The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 10

10 THE AGE, Friday 17 July 1981 edited by Anthony Clarke FILMS Neil Jillett A grand battle at the keyboards REPORT Jill Sykes SYDNEY. The corridors of the Conservatorium here 1 are filled with the sound of pianos. The violin I chanced upon the other day seemed like a renegade. The reason is the second Syd- ney International Piano Competi-; tion, which has virtually taken over the Con for the month of July to allow more than 30 young pianists from many parts of the world to battle it out for prizes totalling $23,000. plus a handy swag of enagements.

After 10 hectic days of practising and performing, 10 men and two women have reached the semi-finals. They are, in alphabetical order, Daniel Blumenthal (US), Alec Chaen (US), Chia Chou (Canada), Endre Hegedus (Hungary), Edward Newman (US), David Owen Norris (England), Patrick CByrne (NZ), Marc Raubenheimer (South Africa). Yves Rault (France), Marten Ros-coe (England), Catherine Vickers (Canada) and Liora Ziv-Li (Is-' rael). On principle, I do not believe in competitions as a way of developing or discovering great artists in any performing area. But in practice, I am as easily hooked as a regular Eistedd-fodden contests are undoubtedly addictive, and the high standards in this one have made it compelling from the start, Apart from anything else, it is exciting theatre.

The opening recitals give you the ritual of the pianos. Each contestant has six to choose from, all dimly in view in the unlit recesses of the stage. Four men, all dressed in black except for whiter-than-white gloves, set the successive recital choices in the spotlight by the same carefully planned manoeuvre; wiping the keys and setting the piano stool at the required heights. It is like having the Black Theatre of Prague to entertain you between performances. (Just for the record: In Stage one of the two Steinway pianos was selected by 18 contestants, the other by six; four chose one.

of the Yamahas, no one chose the other; the' Bosendorfer was played five times and the Bech-stein once.) If the entrance of the performers was dramatic some looking as though they were about to do a U-turn and head straight back into the wings, others desperately assured the few moments as they settled themselves at the piano was even more so. The silence seemed to crackle: would those first few notes ever sound? Once they had started, most of the pianists found their fingers, their feet and their confidence at the same time. If mistakes were made, they recovered. But not the Romanian contestant, Dana Borsan, whose tension was too agonising to watch; it was not a surprise to suddenly hear the music stop, and look back to see her leaving the stage. She tried again later but eventually withdrew from the competition.

The strain of competing is obviously enormous. Of the five withdrawals from the 40 contestants fielded on the cut-oil date ly damage your health, so eat cake instead. Sydney The Sydney International Piano Competition, unlike some others, gives its contestants a fairly decent hearing. Everyone accepted gets two recitals, and it is on the results of these that the 12 semi-finalists are chosen for a series of accompaniment and chamber music recitals (the first cf which began on Wednesday night), to decide the six finalists. The wait to hear the names announced is painful.

As we all gathered in the Con foyer, some contestants paced feverishly and others stood still and pale. It was getting on for midnight when the bell summoned us back Into the hall. Like Shakespeare's unwilling schoolboy, we made a slow return. The names were read out In alphabetical order. I didn't see any tears, but the losing smiles were very brave Indeed.

The winning grins were well in place, but no one, to their credit, was noisy about it. Perhaps it is part of competition lore that such moments should be sober for all concerned. Having heard 29 of the 34 contestants who actually sat down to play (a sixth contestant withdrew with tendonitis after he had arrived), I had of course made my own list of semi-finalists. There were only two on which I disagreed with the judges David Owen Norris and Marc Raubenheimer and a third, Patrick O'Byrne, whom I was delighted to see included but had felt was on a par with several others who were not. The selection is a singular ture of the intensely lyrical and the technically pedantic.

Most are accomplished competitors, and look like it. But there are exceptions, such as Hungary's Endre Hegedus, who seemed to be playing for the love of it rather than for the ears of the international board of judges at their tables in the front row of the gallery. Apart from the obvious exceptions such as the People's Republic of China (fielding an entrant for the first time) and East European countries, the nationality of the contestants seemed of little importance. The classical piano repertoire has its own international circuit of teachers whose Influence, directly or indirectly, spreads around the globe. Soviet pianists, who took first, second and sixth places at the first Sydney Competition in 1977, were absent this year.

The time the invitations went out last year was hardly the most fertile in the USSR's relationships with the West. Commercial ventures appeared to go on unchecked but cultural relations froze. If it is any comfort, this year's Van Cliburn did not score any Soviet pianists either. After this weekend, we shall be down to the finalists, who have to perform two concertos and take part in a final recital, on 24, July at which the winner will be announced. He or she will give a full recital the following night in Sydney and on 31 July in Melbourne.

By that" time, my addiction might be well and truly cured. of 1, May that of Santiago Rodriguez was particularly disappointing and poignant. Awarded second prize in America's recent Van Cliburn competition, he suffers from an ulcer and has. declared he will not compete again: There was quite a panic one day in the organisation headquarters of the Sydney competition: one of the competitors was reported to be packing up to leave the country whether in despair or umbrage was not quite clear. But a hasty investigation revealed he was only moving to a better room in the hotel.

While nerves are on knife-edge, the atmosphere remains surprisingly friendly, with taxis full af contestants seen to be leaving the Con for a convivial lunch and groups comparing notes in the corridors. As they waited for the semi-finalists to be announced after the last Stage II concert, pianistic opponents played ping-pong at a table specially set up for them at the Con. (On second thoughts, ping-pong for a pianist could be a dangerous game). The organisers, headed by Virginia Braden, do not have time for ping-pong, but they could not resist the enterprise of a cake-maker who rang last Monday to sell them a tiny, iced, edible grand piano that someone had ordered for a 21st birthday and not collected. It duly arrived, its raised, lid inscribed on request: "Piano, competitions can serious mm vJh i Winter of their discontent XT IS JUST the thing to freeze the marrow and warm the heart in the middle of a Melbourne winter.

'Northern Lights (Longford, South Yarra) is set in a landscape that looks slightly less attractive than Siberia, but the story It tells is a curious mixture of tragedy and good cheer. In mood, time and place 'Northern Lights' has many similarities with -Heartland', another low-budget, Independent American film shown recently at the Longford. But the similarities are all on the surface. "Heartland" is a cosy exercise in apple Die nostalgia. -Northern Lights' is a realistic piece of political history entertainingly reshaped into a semi-documentary drama.

It is set on the plains of North Dakota in the winter of 1915-16 High-interest mortgages and low wheat prices are driving families from their farms, and the discontented survivors form a league to launch a quasi-socialistic attack on the capitalist system. They are successful and for a few years a period not often examined by historians control their State's political machine. 'Northern Lights was written, directed and produced by two young men, John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, whose grandparents were among the rebellious North Dakotan pioneers. The film-makers were helped by local historical societies and by a grant from a North Dakotan branch of the US equivalent of the Australia Council. Hanson and Nilsson concentrate on the members of a group of families of Scandinavian descent, particularly Ray Sorensen and his fiancee, Inga Olsness.

Ray is reluctant to join the farmers' league and then becomes addicted to politics. "Northern Lights' is as much a study of an obsession as an account of a fight for justice. Judy Irola's extraordinary camerawork has much to do with the film's sense of period and its sturdy sincerity. At first it may seem too artily contrived, excessive in its graini-ness, irritating in its refusal to find modulating greys between its harshly exposed blacks and Robert Behling in 'Northern Lights': portrait of the altruist as a selfish man. whites.

But Irola's camera does work a spell that would have been impossible with color or a more subtly graded black and opening and closing use of scenes from the present-day life of one of the Dakotan pioneers is at odds with the style, mood and pace of the main story and inadvertently questions its value as a piece of impressionistic history. And, although most of the acting is good, there are, among all those stern, whiskery faces, pnarled hands and worn-out boots, occasional slides into the cardboard gestures of 1930s social realism. Robert Behling and Susan Lynch, as Ray and Inga, are never guilty of such laziness. They suggest the conflict between the two characters as well as their love. One of the best things about "Northern Lights' is the honesty with which it looks at Ray's selfishness and selflessness, there is penuine altruism in his work for the farmers' lengue.

hut, confronted by Inca's tearful complaints about his neglect of her. he is unable to deny that one of the attractions of a political career is it gives him an excuse to evade family responsibilities. white, catches images a steam-thresher heaving and thumping in a blizzard, a quarrel over a candle-lit table, a funeral on a bare, windy hillock that are as evocative of time and place as Frank Hurley's photographs of early Antarctic expeditions. In other ways this is not a film of contrasting blacks and whites. Script, direction and acting are more concerned with implication and inference than with direct statements.

Extremes are avoided in this study of a capitalist system under challenge from the workers. 'Northern Lights' Is putting a particular piece of history back on the record. Its treatment of a more general theme presents us with a paradox. It holds our interest by showing the drudgery of scraping a living from a hostile society in a hostile land. It is about depressing events, yet never becomes depressing "to watch.

The film has a few flaws. The MMMUVBCabChtssIs. 1TonmLWBGibChtls. A delightfully vulgar pair A DELAIDE playwright Dor- With van hark foistnm fitlnrfl With van back (custom fitted). Available in petrol ordiesel.

With drop-sice tray (custom fitted). Available In petrol ordiesel. THEATRE een uarice mav nave Leonard Radic come to the stage late. But she is fast making up for lost time. 'Farewell Brisbane Ladies' (Playbox Downstairs) is her third play staged in the past six months, and the second tn be staged in Melbourne.

The qualities evident in her earlier "Rleerlin' RuttArflipc' una again evident: a developed sense of comedv. a rich rnmmanrl nf Clarke's two ladies are a delightfully vulgar pair with an earthy turn of phrase. In the hands of director Kevin Palmer and his original State Theatre Company of South Australia cast Monica Maughan and Maggie Kirkpatrick they are good for many a belly laugh. Kirkpatrick's Winnie big. blowsy and with the gait and figure of a lady wrestler is a barrel of fun.

Maughan's Gertie thin, prim and trying hard to be proper and respectable without quite getting there makes a perfect foil. Both enter into their parts with relish and a lively and playful sense of humor, milking them for all their worth. The script while racy and colorful, is not particularly remarkable. By the last scene it was beginning to run out of steam and inspiration. For all that, it comes over entertainingly.

It should find a ready and responsive audience. vernacular, a good grasp of fe a pair of one-time Brisbane prostitutes now in their fifties. Gertie, the elder of the two, has gone north in search of peace, quiet and respectability. Her sojourn in a house willed to her by one of her long-term "regulars" is interrupted by the arrival of her old friend Winnie. Winnie is the original good time girl emotionally underdeveloped but warm-hearted and affectionate.

But. as Gertie discovers when her friend's proposed two-week holiday stretches out to months, Winnie can be petty-minded, selfish and underhand as well. Described this way, the play may seem sober-minded. Nothing could be further from the truth. male psycnoiogy and a feeling for the battler class.

Onlv whew th Mrlipr nlnw hA pretensions to being something more a commentary on patri- archalism exemplified in a group of Depression workers "Brisbane Ladies' is a character study pure and simple. The two ladies of the title are Available in petrol ordiesel. Petrol. Payload 750 kg. Urge storage space behind the behind the seats.

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