But, praise be, we have Berlin’s songs.
Beyond White Christmas, the film bequeathed the world Be Careful, It’s My Heart, which was its intended hit, and some rather more forgettable ones. It seems, however, that creators Gordon Greenberg and Chad Hodge had the run of the Berlin catalogue, so the score is immeasurably fattened up by the likes of Steppin’ Out with My Baby, Blue Skies, Heat Wave (apposite on this night) and Cheek to Cheek. Precious few modern musicals can boast such a roster of timeless songs.
First-time director Sally Dashwood has assembled a cast that does justice to these songs, including Huckle, Steen, Feliciano, Paige Fallu, Matt Hourigan and Niky Markovic, and the dancing (with choreography by Veronica Beattie George) also has its moments, notably from Steen and Feliciano. But saving the characters from our indifference is not just beyond Dashwood and her performers, I dare say it would be beyond the best in the world. The exception is Mary McCorry, who genuinely sparkles as Linda Mason, the second woman in the story who must choose between Jim and Ted, and the one character with a semblance of three-dimensionality.
Brendan de la Hay’s costumes include a standout moment when the men wear Magritte-like cloud-patterned suits for Cheek to Cheek (“I’m in Heaven”), although the on-stage band is less assured. Abi McCunn has generally done a shrewd job of shrinking the original orchestrations down to just a quintet, led by herself and Dylan Pollard, but the music is blighted by some flat notes from the horns and by several rhythms sounding wooden rather than lithe.
Nonetheless, it’s nearly (a non-white) Christmas, and fans of Irving Berlin may be happy to turn a blind eye to the narrative inadequacies, and if the band can be polished up to the standard of the singing and Veronique Bennett’s lighting, wallow happily in some of the finest songs ever crafted.
Vasily Petrenko conducts The Rite of Spring
Opera House Concert Hall, November 27
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★★
History has not recorded the impressions of the 77-year-old Camille Saint-Saëns as he sat through the first performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on 29 May 1913, but, given his vitriol against modernists such as Debussy, one suspects he had more sympathy with the rioters than the supporters.
Stravinsky’s opening bassoon solo embellishes a melodic pattern (using scale degrees 8, 7 and 3) used by Saint-Saëns in his famous melody for The Swan and also in the central section of his Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, but one doubts the older composer would have been much mollified by this.
Vasily Petrenko’s pointed gestures and mercurial energy were virtuosic.
In the first half, cellist Johannes Moser played the opening theme of this concerto like a torrent down a river bed, eddying haltingly at the bottom, before surging forward with pent-up momentum. Moser lingered over the second theme, and after the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under conductor Vasily Petrenko established the rhythm of the central minuet with the lightness of delicate clockwork, he broadened expansively before ushering in the finale with renewed intensity, all the while coaxing his 1694 Guarneri cello with nuanced expression and deft virtuosity.
For an encore, he joined the SSO cello section for a warmly mellow arrangement of the sarabande from Grieg’s Holberg Suite.
Before this came Elizabeth Younan’s short fanfare, Nineteen Seventy-Three, written to celebrate last year’s fiftieth anniversary of the Opera House. The opening had arresting vigour with weighty, well-orchestrated chords in agile jazz-like rhythms. The next idea was lighter but cut across with string chords in irregular strokes that brought to mind famous passages from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which we were to hear shortly.
It built to a broader chorale-like idea, followed by a quieter interlude. After the broad theme returned the piece wound up, almost too quickly from my perspective, since Younan had demonstrated sound craft in writing for the orchestra and in developing ideas.
After Matthew Wilkie’s transparently quiet opening bassoon solo, it was a special pleasure to hear the awakening opening section of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in the clarity of the Concert Hall’s new acoustic. As each new instrument joined, seemingly contradicting the previous ones in rhythm, metre and key, it was like an assembling of vivid individualists whose differences were yet to be resolved.
Petrenko’s pointed gestures and mercurial energy were themselves virtuosic, resulting in a totally captivating performance from the SSO, outlined by sharply defined edge and accent and starkly etched instrumental blends coalescing with distinctly coloured clarity.