ANAM: Island Songs and Big Brass

ANAM Brass and The Tasman Trio

Friday 11 May 2018

South Melbourne Town Hall

I walked up the ramp (because I was clutching a take-away coffee and an umbrella) in the rain. There was a gaggle of brass inside practising, presumably for the 1pm recital. The sound was fresh and clean. It was as sharp and precise as the freezing wind that had been annoying the penguins in Antarctica a few hours earlier. I had no idea what it was but I knew I’d recognise it later from the little teaser I’d heard.

A brass quintet is impossible to ignore. It’s the sort of group you hire if you want a memorable party – more so if you ask them to play Bozza’s Sonatine. Some furtive Googling revealed that Eugène was a sort of younger contemporary of Ravel but with a much more well-developed, dry sense of humour. I was amazed at the complexity, humour and agility that underpins this piece and that humans could actually play it, that is, get the rhythms together. It seemed that this lot did this with ease (after hundreds of hours of practice – alone and together).

ANAM Brass was dominated (in every sense) by the bass trombone – a really big bugger played by Simon Baldwin, a big bugger (you need the lung capacity).

In terms of musicianship, there was nothing to choose between this gang. But I reckoned, from the perspective of complete ignorance about brass instruments, my money was on Maraika Smit. She who had complete mastery of her French horn. Absolutely beautiful articulation and not one bung entry. An instrument pitched by your lips is amazingly difficult to play; one that is pitched by lips and fist must be horrendous. Evidence: the bung entries you hear from the French horns of that major orchestra just up the road in Hamer Hall.

And that is in no way to denigrate the playing of Sam Beagley and Sophie Spencer who played stunningly virtuosic silver-sounding trumpet or Dale Vail who played ‘normal’ trombone.

Maraika Smit - 20% of ANAM Brass

But all that is irrelevant when you get the sound we got from this quintet: exciting and compelling music written by a young bloke (he was 46) who had survived the Nazi occupation France – apparently with his head intact – who wrote this mad piece that refuses to be taken seriously. The first movement is marked Allegro vivo, the fourth Largo – Allegro and somewhere in between there’s a Scherzo!

And these your musicians nailed him, young Bozza.

The recital was called “Island Songs” for one excellent reason: John Psathas’ superb Greek/New Zealand Island Songs had an airing – an Oz-première? The Tasman Trio attacked the complex rhythms with absolute assurance. These tiny songs/fantasias sang. By about Bar III of Song I (Driving … um … Driving?) I’d forgotten about the three musos. Their playing of these spiky, sparky, engaging contemporary pieces had pulled me in. The big test applied: I wanted to hear them again.

The program notes said, somewhat ingenuously, ‘Each instrument [piano, cello, violin] … is allowed to showcase technical facility.’ That sentence was obviously redundant from the recital’s outset. Why not say outright, ‘These are bloody difficult. We’ve programmed them because we like them and they show off our spectacular talent.’

Go for it!

But it was in Brahms’ #2 Trio that Tasman showed they could match the bar set by ANAM’s Brass Quintet. It is at the pinnacle if chamber music. It is highly technical and highly chromatic. It demands three mature minds that can understand the ideas and get them out of their own head into ours. 

It has been described as ‘an astonishingly vast scale of expression’ so, to play it in front of people who have had a long lifetime of listening to it a trio of young musicians would need an ego a mile high or have worked their arses off. Just look at the score!

Piano Trio No. 2, Op. 87, Brahms

Of this trio I’d heard only Liam Wooding before in November 2017. He’d left me in awe of his technical skills and high musicianship. The challenge now was for the three of them – Liam, Laura Barton playing violin and Daniel Smith playing cello – to make this performance a trio rather than a two strings trying desperately to compete with a full-bodied Steinway. A few years ago I heard one mature, professional trio consistently perform that way and it wasn’t pretty. It didn’t occur to me until the end if this performance that that problem should be considered. I realised, at the end, that I’d settled back to enjoy a familiar chamber work in the hands of experts.

The Tasman Trio I - Daniel Smith, Laura Barton, Liam Wooding

I didn’t want to be dazzled by pyrotechnics; I didn’t want to be impressed by technical wizardry – and I wasn’t. I wanted to get inside the head of a complex man – one who had been a consummate concert pianist, who'd fallen hopelessly in love with the wife of his close friend and who never rid himself of the giant of Beethoven on his back – and I did.

The Tasman Trio II - Liam Wooding, Laura Barton, Daniel Smith

Today I heard a rich palette of piano trio sounds and textures. I heard an intimate collection of three individual strands welded into an ensemble with a powerful unity. 

The freezing wind added a powerful tympani line, battering the hall doors. It didn’t come close to disturbing this trio.