Review: Fine tribute to Haydn

Australian Classical Era Orchestra Government House Ballroom, January 15, review by William Yeoman

This year sees the 200th anniversary of the death of Joseph Haydn and to celebrate the occasion the Australian Classical Era Orchestra, which specialises in historically informed performances, presented two of Haydn’s orchestral masterworks, together with a selection of arias from the operas of his friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Directed from the violin by the ever-reliable Paul Wright, the ACEO began its concert with an account of Haydn’s Symphony No. 61 that grabbed the attention right from the opening Vivace and released it only in the closing moments of the gigue-like Prestissimo.

This was first-rate playing indeed, the finely balanced natural horns and well-drilled strings especially impressive.

London-based Australian soprano Kathryn McCusker then joined the orchestra on stage for two of Mozart’s best-loved arias, Aminta’s L’amero, saro costante from The Shepherd King and the Contessa’s Dove sono from The Marriage of Figaro.

This was exceptional singing, McCusker’s sweet, unforced tone effortlessly filling the hall without seeming too strongly contrasted with the more subtly projected sounds of the historic instruments.

This was even true in the second half of the concert, where McCusker’s considerable dramatic skills were on display in Donna Anna’s aria from Don Giovanni and Konstanze’s aria from Mozart’s Escape from the Seraglio.

In between these last two came Haydn’s delightful G major concerto for violin and strings, which gave Wright an opportunity to show off his own instrument’s singing tone as well as a digital dexterity fully at the service of a prodigious musicality.

If one were pressed to find any fault with this excellent concert, it might be in the occasionally ragged woodwind entries in the Haydn symphony and in the differences between McCusker and the orchestra in matters of vibrato and tone colour.

But that would just be splitting hairs.

With any performance, it’s the overall effect that matters, which in this case was like that of a well-executed water colour: an abundance of lightness and delicacy animated by a passionate commitment to truth.