Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra | Mozart & Brahms
August 25, 2024, St Ives Uniting Church, NSW
An exciting programme at St Ives Uniting Church included my favourite symphony, Brahms no 2, one of my ”Desert Island Discs” in fact. Luke Spicer, a very experienced and well-travelled conductor, introduced the overture to Mozart’s Magic Flute. A very bright opening with some references to the opera but many original themes also. It’s difficult to accept that this was written when the composer was in the last stage of his fatal kidney disease.
Carl Stamitz is one of those composers who, like Hummel and Spohr have never emerged from the shadows of Mozart and Beethoven although they were hot tickets in their day. Perhaps because the viola was his chosen instrument, Stamitz’s Viola Concerto in D shines like a beacon with no lack of tunefulness and inventiveness. Soloist Hayley Lau has won numerous awards in the USA as well as the Far East and is a Heifetz Institute scholar. She plays a John Young viola from the middle of the nineteenth century loaned by members of the Juilliard Quartet. Not only was her playing accurate but she showed extreme empathy with the tone of the music – her first movement cadenza emphasised the brilliance of her technique.
As I say, I find Brahms’ Symphony in D Major an outstanding work eclipsing his other three – energetic, powerful and yet full of original themes, its momentum never falters and the composer himself indicated that it was his favourite. The opening theme of the fourth movement seems endless but blissfully so, matched only by that of the finale of his Double Concerto. A difficult task for the Ku-ring-gai Philharmonic Orchestra, particularly for the Horn and Brass sections.
I left the work The Space Between the Stars by Ella Macens till last because I found it an outstanding piece of music. If I didn’t know, I would have guessed that it was written by Vaughan Williams or Holst. There was beautiful chord structure, not a hint of dissonance, and a rather English characterisation of the hugeness of Space with tremolo strings and harp prominent. Nothing English about Ella – Sydney trained and a pupil of Matthew Hindson who I’m sure appreciates her talent.
PS – if anyone wants to know my eight ‘Desert Island Discs’ I’d be happy to send it to them!
