Bendigo Chamber Music Festival | Day 4
February 8th, 2025, Bendigo, VIC
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Saturday 9.30am Masterclass – Forest St Uniting Church
Four local students/musicians presented themselves for this event.
I was interested to see how the students would present themselves being locally from Bendigo and how the tutors would make change. Louisa and Lloyd did this wonderfully teasing out more from the students, one an adult from the Bendigo symphony. The standout here was the opening of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with the clarinettist a young student of around 17 or so struggling with the difficult glissando. With a look at a new technique Will succeeded tremendously resulting in cheers from the audience. In addition, he was encouraged by Lloyd to make the piece his own which he did with extra note bends. Louisa also handled her students with great encouragement and wonderful perspectives on how to improve. This was most instructive for me as a studio teacher and also echoed many of the things I say to my students!
“great depth”
Saturday 11.00am – Violin and Piano (Charlotte and Daniel)
Prokofiev – Sonata in F minor opus 80. Andante Assai, Allegro Brusco, Andante, Allegrissimo
Clara Wieck-Schumann – 1st Romance
Ravel – Sonata in G major, No. 2 Allegretto, Blues: Moderato, Perpetuum mobile: Allegro
The dark Prokofiev sonata is grim and the direction to the last movement that it should sound like the wind in a deserted cemetery is a good description of the whole piece. The intensity of the two performers gave this the great depth it needed.
The emotional cleanser of the Romance was necessary and immediately delivered an essence of a new day dawning in the opening phrases. A brief work it was played with a refreshing and delightful character so that this work succeeded in brightening our souls.
Ravel was reputed by Charlotte to have always thought violin and piano do not go together. In setting to prove this the sonata created two clashing worlds in two instruments. Having experienced the joy of jazz and St Louis blues in Paris while working on this piece for six or so years, the influence is quite obvious. The opening movement does seem to have a disconnect between the two instruments seemingly going different places musically which to a large extent continues throughout the sonata as if Ravel sets out to prove the two instruments do not fit together. . The blues movement began with the violin sounding almost like a ukelele and followed by a motif remarkably like the beginning of Gershwin’s summertime composed 10 or so years later. With glissandi and pitch bending even with the pizzicato notes this was given a convincing jazz/blues feel. Interplay between the piano and violin was excellent with short motifs gradually extending to longer melodies.
Saturday 2.15pm – Community concert with Bendigo Symphony Orchestra
Mozart – Piano Concerto no 3 (Lily Begg)
Mozart – Violin Concerto (Théonie Wang)
It was wonderful to see the festival artists making up one third of the orchestra. The programme finished with the work listed first (corrected here). Whilst intonation was not always perfect, it was wonderful to see a regional orchestra at work tackling concertos and working with the festival artists.
The Mozart piano concerto is an early work and is relatively straightforward and was ably played by Lily. The violin concerto is more involved and Théonie of the Tarlindy Quartet showed her capabilities here especially with the cadenza full of double stopping and other technical demands.
Saturday 5.00pm – Capital Theatre
Haydn – Piano Trio in D minor Hob.XV:23 (Louisa, Harry, Chris)
Eberl – Grand Sextet in E flat Major, op 47 (Ignas, Lloyd, Peter, Brigid, Justin, Chris)
The Haydn piano trio was an enjoyable work due to the poise , balance and elegance of the performers’ playing. The piano has the backbone of the Haydn trios generally speaking with the violin and cello supporting the pianist right and left hands to fill out the texture. Knowing when to do this and when to take your string solo into the spotlight was done with a real sense of the form and style of this piece. In particular the lovely meandering of the adagio was pleasing as was the pearly piano touch in the finale. This last movement finished the trio with lots of sparkle.
Eberl is not a commonly known composer, but he rivalled Beethoven in popularity in his time. The sextet has a big piano part and many opportunities given the number of instruments to change the texture and the roles of the instruments. Here again we have the opportunity to have first a string piano trio and then a wind piano trio with a cello supporting the bass. Not so far from the baroque times really! There was rom for many solos especially in the Andante which gave room for beauty of tone shown off in each instrument. Fascinating was the manner in which the instrumentation changed regularly in each movement contrasting solos, trios and tutti.
In leaving the concert I was left with the satisfying feel of having heard a substantial work performed by very accomplished musicians.
Saturday 7.45pm – Festival Gala
Ravel – Ma Mère L’Oye (Daniel, Ignas)
– Pavane of the sleeping beauty in the Forest
– Tom Thumb
– Laideronnette Empress of the Pagodas
– Conversations between Beauty and the Beast
– Fairies’ Garden
Spohr – Deutsche Lieder, opus 103 (Alexandra, Lloyd, Louisa)
– Zwiegesang
– Sehnsucht
– Das heimliche Lied
Vivaldi – Four Seasons (Charlotte, Natsuko, Brigid, Harry, tutti strings, Donald)
As it was the Chinese New Year, we had to wait for the crackers to be fired before the concert started 10 minutes later! We did in fact have a disturbing amount of drumming from the Chinese restaurant later in the concert.
The duet genre in France was honoured by a few composers writing specifically for this combination rather than merely arranging something for four hands. Ma Mère L’Oye is one such with this original version performed with sympathetic ensemble and a delightful simplicity. Playing such simple pieces with such sensitivity one always wonders at how such simple pieces’ magic comes to vivid life in the hands of first-class performers.
The Spohr gave us the opportunity to hear voice matched with clarinet. Both performed with great control to give these pieces character and a mix of the dynamic with sensitive management. In this they were greatly assisted with the sensitive accompaniment on piano by Louisa who by this stage was a making a name for herself in my mind as being an extraordinary manager of soundscape, texture and capturing the intent of the composer in whatever role she plays.
The Vivaldi is so well known it can easily be merely a crowd pleaser. This was not played on a period orchestra playing on gut strings, but on the modern instruments, familiar to the festival artists. This was however, a dynamic performance with the standout being summer with Natsuko who made this concerto her own with imitations of the sounds of summer in the birds and insects as in the score but bent to her own ideas. Playing up very high for example on her G string for example to produce wispy sounds to be the atmosphere of summer made this perhaps the most evocative and entertaining version I have heard. It was played with originality and authority. What followed could have been an anti-climax, but the authority of Brigid’s playing and the all-round solidity of Harry playing winter ended this concert on a highly satisfying level.
We are so fortunate to be able to experience concerts like this!
Read more about the Bendigo Chamber Music Festival:
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WEDNESDAY + THURSDAY concerts >>
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