From Light Beginnings, Glory Came
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday December 30, 2008
IT WAS a year with a welcome arrival and a tragic departure. Vladimir Ashkenazy, who becomes the Sydney Symphony's principal conductor and artistic adviser next year, returned in November for another single-composer festival (Elgar) and coaxed from the orchestra its best playing as well as an outstanding performance of the First Symphony and an anguished reading of the Cello Concerto by soloist Jian Wang.
The sudden death of Richard Hickox, Opera Australia's music director since 2005, in the heat of a debate on standards, strategy and casting, left the company with the urgent tasks of renewing its artistic leadership and its governing board. Hickox gave some of his best Australian performances this year: Richard Strauss's decadent Arabella, with a radiant Cheryl Barker; Vaughan Williams's Pilgrim's Progess, in which repertoire Hickox was always eloquent; Neil Armfield's production of Janacek's bizarre tale The Makropoulos Secret; and most memorably, Britten's Billy Budd (another Armfield production) with outstanding performances from Teddy Tahu Rhodes, Philip Langridge and John Wegner. The year began inauspiciously with nothing of musical substance in the Sydney Festival. Hye Seoung Kwon enlivened January with a waif-like Mimi in Simon Phillips's ugly La Boheme, while Nigel Kennedy bowled up in February to kick footballs, Mozart and Beethoven. March brought awe-inspiring cosmic vastness in Georges Lentz's Monh, with sensuous intensity from violist Tabea Zimmermann, and in April there was classic Reich and Xenakis from Synergy Percussion. Paul Daniel, the chief conductor of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, was incisive in Brahms, and a visit by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's chief conductor, Oleg Caetani, for Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony, prompted the heresy that Melbourne had done better with their Italian than we had with ours. Gianluigi Gelmetti's final season as the Sydney Symphony's chief conductor was mixed with good Ravel, broad Mahler and his own Cantata della Vita, but undisciplined Beethoven for World Youth Day and a most disappointing final concert. The Australia Ensemble was among the first to salute the American Elliott Carter, who is still composing in his 100th year without a hint he has even started his "late style". The Messiaen centenary prompted an implacable Chronochromie from David Robertson. Conductor Charles Dutoit visited in May with a bracing trek up Strauss's Alpine Symphony, and the doyen of pianists, Emanuel Ax, returned in June with Mozart, Liszt and Schubert. In July, the Israel Philharmonic marched in with Zubin Mehta and disappointed in Beethoven but was superb in Mahler's Third Symphony with the Philharmonia and Sydney Children's Choir. Emma Matthews stepped triumphantly into Joan Sutherland's shoes in Lucia di Lammermoor. The Takacs Quartet toured for Musica Viva in August with fiercely spiritual music by James MacMillan, and in September Musica Viva presented the year's best concert, from the Eggner Trio. The Australian Chamber Orchestra provided stability in a year of turmoil, with Steven Isserlis's playful reading of C. P. E . Bach, and Alina Ibragimova's fragile, focused Vivaldi. In Beethoven's Eighth they were energetic but risked ADHD. October brought the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra with another of the year's best soloists, Kolja Blacher. November brought us back to Ashkenazy, and in December the Australian composer Brett Dean lost funding for the Australian National Academy of Music but won the world's premier composition prize, the Grawemeyer Award, for his imaginative violin concerto The Lost Art Of Letter Writing - a first for an Australian composer.
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald
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