Featuring:
- Debussy Nocturnes
- Goossens Phantasy Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
- Holst The Planets
Howard Shelley - Piano
Women of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus
Richard Hickox - Conductor
The story behind me attending this concert is no other than Holst's The Planets. I was practically did not care for Debussy's music at that time (2 months ago). MSO's last season concert of Debussy's Images left me sleepy. And who is Goossens? I have never heard of him. So, just for Holst's The Planets only, I got the cheapest ticket for the concert.
The way I looked at Debussy's (and Impressionist music in general) changed again after I listen to Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit and Ma Mere l'Oye. At that time, I only considered Debussy a one-hit wonder with his La Mer. I decided to change my attitude after several listening of the famous Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. And then I moved on to listen to his Nocturnes, which I did not realise was programmed in the concert until yesterday. I liked the piece in the first listening (a rarity for Debussy!), giving special credits to the second and last movement (Fetes and Sirenes). How surprised was I to find out yesterday that I can listen to it performed live by the orchestra.
Now on to the concert itself. It started with the Debussy's pieces. The performance was wonderful throughout and I noticed passages for cor anglais which I could not really identify in the recordings that I listened to. The first movement was very much sustained, but there were plenty of things happening in the piece if you listened to it closely. The second movement, describing a festival, was brilliantly played, and the last movement with the women's chorus hits it home for me. It was just brilliant. However, I felt that the piece did not get appreciated widely by the audience. Most of them looked like they are bored by the piece (which exactly what happened to me when I was in the last season Debussy's concert). Anyway, it doesn't really matter for me what the others thought of the piece. Music always affect people differently.
After some re-arrangement of the orchestra seating, we got an Australian premiere of Goossens' Phantasy Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. It started out interesting, sounding very modern indeed (it was composed around 1944), then it became a tad less interesting, but it became a bit interesting again when we reached the second movement which I felt was a little jazzy. The slow movement, was the one that I gave up on - I really had no idea what's going on in that piece in that movement. The last movement - a very bouncy and rhythmically fast but short in period - served like a wake up call for me after those prolonged boring slow movement. It ended well, but I don't think I can agree to the author of the program notes that mentioned 'It's hard to understand why it's not a standard part of the 20th century piano concerto repertoire'. IMHO, this piece doesn't stand up to Rachmaninoff's 4th piano concerto, both of Ravel's piano concertos and Prokofiev's 3rd and 5th piano concertos. I might give it another listen - after I've found my way with music of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Berg, Bartok - to see what I'm missing in the music.
After the interval, it is the main dish of the night and what I think everyone in the concert is going for - The Planets. Mars was exciting, if not too loud in the loudest passages. Venus was great also, with Wilma Smith and David Berlin playing their solo passages very well indeed. It was a heartfelt experience for me. Mercury was bouncy - also well played. Jupiter was full of jollity. I remembered the conductor using occasional rubato and accelerando in this piece and the result was marvelous. I think Saturn was the best of the night. The marvelous playing of the soothing melodies by the harps towards the end of the piece really moved me. Uranus was quite good. Neptune - with the women chorus not on stage! - rounded off a solid performance of the beloved suite by the orchestra. 3 or 4 curtain calls followed after a prolonged applause.
To sum up, a very interesting concert with 2 good performances in the beginning and the end of the concert and a not-so-good performance in the middle. The concert is neither at my all time worst or best concert list.
Next concert: Dvorak's 7th symphony, Mozart's piano concerto no. 21, Janacek's Sinfonietta in approximately one month
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