BY MELANIE WALTERS
A Well-Set Table
Nexus Arts, Adelaide, 5 May
From the moment I read the line-up for Nexus Arts’ event A Well-Set Table, I knew the audience would be in for an exciting ride. Aviva Endean and Shoshana Rosenberg were described in the advertising for this concert as “two of Australia’s most curious clarinettists”. “Curious” is a great way to describe the broad-ranging, exploratory, and adventurous artistic practice of these musicians, although “clarinettists” may be far too narrow a term for their work in this performance.
Endean and Rosenberg’s work A Well-Set Table was the result of a collaboration exploring ideas around Jewish rituals and personal prayer. It seemed the audience was immediately drawn into the intimate soundworld of this performance through A Face Like Yours. This work might best be described as a video score, inviting the audience to participate in creating a private soundworld using earplugs and facial percussion; such as tapping, pulling, and stroking various parts of the head and neck to create sounds through bone conduction and resonances in the spaces of the head. The unpredictable yet quiet nature of this work drew us into the type of deep listening appropriate for the subsequent intense yet intimate sonic world.
Another one of Endean’s compositions followed: Lehadlik – a solo work for clarinet, amplified candles, and pre-recorded loops of Torah chants. This work was meditative and melancholy, and the influence of Jewish rituals was evident not only in the chants, but also the ornaments and modal motifs played on the clarinet.
Rosenberg then joined Endean in a captivating bass clarinet duet, consisting almost entirely of sustained, dovetailing notes that gradually shifted in pitch and timbre, with various harmonics and multiphonics emerging as the piece progressed. The final work in Endean and Rosenberg’s set incorporated many theatrical elements, with ritualistic, often haunting imagery, and simple but extremely effective lighting and stage design, involving fruit, tableware, fabrics, and a small flood light that Endean moved around the stage.
The second set of the evening was performed by a Melbourne-based trio comprising Ben Opie on oboe, Matthew Horsley on uilleann pipes and percussion, and Iskender Ozan Toprak on a multitude of string instruments. Their performance was an eclectic mix of medieval, baroque, folk, and contemporary music.
Their set opened with a chant by Hildegard of Bingen. The trio brought a great deal of vitality to this piece, and the complementary timbres and temperaments of the oboe and uilleann pipes was really effective. Next up was Handel’s popular (and ear-worm inducing!) Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. Horsley’s cajón enhanced the militaristic character of this work.
The program also featured a couple of works by J.S. Bach: the Sarabande from his Partita in A minor BWV 1013, and an arrangement of one of the cello sonatas. The Sarabande, originally for solo flute, but performed here as a duo for oboe and uilleann pipes, seamlessly shifted between textures, employing an effective mix of heterophony, unison passages, and countermelodies.
The arrangement of the cello sonata however was less successful: the different timbres and temperaments of the instruments, rather than complementing each other, seemed to be in conflict in this work, and the ensemble just wasn’t always in sync.
Henri Tomasi’s Tombeau de Mireille for oboe and tambourine was particularly enjoyable, and its slightly medieval flavour tied in well with the Hildegard piece earlier in the set.
A Well-Set Table was the most interesting, engaging, and thought-provoking concert that I have seen in Adelaide so far this year, and it was great to see a large, diverse, and engaged audience for experimental music.
Images supplied. Featured image of Ben Opie by Rhea Caldwell.
