Above: Retort House at Sub Base Platypus – the location for Sydney Harbour Ensemble’s inaugural concert. Featured image: Conductor Benjamin Crowe and the forty members of Sydney Harbour Ensemble. Photos: Panagiotis Karamanos.
Concertgoers in this city have for some time now enjoyed events held outdoors or in new, industrial, historic and renovated venues. White Bay Power Station, Cockatoo Island, The Cutaway and Machine Hall come to mind for a start.
There is a new instrumental ensemble in our city – Sydney Harbour Ensemble with an exciting raison d’être of matching live music programmes to “historic and culturally significant locations along Sydney Harbour”. Led by local musician and emerging conductor Benjamin Crowe, this dynamic group of orchestral musicians have hit the mark with regards to the ensemble’s mission statement and crowd reaction at their first event.
Destination One on Sydney Harbour Ensemble ‘s 2026 excursion was Retort House at Sub Base Platypus, North Sydney. This building, built using imported pre-fab iron from England, positioned just metres from the harbour, has seen a range of activity since it was built prior to the site’s current role as a community event site.
During its initial use, Retort House contained high-pressurised retort vessels contributing to production as part of the North Sydney Gas Works. After 1937 the naval activities saw it and the surrounding area become a submarine base which included training and torpedo manufacture.
Above: Conductor of Sydney Harbour Ensemble, Benjamoin Crowe. Photo: Panagiotis Karamanos.
Fast forward to early in this year’s Sydney concert calendar, and Benjamin Crowe plus ensemble filled the at-capacity harbourside venue with the music of Johann Strauss II. Strauss’ large output of polkas, waltzes and theatre music is notoriously linked to the piece ‘By the Beautiful Blue Danube’, a famous tone poem saluting that body of water in Vienna. The loved work ended this concert and around me I heard gasps of recognition and joy from audience members.
An all-Strauss concert, even on a beautiful Sydney day with glistening blue harbour water nearby, initially sounded like a challenging afternoon. A programme in the form of a complete biopic of just one composer could also be a difficult assignment, especially for a fledgeling ensemble still learning to speak comfortbly as one.
I was proved refreshingly wrong, however. At this event, with very warm hospitality, in enviable and different concert environs, many aspects of the Johann Strauss II’s canon and fruits of his skill in manipulating an orchestra were explored with precision and formidable impact. These aspects were documented via a carefully constructed programme to be performed in the historic venue – which affords us with an excellent acoustic.
I enjoyed this project’s musical contrasts, and the ensemble’s discipline. The expressive range Benjamin Crowe brought out of the well-trained musicians was very commendable, and the potential to wow audiences in future is great. Strauss demands a lot from an orchestra and its leader- his works contain huge contrasts of mood, wide tempo fluctuations, plus knife-edge textural changes, all with the expectation of a maintining an ultra mooth veneer and deliver crisp end-with-a-bang codas.
Above: Concertmaster of Sydney Harbour Ensemble, Hannah Kim. Photo: Panagiotis Karamanos.
This new ensemble and their clear conductor managed all these challenges with ease and control. The Viennese waltz brand was familiar each time it was created. In the midst of delivering entertaining, exciting vistas to promote a single composer for more than an hour and a half, balance between orchestralsections and effective layering were unwaveringly good in the interpretations heard.
Programme notes for the music were accessible in their tone, nicely detailed and encouraged us to (re)consider Strauss’ environment as well as his love of locations and the time in history he was exposed to that was changing society and music considerably. The digital concert programme also included local history with photos to support the ensemble’s goal of playing in historic Sydney venues, promoting them alongside the music.
Pieces such as Acceleration Waltz, Op 234 and Emperor Waltz Op 437 were important in showing us how this composer created whilst commenting on politics, industrialisation and busy times surrounding him. Non waltz or polka pieces ( A Thousand and One Nights, Op 346 and Artist’s Life, Op 316) were chosen to show the composer off in his telling of more intimate or exotic stories than those brought to us in popular, high energy dance music of his time and place.
Above: Benjamin Crowe and members of Sydney Harbour Ensemble take a bow. Photo: Panagiotis Karamanos.
After a great alfresco interval outside the recently restored Retort House, the orchestra gave a solid rendition of the overture to Die Fledermaus, showcasing the composer’s most celebrated theatrical work. Compositions referring to nature, (Under Thunder and Lightning, Op 324 as well as In Krapfen Woods Op 437) demonstrated Strauss’ ability to write his reactions to nature down and ask an orchestra to vividly recreate the vistas. Such vivid recreations were elegantly and capably done here, with a fresh, keen and measured sense of drama. This concert and landscape surrounding the Retort House venue included moments when we could see boat masts drifting slowly past the tall windows behing the orchestra, with lush soundtrack to the action. This close-encounter experience would not be possible in many local concert halls.
Second-half polka spots of excellence in entertainment value and instrumental control came in the form of Pizzicato Polka, Op 234 and the familiar Tritsch-Tratsch Polka, Op 214. A rocketing tempo choice was taken for this Tritsch-Tratsch, that was never in danger of skidding across the concrete Retort House floor. This enduring favourite was a definite souvenir to take home from the documentary.
Above: Cellist Ryan Xu. Photo: Panagiotis Karamanos.
Notable in this event was Benjamin Crowe’s rapport with his ensemble, as well as the audience during his introductory address. Cellist Ryan Xu deserves a mention also for the way in which his solo lines and hues repeatedly emerged with shapely ease and impressively managed tone from the fuller sound.
We eagerly await the next concert destination and exciting blend of Sydney Harbour history with music from this new team. Their stable, flexible sound and intelligent, agile gesturing already make them recordable. More importantly though, these characteristics and the project at hand will enhance this city’s 2026 concert calendar and beyond. This new musical team promises to provide residents and tourists memorable and unprecedented live entertainment options, beside our equally impressive Sydney Harbour.
