A celebration for Alan Holley, a celebrated Australian composer

Friday Music | Alan Holley 70th Birthday Concert

11 October, 2024, St Stephens, Sydney

OPERA AUSTRALIA WIND QUINTET

Diane Berger – Flute, Matthew Tighe – Oboe, Richard Rourke – Clarinet, Lee Wadenpfuhl – Horn, Tim Murray – Bassoon,  Sumiko Yamamura – Piano & Dean Bassett – Tenor

Sydney based composer Alan Holley recently celebrated his 70th birthday, with a lunchtime concert initiated by his dear friend and fellow musician Richard Rourke. It was befitting to celebrate such an auspicious occasion, as Holley himself had produced birthday concerts over the years, celebrating the works of fellow Australian composers such as Richard Meale, Dulcie Holland, Andrian Pertout and Ross Edwards. In keeping with this tradition, the audience was gifted a compendium solely from Holley’s oeuvre, and it is interesting to note, that this concert dedicated solely to the music of a living Australian composer, received one of the largest St. Stephens’ Friday Music audiences from the last 10 years!

Best known to Sydney audiences for his three Sydney Symphony Orchestra commissions, including a trumpet concerto Doppler’s Web written for soloist Paul Goodchild, his oboe concerto, A Shaft of Light written for Shefali Pryor and Loaded with Dream written for the SSO Fellows, Holley also had works commissioned and performed by the Australian Chamber Choir to be performed both in Australia and in Europe. His body of work is extensive including chamber music commissions, chamber orchestra, smaller ensembles including voice and a plethora of solo instrumental pieces. He is in demand as a lecturer both here and in Europe, participating in numerous festival residencies.

The program for this concert included compositions from the last thirty years, with Fable of the Wind, Holley’s wind quintet written in 1997 opening the concert with a chorus of bird songs that was both listless and soothing. Sweet murmurings and flourishes across the ensemble were interspersed by a nautical motif in the french horn and clarinet, whilst the clarity of each voice punctuated the musical arc.

The Opera Australia Wind Quintet (Diane Berger, Flute; Matthew Tighe, Oboe; Richard Rourke, Clarinet; Lee Wadenpfuhl, Horn and Tim Murray, Bassoon), performed with clarity, sensitivity and precision. Their ensemble playing was reminiscent of musicians who have played together for many years holding an intricate familiarity of each other’s sound, phrasing and breath.

The second work in the program, Cage of Gold, for flute and piano performed by Diane Berger, flute and Sumiko Yamamura, piano, provided juxtaposition from the musical restlessness of the preceding quintet. Based on a poem from Dorothea McKellar and encompassed within Holley’s opera Dorothea (homage to McKellar), The Heart of the Bird describes the moral quandary in keeping a caged songbird.

‘ The bird sang for desire of the sky, and her feathers shone redder for sorrow;

And many passed in the streets below; and they said one to another;

‘Ah that we had hearts as light as a bird’s!’

But what does the passer-by know of the heart of a bird?’

Holley’s subtle lullaby rocked us into a trance, eagerly embracing the mellifluous flute playing by Berger, emulating the songbird, and the tender accompanying piano by Yamamura.

In 2018, Holley revised an earlier string quartet score for Saxophone and piano, closely followed by a horn and piano version at the request of Ilir Kodhima (Albanian horn player). The version The Glebe Glows for horn and piano which we heard in this concert, was yet another reworking of the original horn and piano version especially for this performance, and Lee Wadenpfuhl and Sumiko Yamamura masterly accomplished the required virtuosity and highlighted the lyricism and bell like sonority from the plethora of parrots and rosella bird chatterings.

Richard Rourke, who performed the premiere in 1999, played Holley’s clarinet sonata, Three Dreams with Sumiko Yamamura. This was not my first outing hearing this superb work, and as I settled into the comfort of familiarity, the nuanced and evocative dialogue between clarinet and piano highlighted the elegant phrasing, breathtaking taperings and the allowance for time and space to permeate the surroundings. Likened to the opening of a favourite aged red wine, highly anticipated and yet deliciously enlightening!

The final work in the program saw the return of the Wind Quintet joined by tenor Dean Bassett from the Australian Opera Chorus. Three movements from Borneo Songs, originally from a set of 7 songs, evolved after Holley spent time in Borneo’s jungles. The opening movement, Jungle Song, was reminiscent of Britten’s Peter Grimes with the sparsity of instrumentation coupled with a heraldic tenor line.  An instrumental Interlude highlighted the horn’s ability to emulate perfectly the call of the hornbill, whilst in the third movement, Heat, Holley exquisitely married music to poetry by Jyoti Brunsdon, delicately illustrating the forest undergrowth, with an overarching onomatopoeic vocal line. Throughout this final work, Bassett’s delivery was clear and yet delightfully subtle, with the wind quintet’s imitation of jungle murmurings, illustrating the mystery of Borneo with its colour, dense forests and thick enveloping heat.

Guest Reviewer: Yvette Goodchild

Artwork: Rod Holdaway