Cricket, concerts and a Christmas Down Under

By James Chater

Over the Christmas break, I was lucky enough to visit Perth, Australia. However, I was not so lucky in that my stay coincided with one of the worst Ashes defeats in history. Being half Australian, I have always found the vehement rivalry between Australia and England amusing. Propaganda-like ‘pom-bashing’ in KFC television commercials was an affirmation of that. However, for many, this rivalry is not a joke. In a place which seems to pride itself on being opposed to English culture in every way, then, I was intrigued by what an Australian classical music concert might look and sound like.

The concert took place in the enormous Perth Concert Hall, and the work was Handel’s Messiah, a true Christmas favourite. Although the performers stopped short of coming on to the stage in swimming trunks and sunglasses, there was undoubtedly a more relaxed and informal atmosphere to proceedings. When the doors opened to the audience half an hour prior to the scheduled start, the orchestra were already in their seats, although if anyone needed to make a late application of rosin or even go to the loo they would not hesitate to leave the stage. This may sound rather pernickety, but resulted in what at times looked like a rather hilarious game of musical chairs, made even more humorous by one musician who, when arriving back to the stage, actually did sit in the wrong seat and had to be asked to move by the violinist who was meant to be seated in the row in front of her.

The riveting game of musical chairs was interspersed with episodes of full orchestral practice (still whilst the audience was filing in), which meant that the audience became acutely aware of what movements the orchestra really did find the most tricky. One rebellious violist abstained from this last minute rehearsal, as he was engaged in what looked like an arduous practice session of the 24th Caprice by Paganini.

The 7pm start time edged ever closer, yet there was still no sign of a conductor, soloists or choir. Finally, an announcement over the intercom relayed the information that the harpsichordist was running 15 minutes late (I thought the rehearsal snippets sounded a bit bare) so the concert would start at 7.15pm. The voice on the intercom assured us it was traffic; my very English mother was utterly convinced he was “probably still surfing.” Sure enough, a few minutes later a rather distressed looking harpsichordist wandered onto the stage to finally bring to a close 40 minutes of musical chairs. I could go on, but I think the type of atmosphere is evident!

Whilst mulling these happenings over during the opening bars, I realised my thoughts all shared one thing in common; none were related to the actual music. Aghast, it suddenly dawned on me that perhaps I was exhibiting the fustiness that Australians seem convinced every Englishman harbours. This confirmed to me how important all the ‘trimmings’ of a concert have come to be in conventional classical music performance; the way the performers walk on and off the stage, what they wear, how they stand. But then what is conventional performance practice? Who is to say that what I saw in Australia was the wrong way of doing things?

Both Julia and Chris, in the past two weeks, have highlighted amongst many other things how when we go into a concert, we have a set of expectations as to what might happen; both musically and extra-musically. It is possible that, on this occasion, the ‘trimmings’ had become too great a part of my opinion of the evening before it had even started. So much so, that I had almost convinced myself the music was not going to be of a high quality, when really I had no reason to expect this at all. When the music did (eventually) start, the audience was treated to a great performance; the conductor was excellent, as were the soloists, and the choir were not only of a high quality but really looked like they loved the whole event. It was safe to say that my musical expectations had been far surpassed; interestingly enough, the ‘Australian’ Messiah was one of the best I have ever heard.

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