“So, do you go to things like this often?” my date asks. I have two tickets, courtesy of 4ZZZ to see the Australian Youth Orchestra perform with Andrey Gugnin, the 2016 winner of the coveted Sydney International Piano Competition, at the QPAC Concert Hall. I answer the question with a question: “fancy a champagne?” Champagne is only $8. Cheaper than expected. This triggers a chain of thought that will boggle me throughout the entire performance…
Classical music, aka ‘high art’, is quite simply objectively better than pop music. There should have been no need for inverted commas when I said ‘high art’ in the last sentence. Bugger, I did it again. I’m using a typewriter. People listen to music for the same reason we watch films, play video games and eat fluffy almond croissants in rustic colonial buildings: escapism. A trip to see an orchestra, no matter whether it might be comprised of youths, is the highest form of escapism: close your eyes during a luscious sweeping movement, as Andrey’s grand piano buoys upon a boiling sea of strings and horns, a wall of sound filling the QPAC Concert Hall.
Gugnin glided through Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 with such elegance and passion it was as if he wrote the piece himself. It felt like Andrey and the piano had a symbiotic relationship, and it was simultaneously breathing life into him, too.
Andrey stands. The crowd erupts. He bows. He leaves. He comes back. An encore. He stands. The crowd erupts. He bows. He leaves. People grab their purses. He comes back. A double encore! He shrugs at the crowd and smiles. The audience holds its breath for a solo piece that fully demonstrates Gugnin’s control, precision and tasteful theatrics.
An intermission, and the orchestra are back on for a rollercoaster-like rendition of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. The conductor abruptly swivels and addresses the audience, giving a short history of the featured composers and brief descriptions of the techniques and narratives of the compositions. There is something to learn for the seasoned concert-goer and it’s great introduction for the newcomers.
Symphonic Dances stirringly evinces the juxtaposition of bleak darkness and euphoric jubilation, a reflection of life itself. The orchestra emphatically demarcates these two moods, and the band masterfully weave their way through the seemingly spontaneous rhythmic changes. Even the French horn section get their time in the sun.
But the experience is not merely aural, it is a wondrous spectacle too. The performance was accessible, but masterful. This was a testament to the universal appeal of classical music, because it is objectively better than any other music.
I should like to go to things like this more often.
Conductor Courtney Lewis
Piano Andrey Gugnin
Britten Sinfonia da requiem
Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1
Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances
16th July, 2018
QPAC, Concert Hall
Review by: Harry Rival Lee