Director of Music Gary Stavrou addresses the audience during the concert.
The three works heard in this latest concert from The Balmain Sinfonia were sufficiently varied to showcase the interpretative range of this orchestra. The works dated from the first half of the nineteenth century and were performed in chronological order.
The audience heard a selection of genres; French operatic overture was followed by a violin concerto by the German master of orchestration and a symphony by an important Danish composer.
The concert opened with a vibrant performance of the overture to Louis Herold’s opera comique, Zampa (1831). This was a successful rendering of the exciting opening to Herold’s opera of love, infidelity and their consequences. The contrasts within the piece were well handled by the orchestra’s finely blended sections. The tone was well suited to the curtain-raising nature of this work.
It is always a highlight to attend a concert where one of the orchestra’s principals steps out of their chair to play as a soloist. This afternoon was a special treat, with concertmaster Alistair Duff-Forbes tackling the well-known Violin Concerto in E minor Op 64. Director of Music Gary Stavrou and orchestra often supply a very sympathetic accompaniment for any featured concerto soloist. The balance and mood supplied for the Mendelssohn work was no exception to this pattern.
The lengthy and demanding opening movement to this concerto was a consistently fluid stream in the hands of Duff-Forbes. Mendelssohn’s writing exploits all registers and capabilities of the instrument, and this soloist’s technique met these challenges boldly. Leaps to and from the extreme upper register were precise and delivered with well projected tone.
The work’s finale was just as fluid, rocketing away at a very keen tempo. The movement was drenched in character, with its stunning salvation being a satisfying lightness from both the solo violin and orchestra. The central Andante contained many fine lyrical moments but was not as successful as the outer movements with regard to precision and rendering of the orchestrations’ detailed architecture.
The four-movement Symphony No. 5 Op.25 (1852) by Danish composer Niels Gade took up the concert’s entire second half. This interesting piece with a piano part woven amongst each movement’s orchestral lines is a substantial development of the standard instrumentation and symphonic structure of the time.
Gade’s vision and earnest exploration of orchestral possibilities was decently portrayed here. Kudos to pianist Katrina Choi who managed to sensitively play the gilded Gade filigree on only an amplified Kawai keyboard. It was quite well blended with the orchestral tone colours.
The opportunity to present this work with an acoustic piano would have added a more penetrating keyboard tone colour to the work. It would also have presented Gade’s ingenuity to the audience more authentically in the manner of the composer’s mid-nineteenth century manipulation of orchestral forces.
The Balmain Sinfonia is joined by Australian pianist Phillip Shovk in the next concert. This December 6 event, held once more at the Macquarie Theatre, will present Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D minor alongside music by Johann Strauss and Tchaikovsky.