The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 16

16 Arts THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1997 MUSIC MUSIC Pleasing both sides of brain A woman before her time NASH ENSEMBLE Everest Theatre, November 15 By DAVID VANCE EMISP11ERES, by the Russian-born Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin minute duration, the intellectual amusement comes from sporting the musical references. With postmodernist skill, the composer draws on a variety of sources, ranging from Debus-sian impressionism, the rhapsodising of Rachmaninoff, the buoyancy of Stravinskian rhythms and the pleasantly mind-numbing repetitions of minimalism. There is more: Messiaen, Britten, jazz, Hebrew melody a wide spectrum of allusions which is certain to occupy the fossicking of some future musicologist. But this is more than mere pastiche: there is great intelligence and wit, sometimes sardonic, in the handling of the material which embraces opposing worlds, cultural as well as mental. There is also a captivating energy which maintains the listener's engagement with the score as it progresses through clearly defined sections: the symmetry of recapitulation appeals to the ear versed in classical forms, while the delicious sonorities appease the sense.

The performance by The Nash Ensemble was both lively and enjoyable, and seemed to comprehend the musical realm of the composer. I look forw ard to hearing Hemispheres again, and imagine it Finding a worthy place in future Australia Ensemble programs. I I ry. iM.MiiiwiMiiw'''t'T''wi' ill I It I jlijj nil-" JBT jjr iS? was premiered on Saturday night by The Nash Ensemble of London for whom the piece was commissioned by Musica Viva to mark the 50th anniversary of The British Council in Australia. Though the work's title may allude to the cultural interchange of the northern and southern hemispheres currently being celebrated as part of the New Images program, the composer notes that she was more concerned "to express the complex relationships and contrast between the rational and emotional, left and right hemispheres of the Both hemispheres are satisfied by this music which appeals to the ear and the intellect.

Written for an ensemble comprising string quartet, flute, clarinet, piano and harp, the work thrives on the opposition of varied textures and sonorities, now dense, now transparent, always interesting and treated with unfailing imagination. If the aural pleasure rests (in part) on the kaleidoscope of instrumental colours that appear during the work's 13- THEATRE A dead cow and dope before dinner MILO Theatre, Penrith, November 13 By JAMES WAITES ILO (Wayne Pygram) is forever starting things. As an ex-Sydneysider Margaret Sutherland would get "so depressed sometimes that she tore up a whole lot of Composer Margaret Sutherland was darnned on two counts she was both Australian and a woman. But finally she is gaining recognition, writes JUDY ADAMSON. HE HAS been called the "matriarch of Australian music" a pioneer in Australian composition history ness of producing a reliable chronology is fraught with difficulties.

One is doing educated guesses all the time. I'm using things like her correspondence with the ABC to date music because there's no date on the score. "In addition, dear Margaret got so depressed sometimes that she tore up a whole lot of "It was like no other music that I had ever heard, and I felt that this was my first encounter with a truly original and Australian voice," he says. "Looking back, it was difficult enough for me to be a composer in our society of that time. It must have been very much more difficult for her." Symons says scholars of Milo plays games like a kid in a sandpit.

And Di has been relegated to playing Milo's mother, paying the bills and picking up broken toys. As the saying goes, she's sick to the back teeth and ropable as well. The only real problem with this script is the danger at times for it all to seem a bit one-sided. Di is called to make, too many gratuitous one-liners about Milo's hopelessness in front of the guests. There are also phrases that fail to translate from the written to the spoken, especially when Di has to talk about her PNG fund-raising or other similar issue and information-based sequences.

The play would benefit from the cutting of just a handful more lines. These days audiences, used to the cinema, do not need everything spelt out. And while fleshing out is part of the playwright's craft, it's sometimes hard to tell until a play's on stage where flesh spreads to fat. The director, Helmut Bakai-tis, and his capable cast do everything they can to counter this. Camilla Ah Kin is an excellent actor and here she brings considerable depth and subtlety to Di in an impressive performance.

Alan David Lee creates a sensitive farmer in Toby, with Wayne Pygram as Milo and Jacqueline Brennan as Peg also excellent in their roles. Production design is by Judith Hoddinott, with a lovely take on galvanised iron trendy-ism. Costuming is by Paula Martin and lights are by Andrew Kinch. Milo runs until November 30. careerist settling into a new life and lifestyle several hours out of town, that's a good thing.

Pity he never gets round to finishing any of these projects. Hobby farming isn't even that to him. Toy plane makers usually see their projects off the ground. The house is full of wacky and ultimately useless part-built inventions. On this day, Milo's working wife, Di (Camilla Ah Kin), has had a bad day.

Just back from an unsuccessful meeting in Canberra, she is stressed and miserable enough without having to face yet another dead cow (due to Milo's carelessness) and him stoned off his face on dope. They moved to this hobby farm from the city on the basis of his promises, and she's damn well sick of dream after dream failing to turn into reality. To stoke the fires of conflict, long-lost friends Peg (Jacqueline Brennan) and Toby (Alan David Lee), these days real farmers from the other side of the mountains, are coming for dinner. Ned Manning's play has many qualities, with some particularly strong and vivid scenes popping up just when you don't expect. The conflict between Di and Milo is complex and genuine and should strike a mark with long-term couples struggling to come to terms with differing expectations.

The bottom line is that Arts Centre would be retained for that purpose, when the South Melbourne City Council wanted to sell it off to an engineering company." Sutherland was born in Adelaide, but moved to Melbourne with her family at the age of four andiived there all her life, until her death in 1984 apart from trips to Europe which included a period of study, in the 1920s, with English composer Sir Arnold Bax. The niece of Heidelberg artist Jane Sutherland, she was encouraged in her pursuits by her family, who although believing very much in women's domestic role also regarded their women as men's intellectual and artistic equals. Sutherland was heavily involved in the musical life of Melbourne, but at first was recognised more as a performer, as she stepped back from composition between 1927 and 1935 while her children were little. Her marriage was unhappy and eventually ended in divorce. Symons says it is "very tempting, but speculative" to equate the emotional melancholy in some of her work with aspects of her personal life.

Yet he notes that the music, although essentially restrained, also contained "great emotional depth and warmth especially in her songs and in her larger orchestral Her early work was strongly influenced by the English composers of the time, such as Arnold Bax, but gradually developed more in common with European neo-classicist composers such as Bartok, Shostakovich and Poulenc. However, although Sutherland absorbed these influences, Symons believes she "definitely had her own profile her own "Any responsible history of 20th-century music would have her as one of the heights," he says. "You have almost a sense of greatness. Sutherland was to early 20th-century Australian music almost what Sculthorpe is to late 20th-century Australian music. She's that important" The Margaret Sutherland centenary concert will be held in the Eugene Goossens Hall at 8 pm on November 20, and broadcast live on ABC Classic FM.

Limited seating is available. the music of the early 20th-century composers, and Sutherland in terms of her importance was the most yawning He says it was not until the 1960s that Australian composers began to emerge from the relative obscurity to which they had been relegated by the very fact of being Australian. Apart from Percy Grainger, and to a lesser extent Alfred Hill, the music of the "post-colonial period" which includes Sutherland has remained largely unknown. Peter Sculthorpe feels a real debt to Sutherland. She championed his music, encouraging the younger composer to continue writing at a time when organisations such as the ABC rejected his work as "unfit for broadcast His friendship with Sutherland began in the late 1940s, when he was playing double bass in the string orchestra at Melbourne Conservatorium.

Sutherland had come to a rehearsal to hear the orchestra play her Concerto for Strings, a piece which Sculthorpe says left him "tremendously Sutherland was to eariy 20th-centuiy Australian music almost what Sculthorpe is to late 20th-century Australian music, whose work can stand alongside Peter Sculthorpe's, without shame. Yet the name and work of Margaret Sutherland, unlike that of Sculthorpe, are virtually unknown. Major orchestras don't program her works. Record companies have left her largely untouched. However, this week marks the centenary of Sutherland's birth, and the number of people able to hear and learn about her music is set to mushroom.

The ABC has planned a centenary concert for her birthday on Thursday and is releasing a CD of her keyboard music. On the same day, a book about herjife and work, The Music of Margaret Sutherland, will be released by Currency Press. The author of the book, Dr David Symons, senior music lecturer at the University of Western Australia, undertook the work because "it's about time people started writing some fairly serious books about scores. She got depressed about the whole business of her music, and Australian music, getting the recognition she felt it deserved. But she was not selfish.

She was a tireless fighter for other Australian composers, and was a prime mover in guaranteeing that the site of the present Victorian Australian music have probably been put off tackling Sutherland's musical output in the past, because it is in such a jumble. "People must have given up in horror, thinking, how are we going to write about this woman?" he says. "She rarely dated her scores, so the busi- i MWMH mi the gallery's showings. However it seems the "art gallery" will be very limited in scope, focusing on just six artists, the 1990s work of Mike Parr, Peter Tyndall, Peter Booth, Tony Clark, Bill Henderson and Howard Arkley. Gel seems like good thinking given that 70 per cent of its audience is over 55).

Other companies to target the young will be the Arena Theatre Company, St Martins Youth Arts Centre (that makes sense) and the Melbourne Festival. Meanwhile, Jeff Kennett was beaming last week over the announcement that the Federal Government would hand over $25 million for the National Gallery of Victoria's renovations. The State Government has already agreed to pay $96 million but, with the plans coming to $136 million, there was just a wee gap that gallery director Timothy Potts had to meet. ehratipn Be part of our history 50.000th JACKI Weaver gives a courageous performance in the Melbourne Theatre Company's new play Navigating, that is to say, she pads up in a fat suit, wears lank hair and red eye-rims and stomps around the stage like a bag lady. It's an endearing and bravura performance as Bea Sampson, a small-town whistleblower.

Ex-husband Derryn Hinch was there last week to witness her efforts on opening night, along with the play's director, Richard Wherret, whom Weaver was contemplating marrying at one stage. Sadly, however, the reviews were less than enthusiastic, with the play written by Sydney's Katherine Thomson variously described as unbalanced and hampered by some two-dimensional characterisations, Weaver excluded. CHAMBER Made Opera is unveiling its world premiere new work, Fresh Ghosts, on November 28 at Theatreworks in St Kilda. Composed by Julian Yu with a libretto by Glenn Perry, the opera is based on work by Lu Xun, one of China's best-known modern writers, who combines social realism with a biting political edge. Sung in English, it tells the story of "the desperate lives of two devoted women who become inextricably bound as those they love are threatened by law and Yu's score promises to combine traditional and contemporary sounds from both East and West.

wv nv souvenir issue of the Sydney Morning Herald MELBOURNE property developer Michael Buxton has pledged to build a contemporary art gallery at Melbourne's docklands if his Yarranova consortium's $2 billion bid is accepted to develop two of the site's key precincts. The gallery is expected to cost $2 million to $3 million. Melbourne, of course, has long yearned for its own modern art gallery to rival the Museum of Contemporary Art (the loss of the Smorgon collection still rankles). Buxton is a fourth-generation member of a real estate dynasty who has been amassing contemporary art for 20 years. Although his collection has never been shown or lent to the public, it is believed to be one of the most substantial in private hands in Australia.

In a canny move to win the bid, he has pledged his collection would form the core of the proposed important events covered by the Herald, the stories that have made us laugh and cry. This extensive report will be collected and treasured. The publication of this issue offers businesses and organisations a unique opportunity to be part of our history. For further information and advertising bookings please contact Lisa Boyle on (02) 9282 1637 or Amanda Bennetts on (02) 9282 3331 THE unashamedly marketing-oriented Victorian State Government has launched a new project aiming to explore ways to encourage younger audiences to wander into Melbourne's theatres and concert halls. The Premier for the Arts announced last week that 10 market research programs would give arts companies insights into audiences' habits, preferences and, most importantly of all, disposable incomes.

The arts companies seem eager to embrace this notion of a market-led arts recovery and four of the projects are aimed particularly at young audiences. Musica Viva Australia is looking to develop younger audiences (which Since 1831, The Sydney Morning Herald has played a major role in the life of Sydney. Herald reporters have reported great moments of history from home and abroad and chronicled the growth of our great city. And as Sydney has changed so has its newspaper, today's Herald writers provide comprehensive, informative, always interesting and frequently entertaining coverage of issues important to our readers. To mark the publication of our issue a special souvenir edition will be published.

This special commemorative lift-out will re-visit the MADAME Tussaud's Australia has announced that it will extend its Melbourne season, due to "overwhelming It is now selling tickets up until the end of February, and turning up the air-conditioning to keep the exhibits from melting during the summer months. It says more than 60,000 people have visited the show already, wandering wide-eyed around such old-fashioned attractions as the Chamber of Horrors and the Garden Party, alongside the more contemporary dummies that can be found in Hollywood and the Sports Hall of Fame. JANE FREEMAN 1 COMMEMORATIVE ISSUE.