BY BRIDGET O’BRIEN
Bernstein at 100
Queensland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alondra de la Parra with Andreas Haefliger (piano), Brisbane Chorale, Voices of Birralee, Canticum Chamber Choir
QPAC Concert Hall, 25 August
Bernstein has always made my heart ache with fondness and awe. The freshness in his work was something I could always embrace without hesitation. There has always been the certainty that his rhythms would rouse me and his melodies satisfy.
It felt like a gift to behold his brio, given life under Alondra de la Parra’s baton. The program was so exceptionally holistic, it indulged our ears in what felt like the man’s entire torrent of a life cycle.
The concert opened with Bernstein’s On the Waterfront Symphonic Suite. His film score was a smattering of technicolour upon the otherwise noirish hearth of the film. The grit and grime of Marlon Brando’s vanquished contender was captured in the smearing phrases from Emma di Marco’s saxophone; and the horn solo by Alex Miller painted a harbour-bound horizon. The suite without celluloid tells an equally vivid story: I could feel the salty and dense humidity, taste a scorned injustice, and see stagnation moored. The orchestra laboured through the tension so strongly, drawing us into the pyrrhic depths of Elia Kazan’s 1954 masterpiece.
The Chichester Psalms marked Bernstein’s triumphant return to tonality after briefly dabbling in 12-tone techniques – and the melodies and rhythms in this choral and orchestral piece felt as though they were siphoned directly from the bloodstream of Americanism. The first movement was spiritual in an irreverent, hitch-up-your-skirt, street-side manner. The Voices of Birralee joined the Canticum Chamber Choir and the Brisbane Chorale to cast a wave of exultant ebullience upon us, finding moments to glitter discreetly when the psalms settled into peace. Boy sopranos Riley Peterson and Matthew Redman sang their solos with earnest eyes and surely warmed every heart in the hall. The quartet of soloists was often swallowed by the choral tides, but the texture of community was welcome.
Then came Bernstein’s most explicit attempt at storytelling without a libretto, chorus, or motion picture to elaborate. His second symphony Age of Anxiety was inspired by W. H. Auden’s poem of the same name. Alondra took the time to set the scene, inviting the audience to the post-war drudgery of 1940s New York City, where four strangers meet in a bar. The inebriation spurs conversations about love, faith, purpose, and identity against a backdrop of alienation – issues that Bernstein grappled with himself. In an autobiographical gesture, Bernstein scored the protagonist in this conversation to be the pianoforte – at which sat the virtuosity of Andreas Haefliger. With a fervently furrowed brow sustained through much of his tacit, Andreas was palpably arguing, impelling, and rhapsodising along. Without speaking, there was tone and heart in his voice of one both crestfallen and aggrandised. I was drawn into his storm. The voices were passed from soloist to soloist and the scenes were doubtlessly vivid. The characters’ musings grew more tumultuous with each variation and, unable to tear my eyes off the zeal in Alondra’s leadership or potency in each melodic delivery, I felt imbibed myself. I’d been so churned by the conflict that the movement of jazzy abandon came as catharsis. Double bass soloist Phoebe Russell had me enthralled, believing I may have been several gins deep at this stranger’s Manhattan brownstone.
I wanted more, and was given such: finally, QSO presented the dances from West Side Story, living up to their toe-tapping guarantee. The mambo, scherzo, cha-cha and rumble were apparently as enjoyable on stage as in the crowd.
Helming this entire evening of rapture was Alondra, an unwavering dynamo. She embodied the pulsing agitation in the score with buoyancy and vibrancy. An encore of the Candide overture satiated the tenacious applause – bookending the rainbow of genres we were lucky enough to experience.
It was a privilege to sit in the Concert Hall and ponder how it all made me feel. Bernstein’s messages weren’t lost on me – as a listener who loves story, I always dig around for meaning. But thanks to QSO and the artistry both scored and exhibited, I didn’t have to work too hard. Left giddy with wonder, I was nothing but warmed by how the allegory of this man’s life is so vitally immortalised by the work he left in his wake; and grateful that his voice continues to be sung.
Images supplied. Credit: Peter Wallis.
