BY EMMA SULLIVAN
Have you ever watched a symphony orchestra and wanted to get to know the different personalities on stage?
Melbourne Ensemble, formed in 2017, allows audiences to experience seven Melbourne Symphony Orchestra musicians up close in a series of chamber music concerts at Brunswick’s Noisy Ritual Urban Winery.
The unusual instrumentation for this ensemble (violin, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet, French horn, and bassoon) pays homage to Beethoven’s Septet, and allows significant scope for innovative and diverse programming.
Melbourne Ensemble will be joined by MSO concertmaster Sophie Rowell for its upcoming concert, which will feature two octets – Guido Schäfer’s reimagining of a Mozart serenade, and Octet ‘À Huit’ by the often-underrated French composer Françaix. The program will also feature violist Chris Cartlidge with Percy Grainger’s Arrival Platform Humlet for solo viola.
From the intimacy of one solo voice to the richness of the octet texture, this program promises character and colour and, chances are, you could hear one (if not all!) of these pieces for the first time.
We catch up with Freya Franzen (violin) and Stephen Newton (double bass) to hear about their passion for playing chamber music, and their thoughts on what makes this repertoire so special.
Melbourne Ensemble brings together seven musicians from Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to create one of the city’s newest chamber ensembles. What inspired you to establish the group?
FREYA: This group owes its establishment to founding member Jenna Breen, now second horn in the Seattle Symphony. It was inspired by a love of chamber music, and a love of playing music with friends.
Our unique instrumentation (taken from Beethoven’s Septet) presents an exciting mix of winds, brass, and strings; and can accommodate being broken down or built up for true programmatic versatility.
An equally inspiring aspect of this group has been the importance of finding our own voices, whilst staying true to an ensemble sound. This group has special importance to me personally because it encapsulates the intimacy of a small chamber group, but the mixed wind, brass, and strings present sound possibilities more akin to the symphony orchestra, of which we are all so familiar.
Obviously, you are all accustomed to playing together in a larger ensemble. How does working in a chamber music setting differ to your experience as orchestral colleagues?
STEPHEN: We are all responsible for choosing and shaping the works that we perform, so there is a lot of discussion in the lead-up. While there are differing opinions, we continue discussions until we are all convinced. On stage, we are seven individual voices who have to be aware of each other’s parts so that we accompany or take charge at the right times. There is constant eye contact and, of course, listening and thinking ahead.
In an orchestra, the conductor and the rest of your section give you more breadth to relax. The same skills are required, but to a lesser degree; other parties make the musical decisions and your job is to stick to them without question.
A septet is also a strange soundworld – it’s not a string quartet, wind quintet, or a chamber orchestra. It’s something of a mix of these things, so making things sound intimate or full like a huge orchestra is an important part of my role. The bass can fill out the ensemble to create an orchestral sound, or it can play more like a solo line for a more traditional chamber ensemble sound. That probably seems a bit strange, but I think bassists understand that volume can be loud but not direct, so that it provides a pillow for everything to sit upon. In this context, it can be very loud but not noticeably so and, in chamber music, that approach can be great or very clumsy.
In your upcoming concert you are presenting Mozart’s Serenade No. 12 in C minor, arranged by Guido Schäfer. In what ways does the arrangement differ from the original?
F: The original Serenade instrumentation is for pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and French horns, so the most obvious difference to Schäfer’s arrangement besides the ‘Schubert Octet’ instrumentation (two violins, viola, cello, bass, horn, bassoon, clarinet), is the soundworld. The dark, rustic qualities we have come to associate with the original Serenade would have been even more exaggerated by the instruments that were played back in the 1780s.
Modern-day wind instruments have a more even temperament in terms of tone and sound, and I would suggest that ‘even temperament’ might be further exaggerated by Schäfer’s changes to the instrumentation. So, one of the challenges we will meet in our performance is deciding how much of the original soundworld we take on, and how much we celebrate the differences that have been presented to us through this arrangement.
We are lucky that Schäfer has been so skilfully respectful in his realisation, so that part of the hard work is definitely looked after!
The program also includes a work for solo viola by Percy Grainger, featuring Chris Cartlidge. Do you plan to showcase each of the ensemble members as soloists throughout the concert series?
F: The Melbourne Ensemble is very proud of being able to present every member as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player in their own right. We therefore don’t see any reason to shy away from solo appearances, but perhaps more specifically, we like finding the right repertoire to fill our programs.
With a comfort and willingness in our programming to be bold and take risks, solo works will definitely continue to be on the table! They offer the most intimate window into our players’ sounds, personalities, and skills. We were all thrilled when Chris put his hand up to play Grainger’s Arrival Platform Humlet – it should be a real treat!
Françaix pays homage to revered chamber music giant Franz Schubert with his Octet ‘À Huit’. What can audience members expect from this work?
S: Françaix is a wonderful composer and totally underplayed. His music is always full of charm, colours, and humour. It also has this constant drive and movement, particularly in the faster movements that seem to begin then immediately bubble along with constant musical chatter and dialogue among all the different parts.
His wind writing is typically virtuosic – he wrote many works for wind ensembles and solo woodwind, so he had a very good idea of those instruments’ capabilities. The string parts are, at times, extremely difficult, as he churns out long passages that travel huge ranges across the instruments. These leaps and extended range come more naturally to keyboard and some woodwind instruments.
Your concert is being presented in the Noisy Ritual Urban Winery in Brunswick East – not a venue often associated with classical music! What made you choose this space, and what do you think it brings to the concert experience for performers and audience?
F: We love the idea of bringing high quality performances to venues that are associated with relaxing and having a good time, and also to explore the intimate elements that are sometimes lost listening to chamber music in larger venues. Noisy Ritual Urban Winery not only presents us with these intimate, feel-good qualities, but also provides us with a beautiful backdrop of wine barrels and fairy lights, and it has a great acoustic to boot!
We want our audience to feel like they can enjoy our performances without the formalities of the concert hall. So we encourage them to bring a friend, buy a bottle of wine, enjoy a cheese platter, relax, and let our ensemble take the worries of the world away for the evening!
Check out Melbourne Ensemble Seven & One at 8pm June 30 in Noisy Ritual Urban Winery, Brunswick East.
Images supplied.
