Signature Sound

The Sydney Symphony was in fine form last Friday at the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House, fine form indeed. Let us not take the concert in linear form, however, but jump straight to the middle of the three pieces.

There was an irresistible energy and driving force to The Lost Art of Letter Writing, a violin concerto by Australian composer Brett Dean, being performed in Sydney for the first time. In four movements, each of which is based on a letter by Brahms, Van Gogh, Hugo Wolf and Ned Kelly respectively, it is an astounding work, one that won its composer the Grawemeyer Award (the $200,000 equivalent of a Nobel Prize for music) – Dean being the first Australian to win the prize. It is a piece of many parts, of course, but underlying it all is a shifting depth that makes it both a joy and a challenge to listen to, commanding the attention of the audience.

There were many highlights, though two in particular stand out: the opening of the second movement, a quiet, introspective, almost Buddhist meditation (Van Gogh, in his letters, describes how his “intercourse with artists has stopped almost completely”), and the entire fourth movement, a thrill ride of revolutionary proportions. But to pick out highlights is to unwittingly deny the power of the rest, and this is something that one wishes the reader to think of otherwise.

What Dean can do, and has done with this work, is to create seemingly unbearable tensions on top of seemingly unbearable tensions, letting the audience relax on occasion but not releasing them, as he merely loosens his grip on the elastic slightly, without ever fully letting go. We feel the relief of a pressure reduced but not gone. There is an overwhelming sense of modernity in his work, though not in a futuristic sense. One feels that he has truly captured something of our lives, a juxtaposition of contemporary malaise and alienation, a society where irony is never far away.

Frank Peter Zimmermann, soloist for the evening, performed superbly, and Jonathan Nott’s conducting handled the trials of the piece with great aplomb. Zimmerman was also soloist when the piece was premiered with the Royal Concergebouw Orchestra in 2007, and was this week in the process of recording it for the first time, a recording this critic greatly anticipates.

But let not all this talk of Dean get in the way of mentioning the Brahms and Schubert that were part of the program as well. Brahms’ Tragic Overture Op.81 began the proceedings, and was swiftly dispatched by Nott with a fine skill. Enjoyable, yes, but merely something to be gotten through before one could hear the violin concerto. After the interval was Schubert’s Symphony No.9 in C, D944 (Great C Major). It was a fantastic interpretation, and one that had this critic wanting each movement to continue on into the night, even considering how long they each were to begin with. A resounding success of a concert, and yet another exciting premiere.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Sydney Symphony presents
Schubert’s Great C Major: Signature Sound
BRAHMS Tragic Overture
DEAN The Lost Art of Letter Writing – Violin Concerto SYDNEY PREMIERE
SCHUBERT Symphony No.9 (Great C Major)
Jonathan Nott conductor
Frank Peter Zimmermann violin

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
Friday December 1, 2011