Recorder queen Genevieve Lacey brings breath of fresh air to Sydney Festival

A Sydney Festival performance that aimed to turn our notion of a classical concert on its head featured Australia’s recorder queen Genevieve Lacey.

Genevieve Lacey and dancers performing in her Soliloquy concert at the Sydney Festival. Picture: Victor Frankowski

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A performance that aims to turn our notion of a classical concert on its head was the latest foray by Australia’s queen of the recorder Genevieve Lacey in a one-off show for Sydney Festival.

Soliloquy featured the 12 solo flute fantasias of Georg Philipp Telemann and Lacey was joined by dancer Stephanie Lake, resident choreographer of the Australian Ballet and artistic director of Stephanie Lake Company. Sharing the choreography honours offstage was Gideon Obarzanek, founder of the Chunky Move dance company.

The twist was Lacey and Lake were augmented by 30 untrained dancers who had only met each other that day and had only one afternoon to learn and rehearse their moves. It should be a recipe for disaster, but in fact it was carried off with barely a mistimed hitch.

Lacey first heard the fantasias as a teenager and years later she decided to learn one of them a month during a year-long residency. “I like their solitude. Climbing inside them, I could hear the workings of a brilliant mind,” she said.

It became personal for Lacey – a “soliloquy”, hence the title of the show. She went on to record them in 2018.

Each piece is around five minutes long, so playing them one after the other is enormously demanding on the soloist – rapid arpeggiated runs switching between registers are common, but Lacey delivered them all so seamlessly and freely that if you closed your eyes it was easy to imagine they were coming from the keyboard of a chamber organ.

Volunteer dancers performing in Genevieve Lacey's Soliloquy concert. Picture: Victor Frankowski

But you needed your eyes open for after the intricacies of the first fantasia Lake came on stage and, lying on her back with her head to the audience, performed a graceful ballet with her arms, perfectly synchronised with the music.

After that the volunteers entered through the audience and took up seats on the stepped stage behind Lacey. Lake whispered commands to those nearby, who passed them on to the others, and led the ensemble in more arm choreography, arms and hands entwining with each other like two kissing swans, creating wave effects, shaking or swaying or pointing in unison. The effect was impressive.

For another fantasia Lake sat behind Lacy, using her arms like a Hindu deity, while for the next one Lacey lay flat on her back, still managing the tricky runs and breathing with easy fluidity. The “dancers” meanwhile reclined in various poses of sleep.

One of the faster pieces livened things up with some party dancing and jigging while for yet another everyone processed off the side of the stage, led by Lacey as pied piper, only to go round the back of the stepped platform to emerge at the other side.

This was an enjoyable concert, but a little too long as after a while each piece seem to blend into the next. And there’s only so much that you can expect 30 untrained dancers to do, albeit what they did do they did very well.

SYDNEY FESTIVAL

• CONCERT Genevieve Lacey: Soliloquy

• WHERE City Recital Hall

• WHEN January 17, 2024