BY ANGUS MCPHERSON
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Discover Richard Strauss ‘Death and Transfiguration’
City Recital Hall, Angel Place, 10 November
The limping gait of pianissimo violins and violas is darkened by an ominous chord from the low winds, the contrabassoon a primal rumbling from the depths. Richard Gill turns to the audience and the orchestra falls silent. He says: “It’s not a happy piece”.
Richard Strauss’s ‘Death and Transfiguration’ was an apt choice for the concert that brought to a close 16 years of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s Discover Series and almost 20 years of the Sinfonia program, the SSO’s mentoring orchestra for up-and-coming musicians. Both programs have been discontinued in 2016 and will be sorely missed. That did nothing to dampen Gill’s energy and charisma, however, and the audience’s affection for the conductor was apparent from the moment he stepped onto the stage; they greeted him like a rock star, stamping their feet and cheering.
Gill went on to lead the audience through an in-depth masterclass on Strauss, touching on aspects of harmony, orchestration, music history and even theology (Gill explaining the difference between Transfiguration and Assumption). Despite the complexity of the material, Gill’s genial presentation style and obvious passion for the music meant the atmosphere was relaxed and engaging.
Strauss’s tone poem paints in music the last hours of a dying man, the opening representing laboured breathing. As Gill explained, a tone poem is based on an extra-musical idea or source, as opposed to a symphony, which is based on musical material. Although, in this case, the poem ‘Death and Transfiguration’ wasn’t written until after the music.
Having presented the opening motifs – including the haunting oboe solo that drew adulatory foot shuffling from the other musicians – Gill guided the audience through the metamorphoses (or transfigurations) of Strauss’s musical ideas, using the orchestra to illustrate his points. Gill highlighted solo lines from the flute, oboe, contrabassoon, harp and gong, and built up orchestral layers to demonstrate how Strauss created different colours. He punctuated these examples with his own colourful commentary: “Some people say the brass are too loud. Those people have no taste!”
The audience, having been sufficiently primed, was then treated to a performance of the work from beginning to end; from the agonies of the death bed until, in the words of Strauss, “the soul leaves the body in order to find, gloriously achieved in everlasting space, those things which could not be fulfilled here below”.
When the applause died down, violinist Fiona Ziegler stood up to thank Gill for his years of work with the Discovery Series and Sinfonia, both Ziegler and Gill expressing their sadness and shock that the programs had come to an end. But as he left the stage, Gill was typically upbeat, exclaiming: “Onwards and upwards and I’ll see you around!”
