Limelight editors Clive Paget and Maxim Boon select their best music, dance and theatre events from across Australia.
Orchestral
West Australian Symphony Orchestra’s Brahms Festival
Chief Conductor Asher Fisch’s work with the orchestra over the last two years has certainly paid off in spades. With sumptuous tone, immaculate balance and 1000 watts of musical electricity, the orchestra’s Brahms symphony cycle was a stellar event, surpassing performances in recent memory by the likes of the (excellent) Berlin Philharmonic.
Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s Missa Solemnis
With the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs on cracking form and a luxury line up of soloists that included Stuart Skelton, David Robertson’s reading of Beethoven’s late masterpiece was an ear-opener. Packed with interpretative detail, yet achieving an unusual dramatic logic, the SSO really got to grips with the apocalyptic nature of the beast.
Alondra de la Parra at QSO Current
With a programme of new works by Australian and American composers, plus an engaging selection of contemporary Latin American work, the QSO’s new Music Director designate gave Queenslanders a taste of what to expect in 2016 and beyond. Her stylish conducting and attention to detail made for compelling listening, engaging both head and heart.
Chamber
Headlining this year’s Townsville chamber music fest, a rare visit from Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski was a spine-tingling reminder of why nearly every meticulously prepared CD release from this consummate artist garners five star reviews and a slew of awards. His Bach was crystalline perfection, his Mozart, perhaps surprisingly, laced with romantic depth and emotion.
The young Chinese pianist came to Australia and showed precisely what all the fuss is about. Her concerts with the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony were impressive enough, but her City Recital Hall programme of Scriabin and Chopin was truly incandescent. Her strength, passion and instinct all combined in a rapt, intelligent interpretation to rank alongside the greats.
Florian Boesch is one of the great Lieder singers of our time and his touring survey of the three Schubert song cycles was revelatory. Bringing an intense theatricality to bear on the text and its presentation, Boesch claims not to ‘act’ per se, yet his Schöne Müllerin and his Winterreise were among the finest dramatic moments to be seen in Australia this year.
Opera
Quite rightly, the giant slayer at the Helpmanns this year was Faramondo in a witty staging from the Göttingen Handel Festival. Imported thanks to a bit of smart talent spotting by Brisbane Baroque, Anna Devin, Jennifer Rivera and Christopher Lowry (as the knicker-snuffling villain) were all winners, as was Paul Curran’s idea-packed direction.
Most every opera company in the country does Faust
Sir David McVicar’s sumptuous Royal Opera House production of Gounod’s satanic story shifts the action to 19th-century Paris and is all the better for it. Packed with intelligent ideas, it was seen at OA, State Opera of SA and WA Opera with standout performances from Michael Fabiano and Nicole Car (Sydney) and Teddy Tahu Rhodes (absolutely everywhere).
Directed with genuine insight by the wizardly Elijah Moshinsky, OA’s titanic production featured some fine performances, especially by Latonia Moore, Giacomo Prestia and José Carbó. But it was veteran Ferruccio Furlanetto as the tortured King Philip who carried off the crown jewels showing just what a real singing actor can achieve.
Musical Theatre
Blue Saint Productions’ Violet
A new company out of Melbourne, Blue Saints’ realisation of Jeanine Tesori’s 1997 musical showed just how well the form can carry big, serious ideas with heart and emotional insight. With accessible yet sophisticated music and a first rate production team, Mitchell Butel’s staging featured a fine cast and promised a great deal for the future.
Squabbalogic and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs’ Of Thee I Sing
Thanks to an irony bypass, some critics seemed to misread the targets effortlessly picked off in the Gershwins’ razor-sharp Pulitzer Prize winning musical. A smart collaboration between a small production company and a big choir allowed Sydneysiders to revel in a blast from the past, beautifully staged and conducted and with pitch-perfect performances.
Les Misérables
Yes, it’s been around forever but Cameron Mackintosh’s revised staging of Schoenberg and Boublil’s ‘80s mega-musical showed there is life in the old dog yet. Simon Gleeson as a powerful yet subtle Valjean and Hayden Tee as a saturnine Javert delivered intense performances and there was a star-is-born turn from Kerrie Anne Greenland as Éponine.
Dance
This ballet is one of the most perfect archetypes of the classical narrative canon, and this particular production by former Artistic Director of the Australian Ballet, Maina Gielgud is a well worn favourite for this company. However this most recent season had the distinction of being the final headline role of one of the finest dancers produced by Australia in many years, Madeleine Eastoe. Rarely does an étoile emerge who can channel the physical poetry and technical rigour of the finest ballet with such effortless perfection. Having the opportunity to see Eastoe, a dancer at the peak of her powers, perform this iconic role was truly a privilege.
Sylvie Guillem Life in Progress
Could any dance review of 2015 be complete without mentioning the global farewell tour of the most accomplished dancer of the past century? In theatres around the globe, including at the Sydney Opera House, audiences flocked to catch one final glimpse of Guillem, the dancer that redefined every facet of the art form imaginable. Watching her final programme it was clear that here we were witnessing a performance born of the most insightful understanding of balletic tradition that simultaneously disintegrated any notion of boundary or constraint. It was a profound experience that will stay with me forever.
Sydney Dance Company Frame of Mind
2015 has been one of SDC’s most successful years to date, and the epicentre of this triumphant season must surely be this multi-Helpmann Award-winning opening programme. Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela’s careful negotiations to persuade American dance icon, William Forsythe to allow SDC to perform his heartbreaking ode to his late wife, Quintett, made this evening a coup in itself. However the world premiere of the most assured work of Bonachela’s career, Frame of Mind, has truly cemented his position as the most important dance practitioner in Australia today.
Theatre
Finally reaching Sydney after five months on the road, director Damien Ryan’s production of the Bard’s blood-soaked epic could easily have lapsed into perfunctory tedium for this touring cast. Yet Josh McConville’s account of the devastated Danish prince is, for me, one of the most arresting performances of the year. This was no slow trudge into madness. It was an existential kamikaze plunge through grief and straight into psychotic rage, a white knuckle ride that uncompromisingly confronted its audience with a disturbing portrait of violence and loss.
Sydney Theatre Company’s The Present
While strictly speaking 2015 was outgoing artistic director Andrew Upton’s penultimate year leading STC, it was his last season while still based in Sydney. Being a hands-on AD he seemingly opted to serve up a selection of tenure-ending triumphs a year early, crowned by his own reimagining of Chekhov’s early play, The Present. Starring Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh, the calibre of this performance was stratospheric, a masterclass in emotional authenticity. Upton is an ardent Russophile and Chekhov is material he understands impeccably, but this expertly crafted piece of theatre fused this with Upton’s implicit understanding of his own Australian culture. An intellectual and visceral home-run.
Headlong Theatre & Melbourne Festival’s 1984
Given the level of critical praise from its premiere season in London, I expected great things from Headlong Theatre’s adaptation of Orwell’s unnervingly prescient vision of a government manipulated future, and it definitely didn’t disappoint. In addition to superbly distilling the source material into a taut, sharply articulated stage production, this show was also a triumph of technical wizardry. Hidden sets, live video projections, deafening sound design and dynamic lighting combined to conjure this dystopian universe more intelligently and credibly than ever before. For once, the hype was well deserved.
Comments
Log in to join the conversation.