Performers who defy criticism! | Canberra CityNews

Music / “Weavers of Tune”, Miriam Allan & Erin Helyard. At Wesley Music Centre, September 17. Reviewed by GRAHAM McDONALD.

THERE is an added pleasure in a live performance when there may be an apparent pleasure within the firm and an appreciation of one another’s skills between the performers. 

On this case it was between Australian soprano Miriam Allan and fortepiano participant Erin Helyard. They’re virtually precisely the identical age and have studied and labored collectively for a lot of their skilled lives. 

Allan is now based mostly in England, the place she specialises in baroque and classical interval opera whereas Helyard relies in Sydney the place he’s the director of Pinchgut Opera, additionally specialising in producing 17th and 18th century opera.

This live performance celebrated the 20th anniversary of the muse of the Wesley Music Centre, with an introduction by the centre’s director Liz McKenzie acknowledging the efforts of Garth Mansfield, whose power and drive was basic to its institution. 

The music for the live performance was composed of songs by Joseph Haydn and Franz Schubert with fortepiano works by Josepha Barbara Auernhammer, Mozart and Schubert.

The Haydn songs had been from “Unique Canzonettas”, composed within the mid-1790s, with many of the six chosen settings of poems by Anne Hunter. These had been introduced into two blocks of three with a piano work by Auernhammer to interrupt them up.

She was a scholar of Mozart and wrote this work, variations on a music theme from the “Magic Flute”, shortly after his demise in 1791. The Haydn songs had been adopted by a Mozart “Variations on a Theme” earlier than a leap ahead 20 or so years for one more six songs by Schubert interspersed with three quick piano works.

I’ve not talked about the performances as a result of there may be little a reviewer may probably write in the way in which of criticism. 

Allan’s voice is beautiful, precise in pitch, filled with dynamics with pleasant bits of baroque ornamentation. She held a excessive observe within the third of the Schubert songs which had Helyard wanting throughout in marvel and admiration. Helyard’s taking part in was flawless. The fortepiano, a duplicate of an early 19th century instrument, growled and rippled as required, sounding completely acceptable to the music. There was additionally the curious numerical structuring of this system, with all of the works organized in threes and sixes, maybe with some underlying significance, however all a part of a powerful musical efficiency from two artists on the peak of their powers.