Perth
International Arts Festival 2002: Late Nites in the Sunken Garden
The Sunken Garden is an open-air venue on the grounds of the University of Western Australia, which one would hope might be irked by the illiteracy perpetrated in its name but shows no sign of it. Nevertheless, it is a pleasant place for a concert on a balmy Perth summer night, and even better if you bring your own chair.
Late Nite in the Sunken Garden 1
Tuesday 5 February 2001
Sunken Garden, University of Western Australia, Perth
Bartók: Duos for two violins
Priya Mitchell (violin)
Henning Kraggerud (violin)
Kraggerud: Voyage Douleureux for two violas
Henning Kraggerud (viola)
Brett Dean (viola)
Berkeley:
Odd Man Out for solo viola
Flighting for solo clarinet
Brett
Dean (viola)
Joy
Farrall (clarinet)
Poulenc: Sonata for Two Clarinets
(arr. for oboe and clarinet)
Nicholas Daniel (oboe)
Joy Farrall (clarinet)
The Bartók work which opened this program consists of eleven short
movements, based mostly on Hungarian folk tunes and depicting "scenes from
everyday life." Many of them are dances, interspersed with the occasional
slower mood piece. Henning Kraggerud, looking even more absurdly young than
everyone else involved in the Festival's chamber music series (are they raiding
primary schools for these performers?), introduced the Duos in brackets of
three, entertaining the not-insubstantial audience with what he described as his
"unstable" English. The two violinists seemed to be
having a remarkably good time with these mostly merry pieces.
With a pair of talented performing composers such as Kragerrud and Brett Dean joining forces, viola jokes went right out the window. Kragerrud introduced his own work, commenting that it started with a solo and depicted a journey towards "finding your own sorrow." Voyage Douleureux is a virtuoso showpiece; the impressive central episode has a "dueling violas" effect, with the instruments following different but not completely discordant melody lines, then coming together for a resigned but harmonious resolution. Does this make sense of "finding one's own sorrow"? It certainly seemed so at this performance.
Michael Berkeley was once again on hand to introduce his two compositions. He pointed out that Odd Man Out is not a viola joke, but refers to the children's game and the solitariness of the outcast. It makes much use of the viola's uppermost range and indeed starts on a harmonic, producing an effect all the more uncanny for being in unfamiliar viola territory. Despite Berkeley's comment that Odd Man Out was not written to display pyrotechnics, there are plenty of instrumental fireworks, but they did nothing to lessen the feeling of emotional isolation evoked by the plangent tones of the viola. The brief but beguiling Flighting basically consists of a series of notes spiraling around each other without quite constituting a linear melody, rather like feathers carried on the breeze. The idea for running these two pieces together was a new one, which had not even been rehearsed as such, yet Flighting did seem to emerge organically from Odd Man Out, with the dying notes of the viola being carried forward by the clarinet.
Poulenc's Sonata for Two Clarinets, arranged by oboist Nicholas Daniel for oboe and clarinet, consists of three short movements: a sparking Presto, a gentle and haunting Andante, and a lively and quirky Vif. As was the case throughout the concert, high virtuosity combined with expressiveness to provide a satisfying serving of modern music and send the audience off in high spirits.
Late Nite in the Sunken Garden 2
Thursday 7 February 2002
Sunken Garden, University of Western Australia, Perth
Hindemith: Die Serenaden
Nicole Tibbels (soprano)
Nicholas Daniel (oboe)
Brett Dean (viola)
Jon Tooby (cello)
Berkeley: Snake
Nicholas Daniel (English horn)
Dean: Intimate Decisions for viola
Brett Dean (viola)
Britten: Six Metamorphoses for Oboe, Op. 49
Nicholas
Daniel (oboe)
Similar in format to the first "Late Nite," this concert offered compositions
by two 20th-century masters bookending a pair of works by contemporary composers
who were on hand to introduce them. First up was Die Serenaden, a
relatively early work (1924) by Paul Hindemith consisting of eight movements:
six poem settings for soprano and two instrumental pieces. In his introduction,
oboist Nicholas Daniel indicated the running order and nature of each movement,
but it is a pity that a little more description and the texts were not included
in the program for non-German speakers. Nicole Tibbels displayed exemplary
diction, exquisite vocal control and commendable intonation in songs which
cannot be as easy to sing as she makes them appear. The instrumentalists matched
her virtuosity, particularly in the "wild ride" viola-oboe duo and the lyrical
trio movement.
Michael Berkeley's Snake, commissioned by the Natural History Museum in London, was inspired by a D. H. Lawrence poem about a snake and the reactions of a man encountering it. After a stop and start opening, perhaps representing the reptile waking up, the mellow tones of the English horn traced an appealing, if predictable, sinuosity; Daniel, contending with the Fremantle Doctor trying to remove his score (no, it wasn't an obstreperous audience member, but rather a cooling summer wind which blows into Perth off the Indian Ocean), took on something of the aspect of a snake charmer both visually and aurally.
Brett Dean introduced and played his composition Intimate Decisions for viola, describing it as a very personal piece. It starts in a questioning mood, with several unresolved cadences; the music seems to gather confidence as it picks up speed. Dean was somewhat challenged by a broken string, but after changing it on the stage (there was insufficient light away from it), picked up where he had left off and carried on apparently undaunted. The middle section contained an effect distinctly like the flight of Rimsky-Korsakov's poor overworked bumblebee, followed by some dissonant multiple-stop chords that resolve into an introspective melody and then fade into silence.
Britten's Six Metamorphoses depicts six physical transformations recounted in Ovid, beginning with the transmutation of Syrinx into reeds and then into panpipes, and culminating in Arethusa becoming a fountain. Nicholas Daniel introduced each place before playing it, so the audience was able to follow closely these vivid musical tableaux. The galloping horses dragging Phaeton to his death and the subsequent slow drift down of his incinerated remains, the sprightly feast of Bacchus, the rising mist and subsequent watery elevation of Arethusa — all were exquisitely rendered by Daniel, who received an enthusiastic response from his listeners.
Perth has been privileged to enjoy such adventurous programming, not to mention such a variety of talented performers from home and abroad, in the extended chamber music portion of the Festival. The "late nite" concerts in particular took a risk in featuring 20th- and 21st-century works, many of them for unaccompanied solo instruments outside the generally charismatic range of piano, violin, cello and guitar. Yet the programs successfully conveyed a range
of moods and styles; while the audiences were undoubtedly different from those
attending the more mainstream concerts, they clearly appreciated these forays
off the beaten musical track.
