Orchestra superbly brings out the colors

Music / “Hearth & Shadow”, Canberra Symphony Orchestra. Llewellyn Corridor, March 22. Reviewed by ROB KENNEDY.

ORCHESTRAS are performing extra modern Australian works as a result of they realise, they’ll’t maintain enjoying the identical outdated music 12 months after 12 months and anticipate finding new audiences.

With Australian composer Iain Grandage’s work, “Dances with devils: Concerto for percussion and orchestra”, because the centrepiece of the primary Canberra Symphony Orchestra (CSO) live performance of the 12 months, Australian music is lastly getting its place in live performance halls, because it at all times ought to have been.

With Dane Lam conducting the CSO, they started with the “Divertimento from Le baiser de la fée”, by Igor Stravinsky. This motion from the neoclassical ballet is commonly performed as a standalone work as a result of it has all the colors of a rainbow.

As with loads of Stravinsky’s works, this one is fashionable and classical. And as at all times, orchestrated like few different items. With concertmaster Kirsten Williams on violin, the strings and woodwind led the music by a pensive and looking out opening phrase. Motion may very well be felt within the thought of the music. It rapidly modified, it set various scenes by musical movement.

As the colors of the music slid throughout the orchestra, the CSO introduced out all of the flavours of this dancing piece in a scrumptious method. The French horns made it vivid and dynamic all through. A top-of-the-mark method to start a live performance.

After an informative and entertaining introduction from the conductor concerning the percussion devices utilized in “Dances with devils: Concerto for percussion and orchestra”, by Iain Grandage, the soloist Claire Edwardes got here on to stage.

It is a main work in 4 actions. The concerto relies on chosen books centred across the Australian legendary view of the bush the place the principal characters are feminine.

Written for Edwardes in 2015, she describes the work as “extremely crafted”, and it’s. With banks of percussion devices earlier than Edwardes and dealing from a number of scores, it burst into life. Its quantity is immense. It’s electrical with attention-grabbing orchestration; there are few concertos like this one.

Transferring throughout stage to a different set of percussion, Edwardes opened up an extra realm of sound with chimes and a specifically designed set of tubular bells set in buckets of water. It was a surreal expertise of sight and sound.

Then the Waterphone, an instrument that Edwardes has made her personal. She walked throughout the stage bowing it, growing the spatial impact of its sound. What a piece. This concerto informed a fascinating story, aurally, visually and emotionally. Edwardes and the orchestra lived and breathed it, and so did the viewers.

After the interval, we bought to listen to from the inventive director and chief conductor, Jessica Cottis. By way of a video recording on a giant on-stage display, she spoke about what she was doing and the ultimate work of the evening, which was Beethoven’s “Picks from The Creatures of Prometheus”.

Pounding into starting, the unmistakable music of Beethoven. The profound hit factors of this music signature, greater than anything, that is the music of Beethoven. Hearth and drama breathe by this ballet rating. It expounds a dramatic story.

Like all of the works on this system on this live performance, color, variation and the music of festive dancing stuffed the ears of an engaged and extremely captivated viewers.