This was published 7 years ago
Review: Haydn's Passion by The Australian Haydn Ensemble at University House
By Janet Wilson
Haydn's Passion. The Australian Haydn Ensemble. The Hall, University House, ANU. Thursday, December 15 at 7pm. Tickets: $30-$55. Bookings: 1800 334 388 or australianhaydn.com.au
Early music expert, opera director and keyboard performer Erin Helyard returns to Canberra to direct the Australian Haydn Ensemble's final concert for the year at The Hall, University House, ANU on Thursday, December 15. It was Canberra's loss when Helyard moved on from the ANU after his time there from June 2014 until January this year. But he has not forgotten Canberra.
Dramatic intensity: Skye McIntosh and Erin Helyard.Credit: Helen White
"I was recently awarded an ARC Discovery Grant with some colleagues in the School of Art and in the Digital Humanities so I'm thrilled to be maintaining some contact with my Canberra friends," he says. "I recently played at Lanyon Homestead; I forgot how beautiful the region is."
If you feel that pre-Christmas music is all carols and Messiah or other impressive oratorios – beautiful but predictable – you will find this program from this sophisticated early music ensemble an appealingly different experience: three works by CPE Bach, "with Haydn, one of the finest exemplars of the emotionally turbulent style of music that was very popular amongst the younger generation in the 1770s," as Helyard says, and Haydn's Symphony No. 49 The Passion – his only orchestral work in the key of F minor.
Violinist Skye McIntosh, artistic director of the ensemble, has chosen what she describes as a program that has dramatic intensity.
"It's not light," she says, "but a mature program of full-blooded music. It was inspired by the sturm and drang [storm and stress] movement." These musical works are usually in minor keys and have dramatic characteristics.
Helyard will be soloist in CPE Bach's Harpsichord Concerto in D major.
"I adore the music of CPE Bach as I know his famous Versuch [his great treatise on keyboard performance] extremely well," Helyard says.
"Here is a great Enlightenment thinker and composer who had a profound impact on Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and who points out that 'a musician cannot move his audience unless he is moved himself'. This dictum continues to hold true even today."
CPE Bach's stormy Sinfonia 178 in E minor will open the program and be followed by his Flute Concerto in D minor featuring soloist Melissa Farrow, principal flute with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Antipodes as well as the AHE. Her speciality is playing historical flutes and she focuses almost entirely on the baroque, classical and early romantic repertoire.
To help her body cope with the demands of constant playing she follows a rigorous program of exercise including eating crunchy vegetables like carrots to exercise her facial muscles. McIntosh says the flute concerto was originally written for harpsichord but then rewritten by CPE Bach himself as a work that has more lyricism. She says, "The flute concerto is very beautiful and Melissa is fantastic!"
The grand finale of the concert will be the performance of Haydn's Symphony No. 45, The Passion.
A great part of Haydn's music was written to entertain his patron, Prince Esterhazy, and was characteristically sunny and upbeat and often included musical jokes and perhaps a surprise ending. The lyrical and at times rollicking music of The Seasons is a delight. But this symphony reveals different characteristics and very much shows Haydn's darker side. It stands as an apposite companion to the CPE Bach works that will precede it in the program.
Over the past weeks Helyard has been very much involved as director of Pinchgut Opera's second 2017 production, Handel's oratorio Theodora, staged as an opera with singers accompanied by the renowned Orchestra of the Antipodes.
"It's been going swimmingly," he says. "The Sydney Morning Herald awarded it five stars and Oliver Watts of The Conversation called it '... the most contemporary creative work that I have seen this year.' It is a beautiful score. I think it is Handel's Parsifal."