A part of history - and ain’t it grand

Friday September 29, 2006

By Helen Musa

Arts Editor

If you owned a one-of-a-kind German-crafted, 125 year old Rönisch Concert Grand Piano, you would naturally want to have it tested out by the finest pianists you could find.

MUSIC TO HIS EARS: Professor Larry Sitsky put the Rönisch grand piano through its paces at its new home 

at the ANU School of Music yesterday. Picture: GRAHAM TIDY

That was no problem for the ANU School of Music Keyboard Institute - it has quite a few to choose from.

In fact, the school’s master fortepianist and Canberran of the Year, Associate Professor Geoffrey Lancaster, was seen on ABC TV recently trying out the fine instrument, bought for the school with the help of the Department of Environment and Heritage’s National Cultural Heritage Account, and a contribution from Pioneer Electronics Australia.

But yesterday it was the turn of Professor Larry Sitsky, who put the Rönisch through its paces by performing demanding works by Anton Rubinstein, composed during the era in which the piano was made and exported to Australia.

In 1845, Carl Rönisch established a piano-making company in Dresden. By the time he died in 1892, Rönisch’s company was known as the Official Purveyor to the Courts of the King of Saxony, as well as the Courts of Spain and Russia.

The School of Music bought the instrument from a private citizen in Melbourne who feared that it would be sold to an overseas buyer. It was commissioned in the 1970s or early 1880s by Australia’s Nicholson and Co and was for a time the centrepiece of the display in the company’s Melbourne showroom.

The head of the School of Music, Associate Professor John Luxton, described the instrument as important part of Australia’s musical heritage.

He said the unique piano would continue to make history by being part of the education of the next generation of talented Australian pianists.

Tomorrow at 7.30pm in Llewellyn Hall, a talk by Professor Lancaster will proceed a performance of works my Rubinstein on the Rönisch by Larry Sitsky.

Bookings on 6275 2700 or www.canberraticketing.com.au

First published in The Canberra Times, September 29, 2006 

Album Review: SUBURBAN SONGBOOK - BOB EVANS, EMI 0946 3 69330 2 3, Reviewed by Tony Magee

This very aptly named album from Bob Evans captures the listener instantly with songs that are extremely well written, wonderfully varied in style and brilliantly performed.

It follows a pleasing current trend with some Australian singer-songwriters do deliver meaningful lyrics and say something relevant about society and relationships in a simple uncluttered musical style, well arranged and thoughtfully produced, not unlike the good old days of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, where a decent and meaningful country ballad stood proudly alongside a driving rock piece.

Bob Evans likes this eclectic mix of styles, combining a country feel with the rock and pop idiom. His voice is light and flexible, with good diction and range, all of which means you get to understand his lyrics and feel the emotion that he writes and sings about. He favours a slight 1960’s feel to his songs. Some tracks, for example – Nowhere Without You and Don’t Walk Alone - are reminiscent of the Beatles. At other times, Bob Dylan influences pop up. But there is the ever present and welcome 21^st century drive and lightness combined with a swinging ease of delivery. 

His instrumentations are varied as well. There is certainly an acoustic feel to the album which includes guitars, mandolins, double bass and harmonium, combined with a traditional rhythm section, however some tracks add brass, sometimes strings, country fiddle, slide guitar, sometimes rich vocal harmonies, at other times just the simple solo voice of Bob. In fact, the eight musicians on this album play thirty-four instruments between them! Bob Evans alone is responsible for lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, bells, claps, piano and mandolin.

I’d very much like to see and hear this band in concert sometime, so hopefully a tour is coming up. This is my first introduction to this artist, so I’ll certainly be looking forward to hearing more from the very talented and listenable Mr Bob Evans.

Tony’s rating: 4.5 stars

First published in Eat Drink Magazine, August 2006 and Our Hotel Magazine August 2006

Album Review: BIC RUNGA - Birds

SONY/BMG 82876811792

Review copy supplied by Abels Music, Canberra

Reviewed by Tony Magee

New Zealand singer songwriter Bic Runga has released her third album – Birds. Most interesting stuff.

Little hints of The Whitlams and even Al Stewart are evident in terms of vocal line style and melodic progressions. Even so, this is definitely a new sound and Bic presents here a mostly ethereal and reflective collection, all written by her. The structure of the songs is simple but there is an elegance of shape and form and nothing cluttered or over arranged. Mostly what one would call rock or pop ballads with one piece of old style blues thrown in, where you are suddenly sitting on someone’s front porch in 1930’s Mississippi. That track is called No Crying No More.

The album opens with a fairly bouncy number called Winning Arrow. Medium tempo pop. From then on it’s slow but thoughtful. One of the most appealing pieces for me is the title track, Birds. It is in a minor key and has a chord structure mostly centring around tonic and dominant. There is a distinct Middle Eastern feel to it in places. The middle section is beautifully orchestrated by Neil Finn and Tom Rainey giving a lush sweeping sound over which Bic soars with haunting vocals swoops and curves, rather like an eagle. I suppose that’s partly the point of it.

Neil Finn also appears on other tracks playing keyboards and backup vocals. It’s great to see and hear a modern album using real instruments, particularly when it would be oh-so-easy to just bring in a synth string sound – but no – all those lush violins and other strings are real instruments and all the players are credited. There is also harp and French horn as well as the usual rock and pop lineup. The arrangements throughout the album are all superb and really make it something quite special.

The recording quality is very good too, particularly the backup vocals, which are crisp and full, and superbly pitched by the singers. Bic herself has a voice which wafts sweetly and surely.

The booklet contains some superb photographic reproductions of birds by Fiona Pardington from her series “Future Beings” and also a reproduction of Kasimir Malevich’s 1913 oil on canvas, “Black Square”, for anyone interested in modern art.

This album represents excellent value for money, because you also get a second CD with five tracks recorded live at a Bic concert at the Civic Theatre, Auckland in Nov 2005 (although the album actually states Nov 2006 – but that’s yet to happen!!). This album grows on you. I think you will like it.

First published in Eat Drink Magazine, May 2006 and Our Hotel Magazine, May 2006

John Laurie : Shakespearean actor and Private Fraser in the BBC's Dads Army

John Laurie. Photo courtesy Media Storehouse

John Laurie was born 25 March 1897 in Dumfries and was destined to be an architect before the Great War intervened. He admitted that he never expected to survive the conflict; in fact, he was invalided out of the service and became a sergeant-of-arms at the Tower of London.

John Laurie was a Shakespearean actor between the wars.

In 1919 John Laurie’s passion for Shakespeare inspired him to become an actor and he established himself as a noted performer, playing all the great Shakespearean roles at the Old Vic before being enticed into the film world.

A young Laurie can be seen in The Thirty Nine Steps (1935) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, which starred Robert Donat; many other films followed. 

Laurie served in the Home Guard during the Second World War and enlisted in the ranks of Dad’s Army in 1968, just when he was considering retirement. In his portrayal of Private Fraser, Laurie cornered the market in the role of the cantankerous elderly Scot.

Throughout the series, Laurie remained hale, hearty and apparently ageless. He remained sceptical about the worth of the series, reminding people of his dramatic Shakespearean roots. His famous phrase ‘We’re all doomed’ was almost created by him, after the writers of the show, David Perry and Jimmy Croft, heard him complaining once more about some facet of the show being doomed to failure!

John Laurie, yet one more of those courageous servicemen from the First World War who became actors, contracted emphysema which complicated a lung ailment and he died on 23 June 1980 at Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire.

[This short profile of the actor John Laurie first appeared in a piece by Mark Bristow titled 'Seven British Actors Who Served during the Great War'. It appeared in Firestep Vol.7. No.1 - The Western Front Association London Branch magazine, all volumes of which are available for access by members using their member login].

Published at The Western Front Association, Firestep Vol. 7, No. 1, May 2006.

Arnold Ridley aka Private Godfrey of Dad's Army

Arnold Ridley joined the Army in 1915 and went on to experience the horrors of trench warfare
Photo courtesy BBC News

By Mark Bristow

Arnold Ridley, born 7 January 1896 in Bath, Somerset, initially aspired to become a school teacher but briefly joined a theatre company in 1914. As with so many others, Arnold Ridley’s plans were turned on their head by the advent of War; Arnold was involved in at least one pretty grim front line struggle and sustained a severe head injury from the butt of a German rifle. This caused him to suffer blackout and he was invalided out of the army in 1917. After employment in his father’s boot-shop, unsure he could ever act again, wrote his first play, which was rejected despite an approach to a London theatrical producer. 

In 1925, whilst enduring a four-hour delay on a train journey from the Midlands, Ridley found himself stranded on the deserted station at Mangotsfield; it was here that he first conceived of the idea for The Ghost Train. He completed the play in the next seven days and it became a huge success when it was staged at the St Martin’s Lane Theatre in London, spellbinding its audiences. It told the story of a group of passengers stranded at night in an isolated station at Fal Vale in Cornwall, where they were terrorised by a phantom train. It was in the time a technically daring play to produce for the stage, the sounds of the train had to be improvised from drums, thunder-sheets, a cylinder of compressed air, and even a garden-roller. It ran for 600 performances, and so began Arnold Ridley’s writing career. The play was filmed several times, and in different countries. Other successful plays followed throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

With the outbreak of the Second World War Arnold selflessly re-enlisted in the Army. He was subsequently sent to France, only to suffer from shell-shock during the evacuation of the BEF, to the possible exacerbation of his old wounds. 

Invalided out of the army once again, Arnold utilised his talents by joining ENSA. After the war he had the opportunity of directing one of his plays which prompted him to take up acting again.

During the 1960s and 70s Arnold played often as the archetypal kind and gentle old man. He also featured in the popular radio series The Archers and appeared regularly in both Coronation Street and Crossroads, before in 1968 landing the role for which he is so fondly remembered today. He served, with much distinction as Private Godfrey in Dad’s Army until the show’s final episode in 1977. Arnold Ridley was awarded the OBE for services to the theatre in the 1982 New Year’s Honours list. By then suffering from very bad health, he died 12th March 1984 age 88.

Arnold Ridley as Private Godfrey in Dad's Army

[This short profile of the actor and playwright Arnold Ridley first appeared in a piece by Mark Bristow titled 'Seven British Actors Who Served during the Great War'. It appeared in Firestep Vol.7. No.1 The Western Front Association London Branch magazine, all volumes of which are available for access by members using their member login].

Published at The Western Front Association, Firestep Vol. 7, No. 1, May 2006.

Link to Firestep Magazine here.

Album review: ELENA KATS-CHERNIN - Wild Swans

ABC Classics 476 7639

Review copy supplied by Abels Music, Canberra

Reviewed by Tony Magee

Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin composed the music for the ballet Wild Swans, which was choreographed by Meryl Tankard for the Australian Ballet, in 2003. Here, it is presented on this excellent CD, along with her Piano Concerto No. 2 and a single movement piece called Mythic.

The score for Wild Swans – a suite in 12 movements -  is wonderful, magical, a whirlwind of haunting drama, mysticism, witchcraft and sorcery. Based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen, the young girl Eliza is driven from her home by her wicked step-mother, who turns her eleven brothers into wild swans.

Kats-Chernin’s score captures perfectly the fairytale world of the story. The power of music to evoke images has always been one of the great wonders of the arts and when it’s well written, like this piece is, the images can be very striking and vivid. Perhaps the most beautiful part is the representation of Eliza, bereft of words, by a single wordless soprano voice set amongst the instruments of the Tasmanian Symphony, ably delivered by Jane Sheldon.

The Piano Concerto No. 2 is played by Australian pianist and composer Ian Munro. It is a lyrical and melodic work, with a particularly atmospheric and reflective opening. The second movement uses fragments from Chopin’s waltzes to create a blues-like interlude. The third is powerful and discordant. The fourth uses a repeating phrase format to build musical surges. It is a glowing work and full of so many musical ideas, twists and turns, that it is amazing to think that all this is packed into one work.

Finally, Mythic is a rather more sombre piece, but with plenty of drama along the way, and makes full use of the excellent musicians of this fine orchestra.

First published in Eat Drink Magazine and Our Hotel Magazine, March 2006

Obituary: Gery Scott - Lives in Brief - The Times

Edition 1WCMON, 13 FEB 2006, Page 55

Gery Scott;Lives in brief;Obituary;The Register

FEATURES

Gery Scott, jazz and cabaret singer, was born on October 5, 1923. She died on December 14, 2005, aged 82.

Although Gery Scott became well-known to British audiences during the latter part of the Second World War, when she sang regularly at the BBC with Harry Gold’s Pieces of Eight, and the band led by guitarist Vic Lewis, she achieved most of her fame outside the UK.

Born Dianne Geraldine Whitburn in Bombay, she first recorded in Calcutta for the Indian branch of Columbia before coming to England in 1943. After the war she made headlines in the former Eastern bloc. Signed to the Supraphon label in Czechoslovakia, she sold several million records in the communist world throughout the 1950s, with bands led by local arranger Gustav Brom, and by her second husband, Igo Fischer. She toured the Soviet Union and was invited to sing the jazz anthem, How High the Moon, at the Kiev Opera House to celebrate the launch of Sputnik 1.

Scott moved to London in the early 1960s, where George Martin signed her to Parlophone. In 1980 she decided to settle in Australia, where she remained after the murder of her third husband, the oil magnate Tony Diamond. Her final appearances were in Canberra in October last year.

First published in The Times, February 13, 2006