26 June 2018

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and Anna Goldsworthy


Elizabeth Murdoch Hall
Sunday 24 June 2018


I’ve listened to a lot of pianists. Some, mainly competition finals, out to impress a jury, seem to have decided that louder and faster is better: the rock band syndrome. The corollary of that is, to find the musician, listen to the pianist play something that’s not presto agitato. The more lento, more pianissimo the better.

Anna Goldsworthy played two concertos this afternoon each with a slow movement. No agitato here; no hint of presto – except in the Hungarian movement of the Haydn concerto where there was plenty.

Haydn’s Piano Concerto No.11 was written between 1780 and 1783 in the gallant style. The style required light elegance in music. Perfumed handkerchiefs were in fashion. The second movement is marked Un poco adagio. It’s writing is elegant and chromatic and in Anna’s hands it’s performance became absolutely beautiful as well. She took her time to find the elegant phrases and she often introduced them with micro-rubato with absolutely no hint of affectation.

Anna Goldsworthy
Source: http://www.annagoldsworthy.com/


Anna is a pianist whose head is firmly in the Classical style, including Haydn. She restrained the hints of romanticism – they are there are in both Haydn and Mozart – and so made them all the more powerful; a case of what’s unsaid. There was an obvious intelligence in this work that impressed me. Anna told me a few months ago that she was about to begin to learn the work. In my ignorance I thought she meant the notes. It became clear yesterday that she’d been talking about its style, its culture, its colour and its modulations.

Gallant style was young Mozart as well. Mozart 6 was written in 1776 when he had just turned 20 so it almost overlaps with Haydn 11. The major difference, though, was clear in Anna’s playing of its slow movement. It is marked Andante un poco adagio and it was the adagio bit that allowed her exploration of the incredibly beautiful modulations that, in typical Mozart fashion, are complex, extended and very interesting.

An integral part of that Mozart piece is the orchestra – strings with a brace of horns, of oboes and of flutes. In the orchestra-only sections Anna gently, unconsciously, conducted with her right hand just below the keyboard with a gentle up-beat onto the keyboard to continue her piano part.

Which brings me to this problem: the first movement and the Rondo all'Ungarese movement of the Haydn concerto was not too fast for Anna but it was for the violins.

The violin’s delicate semiquavers lost their definition in bars three and four then nine and ten. I heard a sort of chord rather than four discrete notes. It was often a problem in the third movement too, made worse by the contrast with the piano playing the same figure but with precision and clarity. It’s common to hear this in the ‘best’ commercial recordings. But my view is that if it’s written as four semiquavers, that’s what you play; that’s what I want to hear. Was it under-skilled violinists? I‘m certain it was not. Was it under-rehearsal due to lack of funds? That’s my guess.

http://imslp.org/wiki/Keyboard_Concerto_in_D_major,_Hob.XVIII:11_(Haydn,_Joseph)


Having said that, there’s some incredible talent in that orchestra. That’s no surprise since Bill Hennessy knows where the talented young musos are in Melbourne – and there are plenty. Emma Double-bass Sullivan with her celli accomplices set the pace for Haydn. (She’s brilliant, is Emma) and a pair of horns had the running for Mozart (brilliant musos as well).

And when the band wasn't playing there were the solo piano sections. After this single hearing I was convinced the cadenzas of both concertos were the composer's. But they were Anna's own. "It was a delightful and creative process to devise them", she said. She could also have said "fascinating" - the  idea of getting into Haydn's head (that mixture of serious classicism and deadly humour) to write something of her own that could easily have been his. (Getting into Mozart's head doesn't bear thinking about.) In any event, they were simply superb. And I was fascinated by the fact that she did not use them as a vehicle for self-aggrandisement. But then she had no need to.

I heard a world-class performance of two not-very-showy concertos today. I heard delicacy, lightness and elegance from both piano and band that made me glad. All that was needed was the hand-kerchief, perfumed, of course.

16 June 2018

John Howard: Risen from the dust bin of history ...






Tide turning for Turnbull but byelections won't be easy, says Howard

Former PM tells Liberal party council there’s a clear mood change among people because of Shorten’s ‘very leftwing agenda’
Former Australian prime minister John Howard
 John Howard speaks at the 60th federal council of the Liberal party in Sydney on Saturday. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

The former prime minister John Howard says he senses “a clear mood change in the community”, with people turning back towards the Turnbull government, but pulling off a victory over Labor at the coming byelections would be “something approaching a political earthquake”.John Howard.
... back ya go son-o!

[Liberal party ... 60th national council] voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to privatise the ABC.

11 June 2018

NSW government brumby bill: disaster. Bugger the science; play the politics

Feral horses are incompatible with a world heritage area. It's one or the other

Reprinted from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/11/feral-horses-are-incompatible-with-a-world-heritage-area-its-one-or-the-other

After the NSW government gave them heritage protection with the brumby bill, I had no choice but to quit the NSW threatened species scientific committee
David M Watson
Professor of ecology, Charles Sturt University

 You can have brumbies and horseback adventures at Kosciuszko, but not without damaging the heritage the park was designed to protect. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

You can have brumbies and horseback adventures at Kosciuszko, but not without damaging the heritage the park was designed to protect. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
Last year, I drove up to the New South Wales high country with my oldest son. We arrived at Geehi, found a camp site, rigged up our rods and waded into the crystal clear water, hoping to snag a trout. Between casts, my attention was drawn to a pair of black cockatoos, sailing overhead. Looking up, I noticed the main range of Kosciuszko. Ancient and imposing, granite worn smooth by rain and snow, embroidered with lichens and wildflowers. I don’t know how long we stood there, in silent awe of the jagged peaks, but it’s a treasured moment frozen in time.

In the weeks leading up to this trip, this place had been occupying my mind. As a member of the NSW threatened species scientific committee, I’d been involved in monthly day-long meetings for the past few years, participating in detailed discussions with people who knew far more than me about frogs and plants, bats and snails. I’m an ecologist — for the past 25 years, I’ve studied interactions between plants and animals — working out why some areas support more diversity, why particular plants and animals have positive or negative effects on their communities. This group of independent experts, appointed by the NSW minister for the environment was charged with synthesising available information about species, communities and ecological processes, advising government on the top priorities for management.

With shrinking budgets and the ever-present spectre of unprecedented climatic conditions, we wanted to ensure we were giving government the most up-to-date advice in our determinations. We worked diligently through hundreds of pages of journal articles and reports, emails from experts and concerned stakeholder groups. One of the determinations we were working on was listing feral horses as a Key Threatening Process.

The literature was quite clear on this issue. As with deer, goats and all the other exotic ungulates in Australia, these large hoofed animals have dramatic impacts on soils, breaking through the delicate crusts that hold them together, compacting the soil down so that they can no longer soak up water when it rains. But horses have a range of other effects. Unlike native grazers, they need to drink daily, chopping up creek-banks as they come and go. And because they don’t chew their food as much as deer and goats, many seeds pass through intact, including many weeds, tracked far into remote corners of this rugged country miles from management trails.

Some of the clearest information about how horses affect Australian environments comes from the high country, where fenced-out plots demonstrate just how dramatically they’ve altered these alpine communities. Within Kosciuszko national park, a 2008 report found 76% of stream banks were degraded in areas with horses, compared with 11% in areas where horses didn’t occur. We, the scientific committee, tallied the information, compared it with international benchmarks, finessed the language to ensure it was balanced and evidence-based, then voted and moved on to the next determination.

While this draft determination was open for public comment, John Barilaro, the outspoken Nationals state member for Monaro and deputy leader of the NSW government introduced a bill into parliament. The proposed legislation protects feral horses within Kosciuszko national park, requiring all future management plans for this World Heritage area to consider the cultural significance of horses.


New South Wales government to introduce 'brumbies bill' banning culls – video

We felt gutted. Not only did this fly in the face of the document we had just prepared for government, it made a mockery of the years of careful scholarship distilled within it. 

Discussing this issue with my wife and sons, we decided that if this bill was passed, I would have no option but to resign. And last Wednesday, the bill was passed without amendment. The minister for environment our committee directly advised gave the brumby bill her strong support. The next day, I resigned, sharing my letter over Twitter.
Much has been written about this issue, but let’s be crystal clear — feral horses are incompatible with protected area management. It’s one or the other. You can have brumbies and trail-rides and epic mountain adventures on horseback, but all of these things cannot occur within a national park without causing further damage to the very flora, fauna and ecological communities the park was established to protect.

Putting horses, mountains and the complexities of feral animal management to one side, this issue brings into very sharp focus the disdain our government shows for science. Being a “clever country” necessarily involves listening to our scientific community. If governments continue to ignore considered advice from the very panels they sanctioned specifically to give them considered advice, a lesser Australia awaits. An Australia where sharing quiet moments with your kids, wading along a crystal clear mountain creek, is no longer possible. Our rivers fouled, our mountains choked with weeds. Maybe they’ll tell stories about that instead. Or write poems.

07 June 2018

ANAM: Caleb Wong with Louisa Breen


ANAM Solo Recital
South Melbourne Town Hall
Friday 1 June 2018

Mature-age audience-people have been listening to music for decades. They can tell the good from the excellent from the superb in a flash. When 50 or 60 of them – with 20 or so student-support – recognise a performance as superb and rise as one person to say so it’s good evidence that the muso concerned is a winner. At ANAM on Friday the winner was Caleb Wong.

Caleb Wong
Source: https://www.maroondahsymphony.org.au/future-concerts/concert-sunday-16th-september-2018/

The Strauss/Mendelssohn opus 6 cello sonata was written when Richard was in his late teens: it’s late-ish 19C. So playing it very well, answers, ‘can I play German romantic with my eyes closed - because you can’t play Mendelssohn well with your eyes open. In Caleb’s case on Friday, the answer was,’ Why are you bothering to ask?’ He had the score open but I have no idea why. He spent a lot of time not looking at it and it showed in the way he let the music channel through his head and out over the space between stage and audience He gave us wonderful brio in the first movement and great vivo in the third with beautifully controlled andante but non-troppo in between. Simply beautiful. But was it competition winning stuff? Yes ... ish.

The late Debussy sonata was next. Not easy, that piece. Challenging to listen to with its unusual sur la touche and sur la chevalet bowing instructions. Caleb describes the second movement as sarcastic. I’ve never thought to describe even late Debussy like that, but he’s right. It’s a wonderfully acerbic piece that Caleb clearly understood very well. Hmmm ... it's not all sweetness and light in that head.

Grace Wong with brother Caleb
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xobm-7xhdWo


But to cut to the chase, Caleb was, I’m certain, doing a practice run for a high-powered competition. In that, his next choice of repertoire was ideal. He came nowhere near the boring and banal of which there is heaps in the cello list:
Samuel Barber? No! American schmaltz.
Béla Bartók? No?
Britten? Hmmm … later, maybe.
Elliott Carter? Bit risky. Very risky!
Elgar? Du Pré! So no, not until I'm very famous.
Variations on a Rococo Theme? No bite! What Tchaikovsky has?
Prokofiev Sinfonia Concertante? Yes! Bite!

But can we handle the horrendous technical stuff? The answer was, yes, firmly, yesapparently with ease. We were given (thank you Caleb) a brilliant, gut-grabbing performance of a piece that is rivalled for Russian bite and satanic writing only by Prokofiev’s third Piano Concerto. We heard only the second movement with the deceptive instruction, Allegro. Now I want to hear the whole deal. Even in a piano reduction it’s a spectacular piece of music with enormous music values and we got a spectacular performance that tapped into those values. Not just my opinion. The audience were on  their feet before I could move.

Louisa Breen was the Associate Artist – not the accompanist. Gerald Moore killed that concept by asking sardonically, Am I too loud? Louisa’s playing was equally as stunning as Caleb’s.

Louisa Breen
Source: https://www.melbournerecital.com.au/events/2018/natural-landscapes/
  
When they stood, exhausted, Caleb waved his right hand in her general direction. I’m absolutely certain that he didn’t intend to be dismissive: he’s too good a bloke for that. But as a piece of stage manners, next time Caleb might indicate Louisa firmly or shake her hand or kiss he on both cheeks or hug her then do a hand-holding bow with her. Mate, she was your associate artist! The performance was not possible without her – her work was top-class . You were both equally superb, mate!