PCQ play Joe Hisaishi – good art, excellent playing and joyful nights

Phoenix Collective Quartet | The Art Music of Joe Hisaishi

August 5, 2023, Hunter Baillie Presbyterian Church, Annandale, NSW

Joe Hisaishi is best known for his long collaboration with Studio Ghibli, while also being an excellent composer of Art Music in his own right. If it wasn’t for Saturday Night’s concert with the Phoenix Quartet, I wouldn’t have known that Hisaishi is such an extraordinary composer of Art Music. This concert program has been bringing Hisaishi’s String Quartet No. 1 to Australian shores for the first time, and we are all the richer for it.

Dan Russell leads the Phoenix Quartet as Artistic Director and Violin 1, and is a charming compere. I was lucky enough to see him play and MC a similar program in Perth in 2022, and it was an equally enjoyable experience to be taken through Joe Hisaishi’s music by an excellent violinist who is also very clearly a big fan of the music he is playing and programming. 

The audience on Saturday Night was so excited to hear their favourite film themes played by a wonderful quartet. There were people of all ages and demographics in the pews of the beautiful Hunter Baillie Presbyterian Church, and there were wiggles of delight from some of the smaller members of the audience when their favourite tunes were announced. All of the arrangements for the Quartet were beautifully done, many by their cellist, Andrew Wilson. Wilson’s arrangements do an excellent job of evoking broader orchestral colours, with pizzicati and ostinati prevalent in all as they add texture and more colours to the arsenal of the quartet. Each member of the Phoenix Collective Quartet played beautifully, and they are all clearly very familiar with each other musically, communicating expertly through difficult phrases, and enjoying the process together.

As well as all the familiar hits from Spirited Away, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke and more, the quartet took us through Hisaishi’s String Quartet No. 1. Violinist Pip Thompson explained that each movement is based on a work by MC Escher. The four movements ‘Encounter’, ‘Phosphorescent Sea’, ‘Metamorphosis’ and ‘Other World’ each take on different characteristics of the corresponding Escher works, and pictures of these can be found on the Phoenix Collective’s website. In each movement the quartet were put through their paces technically and in sheer concentration power. If you are familiar with MC Escher’s work you will know that each is very mathematical and full of patterns. Hisaishi’s writing uses impressive techniques to state a theme and deconstruct it, flip it upside down, return it to the right way up and reconstruct it all in the space of a few minutes. Throughout each of the movements the players used extended techniques – playing close to the bridge, over the fingerboard, sliding harmonics up and down the strings, and many other difficult technical feats. Pip’s explanation at the start was very helpful to try and make sense of the piece, as it was certainly more challenging to listen to than the rest of the program. At the end of the four movements I was left feeling impressed by the feat of concentration and the expert techniques employed by the string quartet, but craving something lighter.

Phones came out to film as the concert returned to the film music with Spirited Away, followed by Merry-go-round of Life. From here on the music was again charming, light and familiar – a very good move from Artistic Director Dan Russell. I attended the concert with a diehard Joe Hisaishi fan who walked away from the experience with two CDs and a spring in their step. If you like good art, excellent playing and/or joyful nights out, get a ticket to a Phoenix Collective show immediately.