Above and featured: Ray Chen performs Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Op 35. Photos by Craig Abercrombie.
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s most recent concert in their 2023 season featured at its pounding heart a scintillating rendering of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto from our high profile expat success Ray Chen.
Also on the programme was yet another beautifully able creation of atmosphere commissioned by the SSO’s 50 Fanfares Project. These new works begin concerts with an elaborate, unique flourish for full orchestra.
For this concert’s fanfare we had the absolute thrill to hear from the original, playful and cleverly pictorial pen of in-demand composer Alice Chance in her work Through Changing Landscape.
Like Ray Chen, Alice Chance is another local expat with an impressive output, social media presence, list of colloborations with local and international artists or groups and has been a judge for Eurovision Australia. Chance relished the opportunity to provide a scenic fanfare and solid prelude to the fireworks to follow in the concerto performance.
Her exquisitely thoughtful sharing of quick-moving scenery as if seen through a static train window. Its flickering and curves mimic our outward processing of the fleeting, everchanging environment during a train trip.
This new work illustrated Chance’s sound knowledge of orchestral writing. Her innate ability to conjure and contort feelings and sounds through the playful and vivd fanfare madefor an effective soundscape. It’s clever textural shifts with high omnipresent glassy chime flicking plus fluid shimmering subtleties were kept nicely on track by SSO under the baton of guest conductor David Robertson.
Ray Chen recorded the Tchaikovsksy and Mendelssohn Violin Concerti in 2012, less than five years after playing them to win first place in the Queen Elisabeth and Yehudi Menuhin Competitions repectively, in 2009 and 2008.
The excitement and emotion of this concerto’s first movement was joined by an eloquence and calm resolve which comes from living with the work for many years. The cadenza voice with complex bravura gesturing had great pacing.
Any excursion into the high register was delivered witn Chen’s trademark ringing projection. Character changes between the two main subject melodies were very clearly deliniated by the superb musical and emotional command this soloist always delivers.
Above : Alice Chance, composer of the opening work: ‘Through Changing Landscape’.
Tchaikovsky’s deep emotion and exuberance were respectfully given equal attention in this interpretation. Chen’s synergy with SSO, both against the whole band or in the exchanges with soloists such as the flute or clarinet, was so refreshing to witness.
This was especially rewarding in the Canzotta second movement, where all forces worked so well together to trace the lines and development of the sound and emotional intensity.
The super- hero strength contrast achieved in the shift to a very vivacissimo tempo for the last movement was an action sequence for all to enjoy. The broad strokes, forthright utterances and shifts between more meditative moments and the entire forces taking flight were thrilling to be treated to, and trademark Ray Chen.
The audience included very young audience members, possibly members of his successful Tonic App community for practice or perfomrance preparation. They would have been enormously inspired by Chen’s stamina and approach to live performance
These young musicians were also treated to Chen’s superb resonating harmonics, layered chordal playing and shifts back into well voiced moments of calm as he duetted with the orchestra. Audience members of any age gasped at the concluson of the fast finale. They also could enjoy the colourful, compelling co-operation with orchestra thtrough the whole of this landmark concerto.
Sydney Symphony Orchestra ended the contrasted pictures exhibited and through this concert with a balanced and thoughtful delivery of Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No 5 Op 50 from 1922.
The orchestra and conductor unravelled thiscomposition admirably to present a clear reading. Its persistent presence of on and off-stage military drum, provided with edgy precision by percussionist Rebecca Lagos, hurtled us back to the work’s post-WWI period of composition.
The well-measured approach to slow changes in mood and orchestral shapes were harnessed by SSO. Conductor David Robertson and the orchestra led us through some impressive moments of organic growth. This was a worthwhile introduction to or reminder of the stilled atmospheres manipulated during this symphony.
Nielsen’s Symphony No 5 was yet another colour with which to end this varied concert. This was a concert which had already offered us a new work, a famous concerto and Waltzing Matilda in arrangement by Ray Chen himself for an encore prior to a massive ovation for the popular guest.
August concerts from SSO include Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony conducted by Simone Young and Principal Oboe Diana Doherty perfoming music by Ross Edwards.