Conductor Jessica Cottis.
Classical music is like guacamole – there’s a million and one ways of interpreting the base recipe, and each has their own advantages and disadvantages. Which is why it’s always exciting to witness a new conductor in action. Fresh blood, as it were, for the said guacamole. Now, Jessica Cottis, conductor for the latest Sydney Symphony concert, Mozart’s Haffner Symphony, is not the newest of conductors around. She’s not, for instance, one of those who win Opera Australia’s yearly competition to conduct the national anthem at the Opera in the Domain. But she is the latest assistant conductor for the Sydney Symphony, and she is certainly relatively new to Sydney audiences, having only conducted (to the best of this critic’s knowledge) here twice.
The main event came last year, at another Mozart in the City concert like the one under review, where she made a splash with a wonderful rendition of the overture to The Magic Flute, and gave the world premiere of ‘Lake Ice’ by Mary Finsterer. She was an energetic presence on the concert platform then and she is just a lively this time around. For instance, at one point in the concert, she cued multiple blasts from the brass by bouncing on the balls of her feet and alternately jabbing her index fingers in their direction.
We began this concert at the City Recital Hall with Mozart’s ‘Symphony No.35 in D, K385 (Haffner)’. Named after friend of the Mozarts’, Siegmund Haffner, it was composed after he moved from Salzburg to Vienna in 1781 to celebrate his acquaintance’s ennoblement. Changes were made to the symphony in 1783 – the adding of flutes and clarinets to the first and last movements, and the deletion of a march and the first minuet – and we were left with the ‘grand and rather festive symphony’ that we heard. Instead of going for a crispness like some conductors, for Cottis the phrases were instead marked by an overall whirring of energy and momentum – a sort of controlling of the maelstrom, rather than, say, principal conductor David Robertson’s angular precision. It was spirited and enjoyable.
Leonard Bernstein, that genre-defying composer of the 20th century, came next, with his ‘Serenade after Plato’s Symposium for solo violin, strings, harp and percussion’. Based on, strangely enough, Plato’s Symposium, it musically tells the story of the philosophers that one day decided that instead of drinking copiously then discussing serious issues like they usually would, they would rather drink nothing and then discuss frivolous things – namely, love. In five movements that represent the various speakers (such as Phaedrus and Aristophanes), the talking progresses until late in the fifth, when Alcidbiades and his band of drunkards come in and gloriously (at least in musical terms) interrupt everything. The interpretation here was energised and enthusiastic, with concertmaster Dene Olding’s solo violin (for this was a violin concerto) moving and articulate, especially in the Agathon movement, a simple three-part song talking of love’s potency.
Mozart’s ‘Overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio’ finished the program, with his take on the fad for Turkish music at the time providing an over-the-top conclusion, and was triumphant in its brashness. The encore – or rather the planned ‘Mystery Moment’ (where we are treated to a small piece to be revealed on Twitter the next day – unless you can guess it first) was the Allegretto (the second movement) from Haydn’s Military Symphony (No. 100). Overall, yet another worthwhile concert from this gem of a series.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
City Recital Hall, Angel Place
www.sydneysymphony.com
29 May
