Sydney Reviews

Understandably, most of the reviews in this journal cover events in Australia’s major cities. It is with special pleasure, then, that I now write about a concert by one of our most excellent regional orchestras, The Northern Rivers Symphony Orchestra. They perform in the Tweed Heads Civic Centre, and for this concert they came off the stage onto the floor, to allow the choir to occupy the stage. The resulting cramped audience space was, in my view, amply compensated for in the much warmer and more immediate sound of the orchestra playing on the wooden floor of the auditorium.

Typical of many regional orchestras, it is entirely amateur, run by a volunteer committee. But for much of the time during their concert, Winter Delights, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Brisbane or Sydney. Yes, the audience betrayed it, by clapping between every movement; and there was the inevitable raffle. However, under the reliable and focussed baton of Marco Bellasi, the performance of Beethoven’s Leonora Overture no 3 which opened the program sounded fully professional. Their strings, led by Alison Fletcher, conjured up electric pianissimi in the slow introduction while wind and brass gave fullthroated, well-blended fortissimi in its climaxes. In this performance Bellasi’s unremitting attention to detail was most evident in the many woodwind solos clearly floating over the soft strings, but also in the careful positioning of the trumpet, which famously announces the arrival of Don Fernando in the opera now known as Fidelio, at the back of the auditorium.

Leonora 3 was followed by the Grieg piano concerto, brilliantly played by the immensely talented local pianist Ayesha Gough. Everyone knows the story of how, to the composer’s chagrin, this grand Romantic concerto replete with virtuosity was sight-read by Liszt when the 25-year-old Grieg took it to him. In Ayesha Gough’s hands the famous opening gesture sounded at least Lisztian, almost like Rachmaninov in fact, in its powerful rhetoric. Then for the tender countermelodies she coaxed gentle Schubertian sonorities from the piano. The contrast between exhilarating flamboyance and warm cantabile in her playing entirely captivated the audience.

Like Bellasi’s Beethoven, Gough’s Grieg was either very soft and tender or really loud and passionate, without much in between. They were very well matched in this way, which is perhaps not surprising, as they have recently celebrated their marriage.

Following a convention which seems to be dying out now (or am I wrong?), Gough played an encore after the concerto. Chopin’s Ab Etude, op 25 no 1 enchanted Schumann when he first heard it, particularly the inner fragments of melody which appear and disappear through the evanescent texture. Gough played the étude with sparkling clarity, in a way more as if it were by Liszt than by Chopin, more rhetorical than poetic perhaps. But this pianist is nonetheless clearly a musician of considerable stature.

After the interval we had the rare experience of hearing the Requiem by Michael Haydn, Joseph Haydn’s younger brother. It was first performed in Salzburg in 1771, and both Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played in the orchestra in that performance. Apparently both Leopold and especially his son disapproved of Michael Haydn’s drinking habits!

The parallels between Haydn’s and Mozart’s own Requiem are striking. Mozart’s is also in D minor, the key associated with the supernatural in late 18th century music. The Confutatis alternates between the men and the women of the choir. There is a fugue for the Quam Olim Abrahae passage, and the four soloists are used in very similar places, most conspicuously for the Christe Eleison and the Benedictus. Haydn’s Cum Sancto Spirito fugue subject turns up in Mozart’s Solemn Vespers, in the D minor Laudate Pueri movement.

But what it reminded me of was that moment in Peter Schaeffer’s play Amadeus where Mozart hears music by Salieri (I think it was Salieri) and says something like “I could make something of this”, then proceeds to make magic out of something robust but routine. Haydn’s music is often interesting; Mozart’s is immeasurably more so. I can imagine Michael Haydn, if he ever heard Mozart’s Requiem, (and he may well have done) thinking – it’s just not fair!

The soloists were altogether excellent. Patrick Donnelly is so completely at home as an operatic bass, it is a shame he doesn’t perform more often. The tenor was the evergreen Greg Massingham, limpid and clear as always. I would walk miles over hot bricks to hear Gaynor Morgan, the soprano, with her combination of purity of sound, dramatic flair, and care about the whole musical context. The alto soloist was a real find. Morgan Rosati is a young student at the Queensland Conservatorium, a protegée of Margaret Schindler, and has a warmth and flexibility of colour that I should like to hear more of.

For Haydn’s Requiem the Northern Rivers Orchestra was joined by a local choir, the Coolamon Singers. Although they sang with clear diction, and with much verve and spirit, their blend and their intonation left something to be desired, despite being helped by the very fine and sensitive trio of Colla parte trombones in the orchestra. I have to say that I think this orchestra deserved a better choir. However, in the name of a truly local-generated concert, it was a worthwhile endeavour, and Bellasi’s enthusiasm for the Michael Haydn’s Requiem made the whole occasion remarkably effective. The Northern Rivers Symphony Orchestra is to be congratulated on such a ambitious and successful concert.