Patricia Gill, Denmark Bulletin
The Orenda Trio says a house concert is their favourite performance venue to share musical experience and communicate with the audience.
As flautist Michael Howell told the audience gathered at a Weedon Hill home on August 3, an audience through interaction with the performers, plays a big role in how music is interpreted.
Michael and viola player Alix Hamilton joined Denmark Sarabande Ensemble to start the night with Suite 3, Gratitudo by Georg Muffat.
This included a tight and rich performance with Caroline Blumer on recorder, Jocelyn Bathgate oboe, Marion Jamison spinet, Marloes Kaandorp cello and Kanae Jones violin.
They played seven dances of the piece titled Florilegium Primum, meaning first flowers.
Michael and Alix followed with Duo No.2 in D Major for Flute and Viola by Franz Anton Hoffmeister, a duet that they had previously performed at Wesley Church, Perth.
Of the same era as Mozart, whose works followed the Hoffmeister performance, Michael said in pictures Hoffmeister looked like Gene Wilder.
“So, Willy Wonka wrote this music,” he said.
Hoffmeister was ‘great friends’ of Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart and one of the first publishers of music in Austria which accounted for his friendships with the greats and others.
The three movements of the Hoffmeister piece – Allegro, Lento and Allegretto – included the last as a rondo.
“It always returns to the theme so keep an ear out for that one, because they’re always trying to tell that story,” Michael said.
Pianist Sam McSweeney stepped in for the concert when Orenda’s usual pianist Adam Pinto was unavailable. After considering whether or not to cancel the event, the inclusion of Sam rescued plans.
He joined Alix and Michael for Mozart’s Trio No.4 Kegelstatt Trio for Piano, Clarinet and Viola.
In German, kegelstatt is a place where skittles are played and can still be found in some pubs today.
Mozart enjoyed playing games such as snooker and chess, and Orenda had the ‘romantic notion’ that the piece was written with playing skittles in mind.
Michael described the pianos of the day as ‘kind of between a harpsichord and piano’.
“The reason we’re not playing the clarinet is because I can’t,” he said.
fter the first movement, Andante, a Menuetto and Trio followed in the second.
It finished with a Rondo to re-enter the theme.
Trio No.6, Nachtgesgang, for Piano, Clarinet and Viola Op.6 by Max Bruch completed the night.
Curtin University lecturer in astrophysics Sam said in his work new types of objects were being discovered in the galaxy.
“We can see signals from them, but we don’t know what they are,” he said.
Having donned a suit for the evening, he said the last time he had worn it was to record an online talk for the TEDx talk in Perth last year.
This event aimed to show all things remarkable, challenging and thought-provoking, and to raise the intellectual ambition and culture of WA.
Sam had found a name badge in the little-used suit, dating from the time he was a Mormon missionary in Taiwan.
He said Max Bruch’s writing was so well executed that the ‘voices’ just ‘kind of come in and out’ and everything can be heard and transferred musically. Indeed, that’s true.
This article appeared in the Denmark Bulletin, 15 August 2024.
