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Musicals with no decent music? Bah humbug…

Full of the festive spirit, and wondering what kind of entertainment will keep the children off my back over Christmas, I thought I’d take a swipe at one area of music which has been bugging me for years – the music in musicals. When a musical gets it right and the music is passionate and the dancing and singing and staging all work together, they can be a magical, joyful experience, but of late musicals have been a series of pastiche experiences. Pastiche comes from the Italian word pasticcio which is apparently a pâté or pie-filling mixed from diverse ingredients, and the theatrical equivalent is music that has all the dynamic texture of pâté and sounds like every other musical you’ve ever heard. I watched the musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels recently in Sydney and while the acting and production were great, the music in the show was like some old 1950s generic score taken out of the freezer covered in frost and congealed fat, reheated in the microwave and served up as a new dish. As soon as a song begins you know exactly what is going to happen, every chord, every rhyme. You could even just start the song……

May 8, 2014
Classical Music
features

Emma Ayres’ major cycle

In an extract from her memoir, the ABC’s Emma Ayres recounts her cycle ride from England to Hong Kong. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

April 19, 2014
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It’s All About The Audience

We often think that all the magic in a performance happens on the stage, but I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that the excitability of the audience is as much to do with a successful concert as the performers themselves.  Recently we had two packed houses at the Sydney Opera House for the Australian version of the Last Night of the Proms. In our Australian way, we have none of the other concerts of that great London festival, so our first night is also our Last Night. On a Friday in Sydney, I walked out as conductor and already you could tell that the audience was ready to combust. It was like dense bushland with tinder dry leaves and dead wood littered everywhere, waiting for a match in order to burst into life. You can tell from the way you enter. If the applause is warm with a few whoops and you have to wait for them to calm down before you start, you know you are on to a winner. If on the other hand the audience barely claps long enough to get you to the podium, and you turn around in silence to acknowledge the applause after it…

February 27, 2014
Classical Music
news

John Hopkins has died

The noted conductor and a legendary director of music for the ABC has passed away at the age of 86. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

October 1, 2013
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CD and Other Review

Review: RACHMANINOV: Symphony No 2 (MSO/Otaka)

My introduction to Rachmaninov’ s Second Symphony was a welcome distraction from Camus, Jane Austen and Virgil studies for my HSC. I loved it from the start. My introduction to Tadaaki Otaka’s first splendid version, with the BBC Welsh National Orchestra, came many years later and I was equally impressed. He continues to acquit himself as a masterful and instinctive Rachmaninov interpreter in a rendition which wins hands down, in both performance and recording, against Ashkenazy’s tepid, enervated reading with the Sydney Symphony, itself a mere epigone of that conductor’s radiant Concertgebouw version. The secret in this potentially sprawling work is to gauge the pulse of the opening movement, making the ebb and flow convincing and grading the climaxes – in other words, keeping your powder dry. No other symphony I know radiates such a powerfully Russian sense of yearning amid the glamorous scoring, enriched by Otaka’s haunting, affectionate (without appearing to milk every bar of emotion) and ultimately stirring insights. Tempi are well judged – I particularly responded to the precision in the Prokofiev-like spikiness of the Scherzo and the tenuto used to great effect just before the final climax.  A colleague whom I… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

May 31, 2012