Leanne Kenneally singing Strauss’ Four Last songs with the Queensland Youth Symphony
Concert review
Queensland Youth Symphony: Inner Worlds
Saturday 28 May, 2022, 7:00pm
QPAC Concert HalL
On Saturday 28th May, the Queensland Youth Symphony presented “Inner Worlds”, a program that featured the newly commissioned Present, Past, Future by Nicole Murphy and the ingenious pairing of two works by Richard Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra and the Four Last Songs.
Nicole Murphy’s Present, Past, Future is a triptych of works that take inspiration from poems by Antigone Kefala and Richard James Allen. Fittingly, for a work commissioned for a youth orchestra and written as the pandemic warped our collective sense of the passage of time, the poems selected by Murphy explore the themes of youth, the nature of time, and hope.
Based on Kefala’s In the bus, the first movement Present opened with plaintive cello, warm winds, and pointillistic textures from the harp and glockenspiel. The horns showed wonderful control and restraint, providing the foundations for a glorious unfurling of sound reminiscent of Debussy or Ravel’s symphonic sunrises.
The second movement, Past, is in turn inspired by Richard James Allen’s The Road to Utopia. The poem is a series of increasingly absurd instructions to the reader that culminate in a cry of frustration, but Murphy takes a more measured approach, imbuing the movement with a steely energy akin to that of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. It’s a challenging movement that requires technical precision and conviction in its delivery, and both the orchestra and conductor Simon Hewett seemed to relish the demands of the music. The balance was superbly handled in the interplay between soloists and sections, although I would have liked to see the brass players match Milly Yip’s contrabassoon growls with more snarls of their own.
Darkness gives way to hope in the third movement, as Murphy draws once again on Kefala’s magical minimalism for inspiration in Future. It’s a “celebration of exuberant youthfulness and optimism for the future” that allows the string section to wear their hearts on their sleeves with yearning upward melodic leaps. Reflecting on my own experiences as a member of QYS over a decade ago, I can’t help but feel hopeful about the future as well. I don’t recall performing a single work by a female composer during my time in the orchestra, let alone a newly commissioned multi-movement work.
The orchestra continued to shine in the second half of the program; as the iconic opening fanfare of Strauss’ epic tone poem rang out and the upper strings commenced their deft left-hand gymnastics, the irrepressibility of the young musicians filled the hall. The viola section’s powerful sound was a notable testament to the legacy of QYO’s founder John Curro. The enigmatic ending of Zarathustra made for an elegant transition into the Four Last Songs, featuring soprano Leanne Kenneally. Concertmaster In Yi Chae’s solo in the third movement was a highlight, her rich violin tone providing a wonderful foil to Kenneally’s polished performance.
That evening, I left the hall feeling buoyed by the brilliant performance by the orchestra, and optimistic about the future of orchestral music in this country. Given that the vast majority of Australian works commissioned or performed by Australian orchestras in the last decade are short works that can sit alongside a concerto or tone poem in the first half of a typical concert, I’m excited and incredibly proud to see QYO setting a brilliant example in both artistic vision and execution for Australian symphony orchestras to follow.
Flora Wong
