Review: Australian Brandenburg Orchestra's 2016 Season Opener MAURICE STEGER: RECORDER REVOLUTIONARY Is A Sensational Showcase Of the Simple Instrument.
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Wednesday 24rd February 2016, 7pm, City Recital Hall, Sydney
The energetic, engaging and enthusiastic Maurice Steger joins with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra to delight audiences with the amazingly complex music that he can produce from the seemingly simple instrument for RECORDER REVOLUTIONARY. Steger and Australian Brandenburg Orchestra Artistic Director Paul Dyer put together a wonderful program of music from the Baroque era.
Steger's performance makes it easy to see and hear why the medieval English minstrels used the recorders to tell their stories through song as he paints pictures with his music. The instruments, which have their origins tracing back to the Middle Ages, were favoured during the Renaissance and the Baroque period, as evidenced by the music Steger and Dyer have collected for the concert, but fell by the wayside as popularity of the transverse flute increased.
Steger joins the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra which ranges in size from around 20 instruments to 25 for this concert, dependent on the work. In order for the baroque works that feature in the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra's repertoire to be expressed as their composers intended, the instruments used are traditional instruments from the era with the string instruments strung with gut instead of the modern metal and synthetic strings, and sans support attachments seen on contemporary violins, violas, and cellos. An intriguing multi stringed Theorbo and the percussive sound of a Harpsichord add an additional old world sound and lovely undertone to the works.
The opening work, Antonio Vivaldi's Concerto in G major, RV 443 is a wonderful, complex introduction to the night. Steger's recorder solos are frenetic and his fingers fly at incredible speed. Both the music and Steger's expression give the Allegro the impression of excitable conversation between the Recorder and various sections of the orchestra. In contrast, the Largo is mournful and Steger draws out the texture and emotion of the work that require more intensive breaths before the work returns to a joyous, festive speed in the Allegro Molto. Steger's physicality adds a great deal to the performance he bounces around the stage whilst the music sounds like a chattering chicken gossiping with the orchestra.
Dyer has also included the bold, majestic Concerto for Three Trumpets in D major TWv54:D4 by Georg Philipp Telemann. This work brings in the three Baroque Trumpets and Timpani to add a bolder sound. There is a frenetic pace in contrast to the big and bold lower register of Largo - Allegro before the sweeping, stately fullness of the Adagio and finally the bold, but lightness of the Presto.
Steger also utilizes a slightly larger recorder for Nicola Fiorenza's Sinfonia in A minor. The instrument gives the mournful Grave a deeper warm tone, standing out against the minimal support from the orchestra before the sound swells to the full orchestra. The emotion evoked in the music and Steger's interpretation make it easy to imagine the work underpinning a story. The Allegro includes more frenzied flying of notes before the emotional pleading of a pensive Largo e staccato and finally an angry, aggressive Allegro assai.
This concert is a beautiful expression of old world music, presented on period instruments and therefore how the composer intended them to be. Steger and Dyer's enthusiasm and enjoyment of the work is palpable, making it even more of a delight to experience. For orchestral fans, this is a must. For those less familiar with orchestral works, this is a delightful concert that is a wonderful introduction and proof that classical music need not be stuffy, buttoned up affairs but can be light-hearted, fun and easy to follow expressions of joy a storytelling.
