It is not too often that one finds a composer capable of creating music from written letters or one who is able to so successfully convey through music the sensibility expressed in these words. However, Australia has a virtuoso composer and violinist called Brett Dean who has used his talent to do just this. He has created a beautiful composition in four movements using references about four important characters of the 19th century. And to make it more intense the sounds are produced by the Orchestra of the Australian National Academic of Music and the young Australia awarded violinist Kristian Winther.

Everything begin with Hamburg 1854 with a love phrase: “ Would to Ggod that I were allowed this day of writing this letter to you to repeat to you with my own lips that I am dying of love you” (Johannes Brahmas in a letter to Clara Schumann). The music is desperate and anxious. Violins and violas sharpen the senses. The unquiet love of Brahms is telling that this is a feeling that he can not maintain. The audience became tense waiting for the outcome, but the answer the work give us is unrequited love that only serves to generate more anxiety. The first movement finished and the public is left wanting more.

The madness has flooded the theater. Vincent van Gogh is writing to his mentor and friend the painter Anthon van Rappard “My intercourse with artist has stopped almost completely…All kinds of eccentric and bad things are thought and said about me, which makes me feel somewhat forlorn now and then, but on the other hand it concentrates my attention on the things that never change -that is to say, the eternal beauty of nature” (The Hague, 1882). The van Gogh geniality is caught by the Orchestra. A vibrant touch of cymbals produces a nervous collapse of the moment. People change positions in their chairs; most of them move their fingers trying to let them off.

A new silence begins. The third movement is slightly different to the second. It is as a continuation but less accelerated. The violin produces a keen groan that is not completely illogical. Existential problems unresolved are capable of making one rave and Hugo Wolf was full of this happenstance. As he wrote to his friend Josef Strasser “It grieves to me, but I know for certain: that it is my lot hurt all those who love me, and whom I love” (Vienna, 1886). These special phrases remain attached to the strings of the violins and the heavy sounds of the orchestra.

The final movement takes the character of a moto-perpetuo. The audience feels as if somebody is escaping. A prisoner is being hunted. Who is this person? He is Ned Kelly, the heroic Australian bushranger. His struggle is revealed in the Jerilderie Letter “I do not wish to give the order full force without giving timely warning, but I am a widow’s son outlawed, and my orders must be obeyed” (Jerinlderie, 1979). This vigorous end keeps the heart beat accelerating only to find release in the knowledge that the persecution has finished. The Director Brett Dean and the Violinist Kristian Winther are warmly applauded to the point of having to leave and return to the stage four times. They received well deserved praise.

The Lost Art of Letter writing

Location: South Melbourne Town Hall, 210 Bank Street, South Melbourne, Australia