Well, it’s been a busy time around here- two performances of ‘The Queen’s Music’ in a week and then a paper for the 5th Australian Harp Festival in Adelaide. And what a weekend that was.
The opening concert was held in the gorgeous Elder Hall at the University of Adelaide.
The guest international musician was Maria Luisa
Rayan-Forero, a performer who I had heard much of but was still not adequately
prepared for. She was amazing.
The programme was drawn from her latest CD ‘From Bach to Piazzolla’.
While I appreciated the incredible music and the skill that
was required to arrange and perform the selections of Piazzolla, it was the
Bach the caught me, and became the highlight of the whole Festival. It was one
of the most exquisitely beautiful things I have ever heard. To describe it
fully would see me descend into clichés and bucket loads of superlatives, so
just take it as read that it was good. Very, very good.
Listening to Luisa play it I was reminded of a quote that I
am fairly certain came from the great pianist Arthur Rubenstein and went
something like: “The notes I play no better than anyone else, but the space
between notes- there is the magic”. And so it was with Luisa’s playing- she
commands not just the notes, but the space between the notes and there,
definitely, is where the magic lies.
Saturday dawned crisp and bright and saw Rosemary Hallo
deliver her presentation on the harp in colonial Australia with particular
reference to Robert Nicholas Charles Bochsa, who of course famously died in
Sydney in 1856. It’s great work Rosemary is doing in researching this and other
early harp connections in Australia and fantastic to see and hear the single
action harps being played. I had a particular interest in them after putting
together the Marie Antoinette programme- it’s like hearing the sequel to that
concert programme!
Following on from Rosemary was triple harpist Robin Ward who
delivered a nigh faultless performance of music ranging from the sixteenth to
the twentieth centuries. I have only tried to play a triple harp once, and very
briefly at that, mainly because I couldn’t cope. My eyes, fingers and brain
went in to overload. There are 84 strings on that harp, people!
I really appreciated his later workshop as well looking at
the use of ornamentation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, something
which has remained a conundrum for a lot of my playing career. Having had a one
on one session with Luisa on how she plays Bach, it was really interesting
getting Robin’s take on transcriptions and the ‘modernisation’ of Bach and
other earlier composers. Suffice to say the Bach/Grandjany etudes came up for
discussion as did Grandjany’s arrangement of the C.P.E. Bach Sonata with some
quite different viewpoints on the topic!
Saturday night’s Elder Hall concert featured two more
international acts: I-Sis trio and Paige Su with Cody Byasse on percussion.
Here’s some YouTube clips to enjoy-
More from the Festival in the next post!
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