The ACO performs the Goldberg Variations.
MUSIC
THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS ★★★½
Australian Chamber Orchestra, Hamer Hall, August 5-6
Canadian conductor Bernard Labadie’s string orchestra arrangement of Bach’s mighty set of 30 variations made up the major part of this latest program in the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s national season.
As well, artistic director Richard Tognetti presented his own version of the 14 Goldberg Canons unearthed in 1974, a set of puzzles needing a sensitive hand to reorganise. Tognetti runs them into a quickly-negotiated sequence for his band and an underpinning piano handled with tact by Erin Helyard.
Preceding these mildly gnomic canons, the chamber orchestra performed two works originally written for string quartet, thereby fleshing out the transcription-rich nature of the event. Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet gained little from this rendering for 13 players, the first two movements losing some bite, while the final Cantique passed by all too rapidly. Nightfalls, opening Thomas Ades’ eloquent The Four Quarters, made an engaging interlude, if also losing some starch in its expanded garb.
Labadie shares the labour in his Goldberg transformation, giving at least one solo appearance to every one of the strings involved. Still, the main burden fell to Tognetti, here in splendid form, his line a rich mine of phrase-shaping and supple dynamics. He enjoyed intelligent company in second violin Satu Vanska, viola Stefanie Farrands and cello Timo-Veikko Valve but the whole corps outlined the work with finesse, Helyard’s harpsichord and Axel Wolf’s theorbo an efficient double continuo.
Sadly, about eight of the variations missed out on their repetitions as notated in the original.
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