Making their Festival debut, this performance from the Australian World Orchestra (AWO) was a real highpoint of the joint UK/Australia Season, 2021-2022.
While the initiative between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade may have crept somewhat beneath the radar, this week has seen a number of prominent performances that have showcased the joint endeavour. For the AWO’s recital in particular, there was a truly celebratory and cross-cultural feel – with some of the Australian musicians that comprise it being plucked from other orchestras from around the world, as well as directly from Australia itself.
Mehta clearly continues to hold such admiration and respect from both his musicians and audience alike; at 86 now, his slow but stately entrances were always greeted with loving applause - his understated but steady command of the orchestra was a lesson from one of the masters. The opening Passacaglia, with its latent order within in a simmering chaos, constituted a gripping opening; before the Six Pieces for Orchestra (also by Webern) carried us through some of the darker moments of the composer’s own life – written after he was coming to terms with the death of his mother. This was particularly apparent in the fourth and most extended movement of the six, with its relentless funeral beat, and pained and desperate conclusion.
Brett Dean’s own arrangement of Debussy’s Ariettes Oubliées gave somewhat less prominence to the strings, but which allowed other parts of the orchestra to truly shine. Dean will have been performing in his own right the following day, with the Hebrides Ensemble over at The Queen’s Hall at lunchtime. Here, as with the performance of Dvořák 7th, the horn playing was a real treat. In the Debussy piece, while the stunning solo soprano Siobhan Stagg very much made the work her own, the voice was sometimes lost against the weight and arrangement of the orchestra.
The drama in all of tonight’s pieces was pronounced. The brief interlude provided by the pastoral trio during the recurring Scherzo within the final (Dvořák) work really had the feel of passing through the eye of a storm; but the determined drive of the Finale, as it yearned towards its coda, very much made us all thirsty for more.
The performance finished at 9.30pm.
Australian World Orchestra, Friday 19th August, 7.30pm, Usher Hall