Did you know surfing legend Tom Carroll can play the violin? He didn’t either: until he tried. Derek Hynd (pic below TC) can’t believe what he’s hearing.Tom was one of the brave band of surfers to embark on Musica Surfica on King Island. What an amazing 10 days it has been. Not enough time to write in detail. Here is a link to Mick Sowry’s blog : http://safetosea.blogspot.com/
Mick is the director of the doco we are filming.
Folk music is not lost on our audience – if anything Brahms seems to be more so. The Bb string sextet no.1 is surely one of the purest pieces of music: its underlying drama subdued by euphonious melody. Over the years we have performed it many times and the end response is always somewhat subdued. Is this a reflection of the music?
Passions are not natural to humankind; they are always exceptions or excrescences…the ideal, genuine person is calm in joy and calm in pain and sorrow. Passions must pass quickly, or else they must be driven out.
-Brahms writing to Clara Schumann from Detmold (11 Oct 1857)
These are strange and confusing words to come out of a “Romantic” composer. Maybe they are in response to the madness of his friend Robert Schumann who was anything but calm in joy, pain or sorrow.
The work is very challenging to perform, least of all due to the subtlety and restraint of its emotional language. The more one gets into the power of this music, however, the more one finds the underlying drama (the passions?) disturbing that “ideal calm”.
You can feel the audience lulling into the “calm” of the first movement only to be re-awakened by gypsy passion in the second. A Schubertian dance movement follows, raising the pulse before the complex and almost unnerving calm of the last with the “seamlessly woven reappearances of the opening theme barely contrasting with the intervening episodes (an aspect of the composition which drew a negative comment from Joachim, but which Brahms-this time-did nothing to rectify!)”
Richard Specht, perhaps sums up best the overall effect of the Sextet in 1928: ‘Never before have such luxuries of sound been enticed from a handful of string players’.
Taciturn and droll, country fiddler Mike Kerin is a great addition to any orchestra. He stands up the front and with a humble strut (if that’s not contradictory) producing a raw and ready sound more heartfelt than many a top-notch classical soloist. This kind of fiddling is far preferable to the slick Irish fiddling perfection often treading the boards these days.
Danny Spooner is the crooner from soil, industry, ships and unions. He can bellow, caress and weep. His brain holds more than 1000 songs and his recall is phenomenal. It’s been a pleasure arranging these songs and I hope to put some sounds up soon.
Vuillaume
For the first time in the ACO’s history, we have spent some money on a capital purchase (apart from office furniture): we (the ACO company) now proudly own a beautiful Vuillaume cello.
Leaving The audience response in Carnegie Hall ( Zankel Hall ) was gratifying (unlike the acoustics) and we played Debussy and Walton as encores.
Melissa Barnard, Tipi, Pieter Wispelwey and co. are on a cello trying-out frenzy. Instruments by Vuillaume, Grancino, Gasparo da Salò (1542-1609) amongst others vying for their love and appraisal. Very interesting to hear all the different attributes in a piece of wood and how it can really change the way people play. It’s also different to note how, like with wine, people can be persuaded by the pedigree of a name hence it’s best to have blind tastings. Steven Isserlis haughtily claims that he’s not interested in instruments but rather by how people play them…mmm!
The violinists are going mad trying out different bows. A Kittel (turns out to be a fake) and Peccattes. All very frustrating chasing one’s tail.
Stumbled into Gordon Ramsey’s The London restaurant. The nastiest man on TV is an elegant chef and for $16 you could get taster plates after the concert with not many people and exemplary service. Amazingly it’s not too expensive AND unlike
Cellist Julian Thompson is late for the bus out of NYC and can’t be awakened by phone, or repeated knocking on the door, so Damien (orch manager) has to get security to break into his room - and there the little lamb is sleeping off his martinis. Reeking of vodka we howl abuse at people late for buses. Shame on you Prisoner Thompson. HA. I’ll post a photo later.
Apr 25, 2007
What a relief to be in the north east.
Caught up with great friend Ben Zander who took RT out to Walnut Hill performing arts high school for an energetic 3 hours of masterclasses with Ben’s contagious energy inspiring 150 of the country’s most talented high school age music students.
Apr 16 2007
65,000 injuries and 30,000 deaths per anum and they don’t want to fix the problem. Just being near a gun scares the crap out of me. With such a massive gun problem and all the politicians can do is mindlessly invoke the second amendment : “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”. We must be worried by predictions that
Yes! Everyone is bitching about the food, the obesity, the guns, the war, the arrogance, the T.V., the super-powerness. Of course there are INCREDIBLE things in the USA, but if you put yourself up as a superpower then expect the rest of the world to have high standards.
Dear Richard
Chris and I are in LA. Last night we went to dinner at the house of Billy Hayes and Wendy West - friends of mine for nearly 30 years. Billy Hayes was the guy who wrote the story (and lived it) Midnight Express about his bust for hashish smuggling, 5 years in Turkish prison and his daring escape from Turkish Prison.
We started talking about Shantaram, obviously a story he has a lot in common with, and I brought your name up. Suddenly Billy says "ACO???" Australian Chamber Orchestra??? Hey I just drove a double bass and two cellos out to
When he is not acting, or playing poker for a living, he does some long distance driving for the company that delivered your instruments. He gave me Damien Low, your road manager’s cell phone. I called last night while you guys were playing about 9pm. If he is a good road manager he will have delivered my message to you and he will call me with details this morning. Naturally we want to see you and hear you.”
Damien Low is a good road manager – the best – and he did pass on the message. Met up with Penny and was stoked to receive this amazing coincidence. Unfortunately we had our phones off during dinner as Billy was trying to meet up with us. Synchronicity or what?
Now we’re in
Everywhere you travel, you absorb something of the place you’re in. …
When it comes to energy saving, this country is not changing its habits in any ostensible way. At airports fast food outlets help to further oversize the consumer, they have few if any recycling bins and the packaging is unbelievably wasteful and redundant.
Like its inhabitants the cars appear larger than ever, and few people appear genuinely disturbed by the consequence of continuing down this unsustainable route.
Playing in
For those too short-sighted to see the worth of bringing the Sydney Opera House up to the standard it should be believing it to be a waste of money should get out and about and see what they’ve done to MOMA in NYC and what they’re about to do to Alice Tully Hall alone - the latter costing US$700 million. It is these iconic buildings that make a city. We only have one in
“It’s a pity that I don’t understand the art of war as well as that of music. I would destroy him.” Beethoven on Napoleon
We have just concluded the inaugural ACO ’07 tour performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto Op. 61, his Eroica symphony Op. 55 and Turnage’s Lullaby for Hans.
In 2006 we performed Beethoven’s rather more succinct 5th symphony, and hence it is interesting to touch on the differences between this and his more verbose and unwieldy 3rd.
Interpreting arguably the world’s most famous piece of music – the knockout c minor 5th, one is struck by the clarity of its structure. The metronome markings as prescribed by the composer are immutable – one ignores them at one’s peril, and the work builds to an irrepressible big bang conclusion in the bright key of C. The 3rd symphony, on the other hand, throws up more uncertainty. Many stylistic issues arise relating to the metronome marks by Beethoven. For e.g. the provocatively lengthy first movement drives for 16 min’s with one tempo indication (at one bar per second), making it 10 min’s longer than the first mov’t of the 5th. There are no indications for rubato (the give and take of time) and not even a fermata (pause) in sight– interesting to note that within the first 4 bars of the first mov’t of the 5th symphony we are already asked to pause.
Yet Beethoven has infused this colossal first movement with so much musical information; arguing his complex philosophical ideas with such powerful developmental treatment so wilfully that in studying its structure one could assign a different tempo to mark each of the movements strongly varying characters.
And many interpreters do, arguing for grandiloquence by over-gunning dynamics and under-gunning tempo and prescribing rubato to enhance dramatic gesture and assuming articulation markings not in the score.
When one considers and accepts Beethoven’s tempo as a purposeful call to move with force and Napoleonic energy into battle, it demands of the listener and performer a speed of reflexes and stamina required for such a task.
No wonder Beethoven summons the need to repeat the exposition, (he toyed with the idea of removing the repeat, but was convinced of its necessity) in order that our mind’s ear has the chance to be properly acquainted with the rich fabric of strongly distinct ideas before launching headlong into the development.
And so after the longest 1st mov’t written to that date, we are faced with the longest slow movement. No wonder many find this symphony the most exhausting. Spohr was heard to claim during the first performance: I’d pay money for this to stop.
A substantial amount of 19th-century critical opinion of the Eroica touched on the concept of the symphony as a psychological portrait of Bonaparte; or else discussed whether the work is underlaid by a programmatic narrative of Napoleon’s life, or even perhaps the Iliad. The broader point was that Napoleon was merely one example of the contemporary fascination with all things heroic.
Thus, if the first movement represented the heroic warrior in action, the funeral march of the second movement could easily be read as the hero mourning the loss of his friend and comrade-in-arms. The expression of such serious and deeply felt emotion is not incongruous with the energetic soldier, but rather enhances the listener’s mental image of such a man.
The last two movements were often considered by contemporary critics to be weaker than the first two, leading some to place the funeral march last in performance, as something more profound – but also more neatly programmatic. ‘Having portrayed the tiger in the first movement, and the profoundly suffering human soul behind it in the second, Beethoven turned to what he believed would be Bonaparte’s more lasting accomplishments in the final two,’ suggested Adolph Marx, who didn’t share the disparaging view of Beethoven’s original design. ‘The Scherzo represents peace, and the troops breaking off for their dear homeland.’ Marx also put forward a provocative theory that one of the principal themes of the Scherzo is based on a student drinking song, notated by a German folksong expert as being popular in the period 1810-1826, and probably originating in the field with the troops of the Napoleonic wars. The song was intended to be sung in canon, which is how Beethoven treats it. In support of this alcohol-related theory, an anonymous Viennese reviewer described the Scherzo as ‘Raging rapture. Pleasure is the goal of life; every joy wants to be tasted, every sensual pleasure put to the test. Away with wisdom, with its foresight!’
The contradanse which appears in the Finale also attracts attention for its close relationship with English musical models of that dance (as opposed to French or German). Sarah Bennett Reichart has proposed that Beethoven’s contradanse here was chosen to represent a newly democratic age – the English contradanse being popular at the time of Emperor Joseph’s enlightened reforms, to the extent that in some cases masters would find themselves dancing with servants.
Performing the “Carrodus” 1743 del Gesso for the first time in big halls around the country was a rather intense experience, given that it attracted so much attention and hadn’t been played in public since 1953. Please feel free to offer comments.
Apologies for the ghastly Blog blank. The ACO 2006 Sub’s year has long ago ended with glorious, vibrant pianist Polina Leschenko . ACO then went on to finish the year in W.A. at Vasse Felix, Janet Holmes a Court’s winery; one of the original wineries in W.A. Not particularly long ago did cows get the boot in favour of grapes, but now when one thinks of Margaret River the predominant thought is of wine - and surf. The surf is astonishing, the swells are consistent and often large; indeed perhaps it’s the most consistent place on earth for surf, so long as the local winds stay out of the picture. The wind can be brutal and relentless, but the end of November is a less ferocious month, and we were lucky that the Fremantle Doctor (Roaring Forties) didn’t come knocking too hard.
We’re proud to announce three appointments to the ACO core membership:
Principal cello: Timo-Veikko Valve who hails from Finland.
Principal viola: Chris Moore, Newcastle via the Melbourne Symphony principal viola position
Ripieno cello: Julian Thompson, Canberra
Emerging Artists
’06 was the inaugural year for our ACO2 . project. We can now say that ACO incorporates two orchestras, the second being a training camp for the ACO core group. In ’07 we will tour ACO2 on the eastern seaboard of Australia and hopefully finish with a BIG BANG in Sydney.
We are working on a tour with the working title
Musica Surfica * Musicians, Surfers, and Students combining in pursuit of Emerging Frontiers*. ACO2 will perform a vast range of repertoire, and they will get a taste of being on the road.
In April, ACO travels to the USA for a 3 week tour in George W’s land of the you’re either with us or against us. Doesn’t leave much room for intelligent debate does it.
