BY ANGUS MCPHERSON
The Nutcracker
Omega Ensemble
City Recital Hall, 16 November
The title ‘Serenade’ carries connotations of light evening music and amorous entreaty. Carl Nielson’s ‘Serenata in Vano’, which opened the Omega Ensemble’s final concert for 2016, ticks both of those boxes. Described by the composer as a “humorous trifle”, this ‘Serenade in Vain’ depicts a comic, unsuccessful wooing. The players brag and beseech, alternating solo lines and sometimes speaking over each other, but ultimately they give up and, in the composer’s words, “since they have played in vain, they don’t care a straw and shuffle off home to the strains of the little final march, which they play for their own amusement”. The ensemble’s performance was sweet and touchingly earnest, then brightly nonchalant: the players visibly enjoying the wry cheerfulness of the finale.
In contrast, Mozart’s Wind Serenade in C minor, K.388, is darker: the ominous minor key opening belies the lightness implied by the title. Here the Omega Ensemble’s musical cohesion was on display, biting accents and impeccably detailed gestures were marvellously synchronised, and sighing motifs intensified with plaintive melancholy. The oboe is almost a solo instrument in this work, and Celia Craig’s crooning lines were a pleasure, as was her dainty cadenza into the lively coda of the final movement.
Rounding out the evening was the perennial Christmas favourite, music from Tchaikovsky’s ballet ‘The Nutcracker’ in a suite arranged for winds by German composer Andreas Tarkmann. Ben Hoadley’s nimble bassoon playing injected the ‘Overture minature’ with energy and verve – innocuous string lines becoming virtuosic feats when transferred to bassoon in this arrangement – and Georgina Roberts’ mellifluous cor anglais lines sung in the ‘Arrival of Drosselmayer’ and ‘Arabian Dance’. The ‘Chinese Dance’ featured robust, confident solos by Lisa Osmialowski on flute, though here the arrangement suffers somewhat from the absence of pizzicato strings in the accompaniment.
On the eve of Omega Ensemble’s final year as Ensemble in Residence at City Recital Hall, this program was not as adventurous as earlier concerts this season. However, the ensemble’s spotless playing and fine musicianship made this a light but satisfying denouement to a successful 2015 for Omega Ensemble. The concert also marked the launch of their 2016 season, in which they will be performing arrangements of well-loved orchestral masterpieces such as Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and Elgar’s Cello Concerto as well as expanding to chamber orchestra size for the first time to perform works by Haydn and Mozart.
Image supplied.
