REVIEW: MUSIC S t1 t\
l'1'tg I Pi" ,
Program scores well with melodies
SYDNEY SPRING FINAL CONCERT
Goossens Hall, September 26
By GORDON KERRY
T SYDNEY Spring's
A Grand Final on Satur-
day night, flautist
Kathleen Gallagher
and harpist Marshall McGuire
shared the title of Man of the
Match. Actually, I didn't stay
for the medals ceremony at the
end, but all players in the
Spring Ensemble get a gong for
stamina in an over-long but
mainly interesting program.
There was the usual Spring mix
of music by an international
figure, established Australian
voices and young composers.
Matthew Shlomovitz's
Remembering, beginning took
'1-f) ~~MbU'?
Foucault and Myra Breckin-
ridge as its envois (but could as
easily have invoked The City
and the Pillar). It sounded good
though.
Scored for flute(s), harp and
piano (played by Mark Knoop),
Shlomovitz skilfully uses spare
gestures to create a ringing
framework around a sinuous
flute part that only occasionally
descends to off-the-rack ges-
tures of tightly wound melodies
or arpeggios.
Carlo Giacco's Entity for
mixed ensemble might have
been a Baudrillardian sweep
across America, accounting for
a certain coarseness of organi-
sation and literalness of gesture.
Damien Ricketson's Ptole-
my 's Onion amplifies bass flute
and string quartet in seven
highly evocative short move-
ments. I didn't mind its basi-
cally slow rate of change, and
enjoyed the meditative atmo-
sphere of high-lying string tex-
tures cushioning subtly shaded
flute figurations that character-
ised much of the work. The
amplification was maybe overly
subtle, though.
Like Ricketson, Ian Shana-
han used his solo alto flute work
(again featuring Gallagher)
Dimensiones Paradisi for cos-
mological speculation, effecting
the finest details of each musical
parameter. It, too, sounded
good, exploiting a broad range
of timbres and microtonal vari-
ation.
Bozidar Kos's Catena II for
mixed ensemble was a welcome
reminder of the possibility of
absolute music, with its ele-
gantly turned meditations on
restricted intervals in each of its
short interlinked secti ons.
There were some occasional
lapses in intonation, which will
be ironed out with familiarity.
Music by Franco Donatoni
opened and closed proceedings
with Marches - a harp solo
which has become something of
a party piece for McGuire - and
Chantal for harp and large
ensemble. Both are trademark
pieces, with incisive, motoric
rhythms that sometimes reach
the point of obsessiveness, yet
which seem to ultimately pre-
side over their own gradual
extinction.