Review: stars align for Bach’s Universe at gala

THE STARS were all in alignment last night for the official gala opening of the 2015 Canberra International Music Festival. With The Fitters’ Workshop glamorously outfitted with gilded chairs set in a “cathedral” configuration and an intriguing curtain-raiser performance on glass stringed instruments next door at the Canberra Glassworks, all it remained was for “Bach’s Universe” to shine.

The subtitle for the festival, “Music, Einstein and You”, dictated that incoming artistic director Roland Peelman choose a repertoire illustrating his view that “great art emerges out of the collision of the personal and universal,” a point most evident in the exquisite rendition of Bach’s cantata “Jauchzet Gott”, a fine platform for the virtuosity of soprano Alex Oomens.

That and another point Peelman makes about the collision of past and future were also brilliantly illustrated in the finale, “The Dam,” commissioned from composer Kate Moore by local arts identity Betty Beaver. Moore, using old world (baroque) instruments at one end of The Fitters’ Workshop and at the other end ‘new’ instrumentalists Claire Edwards on vibraphone, Amy Dickson on saxophone and William Barton on didgeridoo, created a musical collision of rare force, drawing a standing ovation from the large, appreciative audience.

This “Beaver Blaze”, the longest ever since the commission began, did not always achieve the perfect blend of old and new that the work required, although the soaring soprano of Oomens at the ‘old’ end helped balance it out.

As for Bach’s Universe, his cantata, the Trio Sonata in G major and especially the Partita No 2 in D Minor, performed passionately by violinist Rebecca Chan, more than justified the title.

Moreover, much as Bach may have been a harmonic genius motivated by the power of the Almighty, the almost mathematical complexity of his work holds an element of modernity that bring to mind Albert Einstein, a violin lover who said of listening to Bach “listen, play, love, revere – and keep your trap shut”.

The juxtaposition of the party’s with Steve Reich’s “Vermont counterpoint” played by the charismatic Edwards on vibraphone, directly paralleled that complexity, a clever piece of programming.

Last night we heard Moore, Reich and “Time is Time Enough” by Alistair Spence, but as festival draws towards its conclusion on May 10, there are other challenging modern works in store, notably in the “From The Letter To The Law” concert at midday on May 8, including works by Peter Sculthorpe, Nigel Butterley and Nigel Ford, and “Movers and Shakers” on May 9, with works by Brian Howard, Sculthorpe, Kate Moore and John Adams.

Book-ending “Bach’s Universe” at the NGA on the final day Gandel Hall will be “A World of Glass”, featuring the work of the iconoclastic Philip Glass who drew on Albert Einstein’s love of playing the violin in his “The Kneeplays” from “Einstein on the Beach,” part of the concert.

If it all sounds rather intellectual, it isn’t. For as the opening gala indicated, Peelman has his feet set firmly on the ground—the ground of fine music.

 

 

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