Limelight Magazine Review | "Tchaikovsky, Smetana and Sibelius (Sydney Concert Orchestra)"

The SCO returns with a triumphant showcase of fresh interpretation and the interplay between conductor and concertmaster.

4.5/5 Stars Review

by Jansson J. Antmann on 19 July, 2024| Click to Read More

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Over the past two years, Limelight has documented the rise of the Sydney Concert Orchestra and its penchant for programmatic music.

The Sydney Concert Orchestra with Director and Chief Conductor Omid Moheb Zadeh. Photo © Deppicto

The orchestra has proven a vital platform for Sydney Conservatorium alumni, spearheading the careers of its founding Director and Chief Conductor Omid Moheb Zadeh, Concertmaster David Carreon and Assistant Conductor Ben (Wenhao) Fan.

Moheb Zadeh recently returned from Germany, where he came second in the Berliner Symphoniker’s inaugural LWI (Learn & Win International) Conducting Competition.

Carreon, now based in Boston, is a Dean’s scholarship holder at the New England Conservatory, where he is currently completing his Master’s.

He was recently invited to undertake a music residency at Duke University, and he regularly performs as Concertmaster/Principal Violin with Ensemble Apex as well as the Atlantic Symphony and Australian Youth Orchestras.

Having Carreon back on these shores, albeit briefly, has presented Moheb Zadeh with the opportunity to curate a program that truly tests the strings of the SCO.

Culminating in Sibelius’ Second Symphony, it is a program riddled with opposing forces of love and hate, life and death.

It begins with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture – a symphonic poem that is right up Moheb Zadeh’s storytelling alley.

It’s all there: the feuding Montagues and Capulets and the impassioned encounters of the titular lovers. Their love theme has become something of cliché, but in Moheb Zadeh’s hands we hear it anew, a jubilant budding ecstasy as yet untainted by bitterness and disillusionment.

Trust a conductor in his twenties to awaken memories of first love in this writer’s ageing heart.

Beyond the sentimentality, however, Moheb Zadeh takes us on a thrill ride as he dangerously plays with rhythm and tempo, frequently drawing out phrases until they are heartbreakingly unbearable.

He extends moments like a rubber band stretched to breaking point, the adrenalin rush of the bounce back all the more exciting for it.

Of course, such slow playing can expose faulty intonation, but Carreon masterfully corrals his forces on his 1897 Adam Homolka violin, clearly enjoying every moment.

Concertmaster David Carreon with the Sydney Concert Orchestra. Photo © Deppicto

It is only in a safe pair of hands like Carreon’s that Moheb Zadeh’s risk-taking could pay off, and it does – their interplay a kind of musical symbiosis.

Likewise, Principal Flute Isabelle Ironside rises to the challenge with exceptional articulation in the slower passages that represent Juliet, while Principal Horn Bryn Arnolds and his fellow players give Romeo a rich, burnished voice.

Topping off the Fantasy Overture is the exquisite harp playing of Paul Nicolaou, who almost emerges as a featured soloist. Full marks to Moheb Zadeh for allowing the instrument to shine beyond the glissandos in the opening.

This prominence of the harp segues beautifully into Smetana’s Vltava(Die Moldau) under Ben (Wenhao) Fan, who takes the podium for the second work of the evening.

During the previous two concerts, Fan conducted his own compositions, A Quiet Mountain and From the Stars, in which he painted breathtaking symphonic poems.

Opting to tackle the holiest of holies in the Czech canon, Fan’s reading of Die Moldau pays homage to Berlioz and Wagner, both of whom greatly influenced their fellow Romantic Smetana.

We still experience the river’s flow through the Czech countryside, although the folk influence is underplayed, and a distinctly Germanic undertone emerges.

Once we get to the Svatojánské proudy (St. John’s rapids), Fan ramps up the bombast so it’s more Rhine than Moldau, Smetana’s orchestration almost dissected and its undulating layers exposed in all their glory.

Purists would no doubt grumble at Fan’s Wagnerian take, but for this writer, it is exhilarating to hear an orchestra of this size and vintage achieve a sound akin to the opening of Das Rheingoldor the end of Götterdämmerung.

Ben (Wenhao) Fan conducts the Sydney Concert Orchestra. Photo © Deppicto

Moheb Zadeh returns to conduct the second half of the concert, which is dedicated to Sibelius’s Second Symphony and sees Adrienne Hanslow take up Principal Flute duties in a reconfigured ensemble.

As in the Tchaikovsky, this is a work that relies on opposing forces. For those who subscribe to the composer’s insistence that it is pure music, this could be little more than light and shade.

If one adheres to Sibelius’s references to ‘Don Juan’ and ‘Christus’ when initially composing two motifs in the second movement, it’s about death and resurrection, and for his compatriots it’s about Finnish nationalism in the face of Tsarist Russification.

Some conductors struggle to free themselves of Sibelius’s earlier Finlandiaand wallow in nationalism, others Russify the entire work.

Moheb Zadeh straddles both, ensuring that we experience euphoria against a backdrop of ever-present danger, but not before he takes us to Rapallo where Sibelius began writing the symphony.

It opens like the soundtrack to a Merchant Ivory film, the winds and horns taking us to the Italian Riviera where they unite with the strings in an all-to-brief pastoral idyll.

Carreon then leads the violins in their plaintive cries against the ominous onslaught of the lower strings led by Principal Cello Joanne Hwang alongside Alisdair Guiney (who was principal for the Tchaikovsky and Smetana) and Principal Double Bass Michael McNamara.

Emily Wan beautifully executes the haunting ‘Don Juan’ theme on her bassoon in the second movement, while the military threat is magnified by the trumpets led by David Imlay and Oliver Osborne in the fourth.

Sibelius was a rhythmic master, and the Second Symphony presents constant challenges to any conductor.

Firmly holding onto the reins, Moheb Zadeh makes sense of the fourth movement’s patchwork quilt of motifs, especially the thrumming double basses which can sometimes fall out of step.

Not here. Moheb Zadeh maintains military precision throughout, triumphantly releasing the final D major chord into the heavens as he brings this superb reading of Sibelius’s Second Symphony to a rapturous close.