BY CHRISTOPHER LEON, GLOBAL SERIES EDITOR
My Heart Swims in Blood
Van Diemen’s Band with Lotte Betts-Dean (mezzo-soprano)
Dark Mofo
Hobart Town Hall, 22 June
Hidden within the walls of Hobart’s iconic town hall was the charmingly (ahem) titled event My Heart Swims in Blood: a performance from the locally renowned Van Diemen’s Band in collaboration with mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean.
As the title suggests, you would expect the interior of the performance venue to reflect the sombre mood of the evening’s event. However, the Hobart Town Hall curators must have missed the memo, as the performance space was brightly lit with white lights. The only way you really knew you were even in a Dark Mofo event was the blood-red lights from outside that streamed in through the covered windows.
It was an odd setting, and really didn’t make the performance feel as if it was anything to do with Dark Mofo. This was a shame, because the performance itself was excellent.
(Pictured: Dark Mofo Waterfront Crosses, 2019, credit and courtesy Dark Mofo/Rémi Chauvin. They were inverted last year.)
This performance featured a mixture of baroque pieces showcasing the supreme voice of Lotte, inside a program split by works from Icelandic composer Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir. Each player in VDB had their own time to shine throughout the pieces, with some musicians performing solo passages – it painted an intriguing musical picture, as all individual players’ characteristics were respected and heard. (The exception to this was the theorbo, which I couldn’t hear above the balance of the group.)
The Icelandic works were a surprisingly nice offset to the baroque pieces; signalling the onset of winter, and the isolation of an island in the midst of revelling in a dark and mysterious festival.
The performance was engaging, unique, and something special; it makes the lack of effort by the hall curators even more disappointing, as the event could have been so much more on an aesthetic level if it aligned itself with the red colours and dark atmosphere of the festival.
READ NEXT: Lotte and Van Diemen’s Band chat about the theme of sin in this concert program.
Images supplied.
