ABO + Circa = music and movement of the highest order

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra | Circa & The Art of Fugue

13 August 2025, City Recital Hall, Sydney, NSW

Where do you look, when everything matters?

That was the question circling in my head from the very first Contrapunctus of this astonishing collaboration between the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Circa. Part visual poem, part intellectual puzzle, The Art of Fugue was always going to be a daunting canvas – even before Circa’s extraordinary ensemble began hurling themselves, barefoot and bare-chested, into Bach’s pristine counterpoint.

Director Yaron Lifschitz names the conundrum in his program notes: “In the striving, the doing, the questioning, there is a glimpse of something deeply human.” His choreography, or perhaps more accurately, his human architecture, felt like a meditation on that very idea. Human pyramids. Figures walking across outstretched palms. A woman held aloft in a split atop two others. Feats of physical prowess unfolded with strength, agility and utter control.

But how did this relate to Bach?

That question hovered a the back of my mind throughout. Sometimes the connection was elusive and at times the simultaneous visual and musical complexity created real cognitive load. I found myself flicking between program, stage and score, before surrendering: “I’m giving up reading the program and just going to stop analysing and enjoy the experience,” I scribbled in my notes. But even that surrender was effortful – in hindsight, maybe that was part of the point.

Lifschitz himself writes that circus is a limited language for expressing philosophical abstraction. But it is precisely that expressive limit that made this performance compelling. Watching the performers strive – to balance, to lift, to fall, to rise again – felt contrapuntal in its own right. Not so much mirroring the music as inhabiting its spirit.

The music itself, of course, was sublime.

The ever creative Paul Dyer divided The Art of Fugue into five sets and performed it on harpsichord and (in the final movement) chamber organ. The ensemble, made up of Shaun Lee-Chen (baroque violin), Ben Dollman (violin and viola), Jamie Hey (cello), and Marianne Yeomans (viola); played with astonishing clarity and poise. Set two saw Dollman switch to viola, creating a dark, velvety balance with Yeomans that beautifully grounded the structure. Set four brought a delightful surprise: a pizzicato version of one of the fugues, plucked delicately and playfully.

The final set, performed with organ, added gravitas. The sudden ending, that famously unfinished fugue,  plunged us into darkness, unresolved. It was a stunning theatrical moment. No bows. No flourish. Just silence.

And then: murmurs in the foyer. Some were mesmerised, others perplexed. Perhaps this was a polarising program, Bach lovers seeking sonic purity might have struggled to reconcile the constant motion. Circa fans, on the other hand, were enthralled. But it would be wrong to reduce this to a competition between disciplines. This was not Circa “accompanying” the ABO or vice versa. It was a dialogue.

A fugue, after all, is not about melody but conversation, independent lines in equal tension. This was contra punctus made visible: bodies in motion against music in motion. The two did not always align. But that dissonance, that struggle to connect, was precisely what made the evening linger in the mind long after the lights went down.