ACO with Joseph Tawadros

An amazing concert ! http://www.sydneyartsguide.com.au/tag/australian-chamber-orchestra/ The ACO is celebrating its 40th birthday with a series of terrific concerts, in which they are performing with some of their best friends. This concert featured an ACO in dazzling form and while violinist Richard Tognetti and Egyptian-Australian Joseph Tawadros, internationally renowned as a virtuoso of the oud, were keen to find hidden links between the Venetian baroque and the East, their main success was not to discover them but to create them. The innovative programming combined both old and new. You could hear the Egyptian and also some Flamenco influences. Tognetti’s brilliant arrangements of Tawadros playing, ranging across a profusion of rhythmic time signatures, enchanted. The concert began with Giovanni Gabrieli’s Sonata No. 21 for three violins, featuring ravishing, delicate, exquisite playing, tapping into a common longing for spiritual transcendence. Renaissance style counterpoint was gradually embellished in the Baroque manner which led to quiet but intense loftiness . In the first of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons concertos, Spring, Tognetti consciously shaped and controlled the phrases of the first movement, avoiding obvious accents and using contrast and nuanced understatement to bring some sections forward, whilst keeping others distant. The crazy, bass-slapping Sleight of Hand followed which, whilst with a melancholic feel, was fast and spiky, making a breathless slide into Summer, Tawadros’s contemporary energy appropriately echoing the roller coaster like Baroque passions of Vivaldi’s most organic movement. The inclusion of oud, generally doubling the violin line , allowed for an insect like feel, at times. In Summer, Tawadros and his brother, James, playing the riq, a tambourine-like instrument extremely sophisticated in its range, combined to augment the continuo section of the orchestra with exotic pulses. The playing from Tognetti and the orchestra was astonishing in its emphatic energy and magnificent virtuosity. Of the pieces by Tawadros, orchestrated by Tognetti, Kindred Spirits and Constantinople were striking for their unpredictable rhythmic complexity and flurries of whirling energy, whilst Point of Departure explored quieter intimacy. The concerts’ second half began with the beautiful Grave featuring an extraordinary solo by Tognetti. Vivaldi’s Autumn then dashed in, offering boisterous counter-juxtaposition. Tognetti’s portrayal of the drunkard was marvellously off-kilter. The ‘hunt’ finale called for some dangerous pizzicati gunfire leading to the witty cadenza mourning the death of the poor victim. A charming, delicate Marcello Andante, featuring Neal Peres da Costa on sprightly chamber organ, and Tawadros’ haunting, moving tribute piece Point of Departure led us into Vivaldi’s brisk Winter. There were shades of Ligeti in this interpretation , so bitter was the ACO’s representation of Vivaldi’s shivering frost. Pizzicati was used to indicate recovering by a warm fire before a flurried final movement brought the Vivaldi to a splendid conclusion. After this it was left to Tawadros’s exotic rock-infused Constantinople to keep things flourishing , leading to a blistering, thrilling finish. There was a well deserved, ecstatic, cheering standing ovation at the end Running time – just over two hours including one interval. The ACO and the Tawadros brothers are touring The Four Seasons nationally, playing various venues, until February 23 , various dates and venues.