Review: Natsuko plays Beethoven with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
Concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto gave her farewell performance with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, a rousing return to the city’s musical life.
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It’s been a while between gigs. This concert could have been called The Return of the ASO – and we all fervently hope there will not be a sequel called The Virus Strikes Back.
The disruption to cultural life has been immense. With both the Governor and the Premier in attendance there was no mistaking the significance of this event as live music begins to splutter sporadically back to life.
Decades ago composer Pierre Boulez suggested all performances of Beethoven and the other classical greats should be subject to a moratorium of 50 years – because we take them too much for granted and we will appreciate them so much more when they come back.
Maybe he had a point – but it didn’t need 50 years, six months was enough. If we did take them for granted, we won’t be making that mistake again.
This was an abbreviated concert without an interval, and an abbreviated audience with the required distancing – but nonetheless, the largest indoor public gathering in South Australia since the pandemic began.
Dane Lam conducted the ASO, beginning with two hors d’oeuvres. First the Academic Festival Overture, in which Brahms treated academic pomposity with a touch of irony, suggesting that student days are more about drinking than studying, a tradition that has continued to the present – until it came to grinding halt when all the pubs shut.
Next was much-loved Moldau by Smetana – it’s popularity possibly enhanced by the theme’s close resemblance to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
Both works showed that the excellence of the orchestra has been undiminished by its enforced hiatus, but the main event was Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, with the departing concertmaster, Natsuko Yoshimoto, as soloist.
Her contribution to the orchestra’s development over the past decade has been tremendous, and this was a fitting tribute. There are many ways to approach this concerto, the most lyrical of all of Beethoven’s major works.
This performance emphasised its ethereal beauty, with subtlety, delicacy and even fragility at times. It takes complete mastery of the violin to play in this way.
The audience stood en masse at the end, a tribute to the soloist, and to the orchestra – and also probably a sign of the huge sense of hope and relief that we are moving a little closer to the musical life we once knew.
Natsuko plays Beethoven
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Dane Lam
Natsuko Yoshimoto, violin
Adelaide Festival Theatre, September 18 and 19