BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Can you remember the experience of a pre-COVID concert? If you haven’t thought about it for a while, I’d invite you to take a moment to recall being crammed into a venue’s foyer, anticipation buzzing through the crowd like a charge of electricity. Eager to enter the concert hall, you line up – as close as you can – to the person in front of you. Finally, you squeeze between rows filled with fellow concertgoers to find your seat – sorry, thank you, sorry, thanks. When you sit down, you lean left and right before settling into the optimal position: you can see the stage perfectly between the countless heads before you. And it’s a stage filled to the brim with players.
The last time I went to see a live performance was in March 2020, when the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra played two back-to-back Brahms symphonies in the Federation Concert Hall. While I know the crowded hall to be an experience of the past – perhaps for the next few years; hopefully not – it still didn’t prevent the culture shock of being part of a pandemic audience when I returned to the venue in March 2021.
Pictures at an Exhibition was my first live concert since COVID. The TSO played in its home venue, under the baton of Elena Schwarz, on 26 March. The Federation Concert Hall foyer was near-empty; we were instructed to pick up our tickets no later than one hour before the concert would begin. Getting into the hall was a breeze, and with empty seats on either side, the social distancing felt luxurious. But a wider look at the semi-vacant rows revealed the upsetting consequence of COVID safety precautions, as vital as they may be. A nearby listener told her friend: “We’ll do whatever they tell us to – even though it doesn’t seem to be necessary.” As my eyes scanned the hall, landing more often on an empty chair than a filled one, that statement hit home as both tragic and lucky: we aren’t out of the woods yet; still, that we can attend live music at all is truly special.
It’s near-impossible to judge the public’s interest in a concert when there are two performances in one night: half the hall entered for an early performance (that was me), half for a later one, and a whole bunch of listeners tuned in from home. One would hope the combined total would have filled the venue to capacity – or better yet, exceeded it. But to me, this culture shock was not only induced by the visual scarcity of concertgoers in a venue usually packed with a thousand people. It was felt because the venue itself had changed, as had the nature of the performance.
I’d expected a feeling of returning home to the Federation Concert Hall, which for me has spanned live concert experiences from youth to adulthood. Instead, I returned to an upgraded and unfamiliar version of the hall: the walls were lined with new timber blades – a stunning aesthetic and an even more stunning acoustic, but we’ll get to that later. To the sides were camera operators, capturing the ensemble of distanced musicians on the stage so people could watch from home. And the musicians were dressed down to 21st-Century appropriate attire – no ties or cummberbunds for these orchestral players!
It was only natural the new venue should be filled with new music, too. That the orchestra has taken the pandemic as an opportunity to embrace the new – in so many ways, from acoustic to programming to digital offerings – should itself be applauded.
The first work on the program was the world premiere of Canticum Novi Mundi by Australian composer Chris Williams. He wrote for an instrument rarely heard in a solo capacity: cor anglais. Backing up soloist Dinah Woods were strings, harp, and percussion. Of his musical choices, the composer wrote (as quoted in the program – itself also changed in style to a single A4 page): “Canticum is my hope that we imagine another world.”
The work was beautiful and calming, and occasionally a little romantic. The composer seemed to draw from the most subtle characteristics of older musical styles and combine them to craft his own new soundworld. Inside this piece could be found references to Viderunt Omnes, a 12th-Century piece of vocal music. As the composer further explained: “Each new section of the piece takes some musical fragment of the previous section and reimagines it, building and rebuilding on its own past until, at last, we return in the end to hear the beginning of the piece ‘anew’.”
Dinah read from music as she navigated technically demanding passages, and when the piece finally concluded, we were left with a feeling that we’d made it. We aren’t the same, but we’re still here. There couldn’t have been a more fitting sentiment for the occasion.
After, the composer visited the stage for a pandemic-themed elbow bump with the instrumentalists; a hopeful good riddance to the double-cheek kiss. Then – in one of the rare opportunities through which the orchestra could have done a better job – a staff member started talking from the depths of the hall. I assumed this to be an address intended to keep the livestream audience occupied between works. I couldn’t see where the speaker was placed in the hall, and could only make out a few of his words. But it held up the concert for physical attendees. It sounded as though he were introducing the next piece – Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition arranged by Yu. My complaint? I’d have liked to hear him talk, too. Why not take the chance to address the rest of us? We could all do with a sense of community – and I do love a bit of barrier-breaking between audience and orchestra.
The Mussorgsky presented an outstanding opportunity to appreciate the hall’s acoustic upgrades. They were finally undertaken last year, in time for the hall’s 20th anniversary. Sustainable Timber Tasmania supplied 650 square metre of Tasmanian oak panels, and timber blades, and it made an enormous difference to the listening experience.
Yu’s arrangement – as well as Williams’ work – provided passages of solo instruments and stand-out sections. This meant there was plenty of space to take in the new sound of each instrument in the context of the hall’s upgrades. The new acoustic allowed the spotlight to shine on players and sections as their parts demanded, without a sensation of being ‘washed out’. Where it was once difficult to hear individual sections or players, each tending to blend together depending on the style of the piece, all instrumentalists could now be heard with great clarity.
If ever there was a time for concertgoers to embrace active listening, it’s now. When I attend another performance in the Federation Concert Hall, I’ll know what to expect, and I won’t feel the culture shock of live music in a pandemic. But I will continue to listen differently. Though COVID has created a challenging environment for the Australian arts industry, its practitioners have adapted. Many, like the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, have come out on top, exceeding all expectations of what an arts institution is capable of achieving in a crisis. So as listeners, we should honour their efforts and up our game, too. We’ve had about a year away from live music, so we shouldn’t be quick to fall back into old habits. We should open our ears and listen differently. Embrace new music when it appears on a program, don’t just look out for old favourites. Actively listen to each note – take in the venue, and look at the musicians who are physically in front of you. Most of all, don’t take them for granted. Who knows what lies ahead?
Images supplied. Credit: Alastair Bett.
