Vivacious
This is not my skill area. However it is part of my Theatre going life and I just thought for those of you out there who do not go to concerts I should pass on my experience. Concert going for me was boring. I work in the Performing Arts and always felt that I needed visual distraction to keep me focused. I don’t know when, but several years ago, out of a cultural guilt I guess, I thought I should attempt to experience this Art Form. Something happened at one of these attempts and I became hooked. I am discerning and choose to attend those events that I want to hear. It may depend on Composer or Soloist or Orchestra. I don’t just turn up. But I do include Music going as part of my life now.
I believe that one of the few National Treasures that we have in Australia is the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Especially when Richard Tognetti is at the Concert helm. I have had many sublime experiences with this orchestra and I am a great fan.
Last night I attended a Concert without Mr Tognetti at the helm. Alina Ibragimova is the Guest Director and Lead Violin. The featured music was Vivaldi’s THE FOUR SEASONS. The last time I heard this piece in concert was several years ago when Nigel Kennedy rambunctiously stamped his personality all over the score. Truly awful. In contrast, last night I heard a wonderfully delicate and robust reading it had great integrity and vision. It was at times disarmingly tender and fragile, at others rattlingly explosive. It was a great journey of musical explication. Totally transporting and rapturous.
The first half of the program is idiosyncratically fascinating. The Bach and the Kurtag alternating. The Berg new to me. Each piece of Berg, that I take in, draws me to want to hear more of his composing.
Musically, I am just a journeyman with no expertise of it at all. Theatrically I am a relative veteran. If you don’t go to concert and are looking for an experience that may give you a frisson of bliss I recommend this concert and Ms Ibragimova’s leadership of a great orchestra. It has a series of presentations around the nation . Go.