WAAPA - OZArtsReview

Defying Gravity

reviewer Live Performance September 24, 2018Chon, defying gravity, Gabrielle Lee, Germaine Png, N Cohn, WAAPA

WAAPA Music Auditorium

reviewed by Neville Cohn

It is one of Western Australia’s most meaningful musical success stories.

For years. Defying Gravity has brought performances of the highest order to invariably full houses. This is a particularly remarkable achievement in that, firstly, the performers are still students and, secondly, that the make-up of the ensemble constantly changes as WAAPA students graduate and take their skills to an ever-widening audience. And Tim White, percussionist par excellence, shares, as ever, a priceless understanding of the medium with his students.

Overwhelmingly, works on offer are of recent vintage so it was with particular interest that we listened to a work dating as far back as 1695 when King Louis XIV occupied the French throne. Here, on two timpani, Jesse Vivante brought a sense of high occasion to Philidor’s Batterie de timbales. This was an impressive and stylish summons to attention.

Moving forward 323 years, Germaine Png and Gabrielle Lee did wonders on vibraphone and marimba in Emmanuel Sejourne’s Losa. In high style, this young duo did wonders in evoking the essence of the music. Much of the playing was informed by a frankly delightful peekaboos insouciance and engaging rhythms.

Jonathan Jie Hong Yang’s Rainforest was given its world premiere performance. A program note refers to the music’s ‘mesmerising tranquillity’ – and 16 players pooled their skills to charming effect in evoking this gentle mood. In contrast to these islands of quietness, there were more emphatically stated ideas that fell most agreeably on the ear. I’d very much like to listen to this again, a view probably shared by most of the audience if the intensity of applause that greeted its conclusion is anything to go by.

In Steven Rush’s Mas Fuente, ferocity was well to the fore with savage attacks on drum surfaces and much energetic use of cymbals. A good deal of the performance was informed by a savage, unyielding intensity – but there were also moments where softer tones provided some aural relief.

If the name Pavan Kumar Hari meant little to concertgoers who thronged the auditorium, world premiere performances of three of his works involving both music and dance will almost certainly ensure his name is well remembered – and for all the best reasons. The middle work – Vichara – played on the vibraphone by the composer provided a charming interlude separating the dance offerings.

I am not in any sense an authority on traditional Indian dance styles which were a significant component of Hari’s Svatantrya and A Little Touch of India but to my uninformed eye, the dancing was fascinating and gripped the attention from the moment performers entered the darkened auditorium from different points while carrying small trays of tiny, lit candles which were deposited on the perimeter of the stage. Then followed dance episodes of grace and power that were both fascinating and satisfying. They were strikingly costumed.

Of particular quality were Shweta Baskaran’s accompaniments on sitar and Sivakumar Balakrishnanl on tabla.

Defying Gravity players positioned behind the dancers brought additional sonic muscle to the proceedings. Bravissimo!

Geoffrey Lancaster (fortepiano) James Huntingford (fortepiano)

reviewer Live Performance July 4, 2018Chon, Cohn, Fur Elise, Geoffrey Lancaster, James Huntingford, WAAPA

WAAPA Music Auditorium

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Prior to the performance at WAAPA Auditorium on Saturday, how many concertgoers, I wondered, would have realised that the opening item on the program, listed as Bagatelle in A minor, was, in fact, the much-loved Fur Elise? And as Geoffrey Lancaster ushered in what could arguably be the most famous of any keyboard piece described as bagatelle, there was a faint but nonetheless audible sigh of recognition as Fur Elise registered its presence. Prior to that, we listened to a very brief overture to the celebrated bagatelle, a flurry followed by a more sober statement that led into the piece proper.

This was of course, standard performance practice in Beethoven’s day.

But as Fur Elise unfolded, I noticed a number of concertgoers turning to their companions with a puzzled look. Others seemed almost offended.

These were perfectly understandable reactions because the underlying beat of the bagatelle was often extraordinarily elastic, now an acceleration, now much slower and introverted.

It’s playing that is utterly at odds with current conventional treatment of the piece.

But this was not some wilful or eccentric caprice on Lancaster’s part. On the contrary, what we were listening to was the product of years – decades – searching for musical truth – and offered with an authority born of the most detailed research.

For those with access to the very first recordings made by pianists in the early years of last century – many of these are now available – it may well be instructive, even revelatory, to discover how similar to Lancaster’s keyboard approach to Fur Elise some of these very early recordings are. Careful listening to these will show how much in evidence this elasticity of the beat the playing of the era was, how frequently hands were not precisely in accord with one another. There’s a mood of extemporisation to much of it.

But within a remarkably short period after those first recordings being made available, this manner of performance was to vanish almost completely to be replaced by the far stricter treatment of rhythm and hand co-ordination that we now take for granted. And Lancaster is at the forefront of those bringing back that style into play (no pun intended). It’s too early to tell whether it will ultimately prevail.

It takes considerable courage to place so drastic an alteration to the status quo before the public. It’s an initiative that can so easily backfire courtesy of those who won’t hear (no pun intended) of so drastic a change to the status quo. It’s the music equivalent of an earthquake.

We also listened to Beethoven’s Rondos opus 51. These are great favourites with earnest young piano pupils at local eisteddfodau. But, again, as in Lancaster’s treatment of Fur Elise, there was authority in every measure as we were taken back in time to listen to music as those in Beethoven’s time might well have experienced it. Sonata in C minor from opus 10 (most of the program consisted of music in either C major or C Minor) was frankly fascinating; it was if we were hearing it for the very first time – and as Beethoven himself might have wanted it to sound.

James Huntingford played, inter alia, the Waldstein sonata, music that is no-man’s-land for any other than musicians with complete physical mastery of the instrument. I especially admired the closing pages of the first movement, given magical treatment, the sound reaching the ear as if through layers of fine gauze. It called to mind Moiseiwitch’s unforgettable 78rpm recording for HMV made during the 1950s.. The Pathetique sonata, too, fell well on the ear. Its lengthy adagio introduction could hardly have been bettered. On the evidence of this performance, Huntingford is clearly a fortepianist on the rise.