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The Age, May 20, 2013
Reviewed By Clive O’Connell
Reviewer rating:
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Mozart
The Great Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Melbourne Recital Centre
May 18, 19
This concert’s aim was exemplary: to demonstrate the creative range of one of Western music’s most prodigious talents. The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s strings bounded through an exhilarating, detail-fresh account of the opening to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik , but the following Romanze was sadly missed; director Paul Dyer on fortepiano and ABO concertmaster Brendan Joyce gave a firm, accomplished account of the middle movement to the Violin Sonata No. 17, but the absence of its pendant finale meant we heard only part of the story.
Some pieces for duo and trio basset horns investigated a neglected Mozartian byway but barely whetted the appetite, while one of the scatological choral canons lost its effect by having the Brandenburg singers line the aisles, so that those of us on the edges heard one singer all too clearly, the choral mix not so much. A few minutes later, the same forces gave a luminous reading of the familiar Ave verum corpus motet alongside that wrenching Adagio from the B flat Gran Partita .
In contrast, the orchestra, choir and four excellently matched soloists – soprano Sara Macliver, mezzo Fiona Campbell, tenor Richard Butler, bass Ashley Giles – collaborated under Dyer’s athletic control in an exemplary C minor Great Mass: an unalloyed pleasure from its stately
opening to the final jubilant Hosanna , the whole enterprise carried off with impressive fluency. Although the orchestra tended to drown the lower notes of both agile female soloists, the verve and dynamic variety of all concerned compensated for occasional problems of balance.
