Featured image: Members of Bach Akademie Australia orchestra with Director Madeleine Easton at University of Sydney’s Great Hall on Friday September 22. This was the first of three concerts over three locations over that weekend. Above artwork for this concert series included the painting ‘Venus’ by Wajarri artist Kevin Merritt.
Bach, as a gifted musician and moreover an outstanding contrapuntalist would have been intensely sensitive to his musical environment. Running in parallel to his output was the research and study working on the correct arrangement of our solar system and galactic environment for earth.
Within three decades of Bach’s death came the landing by Captain Cook and then the British First Fleet at Botany Bay. Over three centuries later, Australians have listened to a lot of JS Bach and his family, but a comfortably, quotidien understanding of First People’s culture, a Treaty for the same people and a voice to parliament are still a work in progress.
Using music by Bach and earlier composers plus a newly commissioned piece by Biripai man Troy Russell, the music and peoples from Europe and Australia’s First Nations have been interestingly and passionately linked.
Above: Troy Russell, whose work ‘Clans’ was heard in world premiere.
The focus for such an undertaking was the viewing of Venus, the so-called Morning Star. Russell’s composition for orchestra and choir is titled Clans. It explores the importance of Venus seen at sunrise and the night sky for many indigenous clans.
This work, even on first rang out with expressive use of the small choir it was intended for, and the new work is significant in its iconic blend of instruments and vocal undulations in cycle, creating a mesmerising atmosphere. Its captivating song shapes were earnestly and capably traced by the Bach Akademie choristers and orchestra.
Preceding this work’s World Premiere was an enlightening presentation by Uncle Jimmy Smith, touching on aspects of indigenous approaches to the stars, the earth and looking back now on the recording of astral phenomena in rock carvings and art.
Earlier in the concert, the history of astronomical advances from the inquisitive minds of white Europeans was outlined by Sydney University Professor Jonathan Bland-Hawthorn. This summary was easy to follow, and the linking to composers referencing society’s fascination with the sun and planets was a nice touch beside the scientific history engagingly shared.
Above: Uncle Jimmy Smith, who spoke on indigenous astronomy.
Bach’s music bookended this novel concert structure of choral and instrumental music blended with talks on astronomy. With these themed discussions brought right into the concert programme rather than relegated to a pre-concert talk missed by some of the audience, Easton with her team plus invited guests and creatives brought us a stellar, thought-provoking experience for our time, enhanced by the past of two cultures.
The programme began with the Sinfonia from Bach’s Cantata BWV 182, on the topic of welcoming the King of Heaven. This instrumental work balanced the final full cantata. The performance featuring recorder was a beautifully intimate and gentle way in which to begin. The blend between the instruments and this solo line (played with exemplary clarity by early flute expert Mikaela Oberg) was an elegant and direct conversation with which to start a multi-hued concert voice.
The next two non- Bach works in the concert came from before Bach’s time. Firstly, the inclusion of the popular Renaissance motet setting O Magnum Mysterium by Tomás Luis de Victoria introduced us to the vocalists we would hear later.
Showing off so well the sonorities of Victoria’s compositional devices, as well as the fine voices assembled, we could read in Madeleine Easton’s always excellent supporting programme notes that the Morning Star of Troy Russell’s work was also a hero of the Nativity scene.
Above: Professor Jonathan Bland-Hawthorn, who presented ‘Galileo, Bach and the Western view of the heavens’
A further link to this astronomical phenomenon appears in the final early Bach cantata chosen, Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 1 (translating as ‘How beautifully shines the morning star’). This six-movement work was a special inclusion.
Not only was it nice to hear the ingredients of Bach’s solo and chorale writing excellence well formed in such an early work, but the Christian text’s opening reference to Venus (the ‘morning star’) was a welcome closing consolidation of earthly spiritual star gazing following the talks of the solar system, galaxy and First Nations giant Emu in the sky.
Above: Director of Bach Akademie Australia, Madeleine Easton.
There was impressive solo work in this 1725 Annunciation/Palm Sunday cantata from the solo voice types sans alto. The typical instrumental intricacies challengingly present in Bach’s score here were well harnessed through Madeleine Easton’s direction. There was impressive leadership shown across the characters by first violinist Simone Slattery. Also enjoyable was the chance to hear two corno musicians in the texture.
By father the most interesting link to the astronomical theme was a bracket of pieces for lute composed in 1584 by Vincenzo Galilei. This composer and exponent of that ambitious musical science, equal temperament, was the father of important astronomer Gallileo Galilei, who discovered as a European amongst other things the phases of Venus and the Milky Way that was already considered by First Nations peoples.
The pieces from Galilei’s offering on equal temperament also bring him close to Bach Akademie’s focus composer. The range of moods in these four pieces was shared with impeccable gesture and intimate voice by star lutenist Tommie Andersson. Their position after the history of white man astronomy was also a nice moment in this, a concert where all performances shone brightly and reflected our currently environmental and key relationships so meaningfully.