The 28th of February at Studio Underground saw the West Australian Symphony Orchestra Roll back the years in their program Mayhem and Rapture for Perth Festival. Not only was this the youngest orchestra I have seen WASO field, the virtuosity and vivacity brought from all players through this program of challenging music was beyond that I have seen from the orchestra in the past. Led by conductor Benjamin Northey and international superstar of new music, mezzo-soprano Jessica Aszodi, this program was lively, vigorous, entertaining and heart wrenching all at one.
The concert opened with Holly Harrison’s And Whether Pigs Have Wings; now synonymous with Harrison’s work, this piece brought loud, high-octane energy to the stage. Based on poetry by Lewis Carroll, the text brings absurdity to its meaning and meter, a quality that Harrison imitated and defied in her setting. The work almost read as a heavy, crunchy orchestral beat poem with driving complex rhythmic fragments shifting between musicians before space opened for Aszodi’s bold and playful interpretation. Aszodi, a WASO debutant despite a successful overseas career as one of Australia’s premiere singers of contemporary classical music, was a revelation in both this piece and Ayre later in the program. Her flexibility and range, met with the sheer commitment to the piece demonstrated why she has built such a reputation over the years.
WASO’s Mayhem and Rapture. Photography by Daniel J Grant.
Before the intermission, John Adams’ highly complex Chamber Symphony filled the State Theatre Centre. Written in 1992 and a nod to the piece of the same name by serialist composer Arnold Schoenberg, this piece brings a (more) contemporary perspective to the dense individual virtuosic convention set out in Schoenberg’s 1906 work. While the work is more approachable than Schoenberg’s it is not any less challenging with several solos of great difficulty throughout the work; particular mention needs to go to violinist Semra Lee for a technically clean and stylistically intense delivery of one of the repertoire’s more difficult solo moments. Northey kept the runaway train under control with precise and stable poise at the podium, and while it was not ferocious or full of energy, it gave enough to keep the orchestra pushing through their instruments.
Following the intermission, we returned to Osvaldo Golijov’s Ayre. Eclectic in almost all its facets, this work for a group of 13 musicians including vocalist, accordion, guitar, and electronics is at the pinnacle of developing new voices for classical music. The text, a combination of Spanish, Ladino, Arabic, Hebrew, English and Sardinian, speaks to not only the cultures of the Mediterranean cities and diasporas it was written of but the broader invaluable context of multiculturalism. Once again demonstrating her ability to inhabit spaces, Aszodi’s ability to deliver technically challenging music with elements of art song, klezmer, and electronica in not one but six languages while embodying the intense emotion of the music left me both beaming and with tears building in my eyes.
The integration of a complex instrumentation with electronics and amplification was among the most seamless I have seen in contemporary music – a credit to both the composer and the work of the ensemble. This work passed by in a moment with audience exclamations of appreciation scattered throughout; by the end of the piece, I was ready to go back the beginning and begin again.
This concert represents one of the first times I feel WASO has presented a program which is both musically and culturally relevant. New music is not an afterthought but provides real and current social commentary, reflecting the world as it exists around us. The enthusiastic applause and murmurs of appreciation at the conclusion of the concert are evidence that continued presentation of works like these will not go unappreciated. I hope that WASO continues to utilise this space as one to maintain currency amidst their mainstage concerts of the great canon pieces of classical repertoire. For anybody wanting a taste of this concert, Holly Harrison’s new accordion concerto will premiere in November of this year with James Crabb at the accordion.