BY ISOBEL ARCHER
Our team gives a warm welcome to Isobel in her first review as a CutCommon contributor!
Still Life with Avalanche
Ensemble Offspring
Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House, 26 August
The beautiful messiness of life on Earth was the subject of Ensemble Offspring’s recent genre-bending performance in the Utzon Room. Still Life with Avalanche promised a collection of pieces focused on the extremes of existence. The concert included the music of five contemporary composers. Along with works by Missy Mazzoli, Kaija Saariaho, and Steve Reich, two world premieres by Samantha Wolf and Paul Dean were performed.
Ensemble Offspring artistic director and percussionist Claire Edwardes was joined by Lamorna Nightingale on flutes, Jason Noble on clarinets, Véronique Serret on violin, Freya Schack-Arnott on cello, and Benjamin Kopp on piano.
The concert began with an energising performance of Missy Mazzoli’s Still Life with Avalanche. Droning harmonicas began to create an ambient texture, which was interrupted by outbursts from various instrumentalists. By the end of the piece, it had transformed into a chaotic and much more rhythmic idea. Mazzoli’s composition seemed to expertly capture the time in her life when she learned of her brother’s passing.
The second piece on the program Oi Kuu was written for clarinetist Kari Kriikku and cellist Anssi Karttunen. This version was for bass flute and cello, and was a wonderful and touching tribute to prominent Finnish composer Saariaho who sadly passed away in June of this year.
My favourite part of the program was A rose is a rose is a ruse: A Bachelor’s Tale. The premiere performance of Wolf’s newest composition was a hilarious tribute to the reality TV empire. Taking the form of a melodramatic trilogy, the piece began with each ensemble member emerging with flower crowns, and a particularly fashionable bride-to-be veil for the pianist.
“Welcome to Bachelor Mansion” was announced by the flautist before we were led through the highs and lows of a reality dating show. The spoken word element added a lot to the performance – each instrumentalist in turn announced that they were “here for the right reasons”, and the others were “here for the wrong reasons”, which slowly descended into a cat fight on stage. The last movement involved the clarinetist conducting a live rose ceremony while describing the 27 producer-approved ways to say I love you: “I love the way you make me feel”, “I love spending time with you”, “I love being around you”, and so on. As one by one the performers missed out on a rose, their playing descended into hysterical crying. The ensemble carried off the tongue-in-cheek performance without a hitch. The audience was left laughing, and the front row recipient of the final rose blushing. Wolf has once again proven her place in Australia’s art music scene as a force to be reckoned with.
What followed was a technically impressive work by Reich. Originally written in 1985, New York Counterpoint is a combination of 10 pre-recorded clarinet and bass clarinet parts with a final eleventh part performed live by Jason Noble. Jason managed the complexity of the shifting rhythms with ease. The piece had clear influences from Reich’s other works that use phasing between multiples of the same instrument. The opening was reminiscent of Music for 18 Musicians (1976) but then branched off into a different direction before wrapping up with the same striking rhythmic material from the beginning.
The final item on the program was the weight we carry, a premiere of Dean’s newest piece. A result of the 2023 Steven Alward Memorial Music Commission, the work was inspired by the poem Song by Allen Ginsberg. The piece was a poignant end to a great concert, an expression of the desperation, burden, and importance of love.
Images supplied
