The Hermit of Green Light | Adelaide Festival 2021 review

Actor John Gaden recited Michael Dransfield’s short and curious poem to a setting by Australian composer Ross Edwards.

Actor John Gaden recited Michael Dransfield’s poem The Hermit of Green Light to a setting by composer Ross Edwards. Picture: Hollie Adams/The Australian

The hermit of green light

Classical Music / AUS

FESTIVAL

UKARIA Cultural Centre

March 6

Auspicious performances of two out-and-out masterpieces began the second Chamber Landscapes concert for day two.

Margaret Sutherland’s String Quartet No. 3 from 1967 is still too-seldom performed, but an account as persuasive as that from the Flinders Quartet will go some way towards putting that to rights. It’s a fascinating work, not especially easy listening, but with enough internal interest – some jazzy rhythms, and a propulsive feel towards the end – to keep the audience engaged.

Peter Maxwell Davies’ Ave Maris Stella, on the other hand, is hard work. But oh, it is so richly rewarding to make the effort.

A work like this benefits enormously from an intimate venue like UKARIA, where you can be just a few paces away from the musicians. That way you are truly involved. Including, alas, the person whose phone went off, thus ruining the recording.

A short and curious poem, The Hermit of Green Light, by the prolific but short-lived Australian Michael Dransfield, was recited with great style by John Gaden. Composer Ross Edwards set this piece some years ago, so it was an apt introduction to a recently revised version of his 2015 Bright Birds and Sorrows for soprano saxophone and string quartet. This is a fine piece, unmistakably Edwards from the get-go, with its diverting rhythms and transparent writing for strings.

On, then, to that misunderstood genius Percy Grainger, who deserves to be known for so much more than Country Gardens. The Lonely Desert-Man Sees the Tents of the Happy Tribes (how’s that for a title?) for saxophone and piano is a curious piece, sounding a lot like Grainger at the start with its shimmering piano (Jacob Abela) but less so in a duet (with Michael Duke, soprano saxophone) that follows.

There’s no doubt about it, though, in the irresistible The Immovable Do (or The Ciphering C) in an arrangement for seven saxophones – Grainger’s beloved “elastic scoring” – with Flinders cellist Zoe Knighton, no less, sustaining the eponymous note for the piece’s five splendid minutes.

Grainger’s love of Bach and medieval music is well documented in innumerable arrangements. The Prelude and Fugue in D major BWV874 and English consort music, again for masses saxophones, were simply delightful.

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