Australian Festival of Chamber Music - Opening Night

The Australian Festival of Chamber Music has, over several decades, established itself as one of the gems of the Australian classical music scene. Some festivals offer FIFO concerts where national or international performers fly in, perform their signature pieces, then fly out. This is fine and allows local audiences to hear music performed at the highest standards - an opportunity which might not be available to them under normal circumstances. Music competitions, on the other hand, allow audiences to compare and contrast emerging and newly established musicians, each one  often required to preform the same set works at each recital. These competitions have often proved the launching pad for celebrity careers and provide bragging rights for the audiences who heard them “before they became famous”.

The AFCM, on the other hand, provides an immersive environment for both musicians and audiences. Ensembles and individual musicians arrive with their own repertoire, but they are also deliberately mixed and matched to perform in other works where young performers will find themselves next to established international artists with each learning form the other. And because this is chamber music (or as Australia’s greatest composer, Percy Grainger, preferred to call it, room music”) this is not sitting at the back of the second violins trying hard to perform exactly the same as those in front of you, but genuine collaboration and interaction between fellow musicians in service of the music.

For the audiences, there are multiple sessions every day in various venues with the opportunity to listen to talks and masterclasses and interact with the musicians. Many subscribers chose to attend almost every session for the entire week.

The festival has been adopted, nurtured and helped develop by the people of Townsville for several decades and has now been handed on to the city of Cairns. Judging by the enthusiastic reception for opening night, it is off to a promising start in its new home and hopefully the city will nurture and continue to develop the treasure it has inherited. Appropriately, the continuity was obvious on opening night with artists such as Piers Lane (piano) and members of the Goldner String Quartet performing. These Australian musicians with international reputations have long been associated with the development of the festival in the role of artists, mentors and artistic direction. Equally, in the best spirit of the festival, they were not featured as soloists, but embedded with other musicians in ensemble works.

The concert opened with a trusted audience favourite - Mozart Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. This was performed by an ensemble of what might be dubbed the ‘Festival All-Star Strings’ led by the festival-s artistic director, Jack Liebeck. Mozart wrote many serenades - some large, some small - with many of them designed as sophisticated background music at grand dinners and outdoor pleasure gardens by groups of pick-up performers. He would therefore likely be surprised to hear one of these serenades (published only after his death) performed in front of a quiet, respectful audience in a 1,000 seat concert hall by an ensemble of top musicians with large ranges in tempo and dynamics together with immaculate precision of articulation such as was evident at the AFCM opening night. We hope, that like the audience, he would be both surprised and delighted.

The Festival’s composer in residence is Sam Wu. Sam is an Australian, born in China, currently working in Los Angeles, and has provided a number of original works, themed to North Queensland, for this festival. The world premiere of his work Forest, Ocean, City was performed on opening night by an ensemble consisting of string quartet, piano, flute and clarinet, was commissioned by Cairns City Council as part of the commemoration of the city’s 150th anniversary. Like other works Wu has composed for this festival, the soundscapes are effective and evocative and show his grasp of instrumental technique and timbre.

At this point it is worth noting a silent but major performer for the evening - the venue itself. The Cairns Performing Arts Centre (CPAC) quietly handled an almost 1,000-strong audience together with seamless changes between various performers and speeches from distinguished guests. Professional backstage management, front-of-house, lighting, greenroom facilities, audience refreshments and networking, climate control for classical instruments that often don’t take well to a hot humid climate - none of these are to be taken for granted, and work best when they are not even noticed. Very few Tier 2 cities in Australia can offer such a venue where citizens can feel proud to host both international classical artists and local performers in a distinctly Australian setting.

But back to the concert, and this time the tango. Piazzola’s music is grounded in dance and in rhythm. Unlike commercial pop music where the rhythm  has to be spelled out by a drum kit or its electronic substitute, music such as Piazzolla’s requires the listener to experience the implied rhythm from the harmonic changes and agogic accents borrowed from both Bach and jazz. The listener then becomes a co-performer rather than consumer. The Orpheus Wind Quintet reprised their performance of Libertango from earlier that day at the Cairns Institute, however, this time, the audience did not have to envisage a tango couple but were provided with one onstage. A dance couple performed what we in the audience imagined we always thought we could but never actually did.

The final performance was of the Dvorak Wind Serenade. Having conducted this work myself in expanded orchestrations, I was delighted to experience this work in its original chamber music configuration. It provided a fitting finale for this inaugural concert in its new home.

Our rating - 5 Hats

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