The organ was centre front in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert led by former Director, Edo de Waart, returning to the podium at the Sydney Opera House for a big boned program of Wagner, Strauss and Jongen.
The Cinderella of the program was the Jongen (given once before by this orchestra in 1983), a massive work yet founded at times on the most delicate orchestration, with the behemoth blending beautifully with woodwind and strings. The Symphonie Concertante (1928) is a large scale four movement work that unleashes its power and joy in the final movement, preceded by a wondrous slow moment of light and shadow, where power and restraint washed back and forth across a varied palette of sounds. Olivier Latry gave an assured performance, energising a wide range of sounds and remarkably nimble in the many intersecting sessions betwixt the organ and various principal players and sections. One could almost hear, across time scales, connections with another Belgian – Franck – and the French Messian.
The concert was framed by the Lohengrin (1850) Preludes (Acts i and Act iii). These were tenderly paced by de Waart, bringing a tremor of humanity to the frightfully exposed divisi strings and charted across an arc of sheer sound, highlighting the deft orchestration that Wagner unfolds, particularly the delicate way the cymbal rounds out this glimpse of the rarefied and visionary, swelling then ebbing.
Febrile orchestration was also on display in the wondrous romp that Strauss composed in 1892, Also Sprach Zarathustra. This work is a treasure trove of innovative sound worlds and complex pairings. The organ, starkly simple, weighted us all with its low notes in the power of the opening sunrise.
This is a young person’s music, dazzling, mercurial, surging with energy and thunderous power and full of an almost postmodern wit and wisdom as only the Gemütlichkeit Strauss could get away with – the transformed Viennese Waltz standing in as the metaphysical dance of life. This tanzlied was mischievously played by the concertmaster, Andrew Haveron. The antecedents of Salome and other theatrical works are hinted within this tone poem’s operatic canvas and, as always with Strauss, there is a truffle of surprise, this time via the beautiful and mysterious Nachtwandlerlied where the philosophical questions remain softly articulated, and unresolved, as the power of the orchestra is slowly laid to rest on the plucked notes of the double bass.
This fulsome concert gave us a chance to reflect on De Waart’s skill with large-scale works. His sure tread and clear articulation of the end point of each work ensured sustaining thinking, with each section of sound well placed architecturally in pursuit of a clear and satisfying narrative, just like one imagined the old undemonstrative Dr Richard Strauss himself might have delivered. The music is all, in the hands of such trusted conductors. Welcome back, Edo.
Sydney Symphony Orchestra– Concert Hall – Sydney Opera House (SOH) – November 27, 2015
The organ was centre front in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert led by former Director, Edo de Waart, returning to the podium at the Sydney Opera House for a big boned program of Wagner, Strauss and Jongen.
The Cinderella of the program was the Jongen (given once before by this orchestra in 1983), a massive work yet founded at times on the most delicate orchestration, with the behemoth blending beautifully with woodwind and strings. The Symphonie Concertante (1928) is a large scale four movement work that unleashes its power and joy in the final movement, preceded by a wondrous slow moment of light and shadow, where power and restraint washed back and forth across a varied palette of sounds. Olivier Latry gave an assured performance, energising a wide range of sounds and remarkably nimble in the many intersecting sessions betwixt the organ and various principal players and sections. One could almost hear, across time scales, connections with another Belgian – Franck – and the French Messian.
The concert was framed by the Lohengrin (1850) Preludes (Acts i and Act iii). These were tenderly paced by de Waart, bringing a tremor of humanity to the frightfully exposed divisi strings and charted across an arc of sheer sound, highlighting the deft orchestration that Wagner unfolds, particularly the delicate way the cymbal rounds out this glimpse of the rarefied and visionary, swelling then ebbing.
Febrile orchestration was also on display in the wondrous romp that Strauss composed in 1892, Also Sprach Zarathustra. This work is a treasure trove of innovative sound worlds and complex pairings. The organ, starkly simple, weighted us all with its low notes in the power of the opening sunrise.
This is a young person’s music, dazzling, mercurial, surging with energy and thunderous power and full of an almost postmodern wit and wisdom as only the Gemütlichkeit Strauss could get away with – the transformed Viennese Waltz standing in as the metaphysical dance of life. This tanzlied was mischievously played by the concertmaster, Andrew Haveron. The antecedents of Salome and other theatrical works are hinted within this tone poem’s operatic canvas and, as always with Strauss, there is a truffle of surprise, this time via the beautiful and mysterious Nachtwandlerlied where the philosophical questions remain softly articulated, and unresolved, as the power of the orchestra is slowly laid to rest on the plucked notes of the double bass.
This fulsome concert gave us a chance to reflect on De Waart’s skill with large-scale works. His sure tread and clear articulation of the end point of each work ensured sustaining thinking, with each section of sound well placed architecturally in pursuit of a clear and satisfying narrative, just like one imagined the old undemonstrative Dr Richard Strauss himself might have delivered. The music is all, in the hands of such trusted conductors. Welcome back, Edo.
Sydney Symphony Orchestra– Concert Hall – Sydney Opera House (SOH) – November 27, 2015