Mandolin man Avi Avital is on a life’s mission
AVI Avital is doing for the mandolin what Andreas Segovia did for the classical guitar — lifting the instrument from being an occasional curiosity to a concert hall star.
The Standard
Don't miss out on the headlines from The Standard. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Charm helps carry the day
- Emperor gets the full Nelson
- Ragas for refugees
- Beethoven in the hands of a master
AVI Avital is doing for the mandolin what the great Spaniard Andreas Segovia did for the classical guitar — lifting the instrument from being an occasional curiosity into becoming a concert hall mainstream player.
He’s doing it by combining his own arrangements of Baroque and folk pieces written for the violin with works commissioned from contemporary composers to expand the limited repertoire. Apart from some works by Vivaldi and fleeting appearances in operas, there’s not a lot of serious music written for the eight-string member of the lute family, and putting that right is his life’s mission.
Judging by his debut tour for Musica Viva with the crack Giocoso String Quartet he’s doing a wonderful job of it with a program featuring two superb new pieces for this unusual line-up and a stunning take on a fiddler’s showcase in J.S. Bach’s Chaconne.
The Israeli mandolinist is one of the few classical musicians to have attracted a following more often associated with rock or sport stars.
INTIMATE
He’s young, good looking and an engaging performer and connects with the younger generation of concertgoers — much like Chinese pianist Lang Lang or Australian violinist Ray Chen — as well as the more conservative older listeners. On top of that he is a wonderful musician.
Sydney is used to hearing him with full orchestral backing from our excellent Australian Brandenburg band under director Paul Dyer, but for this tour we can enjoy him in a more intimate setting with the Giocoso, winners of the Musica Viva Australian Prize in the 2015 Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition.
Based in Vienna the quartet — violinists Sebastian Casleanu and Teofil Todica, Martha Windhagauer, viola, and Bas Jongen, cello — draw on members from Germany, Rumania and the Netherlands for their present line-up, which has been established since 2014.
They opened the program with Schumann’s string quartet No. 1 in a performance which combined elegance with energy, true intonation and a keen empathy both for each player and the intentions of the composer.
The finale has the quintet playing like a klezmer band with the women wailing as Orfeo defies the instruction don’t look back
After this magical 26 minutes of high Romance, with Schumann nodding in homage to Bach, Haydn and Beethoven, Avital came to the stage for the world premiere of Orfeo by high-profile Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin, who explained to the audience that the Greek legend about the musician and his wife Eurydice had become a passion for her since making an arrangement of Claudio Monteverdi’s opera The Coronation of Poppea for the producer Barrie Kosky.
Monteverdi was quoted in the joyful opening of this five-part work as Orfeo has a jam on the lute with his mates. This quickly turns to tragedy when Eurydice gets bitten by the snake with the mandolin weeping in its highest register over a mournful, yearning viola solo.
It gets lively and quirky when the multi-eyed giant Argus is evoked and this section with its fiery rhythms reminds one of Astor Piazzolla’s entertaining nuevo tango pieces. The finale has the quintet playing like a klezmer band with the women wailing as Orfeo defies the instruction “don’t look back” and Eurydice is sent back to the Underworld.
RIFFING
The new piece in the second half, Cymbeline by American-born David Bruce, one-time composer-in-residence for London’s Royal Opera House, is an equally satisfying tonal work wedding attractive melodic lines to strong rhythms for this combination of the bright “golden” sound of the mandolin and the warmer, richer tones of the quartet.
Cymbeline was a Celtic sun god and the piece is divided into three movements depicting sunrise, high noon and sunset, so it starts quietly and almost mystically, gets lively and passionate in the middle before a reflective, spiritual finale with the barely audible high tremolo of the mandolin signalling the sun’s disappearance over the horizon.
A highlight was the riffing of the mandolin and the plucked cello.
Before we heard that Avital gave his stunning arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne from the violin partita No.2. It’s not unusual to hear this piece played on another instrument — Busoni’s piano arrangement is part of the mainstream repertoire — but this reworking for the eight-string mandolin is an impressive party piece.
The instrument has little of the expressive range of the violin, however Avital’s deft use of plectrum instead of bow and amazingly accurate intonation on such a narrow and small fretboard left the audience in awe.
The concert is repeated at 7pm on Monday, April 9, at City Recital Hall Angel Place.
DETAILS
● CONCERT: Avi Avital and Giocoso String Quartet
● WHERE: City Recital Hall Angel Place
● WHEN: Saturday, April 7