Celebrating in style – concert for the 60th Birthday of composer Andrián Pertout

Hammerings Records Present | A Concert to Celebrate the 60^th Birthday of Andrián Pertout

August 13, 2023, Church Street Studios, Camperdown

Sirius Chamber Ensemble and friends

Georgina Oakes – clarinet     Melissa Coleman – flute     Alison Evans – bassoon

Sumiko Yamamura – piano     Harriet Channon – trumpet     Gregory van der Struik – trombone

Program

Andrián Pertout – La Vita Nuova for clarinet and piano

Andrián Pertout – La variazione enigmatica for solo trumpet

Alan Holley – Cloud Rim for flute and piano

Andrián Pertout – Assente in uno stato di flusso for solo trombone

Johanna Selleck – Starlight for solo flute

Andrián Pertout – To the Beloved for trumpet and piano

Johanna Selleck – Zest for trombone and piano

Andrián Pertout – Samakramikata (Synchronicity) for flute, clarinet, bassoon and piano

Alan Holley – Morpheus for clarinet and piano

In two concerts in Sydney Andrián Pertout was celebrated in style with five works being performed, three were played twice and the list included three premieres. Quite a splash for a 60^th birthday bash! As a Melbourne-based composer we simply do not hear enough of his music in Sydney and his immense output surely deserves to be played here on a regular basis. And to access on this rare occasion this charming venue, twinkling lights and music-art everywhere put the audience in the best of all possible moods.

Clarinettist Georgina Oakes and pianist Sumiko Yamamura played Pertout’s elegiac-like La Vita Nuova and did so beautifully. This work shared much common ground with the new work for trumpet and piano, To the Beloved and the quartet Samakramikata as all three works harvest a rich vein of lyricism whilst all the time having an ostinato that lulls the listener. Harriet Channon mastered the difficult high writing perfectly here and in the tricky little solo La variazione enigmatic. The new quartet shows Pertout to be totally at ease in blending three wind instruments with the piano, no mean feat. This was a work that quite a few of the audience singled out as one of the favourites of the concert.

In a concert where all the performers shone trombonist Gregory van der Struik was superlative in Pertout’s dramatic and visually engaging Assente in uno stato di flusso a work where the listener must keep total focus on the ever-changing line as it moves at such great speed. Then he backed up with Yamamura in the thrilling and evocative premiere of the duo Zest by Johanna Selleck. This is surely a work to be sort after by trombonists everywhere. In its mere 4 or so minutes it captivated the audience with its tempestuous and intriguing interplay between the instruments. A delightful mix of high energy and dissolving tonal landscapes.  Selleck was also represented by an enchanting solo flute work Starlight performed beautifully and with obvious delight by Melissa Coleman.

My Cloud Rim was written as a birthday card, an album leaf, for my friend Sue Edmonds back in 1994 and it seemed so fitting that it was included in this concert of celebration. Coleman and Yamamura suspended time in this miniature evoking the interplay between light and clouds and the natural world.

Oakes and Yamamura teamed for the final work, my Morpheus. This is a work that was written to showcase the skills of the performers and they were scintillating whilst all the time playing with such elegance tempered here and there with bravado.  The bedrock for the concert was the immaculate and insightful piano playing of Sumiko Yamamura assuredly one of Australia’s leading collaborative artists.

Pertout and Selleck are at the forefront of Australian creative music making and it showed in this concert. The Melbourne music scene has nurtured these two major composers not from inside the institutions but on the outside. They have forged original voices probably because of their isolation from following banal trends and they write real music that leads the way in our country. And how fortunate are we to have such free innovative creative thinkers!

ipad drawing – Rod Holdaway