Melbourne Chamber Orchestra Director, Sophie Rowel, welcomed cello soloist and guest director, Timo-Veikko (Tipi) Valve, explaining that Tipi had curated the program to bring together music from Finland and Australia – his two homelands. Rowell said she saw it as an opera in two acts; and within each act, there were no breaks between the pieces.
“Crystalline Voices” was a nod to two works in the “second act”: Crystalline, a work for string orchestra by contemporary Australian composer Olivia Bettina Davies, and Voces intimae, a subtitle Sibelius used in his eighth string quartet almost a century earlier.
The concert opened with “Stillness”. Absolute stillness. Mesmerising silence. Players motionless. The MCO created the stillness Finnish composer Ida Moberg was contemplating even before the music began. “Stillness” was the fourth movement of Finnish composer Ida Moberg’s 1909 tone poem, Soluppgang (Sunrise). Moberg was deeply immersed in theosophy where, according to Susanna Valimaki, a modern-day exponent of Moberg’s work, art was believed to be “a portal to a transcendental spiritual realm”. “Stillness” was an attractively harmonised setting of a simple lilting melody, rendered in warm tones by Veikko-Valve and the MCO.
With the arpeggione now virtually extinct, Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata has been appropriated by cellists; and in this performance the MCO played Tipi’s arrangement of Schubert’s original piano accompaniment. This sonata is always a joy to hear, but this performance was exceptional. Veikko-Valve played Schubert’s melodies and virtuosic filigree passages with exquisite grace and delicacy. His superb tone ensured a perfect balance between soloist and ensemble. The MCO, led by Sophie Rowell, provided a sensitive accompaniment.
Crystalline, composed for The Hush Collection in 2017, was apparently inspired by the way crystals are formed and the varying fractal patterns they make. Olivia Bettina Davies wrote that she wanted the music “to unfold gradually … to have a sense of energy but also be contemplative”.
The opening note was striking in every sense of the word. It burst out of the cello and slowly dispersed, with the celli and ultimately the rest of the ensemble replicating and developing the sound, seemingly at random. The MCO’s live performance helped make this work sparkle. It was a theatrical experience to see the way these crystalline or embryonic sounds were varied as they passed from player to player.
The final item on the program was a special blend of Finnish and Australian string quartets: the opening and closing movements of Peter Sculthorpe’s eighth string quartet were interleaved between the five movements of Sibelius’ string quartet, Voces Intimae (as arranged by Pekka Helasvuo for string orchestra).
The first and last movement of Sculthorpe’s five-movement quartet, marked “con dolore”, are improvisatory soulful, deeply resonant cello solos, variously punctuated or accompanied by the ensemble. In their original context, these movements provide a strong contrast to the faster, rhythmically rigid style of the second and fourth movements.
In this program, however, Sculthorpe’s first cello monologue was spliced between Sibelius’ first two movements. Sibelius’ first movement opens with an expansive, lyrical dialogue initiated by the violins, but this peaceful mood does not last; the tension mounts, and by the end of the movement the mood is decidedly sombre. Sibelius’ second movement is animated, propelled with an urgent rhythm that drives the listener towards the intense, reflective, densely written middle movement, which gives the quartet its title, Voces Intimae.
Inserting Sculthorpe’s cello monologue and delaying the onset of Sibelius’ energetic third movement amplified the tension Sibelius creates in his first movement. Similarly, inserting another cello monologue after Sibelius’ climactic middle movement (Adagio di molto) reinforced the mood Sibelius creates in the Adagio. This novel juxtaposition produced a compelling performance of both works.
The performance was greeted with rapturous, sustained applause. The community that was formed during that performance – players and listeners alike – left Elisabeth Murdoch Hall beaming.
Photo credit: Lucien Fischer.
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Sue Kaufmann reviewed “Crystalline Voices”, presented by the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra at the Melbourne Recital Centre on July 21, 2024.
