Thursday 6 March 2025

Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Sydney Opera House

London born conductor, Finnegan Downie Dear lead the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in tonight’s program of Ravel and Brahms. A one-time assistant to Simone Young, his tall lean frame leant itself to garnering a wide range of emotions and nuances from the musicians. And as SSO percussionist Timothy Constable said in his introduction, ‘make him feel welcome, the orchestra wants him to come back….often’.

Maurice Ravel originally composed the Mother Goose Suite as a piano duo for children. Subsequently he orchestrated the movements and then in 1912 he turned that into a ballet score by including connecting interludes. The ballet premiered at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris, only 2 years after Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring caused a riot at its premier. A far cry from the jagged primitive  angular music of Stravinsky, this work is full of fluid child-like mystery and magic, like we’ve entered an enchanted forrest. 

The key to its charm lies in the brilliant and innovative orchestration in which Ravel utilises each solo instrument as a fairy tale character or creature. The first thing I noticed was that the only brass in the smallish orchestra were two horns. We heard unusual pairings of instruments that created unique characters within the narrative. Solo flute with horn, piccolo with solo viola and clarinet and contrabassoon representing Beauty and the Beast in a delicious if not slightly macabre dance. There were obvious bird calls with the high glissando on solo violin and the somewhat cliché cuckoo on clarinet. In a later movement,  Empress of the Pagodas, Ravel embraces pure Orientalism with whole tone scales, gamelan-like percussion and piccolo themes, embellished with gongs and bells. 

On the whole an enchanted magical musical journey, lead by our expert tour guide Maestro Dear, who managed to extract orchestral colours that are fairly typical of early 20th Century French composers such as Debussy and Chaminade with a heavy reliance on harp and woodwinds to provide the colour.

Next came one of the stalwarts of the violin repertoire, Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D. Our soloist tonight, James Ehnes, has no doubt performed this work countless times and regular concert goers such as myself, would know every note of the concerto intimately. It is a large work full of beautiful romantic melodies, some fiery Hungarian dances and expansive orchestral sections, including the lengthy pre-soloist introduction reminiscent of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.

So how does a seasoned performer such as Canadian born Ehnes breathe new life into the piece? Well, the cadenza at the end of the first movement was one I have never heard before, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the one written by the soloist for the premier in 1879, Joseph Joachim. It was full of technical challenges and virtuosity that made you think you were listening to at least two violins simultaneously. Ehnes maintained a pure and penetrating tone throughout the concerto that pierced the high notes and warmed in the lower register themes. 

Ehnes’ skill and technique was again on full display in the first of two encores, Violin Sonata no. 3 by Eugène Ysaÿe. In 1923  Ysaÿe composed six sonatas for solo violin referencing his six most admired violinists, no 3 dedicated to George Enescu. A fairly dour work, but it clearly displayed all the technical challenges you could imagine for this instrument, and perfectly rendered by Ehnes. Ysaÿe’s sonata displayed all the skill of Paganini without his melodic appeal.

And for his deserved 2nd encore, Ehnes played a movement from JS Bach’s Sonata No.3 exquisitely. As the duration of the two major works was just over an hour, the inclusion of two encores meant we went home completely sated.

Overall a pleasant night at the Opera House, full of magic and romantic energy. Let’s hope we welcomed Downie Dear enough to ensure that he returns for another season in Sydney.