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Above : Yidaki player Gumaroy Newman joined TMO  for the world premiere performance of Celestial Emu. Featured image : Gumaroy Newman

Almost five months to the day after the British landed in Botany Bay in 1788 Mozart entered details of his now treasured Symphony No 40 in G minor in his catalogue of completed works.

To begin its 2020 Met Concert series, TMO in a new venue of Sydney’s Seymour Centre presented an excellently structured programme. This concert reached out through time, cultures and collaboration from this well known symphony to Australia, the survival of First Nations people, music and culture and to music reinventing the tone of past tradition.

The result was significant in its juxtaposition of works. The collaboration of cultures and placement of a special premiere within the Western music timeline was exciting and very moving.

In  this TMO performance, as typically over the years, satisfying displays of orchestral voice, solid preparation and fine balance of instrumental resources was in evidence.

The world premiere of Celestial Emu by Keyna Wilkins and Gumaroy Newman was surrounded by Mozart and Prokofiev. With a critical need for a successful blend in the performance across very diverse styles, this may have been a choice of programme considered something of a risk.

However fine pacing and preparation by TMO’s conductor Sarah-Grace Williams, instrumentalists and guest composers and soloists brought the programme to life as an electrifying success. This was a programme which not only seemed to gel incredibly successfully but could be considered one of the orchestra’s most compelling programmes to date.

TMO has constantly proved itself to possess a fine voice as an accompanist to a range of solo instruments and voice. Its collaboration with composer Keyna Wilkins and the traditional voice, percussion and yidaki playing of Gumaroy Newman was a stunning example of this skill.

Above: Composer Keyna Wilkins, whose work in world premiere, ‘Celestial Emu’ was a collaboration with the playing, voice and composition  of Gumaroy Newman as well as with TMO,

Often in this new work, single instruments matched lines of atmosphere and contrast with the yidaki drone, rhythm pitch sequences and effect. Such subtle counterpoint and the subsequent joining of Western orchestral soundscapes or colour was  sharp, rewarding to discover and much needed on our stages.

Celestial Emu,  a work arranged  across the Western Art music concerto template of three movements as in Mozart’s day contained many moments of athletic wind playing bravura from Newman.

His storytelling extended on this model as he changed instrumentation, imbued the classical soloist and orchestra formats with spiritual depth and even a newly composed song in Northern NSW Gamilaroi language, creating a fine moment of neo-traditional elaboration on the ‘Emu in the Sky’.

To hear the unmistakable reference to First Nations song so well pitted against TMO’s Western Art Music instruments creating such evocative cells of expression with humility and sincerity in new music devoid of borrowings from tribal repertoire was a touching, inspiring and admirable step forward. it received an extended and hearty standing ovation and will add tremendously to our orchestral music canon.

Before this colourful drama of a legend retold and a celebration of stories from the land and sky, this concert began with a reminder of what was happening in European concert halls in 1788. TMO’s presentation of Mozart’s Symphony No 40 contained great control as tradition here was tinged with a neat retelling of themes related via Mozart’s superb scenic accent and theatrical voice.

The somewhat spongy acoustic of this venue is a challenge for early music styles to bounce off. Nevertheless, Sarah-Grace and orchestra still delivered a shimmering net of strings in the opening and much admirable attention could be heard to her grading of the harmonic structure in this symphony’s first movement.

Above:  TMO and Chief conductor Sara-Grace Williams perform at the Seymour Centre’s Everest Theatre.

A  quite broad tempo was in place for the symphony’s second movement but was successfully maintained. The performance of this section at such a tempo was an exciting precursor to the intensity of future dramatic slow movements by Beethoven.

As in the first movement, the third movement contained carefully varied repeats of musical material. The finale brought us to a familiar close with warm tone, bright management of sectional and tutti articulation and phrasing which worked well in the space.

It was a highlight then to hear the Prokofiev ‘Classical’ Symphony conclude this Met Concert’s emotional and dramatic contrasts. TMO and conductor work hard to give the twist and turns of this Neoclassical ground-breaking work, giving it complex language with shifting fragments a clear and considerable forward direction.

This work’s svelte, short and deceptively simple movements here were very refined and finished statements. Prokofiev’s clever modern colouring of concepts from concert halls past played with delightful and polished finesse. This was Neoclassicism which worked very well as a palate-cleanser for the previous works. The TMO team ensured it was never bland nor simplified in its retrospective effect.

TMO’s Met Concert #2, ‘Strings Attached’, for TMO Strings, takes place on May 17, 3.30pm at the Independent Theatre North Sydney.