Yorke’s original, drawing much from the classical vocal techniques she employed in the first set. This piece was by far the most well received of the concert.

The last three songs of the concert were Sting’s A Thousand Years (drawing on Middle Eastern influences), David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World (undoubtedly influenced by American popular music) and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah (written by an Canadian, and made famous in the contemporary world by the American, Jeff Buckley). These songs, though extremely well performed, diluted the nature of ‘British Song’ as a core theme in the concert but dids serve to solidify the analogy of voyage, especially in terms of emphasising the effects of globalisation on popular culture.

Katie Noonan’s voice was angelic and powerful, reserved and tempered. She is without a doubt a consummate professional who knows when to take the limelight and when to take a back seat. Her sensitive interaction with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which exhibited an extremely polished execution of dynamic range, made for a concert that was  in many ways, exactly as it was advertised; purely sublime.

Sam Webster


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