What a delightful summer classical music festival this is, designed by the highly experienced team of Directors Melissa Doecke and Ben Opie, always bringing a hugely appealing program of highest quality performances to a variety of beautiful venues on the Mornington Peninsula. The recent development of the Flinders Civic Hall with a new performing space and elevated stage while allowing a spacious and attractive concert venue – most pleasant during a heatwave – is still to be tested as being the best space offering optimal acoustics for future performances. Broad and wide outside covered verandas also offer much potential for future events.
Festival concerts work beautifully often with widely connecting themes, with the title “Love and Life” for this program featuring the celebrated soprano Jacqueline Porter alongside Principal Musicians of the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra. Always intriguing for regular concert goers, is hearing these “historically informed” musicians, who play on period instruments whenever possible, scoring new arrangements for these festival programs. Through the venue’s glass walls we caught glimpses of the ocean, some green lawns, cool trees and birdlife, so we felt not too distant from the countryside where Grieg’s String Quartet No 2 in F major was composed, but not completed at the time of his death. Violinists Rachael Beesley, Alison Rayner, violist Stephen King and cellist Rosanne Hunt gave a technically assured performance of a broad and spacious movement, Allegro vivace e gracioso, where unusually spaced thematic fragments and varied textures and partnerships of instruments required each performer to be quite exact in pitch and accuracy as a soloist. At times, the music told a boisterous story, with playful scherzo patterns repeated regularly with a colourful breezy summer style.
With bassist Stuart Riley joining the ensemble, this was now a celebration of A Woman’s Life and Love. Robert Schumann’s Frauen-Liebe und Leben Op. 42 was splendidly arranged by Shauna Beesley for this stellar performance by Jacqueline Porter. Program notes most kindly provided both the original German and English translations of the eight poems in the song cycle, immersing us in the complete story of the protagonist first meeting her love, through marriage, to his death. Stuart Riley added depth to this most empathetic and delicate accompaniment. Porter was just magnificent in every way. Charismatic and elegant in her presentation, her impeccable pitch and expressive phrasing has a universal magnetic appeal. Her expressive word-painting and tonal variation connected her directly with her audience, who were completely entranced, feeling the wide range of human emotion demanded in these Romantic texts. Most impressive too was Porter’s breath and tone control, which never wavered with the softest, saddest moments in the sorrowful lines, “…. you sisters, I greet with sadness … and now my life is done; silently I withdraw into myself”. We were left spellbound.
Following Interval, a drop of wine and with the hint of a cool sea breeze, this substantial program continued with Schubert’s String Quartet No. 7 in D, D.94. Tempos of the opening Allegro and final Presto were held modestly to allow ARCO musicians to amplify a wide range of colour and expression, and give the third movement Minuetto and Trio a very elegant and authentic Viennese style of movement and design.
Composed in the final year of Schubert’s life, Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (Shepherd on the Rock) is one of his most well-loved works, with poetry by Wilhelm Müller, well-known also for inspiring Schubert’s best known lieder cycles Die Schöne Müllerin and Die Winterreise. Today we were given a special setting of the work – without piano – again wonderfully arranged especially for today’s ARCO instruments by Shauna Beesley. We welcomed Nicole van Bruggen with her historical clarinet to the stage, the audience especially curious to hear this featured instrument in its principal role. Again, we were full of admiration for Jacqueline Porter’s polish and shine, and her finely controlled softness and vibrato, with most expressive textual setting and balanced partnership with solo clarinet lines. There was much joy and charm felt in the final lines: “Spring is coming, Spring, my joy, I shall now make ready to journey”. This audience left in very high spirits.
(Peninsula Summer Festival Events continue until 10th Jan)
Photo supplied
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Julie McErlain reviewed: “Love and Life” performed by Jacqueline Porter and ARCO as part of the Peninsula Summer Music Festival 2025 at Flinders Civic Hall Saturday, January 4, 2025.
