Keeping Standards High

The Age

Saturday November 1, 2008

Clive O'Connell, Reviewer

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL ACADEMY OF MUSIC

Brahms and Schoenberg Focus, South Melbourne Town Hall, October 30 www.anam.com.au

IN SUCH a difficult week it was heartening to see the Australian National Academy of Music maintaining, for the most part, its high standard. Thursday's program of Schoenberg and Brahms - part of a series of recitals, lectures and concerts celebrating both composers - began with a duo sonata performed by faculty members, moved to a Schoenberg orchestral work played by the academy's ensemble, then finished with the Brahms Sextet No. 2 where half the participants were academy musicians, half were teachers.

Because of the illness of Sally-Anne Russell, the programmed soloist, David Thomas and resident pianist Timothy Young took on the Brahms Clarinet Sonata No. 1 in F minor and produced a responsive interpretation at short notice. In fact, apart from some over-pedalled moments in the outer movements, this last-minute interpolation made an enriching experience.

Under conductor Fabian Russell, the ensemble played Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra Op. 16 in an arrangement by the composer's son-in-law, Felix Greissle. An intense score, packed with fragments that have to be slotted exactly into position, the pieces have proved popular, not least because of their brevity and concentration of resources - a factor exposed even more in this version. The young players kept their heads, working through the disjunct outbursts of the last two pieces with no apparent lapses.

The reading of Brahms' G Major Sextet proved a trial, mainly because the participants did not present a united front and gave the benign work some rough treatment. Cellist Howard Penny urged out several exposed passages that would have been better treated with more affection; violinists Rebecca Chan and Monica Curro missed out on conveying the score's lyrical suaveness when playing in tandem; Fiona Sargeant's viola gave an unpleasant underpinning to the opening bars of the Poco adagio movement. But the overall emphasis was on driving through the quicker sections with unsettling energy.

Nevertheless, the professionalism shown by the students in the Schoenberg work stood out as witness to the high standards expected of them. A pity the federal Arts Minister was not present to relish this instance of top-quality musical achievement that his administration seems determined to scuttle in a funding decision that, for most music-lovers, beggars belief.

© 2008 The Age

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