Above: Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra’s fourth album ‘Midsummer Dreams’ is released as a physical and digital CD with booklet as well as being available on all streaming platforms from March 27 this year. Featured image: Rachael Beesley with the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra at Brisbane City Hall. Image: Bradley Kanaris.
The next instalment in the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra’s discography, Midsummer Dreams, is released this March. It is another brilliant live recording, this time from a concert tour of nineteenth century music that took place in July 2023. This recording of the live performance was from The Concourse, Chatswood as part of that tour.
The choice and juxtaposition of this album’s works highlight Mendelssohn and Beethoven’s championing their new approaches within the forms and styles of the old. They refreshed and extended musical practices with new colours, sheens and expression. In turn they catapulted their art form forwards into a vibrant place full of new sound opportunities.
This process from the compositional greats was not unlike the refresh that great works are given by Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra during tours and release of recordings.
Once again, the thrill of discovering a new concert project or recording from this orchestra stems from our anticipation of a new sound for popular works, usually heard on modern instruments with less historically informed performance practices.
Here, as preparation for the interpretations, historic recordings were listened to, marked-up historical scores analysed, essays and treatises guided the orchestra members from across the globe in their interpretation. A new sound emerges thanks to the diligence of resident researchers, music historians, period performance practitioners and academics alike.
New academic background for the fresh renovation of key works by Mendelssohn and Beethoven came here from collaboration with academic-violinist Emma Williams. Her PhD research into nineteenth century elocution, actions and delivery of dramatic material further enriched the musical enunciation.
This recording is available both as a physical CD and via all streaming platforms. The attractive painting (by the orchestra’s bassoonist Lisa Goldberg) used for the CD cover design ensures a quality packaging. Equally endearing for the physical product is the chance to physically flip through the booklet, absorbing Yvonne Frindle’s detailed listening notes.
In the CD booklet there is also a worthwhile read to be had of Dr Geoffrey Burgess’ essay on tempo rubato, a freedom many may not associate with music that develops the Classical tradition, but which we enjoy the effective fruits of throughout the recording.
Above (l-r) Ashley Sutherland, Dora Ombodi, Nicole van Bruggen and Emma Black play historical winds in ‘Midsummer Dreams’ at Monash University Melbourne. Image: Ken Nakanishi.
Tempo fluctuations, portamento swoops in melodic lines, the use of gut stringed instruments and historic brass plus woodwinds enrich the HIP (Historically Informed Performance) revivals of the recorded works, which enjoyed strengthened period accent and shaping from the collaboration with Emma Williams regarding dramatic posturing and methods of delivery by singers and actors.
We start the recording with one of the most well-known dramatic preludes from the Romantic period, Mendelssohn’s Overture to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. In this much loved work we are instantly struck by the delicacy of period winds in the opening and a beautiful sheen of gut strings, which bring a welcome new feel to this work. The well-known, rapid, hushed string lines (which Yvonne Frindle’s booklet notes aptly describe as ‘gossamer’) are especially exquisite here, deliver with signature precision from this orchestra.
Contrasts in this fairytale soundscape are excellently managed, with period instruments creating bold vistas. Lyrical moments are rocked in a dreamy cradle of tempo rubato, with portamenti enhancing the lines. The HIP attention to instrumentation includes an authentic period ophicleide, the new lower brass instrument of the nineteenth century. In conjunction with Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra’s period winds, the soundscape has an engaging clarity of early instrument attack in the renovation of this popular overture.
The range of colours and expression, enhanced by flexibility of tempi and approach to changing motivic material, truly finds its home though in an exciting version of Beethoven’s significantly atypical Symphony No 8, at the centre of this recording. The collaboration with Emma Williams regarding historical delivery of declamation by actors and singers shines here. It imbues the version of strikingly new-within-old packaging by Beethoven for this compact work’s challenges to form.
The first movement’s melodic twists and turns often on a knife edge are enunciated clearly as each new hue unfolds. As in the Midsummer Night’s Dream, the tutti sections are strong and excellently balanced, extending from the oration in separate instrumental sections.
Above: Nick Byrnes plays historical ophicleide during Mendelssohn’s Overture to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ during the Midsummer Dreams concert conducted by Rachael Beesley at The Concourse Chatswood in July 2023. Image: Robert Catto.
In this symphony, sans a deliberate and ponderous Beethoven slow movement, we see him tweak traditional Allegretto and Menuet movements at the centre. The second movement is delivered with elegant restraint. This brief, innocent ballad speaks precisely and intimately with measured understatement plus Beethoven-esque sudden outbursts.
Beethoven’s daring colourisation of the symphonic dance movement Tempo di Menuetto contains much colour variation and a range of utterance. The orchestra, especially period brass and woodwind, take clever care of the melodic subtleties and conversation across the expert band as each section is eased into and out of. Listening to this challenging chameleon work and its variegated sections of the finale movement proceed so clearly we are pinching ourselves reminding our senses that this is a live recording, as the rendering is so exact and instantly effective.
The second Mendelssohn work recorded is the large-scale, moody, descriptive ‘Scottish’ Symphony No 3 in A minor. It is brought to life with expansive expression, assisted by a well-honed HIP approach. The sheen of historical instruments so well blended here is heard to stirring effect in clean tutti sections. A combination of the composer’s expert orchestration, combined with director Rachael Beesley and Australian Classical & Romantic Orchestra’s earnest and multi-stranded research delivers soundscapes and songs which unfold unhurriedly across the movements.
This symphony’s second movement showcases some beautiful string delivery of melodic material within the texture. A directness of communication in the gesturing is then taken over by winds and the whole ensemble. The remainder of this symphony’s drama illustrates the possibility of Romanticism being expressed vividly within traditional formats. The orchestra brings us solidly shifting sections with fine oration or dramatic posturing plus some more well-placed portamenti expressively rendering the story.
Above: Rachael Beesley conducts ‘Midsummer Dreams’ at Monash University Melbourne. Image: Ken Nakanishi.
There is a pleasing commitment to drama and a fullness of sound that hits the mark to conclude this triumphant recording. This symphony and latest work on the recording is renewed here with an unprecedented shimmer. A new tempo rubato delivery to Mendelssohn’s story inspired by the new environment of gloomy Scottish ruins, mists, light and national dancing lets the tale unfold with breathing space and effective pacing of the musical description.
This live recording’s keen sensitivity includes historically accurate dramatic gesturing and speaking with informed, well researched ensemble voice. It preserves a vibrant trio of detailed environments from live concert history. Finishing on a very high note with this late Mendelssohn work, the orchestra, through its use of carefully researched techniques, provides us new sounds from older music. The work has a spontaneous soundtrack feel that will appeal to existing lovers of this work plus newcomers to it alike.
This is a fourth recording for the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra and the latest testament to the fruits of their research. Such background work for the well-known compositions involved has again resulted in a dynamic, fresh performance that is instantly accessible, exciting and new.
From March 27, 2025 this CD is available for purchase as a physical or digital CD with booklet at https://www.arco.org.au/midsummer-cd, and is also available on all streaming platforms.
