Perhaps the best test of the finest festival concerts is when audience members linger well after an event to meet performers, remaining also to share their listening experience with neighbouring audience members, and several days after each event are reminiscing or sharing these memorable and unique events with friends – indications of why Peninsula Summer Music Festival is successfully selling out its concerts.
In St John’s Church, Flinders, co-director Ben Opie introduced pianist Georgina Lewis while emphasising the passion he and co-director Melissa Doecke have for newly composed music, especially for giving Australian works a first platform. He welcomed acclaimed and admired Melbourne composer Stuart Greenbaum to introduce this special premier, a work written specially for Lewis, premiered today in an intimate and special historic setting.
We are familiar with Greenbaum’s deep engagement with the nature of our universe, his musical “spirituality” explored in his many timeless and spatial musical compositions which are so colourful, so aurally imaginative, and so beautiful. With program notes providing 19 (approximate) signposts for Sonata No. 3, Life In Light-Years, this one-hour continuously flowing work perhaps offered some challenges to listeners at times, as each person was quite transported in their own journey from “the emergence of life”, “distance”, “the weight of life” and finally “life flashing before one’s eyes”. Titles were not programmatic, listeners enjoyed personal curiosity, dreams and the mysteries of space. As if the music had no bar-lines to the score, Lewis maintained an impressive focus and concentration; we were all immersed in timelessness, the expanse and depth of the mystery of darkness, luminescent descending arpeggios, and freely-spaced random shining stars. Lewis balanced all earthy or celestial rhythmic themes with sensitivity and attention to inner melodies and changing colours and timbres, especially with the circling and repetition of principal short themes and repeated chordal patterns, where varied pedalling and touches of blues and rock patterns opened our earthy world. This thoughtful and musically spiritual journey across time and distance was a highly applauded and rewarding special premier performance.
What can be more inviting than a local journey to the high cooler bush setting of Main Ridge Estate, where, at one of the Peninsula’s oldest wineries, a fine pinot and delicacies from the larder combine perfectly with an intimate concert by Gryphon Baryton Trio? What a chance this was to see the only baryton instrument in Australia, a true copy of one of Haydn’s favoured instruments, commissioned by da gamba player Laura Vaughan, to share performances of Baryton Trio music with colleagues Katie Yap (viola) and Edwina Cordingley (cello). Two concerts were scheduled as there was much lively audience interest to see and hear this “exotic creature”, the description Vaughan gave when demonstrating the baryton’s six gut strings and revealing the unseen additional ten metal sympathetic strings which added delicately strummed arpeggios and soft punctuation.
From Haydn’s huge set of compositions for baryton trio, three of his small suites were most pleasant divertimento, elegant and charming, with rich melodies weaving together in balanced contrapuntal classical style, or blending in unison tenor melodic voicings. As Vaughan also quipped, the scores had no treble clefs in sight, just a breadth of velvety low colours in lyrical settings of lovely aria-like works. Most surprising was the depth and resonance of the acoustic which tonally enhanced the instruments, which were placed centrally under a “cathedral ceiling” in the concert room. A lively Divertimento by Haydn’s colleague and baryton player Burgksteiner fittingly placed these two friends’ music historically side by side in the Viennese court of Prince Esterhazy during the 1770’s.
All smiles and eyes were fixed on the baryton, the principal melody maker, as the three performers communicated much love and happiness in their playing, sharing a fresh and authentic re-creation of Haydn’s trio music. It was indeed the most photographed instrument at this festival. The exceptional craftmanship of Vaughan’s baryton also added historic ornamentation to the fingerboard – and the Gryphon. In true style he reigned supreme, carved authentically at the head of the instrument, no doubt watching the audience!
Photo supplied.
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Julie McErlain reviewed the concerts “Georgina Lewis: Life in Light Years” held at St John’s Church Flinders on January 5, and “Gryphon Baryton Trio” held at Main Ridge Winery on January, presented as part of the Peninsula Summer Music Festival 2025.
