The Metropolis New Music Festival has long been a high point in Melbourne’s contemporary music scene. For three days it turned the Melbourne Recital Centre into a hive of musical activity, attracting a crowd diverse in age, ethnicity and musical taste. This year’s festival celebrated the music of Dutch composer, Louis Andriessen who turns 80 this June. As part of the final day’s activities the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra gave the second of its two festival concerts, offering two premieres of works by its young composers in residence and concluding with an orchestral suite drawn from Andriessen’s opera Writing to Vermeer arranged by composer Clark Rundell who also conducted the program.

Mark Holdsworth. Photo supplied

Cri de coeur by Perth-based Mark Holdsworth, the orchestra’s 2019 Cybec Young Composer in Residence, is “a desperate plea for compassion and love in a time of prevalent discrimination, violence and loneliness”. Stylistically it draws upon various elements of 20th-century art music: the overarching lyricism and harmonic idiom resonates with mid-century America, while the jagged, rhythmically violent middle section tips its hat to Stravinsky and the Rite of Spring.

Holdsworth makes good use of his orchestral resources, holding the listener’s attention by deploying a variety of well-balanced textures and colours. A rising figure on solo violin announces the work’s main theme which is tenderly developed by the orchestra before being supplanted by menacing interventions. After a while, the main theme eventually reasserts itself after a number of thwarted attempts. Holdsworth manages this narrative well, creating an effective score.

After this traditionally moulded piece came Forever Singing Winter into Spring, a four-movement song cycle for solo voice, orchestra and electronics. Jointly conceived by Ade Vincent, the orchestra’s inaugural Young composer in Residence in 2018, and vocalist Lior Attar, this work explores the possibilities of combining “the emotional grandeur of live orchestra with the incisive innovation and driving rhythm of modern electronic music”. Inspired by insights from a friend, a book of haiku and paintings by Mexican artist Teresa Clark, the four movements explore the cyclical nature of life and the moments of birth, growth, change and death.

Ade Vincent. Photo supplied

Opening with relatively sparse textures that emphasise melody and bass with occasional murmurings of new life, the score moves on to a more standard electro pop style with driving dance rhythms to which brass, woodwind and harp make interesting contributions. After the zenith of summer comes a slower trip-hop beat, still driven by the considerable phalanx of percussion and electronics on stage, before the music cedes to the quiet of winter.

While singing mainly in a popular style, Attar brings vocal versatility to his delivery of the texts, which were for the most part clearly delivered. The score allowed the orchestra plenty of variety in terms of texture and timbral techniques, but I sensed that the level of detail in the electronic material was occasionally submerged. In these days of so much synthetically produced orchestral music, it is good to experience the difference and hear the genuine article in real time.

Andriessen produced his opera Writing to Vermeer with film director Peter Greenaway in 1999. It tells of the artist’s life during 1672, a year of disasters which included war, civil strife and catastrophic flooding. At Rundell’s initiative, the composer agreed to his colleague producing an orchestral suite from the opera, which was completed in 2005. Vermeer Pictures is in four movements. Andriessen’s captivating sound world includes two harps, two amplified guitars and two pianos placed antiphonally, as well as a cimbalom and large percussion battery. The juxtaposition of incredibly beautiful textures with episodes of violence make for bracing listening. Rundell and the orchestra gave a richly detailed and powerfully committed account of the suite. It was a very worthy tribute to Andriessen’s creative genius.

If this concert is any indication, new music is alive and well in Melbourne and there is an appreciative audience for it. Long live Metropolis!

Limelight subscriptions start from $4 per month, with savings of up to 50% when you subscribe for longer.