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February 21, 2014 – 11:24AM
Peter McCallum, Sydney Morning Herald
Reviewer rating: Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Reader rating: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars (28 votes)
City Recital Hall. February 19.
The playing spirit that Elena Kats-Chernin’s Prelude and Cube, unleashed from the Brandenburg Orchestra was initially surprising. This full-blooded, blended tone quality was one which historically informed music groups deliberately shed a few decades ago because it was thought it distorted the natural transparency of 18th century music.
Commissioned to celebrate the orchestra’s 25th anniversary, Kats-Chernin’s work for soprano, saxophone and Baroque orchestra alludes to Bach in the figurative ideas that starts each movement, although its gently reiterated accompaniment patterns and cross rhythms also align it with Philip Glass. However, while the latter’s music is flat in terms of tension, Kats-Chernin liked to build intensity, as heard strikingly in the crescendo and
dramatic cut-off just before the quiet close of the second movement.
Using the German text of the Magnificat with a Lutheran chorale, the work is in two movements, the first adopting the unhurried tread of many of Bach’s great preludes, the second more activated. Soprano Jane Sheldon’s
voice found its true colour seeking out sweet spots points of resonance and matching echoing depth with choir and saxophone (Christina Leonard). The Brandenburg Orchestra always brings together a fine choir and this was no exception. Well balanced, rhythmically disciplined, they managed the intricate counterpoint of Bach’s Magnificat with defined precision and unforced splendour.
For Bach, the Magnificat is uncharacteristically concise. There were moments when conductor Paul Dyer’s brisk tempos seemed driven by sprightliness more than line and shape, and risked cramping the structure and rushing to voices (for example in the gently pastoral duet “Virga Jesse floruit”). Baritone Nick Gilbert sang with cohesive evenness, countertenor Maximilian Riebl had caressing roundness, and tenor Richard Butler showed impressively incisive articulation in the difficult “Deposuit potentes de sede”. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 4 in D major, BWV 1069 achieved mellifluous grace in the two Minuets. Though not without unevenness, particularly from the reeds, the Brandenburg Orchestra’s great achievement in its first quarter century is the supportive audience it
has built. The cheers for Kats-Chernin’s work suggest it also doesn’t mind an occasional break from Baroque.
The Performance is repeated at City Recital Hall on Friday, February 21; Wednesday, February 26; Friday, February 28; and Saturday March 1; and Melbourne Recital Centre, Saturday, Februay 22 and Sunday, February 23.
