Sibelius 150, Melbourne Symphony, and Percussion

We couldn't get to Helsinki for the celebrations for my favourite composer, and anyway since his birthday was 8 December that might not be the ideal time for a visit to Finland. However when the MSO advertised a matinée concert with Valse Triste and 7th Symphony -his last, we decided it was time for a midwinter celebration of his work even though I perceive these to be a couple of his more sombre expressions.

After interval the world première of a percussion work was a surprise bonus. The interval was used for lining up front a variety of instruments including marimba, drum and cymbal kit, and some remarkable inventions and innovations: wine glasses with water for string bow accompaniment, a shallow cylinder filled with water and surrounded by brass spikes of graduate sizes to be struck and echo in water, and the arm band tubular bells described below.

This quick phone snap shows the set up in progress with the percussionist, Claire Edwards for whom the composer Iain Grandage wrote the work, obscured by the score. The MSO website quotes Claire  to describe how she sees the work, Percussion Concerto Dances with Devils. It is worth an extensive quote .

 Photo-MSO
From http://www.mso.com.au/news/2015/07/  
 "I was intrigued by Iain’s original inspiration for the concerto: four gothic stories about colonial females in history, and their relationship with the spirits and beasts of the old world...In the first movement, The Chosen Vessel, I am a young woman, dreading the return of a swagman to my isolated hut and finally falling victim to him. The movement features the gorgeous rosewood marimba and is dominated by triplet rhythms reminiscent of horse hooves...In the second movement, The Conquering Bush, I am a young woman who chooses death by drowning – a very dark story indeed. It features a series of metal instruments being transformed in pitch and timbre by water. This calls for two tubular bells which are physically attached to my arms – I need to pull them in and out of buckets filled with water to bend the pitch...In the third movement, The Drover’s Wife (a scherzo), I am the embodiment of Henry Lawson’s famous character...The final movement, Lola Montez, is my favourite. This is a tarantella inspired by Lola Montez, whose famed Spider Dance was the talk of the goldfields when she toured Australia in the 1850s. It’s a zippy little number, which combines impressive mallet percussion licks with lots of upbeat drum and tambourine rhythms..."
 It certainly needed the breather supplied at the end with a conversation between Claire, Iain, and conductor Benjamin Northey.

This remarkable work was made more so by Claire's swift barefoot movements between instruments, her dance-like address to the instruments, and the whirling blur of drum sticks, all of which made the work an audio-visual experience that may not translate completely to another performer or to a sound only disc.  The audience gave a standing ovation.

After this the Bolero was almost an anticlimax, but was a fitting conclusion that need no encore. 

I can only find one press note of the concert and the reviewer, while lyrical about the classic works' performances hardly seemed register what happened between interval and Bolero, making a one sentence comment after summarizing the work: "Edwardes' virtuosity combined with Grandage's clever writing made for a particularly enjoyable aural feast". SMH review July 19