The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Circa join forces for acrobatic display
By Kathy Evans
July 10, 2015 — 11.45pm
Voltaire once declared that French music was not "pleasing" to any other nation. It was "peculiar" and "monotonous", he said. Perhaps that attitude is the reason German and Italian composers snaffle the attention at most Baroque concerts.
But Paul Dyer, director of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, is giving the music a bit of a jolt. He has combined forces with Queensland-based circus, Circa, to put a shock into Gallic Baroque.
Violinist Simone Slattery with acrobat Freyja Edney. Credit:Glenn Hunt
On a stage bathed in artificial moonlight, renowned French soprano Claire Lefilliatre will sing of love and loss, sensuality and abandonment. While the orchestra plays music by the likes of Rameau, Marais and Lully, seven acrobats will emerge from the shadows, whirling above and around the singer, twisting themselves into visual representations of her dream-like state.
"Baroque music works best, like circus, when you get transported somewhere," says Yaron Lifschitz, Circa's artistic director, who worked closely with Dyer on the programme. "To do that, you have to activate the imagination of the audiences. We have created a Baroque fantasia."
The Brandenburg Orchestra has an adventurous heart. Recent escapades include a daring performance of Max Richter's homage to The Four Seasons, Recomposed, a work written for modern-day instruments which the orchestra played on period ones. Late last year, Dyer brought out a troupe of whirling dervishes from Turkey.
Are these experiments part if an attempt to address the decline in the number of young people attending classical concerts? An effort to attract a group who may be put off by the formality of the concert hall?
"As an artistic director, I like to offer different menus of different things," says Dyer. "Among the Brandenburg followers there are those who only like instrumental music and others who only like choirs, so what I try to do is offer a different range for people to hear. We are 21st-century Australians, so whilst we are adhering to the crafts of the 17th and 18th century, we are still fusing it with a modern-day look. And yes, let's hope that younger people come along."
The performance includes Rameau's Overture from Nais an opera-ballet that was the hallmark of the French Baroque, as well as his suite from Les Indes Galantes. Not much is known about Rameau, who was initially most famous as a musical scientist; he spent many decades writing a treatise on harmony. Even less is known of Sebastien Le Camus, viol player to young Louis XIV, whose exquisite air de cour, Laissez durer la nuit, is also featured.
Dyer laughs heartily at Voltaire's crisp dismissal of his countrymen's music-making skills; Dyer believes lack of accessibility is the real reason audiences have not heard a lot of French Baroque. "It's physically hard to come across," he says. "[It] has taken years of my life to actually find the music. I've searched in libraries all around the world."
Audiences have become accustomed to the likes of Handel, Vivaldi and Bach, but it is only in the last 20 years that their French counterparts have come to attention. But Dyer says French Baroque paved the way for good things – architecture, food, Chanel. "It created this idea of brilliance through style."
The opulence of the Palace of Versailles bears testament to this, as do the works of Italian-born Jean-Baptiste Lully, France's foremost Baroque composer and great friend of the Sun King.
The young acrobats of Circa have gained the attention of critics around the world with their distinctive signature style that explores emotional and philosophical states of mind, as well as pushing physical limits. This is circus with brains not just brawn, thanks to the guidance of Lifschitz, who has collaborated with the likes of France's Debussy Quartet and British Renaissance music specialists I Fagiolini on other projects.
"It is a great privilege to bring music to people who may never have heard it otherwise," Lifschitz says. "Our job is to engage with it and add something to the audience's understanding and perception of the music. With French Baroque, it tends towards beauty and ornateness rather than dramatics, so we can add a bit of drama and create a program where not only do people love the music but they are on the edge of their seats. There's probably not a lot of these types of concerts that they've been to before."
French Baroque with Circa is at Sydney's City Recital Hall from July 22-August 1 and at Melbourne's Recital Centre on July 25 and 26.
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