MINIMALIST APPROACH HITS THE MARK Graham Strahle - The Australian - 25 September 2006 Other capital cities have successfully run them for years, but this is the first time Adelaide has mounted a dedicated new music festival. The initiative of conductor Timothy Sexton, it comprised three concerts, mainly performed by his own privately run Adelaide Art Orchestra and choir, the Adelaide Vocal Project. The boldness of this venture was to be applauded, even if the foundations of what Sexton plans to make an annual event were a little sketchily put in place. As always, the success of such events rests on what kind of artistic shape organisers are able to create, given the multiplicity of forms and styles that now belong under the umbrella of contemporary music. Sexton's program did not explore anything genuinely at the cutting edge of new orchestral or chamber music. Concentrating on American minimalists John Adams, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, he assembled a series of well matched, accessible works from the past three decades. But where this inaugural Festival of Contemporary Music broke new ground was in the extremely committed, high-standard performances Sexton was able to extract from his singers and predominantly young orchestra. Indeed, it was a standard Adelaide is not used to witnessing outside its leading musical institutions, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Elder Conservatorium. Reich's Desert Music is a tough work to pull off, its intricately rhythmic textures calling for precise timing if the phasing effects is sets up, in which blocks of harmonies gradually blur into one another, are to work. This performance of just the first movement was marvellously clean and accurate, just lacking in the finer grading of dynamics. No less impressive was John Adams' Grand Pianola Music with pianists Nerissa Van Nek and Carolyn Lam taking the flamboyant dual solo parts. Vigorous and full-toned, they did fine justice to the unbridled virtuosic showiness of this work. Best though was the choral singing in three choruses from Adams' opera The Death Of Klinghoffer adn selections from Karl Jenkins' Imagined Oceans. The dozen-strong Adelaide Vocal Project, mainly drawn from the State Opera Chorus, was solid, gutsy and rhythmically faultless. One hopes Sexton has the tenacity to carry this festival forward and make it a regular event: his performers have proved they have the ability. |
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