Saturday 28 June, 2025
Review by Paul Neeson (Arts Wednesday)
After the sudden cancellation due to injury of scheduled guest director and violinist, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the ACO scrambled to come up with an alternative program for the tour branded ACO Unleashed. What they devised was a program of familiar Baroque, Classical and Romantic repertoire with the addition of the Australian premiere of a Cello Concerto by Jaakko Kuusisto, with the director’s role being shared by both Helena Rathbone and Satu Vänskä. Richard Tognetti’s absence was noted due to prior commitments.
The two upper levels of the City Recital Hall were almost filled to capacity, but there were large swathes of empty seats downstairs. Did regular subscribers take the opportunity to stay home on a chilly winter night? If so they missed out on a great concert stitched together at short notice.
JS Bach’s Concerto for Three Violins opened the show, Rathbone, Vänskä and the ACO’s latest member Anna da Silva Chen performing the solo parts. With two director’s (and possibly an aspiring third) in the soloist roles, it felt at times there was a battle to see whose interpretation would prevail. That said, the brilliance of JS Bach shone through, and the virtuosity of each violinist was clearly on display.
There was only one person in charge of the next work, Tzigane by Ravel. This work is a showpiece for any violinist, full of all the technical demands of the instrument. From the extended opening highly emotional cadenza to the fiery conclusion, we witnessed double stopping, rapid pizzicato, extended melodies played only on harmonics and blindingly difficult runs and arpeggios. Vänskä mastered all the techniques with an ease that spoke of years of experience and performance. The rhythincally charged finale replete with Hungarian melodies was played with such hedonistic abandon it resembled a drunken hoedown fuelled by ample quantities of moonshine. I wouldn’t be surprised if all three of the soloists in tonight’s concert had performed this work as an audition piece at some stage of their career.
An ACO concert would not be complete without a Tognetti arrangement of a string quartet, and tonight it was Beethoven’s Op.95. It felt at last the orchestra gelled and played as one. There were no internal battles for supremacy, instead a unified musical unit with only one goal: expression and discipline. And that was exactly what they achieved.
After interval we were given a delightful Schubert miniature, his Quartettsatz in C minor. Schubert never fails to please with his flowing romantic phrases and melodies that take you on an idyllic journey. It was devised as a first movement of a larger quartet, but was never completed. Nonetheless it has become part of the standard repertoire being able to stand on its own.
Talk about saving the best until last, Timo-Veikko ‘Tipi’ Valve was soloist in Jaakko Kuusisto’s Cello Concerto. Kuusisto was the older brother of Pekka, a regular guest with the ACO. A sad loss for the musical fraternity, Jaakko died of brain cancer at age 48. The brothers performed together on many occasions and made several recordings. The Cello Concerto had all the darkness and introspection of the Finnish mindset that was alleviated on occasions by the inclusion of vibraphone in the score. There was extra poignancy in this performance as Valve is a close personal friend of the Kuusisto family and well-known interpreter of Jaakko’s music. This piece set the crowd alight which had been subdued until this point. ACO fans like nothing more than to be challenged with new and demanding music. They went home fulfilled.