Above: Curator and performer for this latest Sydney instalment of Kammerklang’s ‘Hidden Curiosity’ series-violist Phoebe Green.
Kammerklang’s established series of performer curated concerts continues this year with diverse but equally ingenious works submitted by local composers for the viola voice.
The performer, able to choose music and extramusical agendas that resonate with them, then structures their solo concert statements and theme.
The curation of message and theme by violist Phoebe Green in Out Of The Shadows: A Hidden Curiosity was stellar here. Choosing from over forty works submitted by Australian composers. All of these have been works that received very brief or no airplay since being written.
Phoebe sculpted a one-hour long event which was as exciting as an extended statement about place and the landscapes within ourselves as it was for a promotion of each individual piece and the creative behind it.
Extended string effects and innovative use of the viola was a common feature of all works. Atmospheres and extramusical inflections were in stable hands with this soloist.
Phoebe Green is one of those musicians as comfortable in HIP baroque settings as she is unravelling contemporary scores and modern gesturing to forge intimate portraits and dialogues with the latest expressive tools and the string accent of right now.
Modern programmatic or extramusical features are not always translated into old-school lyricism or neat colour swatches with safe sounds and unchallenging shapes.
This was definitely the case with the works featured here. In the concert’s trajectory of references to place, human sensitivity, growth or interaction with the environment there were many fine moments, and fascinating reveals of new viola works that deserve repeat performances and a place in the solo canon now they are out of the shadows.
Detailed and engaging programme notes added to the undulating stillness-brusqueness and multi-stranded nuance fireworks that this performer brought to each contrasting narrative as the viola, modern Australian compositions and live solo performance were championed evocatively in the inspiring, well appointed, afvanced musical curiositydecor of the Church Street Studios.
We heard Cameron Lam’s Palette Pieces: Where We Stand showed off his signature blend of colour, performer-composer interaction, artwork and a beautiful swoop from depiction of pigments on the focus instrument. His project of expression saw selected pigments indicated in short viola pieces move through to a fully realised piece linking a piece of art. The developed musical fragments and final painting-matched acoustic performance with recorded tracks was once again a stunning chamber music journey and exciting guided collaboration with the performer.
People lucky enough to have attended the 2024 Hidden Curiosities event were able to relish this novel approach in the Palette Pieces and destination visual plus performance art work.
Additional project pieces were Fiora Wong’s Listening By The Warrego narrative which opened the event with picturesque clarity and careful utterance, also combined with recorded tracks-here an evocative, fluid descant swoop of birdsong.
Christine Pan’s intricate linking of modern viola voice with historical paychological method in Shadow Work was a fascinating, touchingly-performed inclusion in the flow of musical exposés.
Another jewel in this concert’s progressive crown came from Emily Shepherd, her work Aeons was a quasi-improvised, interior of a natural cave conceived stunner taking us betond shakuhachi stillness in quantum leaps as it championed new gesturing for the viola at its ground breaking, borrowed sounds plus pioneering best.
Augmenting the seven works selected by this controlled and focussed player was a flurry of new-age scordatura in a detuned version of the viola and a study of emotional fluctuation in Dominik Karski’s Untempered, rich in direction and timbral change.
Thanks to this concert, Pedro Alverez’s Inked In Paths received its premiere thirteen years after composition and a cancelled concert event. Its subtleties deserve plenty more performances in this decade.
The compelling companion piece to Flora Wong’s evocation of country was a journey to India, with Aditya Ryan Bhat’s sonic excirsion in modern voice and dancing across the capabilities of the viola.
The Hidden Curiosities project is an enduring and valuable institution which celebrates a chosen instrument, carefully chosen and curated works that need to see the light.
As this worthwhile concert showed, many important boxes were ticked as the earnest and capable expressions by new musical voices find their way finally via the hands and heart of a very capable performer, and the noise sounded in the chosen chamber is fine.
