Virtuoso performance that surfs a timeless wave of music and film
The Reef/Tognetti
At home everywhere from the red-dust towns of the outback to the nightclubs of Manhattan, the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) challenges accepted formulae of classical concert-giving. So in the conventionally sedate surroundings of the Barbican’s Milton Court, where the ACO’s artistic director Richard Tognetti has been featured as a resident artist this season, something different was called for: behind the orchestra a giant sunrise was screened, in front of it Mark Atkins played his didgeridoo, summoning up one of the world’s oldest musical cultures.
Welcome to The Reef, Tognetti’s personal odyssey that attempts to unite his own two arts, music and surfing. Though the remaining two concerts of the residency are more routinely programmed – being the ACO, there will be no routine playing – this audio-visual project finds the orchestra simultaneously living up to the first part of its name and attracting wider audiences. As Jon Frank (who made the film alongside Mick Sowry) observes, classical audiences can be a little like Florida in their demographics. We’ve come a long way from Carl Orff and surf colliding in the Old Spice television advert; if it advertises anything, The Reef will be good news for the West Australian tourist board. Aerial shots of the desert, a reminder of the mesmerising effect of flying over Australia, give way to footage of everything from eagles to whales – and lots of waves. Tognetti calls surfing a “wondrous dance-art” and talks of its existential awe, which is, of course, something that music explores supremely well.
From Bach to Crumb, The Reef draws on timeless music used not so much as a soundtrack as sonic counterparts to the film’s nonnarrative imagery. Perhaps that is why Wojciech Kilar’s Orawa, inspired by the folk traditions of Poland’s Tatra mountains, works so well in a different geographical context. Highlights also include Rameau’s Suite des vents – the ACO’s fleet-footed playing no less virtuosic than the surfing it accompanies – and a movement from Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, delivered with taut attack.
In Rachmaninov’s Vocalise, Tognetti’s solo violin flowed to dreamlike effect, matching slow-motion footage. Tognetti’s own music here, in which Satu Vänskä exchanged her violin for vocals, ranges from ambient pop to aggressive, minimalist punk. For the closing sequence, back on terra firma, and finally looking up at the desert stars and into the abyss, only the Cavatina from Beethoven’s String Quartet Op 130 could have been mystical enough.