The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has dazzled on all fronts with its latest fusion offering at Hamer Hall.
In a programme of works positioning a mid-century – and often overlooked – Japanese triptyque for strings beside larger opuses of two Russian grandmasters, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra boldly offered as much a fusion of east-meets-west as old-meets-new at Hamer Hall last night.
Concluding with the world premiere of an MSO commission for Young Composer-in-Residence Naomi Dodd – a piece named RUN, as brilliant a descriptive title as could be employed for such a riotously energetic work by a composer still in their mid-20s – the MSO gave audiences a surging pulse of verve and spritz across every moment of the performance.
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Conducting this current of excitement was the evening’s star performer, Benjamin Northey, who held precise command of each symphony’s varied range of sonic textures.
Northey demonstrated remarkable skill in balancing forceful dynamic voices – such as those expressed in the roaring brass of Prokofiev’s Symphony #7 – against intricate lines for strings, à la Yasushi Akutagawa’s aforementioned Triptyque for String Orchestra.
Such was Northey’s talent for textural balance that the most impressive attribute of his conducting was the ability to round off, at the end of each individual movement, dense harmonic clusters of lines for strings and brass.
The clear, smooth swoops with which he concluded symphonic movements provided an exquisite sense of structural integrity, allowing each work as a whole to breathe and flex.
Northey possesses outstanding poise as a director of volume and pace. In his address to the audience, Northey introduced Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony with the admission that it is not a work often performed, but gave assurance that “we know Prokofiev, we love his music.”
To that end, the closing movement of Symphony #7 under Northey’s baton was nothing short of transcendent – a stellar affirmation of why modern audiences continue to see live classical music.
As though this were not enough of a treat, the evening ended with Dodd’s RUN, an explosive work of toe-tapping vigour that inspired within the audience the same kind of fast-paced footwork suggested by its fitting title.
Percussive, metallic, and thrillingly ecstatic, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra brought together works of today and the century prior in a triumphant showcase of gusto and flare.
Bravo, MSO.
Find out what else is on at the MSO here.
