Winthrop Hall saw a tale of two WASO’s at the West Australian Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony on Saturday the 22nd of August. Under the baton of Chief Conductor Asher Fish with pianist Konstantin Shamray, the orchestra moved through its program of romantic orchestral repertoire including Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No.1 with tension and balance.
Asher Fisch’s rendition of Tchaikovsky was immensely evocative, unlike any overture I have heard before. Like a ballet performance, Fisch sat with the music as if he were watching and waiting for dancers on an unseen stage. For the first time, perhaps ever in an orchestral concert, the music spurred on my imagination, bringing images of Romeo and Juliet to my mind. I have commented before on the overpowering timpani in Winthrop Hall, but principal timpanist Alex Timcke balanced his performance carefully and subtly with the other sections to great effect.
WASO Beethoven’s Seventh
Konstantin Shamray then joined the orchestra for Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto in D Flat Major. This light, jovial work is uncommonly short for a piano concerto. Though the shortest work on the program, it is not lacking in number of notes with rapid, dense stretches of piano making use of the upper registers of the piano as it shimmers through the orchestra. Shamray started with a sharpness, and while perhaps not getting the most out of the sound of the Steinway Model D (also notably being held up by a prop stick in the wrong place), the playing was crisp and agile. The lower register of the piano remained thin throughout the performance, but Shamray shined in the celestial and lyrical upper register. The strings adorned the piano like gold leaf through the Andante Assai and the horns had a moment of BIG SOUND (a joke for the classical musician) in the Allegro Scherzando which I almost made an audible laugh.
Shamray’s two encores were full of delight, performing an Etude by a composer I was unable to catch and an excerpt from Cinderella. Something about Shamray’s presence in these encores put the audience at ease. There was a feeling of relaxation following the intensity of the concertos in which both performer and audience were having fun.
WASO Beethoven’s Seventh
After the intermission followed the headline piece of evening: Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Before talking about the music, WASO’s titling and advertising continues to confound me. Admittedly, I do not like this piece of music; to my ears the symphony plods along directionless, relying heavily on strings to create tension and intensity where they are incapable or at the very least not best suited to do so. This dislike aside, I still question why this concert’s visiting international soloist or the upcoming premiere of a new clarinet concerto featuring a composer and conductor among WA’s most respected, each event perhaps never to happen again, are hidden behind these pieces played every several years.
The performance on this occasion was pleasant; the dynamic range was well executed with bold often favoured over gentle transitions. These well-crafted moments were not quite enough to convince me of the excellence of this piece than many people believe it to have but was an enjoyable ending to an evening of music.