Orchestra Takes Orthodox Run Through Russian Classics For Easter

The Age

Tuesday March 18, 2008

Clive O'Connell, Reviewer

GREAT CLASSICS: MELBOURNE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Hamer Hall, March 15

www.mso.com.au

ENSEMBLE GOMBERT

Xavier College Chapel, March 15

www.ensemblegombert.com.au

CONDUCTOR Oleg Caetani went for an all-Russian program on Saturday. Nothing unusual in that, except that the orthodox format - overture-concerto-symphony - consisted of works that enjoy little popular favour, although all were written by significant composers. Still, the Prelude to Act One of Mussorgsky's opera Khovanshchina was in vogue some years ago.

Steven Osborne, Musica Viva's recent guest, appeared in the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2, which is nowhere near as well known as the composer's earlier concerto involving trumpet and strings. The British pianist made it engrossing, powering through the outer movements and urging on Caetani and his forces; an experience that proved wearing for the wind in ensemble work, while some violins could have been more assertive in the finale's irregularities.

Having performed all six standard Tchaikovsky symphonies last year, Caetani went to the next step and resurrectedManfred, the composer's four scenes in symphonic form, which strike appropriate Byronic poses but rarely engross as a complex. The players enjoyed themselves in full-bore passages but the reading sounded under-prepared in the second movement, Vivace, with an unsettling moment of scatter-gun hesitation in the final Allegro.

For Easter, the Ensemble Gombert presented an interwoven night's music, melding the Lassus settings of the Lamentations for Holy Saturday with the balancing final set of nine responsories by Gesualdo. The program ended with Andrea Gabrieli's rich Miserere to flesh out this reduced Tenebrae service. As expected, the singers gave the Lassus settings every care, with a veiled weight coming from the bass line.

While his Miserere has little of the evocative mystery of its all-too-famous Allegri counterpart, Gabrieli gives his executants many pages of consonance-rich energy and, like much of this evening's music, it enjoyed a driving mobility, surging powerfully towards its many cadences.

But the night's most arresting singing came with the Gesualdo settings, including a bitingly direct O vos omnes and a reading of Aestimatus sum that emphasised with exemplary power the abrupt turn from chromatic gloom to light-filled clarity: the essence of Easter. Even in the composer's most wrenching harmonic disjunctions the Gomberts reinforced their reputation for finesse and precision.

© 2008 The Age

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