"A Mixed Offering"
The Australian Art Orchestra has been under the leadership of Paul Grabowsky since 1994, and in that time the group has commissioned and performed 23 Australian compositions. Their commitment to supporting this country's composers is to be applauded, as few orchestras will undertake such risks. Their concert last Saturday was a good example of stylistic diversification as they premiered three scores from three very different composers. Willy Zygier hails from musical worlds that include rock. Pop and jazz; Elena Kats-Chernin is centred in the classical filed; and from the heart of jazz comes Grabowsky as a composer. Of the three works, Kats-Chernin's TurnTableTurn was the strongest essay. It was a breezy, energetic score into which the composer had incorporated loads of light-heartedness.
The piece's boisterously frenetic activity was briefly suspened in the finale to allow for Sandy Evans's stunning saxophone cadenza ∆ without doubt the performance highlight of the evening.
Kats-Chernin's piece worked because it did not overtay its welcome. Conversely, the scores by Grbowsky and Zygier were too long for the material presented. Grabowsky's Variations'd'un gout etranger' on a Theme by Marin Marais was an ambitious piece. Based on a theme form the Baroque era, Grabowsky worked it through eight variations, which formed a sonic rainbow including influences from Bach, Ives and Morricone. Various sections were quite successfully rendered but in totality the differences turned the piece into an uneasy coalition.
And Zygier's The End of Music was lacking in enough ideas to sustain its 20-minute duration.
- The Age (Joel Crotty)
