The story of Chopin, his lover and an unassuming piano – as told through music

JAZZ
HEKKA ★★★★½
Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre, July 8

Reading the advance press for HEKKA’s new album – vividly describing the music as “gritty”, “sinister” and “malevolent” – I was braced for an album that resembled the soundtrack of a violent slasher film.

To my ears, though, there’s nothing sinister about the music on Everywhere I Go My Body Goes With Me. Gritty, yes. Dark at times, certainly. But within the shadows, there’s always a glimmer of beauty, or an irresistible riff waiting to burst into life.

The members of this adventurous Sydney trio – pianist Novak Manojlovic, bassist Jacques Emery and drummer Tully Ryan – deliberately set out to expand (and at times subvert) perceptions of what a jazz piano trio should sound like.

At their Melbourne show on Saturday night, Manojlovic’s piano was supplemented by a Prophet 08 synth that painted twinkling aural stars and woozy prog-rock smears. Emery’s pedal effects and MIDI keyboard allowed his electric bass to morph from deft harmonic anchor to supple melodic or percussive support, while Ryan could build languid backbeats into visceral rolls of energy to transform a leisurely sway into a heady, off-kilter rock anthem.

The trio’s compositions are intricate and deliciously unpredictable, sometimes taking unexpected rhythmic detours or diving into expansive passages that float and drift. On Saturday, conventional “head-solos-head” arrangements were replaced by a more open, collective feel where our attention moved ceaselessly from one player to another as each piece evolved.

Much of the concert unfolded in a continuous arc, embracing elements of minimalist repetition, romantic lyrical flourishes, deft harmonic hooks and fractured electronic dance music.

The concert concluded with the album’s title track: a piece that began with whirring electro effects and brisk brushwork on cymbals; grew into a soulful rhapsody with emphatic piano chords and full-bodied bass; then dropped back to an unhurried saunter before fading into a warm silence.

Malevolent? No. Compelling, beguiling, exhilarating? Absolutely.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas

MUSIC
Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition Grand Final ★★★★
Melbourne Recital Centre, July 9

Melbourne-based Affinity Quartet has swept up the major prizes at this year’s Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition. With a highly committed and suavely flexible account of Schubert’s String Quartet No.14, D. 810 Death and the Maiden, the quartet garnered not only the first prize and audience prize in the string quartet division of the competition, but also the grand prize, for which competitors in the piano trio division were also eligible.

Playing Beethoven’s long and challenging Beethoven String Quartet No.15, Op. 132, Affinity’s rivals, the New York-based Terra String Quartet and the Korean Risus Quartet, offered starkly contrasting views of this late masterpiece. Terra’s softly lit, finely grained account standing at one end of the spectrum gained second prize, while Risus’ brightly lit, broadly conceived performance standing at the other, merited third prize. Risus also won the prize for the best performance of a new work, Lee Bradshaw’s Resolve.

In the piano trio grand final, it was Trio Orelon from Germany that swayed the jury with a smooth and highly polished rendition of Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 1, Op. 8, while France’s Trio Pantoum delivered an exquisitely coloured and deftly characterised account of Ravel’s Piano Trio in A minor that put them in second place.

Trio Bohemo of the Czech Republic undertook Rachmaninov’s gargantuan Trio Elegiaque No.2, Op. 9, the young composer’s tribute to Tchaikovsky. It was a work that particularly showcased the virtuosity of the pianist, but at times threatened to outwear its welcome. Nonetheless, Trio Bohemo won the audience prize in this section, while Trio Orelon won the award for the best performance of a new work, Maria Grenfell’s Bitter Tears.

Such decisive success by the first all-Australian string quartet to enter MICMC is very heartening, further sweetened by knowing the winner came from the host city.
Reviewed by Tony Way

OPERA
Idomeneo ★★★½
Palais Theatre, until July 8

Idomeneo was reportedly Mozart’s favourite of his operas. Though it’s safe to say, it’s nearly no one else’s preferred pick from the composer’s canon.

Unlike in many lauded Mozart operas that came after this 1781 work, Idomeneo has few laughs and hummable hits. As the selection with which Victorian Opera and Opera Australia debut their landmark collaboration, it’s a curious choice. The limitations on this production’s success are somewhat inherited by the very opera itself.

We are often beseeched by a company’s cries that a centuries-old opera is still relevant to a modern audience. Though at first, you’d be forgiven for failing to see the parallels between contemporary life and a mythical king’s deal with Poseidon to save himself from death, involving the human sacrifice of his own son. Oh, and there’s a sea monster.

It’s the instilled Age of Enlightenment values – reason, humanity and ultimately, happiness– that allow Idomeneo to be effective today. That and the eternal magic of Mozart’s music.

Victorian Opera has assembled an Australian cast as fine as you’ll hear on any international stage. In the title role, Steve Davislim displays thrilling technical prowess, while as his (almost) doomed son Idamante, Catherine Carby’s mezzo is both melancholy and golden warm. It is a rare treat to have them both in Melbourne.

As Idamante’s love interests, Kathyrn Radcliffe’s strong soprano makes light work of Ilia and though Elettra might lose the man, Olivia Cranwell wins the audience with her wild, wonderful performance.

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra responded to Conductor Benjamin Bayl’s sensitivity with vigour, particularly the brass and wind players in Mozart’s ferocious storm scenes.

It’s clear countless hours and an enormous team are behind this undoubtedly exciting VO-OA partnership.

But here’s hoping in years ahead it yields productions that do not leave Melburnians all at sea.
Reviewed by Bridget Davies

THEATRE
Just a Boy, Standing in Front of a Girl ★★½
fortyfivedownstairs, until July 9

Euripides’ Medea is one of the most famous and troubling ancient Greek tragedies. Seduced by the “hero” Jason, and then spurned by him for a younger woman, Medea takes revenge by killing their children and riding off on a chariot, unrepentant and unpunished, against all mortal expectation.

This contemporary reworking of the myth from indie company 15 Minutes From Anywhere views it with a tragicomic eye. That was always likely to be problematic, and has resulted in a work that is full of jarring dramatic contradictions.

Writer Jane Miller seems to have been influenced by a reading of Medea that posits the titular character as a victim of patriarchy and the male gaze (while being complicit in both), and rejects entirely the idea of her as a woman motivated by sexual jealousy to murder her kids.

This version leans into teen movie tropes, exaggerating the often subtextual misogyny of that genre into pitch-black feminist parody.

Here an adolescent Medea-figure is born privileged (curiously, Medea is from the same white suburban monoculture as Jason – the fact that she’s foreign in the original gives her abjectness at Jason’s abandonment a further dimension), but when a bitter teacher gives her poor life advice – success lies in finding a man – she panders to a feckless wannabe-magician, who becomes her date at the school ball.

Medea gets pregnant and is rejected (not to mention cruelly slut-shamed and body-shamed) by her wealthy family. She finds herself schmoozing with (and sexually harassed by) narcissistic corporate types as she helps Jason climb the career ladder.

Burdened by suburban motherhood and constant housework, when the Medea of Just a Boy, Standing in Front of a Girl kills her kids, a chorus of nosy neighbours give their two cents on her life and crimes.

Director Beng Oh directs the suburban feminist satire acutely – sharp episodic scenes slice into the absurd cruelties of misogyny on a narrow stage. The show’s pent-up rage unravels with the suburban chorus, though, and an affectless, true-crime documentary style takes over.

You could argue that stripping Medea of emotion is a subversive act that rebels against gendered psychological stereotyping, but it also flattens dramatic intensity.

Euripides’ version brews a psychologically plausible storm and clears it with artifice. Miller’s shifts from a heightened performance style into clipped realism.

Why the total reversal? I’m not certain, although Medea’s original transcendence does not seem less feminist a vision than this play’s downbeat conclusion.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

DANCE
Jewels ★★★★
The Australian Ballet, Arts Centre Melbourne, until July 8

Precious stones had a talismanic importance to many Russian emigres who fled the Bolshevik revolution, so it’s no surprise that George Balanchine, co-founder of New York City Ballet, created a three-part balletic homage to their glittery attractions.

Barbara Karinska, who designed the original costumes for Jewels, fled Moscow with a hatbox full of diamonds. And Nicholas Kopeikine, Balanchine’s long-time rehearsal pianist, escaped across the snowy fields of Poland with the family jewels sewn into his coat.

Balanchine himself, who had a taste for gaudy trinkets, grew up in the world of the Imperial Russian Ballet in Saint Petersburg, where dancers were sent on stage to shine and captivate and flaunt their ropes of gems.

And perhaps there is an echo of that vanished glamour in Jewels, which was a critical success when it premiered in 1967 and has remained popular ever since. What is remarkable, however, is the degree to which Australian Ballet has made this plotless dream of a ballet its own.

This production is an achievement of strength and clarity, with a straightforward enthusiasm that is impossible to resist. It’s free of coy flirtation and kitsch enticement, instead projecting confidence and vigour.

The first part, Emeralds, suggests the green transparency of an aquarium in an upscale restaurant. Dancers float delicately across the stage, twining and entwined. It’s done with surprising lightness and a restraint that complements the murmurings of Faure’s music.

Rubies, a fizzing piece of neoclassicism ornamented with bits of showgirl flair, is performed at top speed. Ako Kondo, Brett Chynoweth and Isobelle Dashwood were galvanic on opening night, propelled through Stravinsky’s Capriccio by pianist Duncan Salton.

The final part, Diamonds, is a fine example of ensemble ballet in the grand style, set to the music of Tchaikovsky. It’s the sort of bedizened fantasy that will no doubt leave the dreamers of Melbourne all agog and wanting more.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

MUSIC
MSO Winter Gala: Ray Chen performs Tchaikovsky ★★★★½
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, June 29

Generous servings of romantic fare made this Melbourne Symphony Orchestra gala a heartwarming mid-winter feast.

Ligeti’s captivating yet rarely heard Romanian Concerto whetted the musical appetite; its four short movements deftly showcasing a variety of orchestral sonorities. The end of the jaunty, folkloric finale brought the first of many occasions to appreciate the fine, burnished tone of the MSO’s horns.

Violinist Ray Chen brought a super-sized serving of showmanship to his account of Tchaikovsky’s ever-popular Violin Concerto.

While Chen’s prodigious technical prowess enabled him to deliver plenty of impressive pyrotechnics, his larger-than-life personality tended to suggest the audience could not be won over by audible evidence alone, but needed constant visual encouragement. Closing the eyes, it was clear the sound was enough.

In the first movement, Chen’s seemingly vehement distinctions between lyrical and dramatic elements occasionally prevented potential subtleties of timbre from emerging.

Exchanges between winds and strings in the central Canzonetta brought charming contrasts, while the solo rose beyond the music’s muted ambience. The whirlwind finale certainly captured the composer’s intended vivacity, even if, once or twice, it left the orchestra slightly out of kilter with the soloist. Chen’s own virtuoso arrangement of Waltzing Matilda with its poignant, ghostly ending effectively employed a wide palette of colours.

Rachmaninov’s hyper-romantic Symphony No.2 made a welcome return after memorable performances in 2021. This time around, under the baton of chief conductor Jaime Martin, the orchestra gloried in the work’s broad rivers of melody; the lush coherence of the string sound particularly beguiling.

Excellent horns, polished woodwind and taut ensemble enlivened the Scherzo, while Martin’s grasp of the musical architecture ensured the work was brought to a glowing conclusion.

With its convincing invitation to romantic abandon and the occasional swoon, here was a splendid antidote to any mid-winter blues.
Reviewed by Tony Way

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it every Friday.