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.

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