Tuesday 14 October 2025

Rrawun Maymuru

Review by Paul Neeson (Arts Wednesday)

How do you combine music that is 300 years old with a music tradition that is more than 30,000 years old? This is the challenge ABO Artistic Director, Paul Dyer set composer Nick Wales for their current concert series “Water Music”. His response was firstly to enlist the collaboration of his long-time musical colleague, Yolŋu songman, Rrawun Maymuru – their previous collaborations include a piece for the Sydney Dance Company’s Ocho.

Dyer’s inspiration for the series came from his realisation that we were endangering one of the natural elements that is absolutely essential for ours and every other form of life’s very existence: Water. The shell of the idea was to intersperse contemporary Australian / indigenous classical music with the Baroque masterpiece of George Frideric Handel, his Water Music Suites. Some might think it a very brave undertaking, but did it work?

From the opening bars of Wales’ Nguy Gapu we were mesmerised by the penetrating clarity of Rrawun’s voice. Sung in language, his is a vocal technique that has not trained to reach the back row of the concert hall, but rather to carry across vast dessert sands or through fertile eucalypt forests, and across the waters that he and his clan have observed and protected for countless generation; the latter forming the “songlines” referenced in the text. The quality of his vocal projection carried all those connotations, transporting us to the tropical wetlands of his homeland in Yirrkala in NT.

Without pause, that segued into several movement from Handel’s 1st Suite. The Water Music Suites would be standard fare for the Brandenburgs, and concertmaster Ray Chen kept the expanded string sections in line. I’ve always thought one of the riskiest instruments to play live is the Baroque horn, being the most likely to break when pitching up to the next harmonic, but tonight’s hornists coped admirably.

Cloud Beneath the Sea was originally composed by Sophie Hutchings and Rrawun Maymuru for piano, voice and strings. For this concert it was arranged for voice and string orchestra by Nick Wales. This is a gentler piece that builds in texture and rests comfortably on one or two tonal centres.

And after some more Handel, the first half ended with a Nick Wales’ work for string orchestra, Harbour Light. Again this is a textural work that builds over time to a lush dense conclusion. Wales says in the interview you can hear below that it was inspired by the endless variation of light reflecting off the waters of Sydney Harbour, which brought to my mind Kenneth Slessor’s 1939 poem Five Bells. So far the opposing music styles, Baroque and modern / indigenous, were blending seamlessly, and as Wales reveals this was partly due to the use of electronic amplification of the orchestra and some minimal use of digital effects. I would not have realised this until I spied the mixing desk secreted in the 3rd back row of the City Recital Hall.

ABO Water Music, Melissa Farrow (photo Laura Manariti)

After interval we had the complete 2nd and 3rd Handel Suites. The Brandenburgs on home turf here shone brilliantly with particular mention going to Baroque flautist and recorder player, Melissa Farrow, leading us beautifully through the 3rd Suite.

I am always delighted when at the end of a fantastically curated classical concert, the final work takes you to a whole other level. This came in the form of the significantly larger portion of Wales/Maymuru’s composition, Nguy Gapu. The opening bars gave us a sound that thrilled me with delight, simple but effective. That was the harpsichord being used as a textural wash of rapid arpeggios, a wondrous contrast to the utilitarian basso continuo that typifies Baroque music harpsichord scores. Rrawun reached a new level in his vocals, building incrementally to a shining high note that held us captive while the strings whirled around him. He also included some elements of traditional dance (if somewhat limited by the available space on a stage crowded as it was with talented musicians). And Dyer’s judicious use of some low booming bass notes on a synthesiser created a cinematic effect, enhancing the illusion of eastern Arnhem Land – simply astonishing!

Bravo to Nick Wales and Rrawun Maymuru for realising Paul Dyer’s vision so effectively and transporting us into a brave new world where cultures separated by vast distance and millennia combine so fluently, and where old meets ancient to become new and fresh.