Symphony

 

Image of Iso-mandala no. 274, made in early 2021

It is the first time we have been in the concert hall named after Rupert Hamer for over two years. How strange to see the Melbourne Symphony regulars milling in the foyers and corridors. Even the increase in unmasked faces lent a peculiar new reality to the gala opening. The theme of the whole concert was new beginnings, so Josef Haydn’s ‘Le Matin’ was as good a place as any to start. The marvel of sunrise fills the first movement, with the other movements fulfilling further expansions of morning. I liked the way the conductor’s hands fluttered lightly like birds in the direction of different sections as they took up the call. Jaime Martin worked without the score, enjoying each moment of Haydn’s day as it arrived. It is impossible, once familiar with Haydn, not to laugh along with him at the inventive games he plays with the instruments. Although lightness is all, his characteristic masterful unpredictability was a harbinger of the much more grandiose unpredictability at play in the final piece, Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony. In between we heard ‘Baparripna’ (‘Dawn’ in Yorta-Yorta), composed by Deborah Cheetham. William Barton’s yidaki (didgeridoo) talked up different bird sounds to those of Haydn’s, the raw aural activity of early morning. His breathings and songs were joined by the orchestra in a glorious cacophonous event, designed to push the limits. The program notes explain we are hearing the magpies in the blue solitude, a sound known very well to Australians. Cheetham’s music lifts the lid of night onto a new day, a place of increasing complexity and beauty. I was not sure if the romantic second half of ‘Baparripna’ was intended to resolve or heighten the thrilling first half, but I wasn’t about to argue as layers of sound merged into an almost conventional classical conclusion. The ovation was as excited as the music. Haydn and Cheetham’s work were a good foil for the complete sound sensation of Mahler, a composer living also in his own country in space and time. The scale and variety of his symphonic experiments, their simultaneous intimacy and grandeur, take us into our own Mahler-like emotions and memories. Program notes explain that No. 1 is inspired by an unhappy love affair with the singer Johanna Richter, which may be why I heard the second movement as a set of Viennese waltzes, each one of which gets crazier and out of kilter, until Gustaf has to try again with a different waltz. Softest sounds and loudest sounds exist together in unexplained yet brilliant relationship. Outside later we walked across Princes Bridge in the crowded warmth of Saturday night, hearing snatches of tram bell and busker sax and party laughter, the better for a return to the eclectic and limitless music of a symphony orchestra live.