Above: Australia’s Ensemble Offspring joined Asko Schönberg from Amsterdam. Featured image: members of the visiting ensemble, Asko Schönberg.
Successful Sydney Festival fare requires heightened creativity, an innovative approach to event structure and an audience exposed to international trends.
This visiting ensemble from the Netherlands, Asko Schönberg, joined our Ensemble Offspring in an hommage to composer-teacher Louis Andriessen. A leading figure based in Amsterdam with his legacy of students with a range of highly individual soundscape voice, including our own star expat composers or those who were lucky enough to be exposed to Andriesen’s genius.
This new music programme featured complex, fresh approaches to ensemble music with soundscapes which were engaging, effective and accessible despite the progressive approach to instrumental composition.
This showcase of Andriessen contained only two works of his and the remainder by his students. The stunning results illustrated why Andriessen was a key figure. He mentored composers from many countries over his career, including Australians Damien Ricketson , Mary Finsterer and Kate Moore.
Mary Finsterer’s Silva was heard and celebrated immediately with huge audience reaction. This fifteen-minute chameleon of a work for sextet with virtuosic percussion is a tremendously tight exploration in new voice. It blends and ornaments so well the searching quality quintet of strings, wind and percussion.
Damien Ricketson’s excellent ‘ Hectic Tulip’ for bass clarinet (Claire Edwardes) on marimba (Jason Noble) and electronics was a work with a great title and impressive duo content. It was a beautiful way to enjoy a hectic few minutes of effective small ensemble flowering. The blending of these rarely combined instruments and the pair’s playing intertwining the virtuosic strands was breathtaking.
The perpetuum mobile of Amercican David Lang’s Sweet Air for chamber ensemble of violin, cello, flute, clarinet and percussion featured impresive dialogue and interlocking. I could have listened to this soundscape for longer, increasing my relaxation response to Lang’s vision for even a greater, rewarding time
The violin concerto ‘White Eagle by Amsterdam local Martijn Padding was a sprawling gift of a work for us. Violinist Joseph Puglia and ensemble played this work with the consummate freshness it deserved. The pure newness of fresh gesturing and exciting string effects were packaged by Padding and redelivered by this group to us in a tight frame of musical variegation.
Ensemble Offspring played the first half then the second half showcased Asko Schönberg. They collaborated with Claire Edwardes and other Ensemble Offspring regulars fleshing out the last piece.
This formed a unique global chamber orchestra in the final piece, expat Aussie Kate Moore’s Art of Levitation. This work written after a car trip beside the industrial images of oil refineries was a stunning example of textural crescendo. It intricately meshed live instruments with electronic sound effects.
The inimitable style of Moore’s comment, an elaborate and thrilling response to the sights, sounds and reactions after her exposure to a landscape was the ultimate demonstration of Andriessen’s unique and productive pedagogy, encouraging radical newness and individuality.
There was an Andriessen work played at the start of each group’s set. These were namely his Elegy fot piano with cello, performed by Alex Raineri and cellist Blair Harris. This was emitted with beautiful expression and a well-paced arching away from the initial stillness.
Asko Schönberg, playing Andriessen’s Zilver for mixed ensemble and two percussionists (Claire Edwardes joining in a reprise her 1990’s time performing with this Dutch new music supergroup) was a thrill to hear.
This work unfolded as a modern take on organ chorale structures, with hypnotic scalic ladder ascending and descending for the foundation of incredible elaboration.
This work, an exemplary modern twist on traditional techniques of elaboration, celebrated the power of unique voice and concepts devised by this legendary composer-teacher.
This entire concert was a fine Sydney Festival concert in the ‘Opera/Classical’ category. For this event we witnessed Artistic Directors Claire Edwardes, visiting conductor Clark Rundell and the celebrated ensemble Asko Schönberg -somehing of a Netherlandish ABBA in new music circles carve up the featured composer’s works and all items on the well constructed programme at the iconic Sydney Opera House venue.
Classical Music in international collaboration has survived the pandemic pause to be brilliantly alive and well at Sydney Festival 2023. The visitors enjoyed dealing with local talent in our elevated summer environment. The audience gasped, gushed and was ecstatically enriched.