Melbourne Symphony Orchestra | Spring Gala: Symphonic Tales
November 11, 2023, Hamer Hall, Melbourne
You could not imagine a more magical evening than The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 and the Scheherazade Suite by Rimsky-Korsakov. These works need no introduction and have sparked imaginations of all ages and romances of all kinds.
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jamie Martin, had its numbers enhanced by musicians from the Australian National Academy of Music, which was essential for the opening work. Paul Dukas composed The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in 1894, well before Mickey Mouse was commandeered to bring the work to life on the silver screen. The cartoon sequence from the 1940’s is now synonymous with the work.
It was lovely to focus just on the music, without the cute distraction of the wizard-mouse. And in doing so, you get to appreciate the many layered textures and timbres employed by Dukas to furnish the vivid sense of action in the score.
The wonderful bassoon solo, often described as lumbering, and the wash of the strings, again to parrot 120 years of critics descriptions, but nothing prepares you for the enhanced orchestral sound when you are there sitting inside the work with what feels like double the usual orchestra.
Multi-award winning pianist Haochen Zhang was the soloist for the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Tchaikovsky. Performing such a beloved work must be a double edged sword: everyone loves what you’ve played before you’ve played it, and everyone knows every single note of the score. Or so they think.
Haochen Zhang did not disappoint. His performance sparkled. Tchaikovsky wrote a fiendishly difficult and virtuosic part, so to hear musical sense and melody drawn out of the wild arpeggios and passages, and delicately given to us to hold on to, is that beautiful relationship – romance even – between the soloist and the audience.
One of the stand out moments to me was at the conclusion of the second, slow movement. The melody must be one of the best ever written and at the conclusion of the movement, I saw many people turn to their concert companion and smile. Romance, friendships, parents and children; love comes in so many forms.
We were transported after interval to the Symphonic Suite Op. 35 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, otherwise known as Scheherazade. It was so exciting to see the line up of the expanded brass and percussion sections, and the return of the contrabassoon, played by Brock Imison, one of the stars of the evening.
Guest concertmaster on the first violin was Rebecca Chan, another star performance that was essential to deliver some of the main thematic material particularly in the second movement (The Story of the Kalender Prince) which seems to become increasingly virtuosic as the Suite progressed. It’s music that most of us know from childhood and will spend our lives loving.
Just like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, seeing it performed live gives you such a greater appreciation for the physical and musical demands played on performers. The strings with their endless and entrancing high tremolo; the brass ready for action to answer in force as soon as called upon by Jamie Martin (who was a wonderfully active conductor); the double basses working up a lather with bow on string. There was so much to enjoy in this robust and fun performance.
The MSO tied together the program under the banner Spring Gala and it was all that. The kind of concert where you leave with a spring in your step and a smile on your face.
