This is a sweet, heart-warming
documentary that is certainly suitable
for TV broadcast, where it would represent
a very absorbing 50 minutes’ worth.
Yet whether one really needs it for
posterity as part of a DVD collection
is another matter. One viewing was,
to be honest, enough.
The film, from RB Productions,
charts a year in the life of Richard
Tognetti’s baby, the Australian Chamber
Orchestra, taking in venues such as
the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Wiesbaden
(Germany), the Proms (London) and the
Sydney Opera House. The ACO is conductorless,
so ‘each and every musician is exposed’.
Members of the orchestra relate why
they entered the field of music and
when they first played together.
Certainly the rehearsal
sequences are illuminating. The music
is dissected painstakingly, and sometimes
only put together at the very last moment
prior to performance (the piece in question
is the Adagio of the Schubert String
Quintet), although where they get their
overview from is left rather open.
Some of the repertoire
is interesting - Sandor Veress’ Transylvanian
Dances, for example. Genevieve Lacey
makes as good a case as it gets for
Vivaldi’s delightful Recorder Concerto,
RV445, contrasting interestingly with
Ligeti’s Violin Concerto (with Tognetti
himself as soloist. He plays a 1759
Guerneri, by the way). The Ligeti provokes
many mystified faces amongst the musicians
(here a guest conductor is hired, Roland
Peelman).
Of the extra features,
it is the performances that enable us
to judge to some extent at least whether
the claims of the documentary are true
or false. An excerpt from the first
movement of Schubert’s String Quintet
is smooth and very together, and also
includes some of the spirit of the dance.
A performance of the first movement
of the above-mentioned Vivaldi Recorder
Concerto is sweet, but Tognetti playing
unaccompanied Bach in an empty concert
hall minus socks (a sound check) is
strictly curiosity value only. A spoken
introduction tells of the story of Haydn’s
Farewell Symphony, and the ACO do, indeed,
leave the stage when they play it. And
some players from the orchestra relate
a few tales.
The Times described
the ACO as ‘the best chamber orchestra
on earth’. There is a continued implication
of its ‘unique’ status, but surely the
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra operates similarly
(and more successfully)?
Interesting, then,
for a one-off. The ACO is a polished
ensemble, of that there is no doubt.
But the hyperbole the viewer is sometimes
subjected to in essence confirms the
true status of this DVD as effectively
promotional material. For a fuller musical
picture, the interested reader is directed
to the ensemble’s recordings on Chandos,
particularly their Sculthorpe disc (CHAN10063:
Review
). There is an audio representation
of much of the DVD’s content at CD
Review , which includes a
complete performance of the Schubert
Quintet.
Colin Clarke
Australian Chamber Orchestra
ABC
CLASSICS 476 102-5 [52’00: extra features
53’00]
