BY KIERAN WELCH
Beethoven & the 21st Century
Australian Chamber Orchestra
QPAC, 15 February
Kicking off the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s 2016 season, ‘Beethoven & the 21st Century’ didn’t actually feature the ACO itself. Rather, it presented the newly renamed ACO Collective, led by idiosyncratic Finnish violin virtuoso Pekka Kuusisto. Beethoven is the theme tying together most of ACO’s concerts this year, and as such this concert was headlined by the composer’s Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95 (‘Serioso’), the final of his so-called ‘middle period’ quartets. More on that one later, though — as it was the first half of the evening, the ’21st Century’, that proved to be the concert’s heart.
The ACO Collective (formerly known as ACO2) formed in 2007 as the ACO’s regional touring orchestra. The group combines core members of the ACO proper with some of Australia’s finest up-and-coming young professionals. The first half of ‘Beethoven & the 21st Century’ saw these talented millennial performers paired with their counterparts in the composition world. The concert began with a jocular spoken introduction from Kuusisto who, after advising that the six-part set would run without pause, told us to our surprise that the performance had in fact already started. A gentle electronic drone had been running since the doors were opened, and this underpinned the first work on the program, the first movement from Nico Muhly’s fantastic ‘Drones & Violin’. Kuusisto invited the audience to hum or sing along with the drone, before being joined on stage by the full ACO Collective to begin the concert in earnest. As one would expect, considering the piece was written specifically for him, Kuusisto’s performance of the dreamy first movement was uniquely captivating—the only disappointment was how soon it was over.
However, a change to ‘Passion’, the second movement from Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür’s ‘Action – Passion – Illusion’, allowed the rest of the ensemble to contribute much more as a whole. And contribute they did, providing one of the concert’s highlights. Building from a soft, minimal soundscape, the collective gradually filled the space with more and more passionate playing, before reaching a searingly emotional climax. Unfortunately, the first movement of ‘Action – Passion – Illusion’ provided a somewhat different experience. Placed a couple of pieces along in the set from ‘Passion’, ‘Action’ provided a propulsive minimalist rhythmic drive, interspersed with staccato stabs. But for such a rhythmically exciting piece, the Collective didn’t seem to enjoy playing it that much. It wasn’t until this faded into Bryce Dessner’s luminous ‘Tenebre’ that one could feel the ensemble fully connecting with the music and audience again, as they brought Dessner’s shimmering atmospherics and post-minimal rhythmic interplay to life with aplomb.
Despite temporary dips in the ensemble’s energy, the first half of the concert was a magnificently programmed journey through a broad, yet cohesive range of 20th and 21st Century compositional talent. Indeed, it worked so well that the second half felt somewhat out of place as a result. ‘Rakastava’ (‘The Lover’) saw Sibelius thread a distinctive emotional depth throughout an otherwise relatively conventional string orchestra suite, and was played with relish by the ACO Collective. Beethoven’s Quartet No. 11 in F minor was likewise handled admirably, despite the ensemble difficulties inherent in translation from string quartet to string orchestra, with the group presenting a particularly compelling third movement. However, it wasn’t until the encore that the whole concert made sense as a whole.
It was only short, but Henry Purcell’s ‘Fantasia upon One Note’ placed the final jigsaw piece in the program. Effectively an early Baroque reflection of Muhly’s ‘Drones’, the fantasia saw the group perform a short set of musical ideas over a constant held C, and finally placed the Sibelius and Beethoven within in a satisfying programmatic frame, counterbalancing the contemporary beginning of the concert with the pre-Classical.
Image supplied. Credit: Kaapo Kamu.
