ACO’s Bill Henson-Richard Tognetti show Luminous with Lior still shines on

ACO leader Richard Tognetti and controversial photographer Bill Henson have revived their Luminous collaboration for a third outing. So how does it stack up after 14 years?

Richard Tognetti (left) and singer Lior and the Australian Chamber Orchestra performing in Luminous. Picture: Julian Kingma

• A night of some great Britten
• The Lang Lang effect
• Is this the new voice of a generation
• From Sufjan to Szymanowski

The answer is pretty well. It is equally engrossing and thought-provoking in its latest guise, which features Israeli-born Australian singer-songwriter Lior Attar.

I saw the concert at its launch in 2005 with cabaret singer Paul Capsis replacing Katie Noonan, who had pulled out of the project.

It made a huge impact then, Capsis’s falsetto bringing a childlike innocence to Benjamin Britten’s Corpus Christi Carol and Tognetti’s Australian premiere performance of Latvian composer Peteris Vasks’ Distant Light violin concerto a spectacular highlight.

Tognetti and Henson revived Luminous for the ACO’s 2009 season — this time with Noonan — in the wake of Henson’s works being seized in a police raid on a Sydney gallery. There were accusations that they contained child pornography with the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd weighing into the debate, saying he thought the photographs were “revolting”.

Ten years later the controversy may have died down but the marriage of music and image is still as relevant. Tognetti has made some small adjustments to the musical program — gone is the God Music from George Crumb’s Black Angels and the vocal arrangement of Astor Piazzola’s Oblivion, in is Purcell’s remarkable “frost” aria What Power are you? from King Arthur.

GHOSTLY

This song challenged Lior more than the Britten carol, REM’s I’ve Been High and Gabriel Yared’s The Talented Mr Ripley: Lullaby for Cain, but his lovely falsetto gave it a good shot.

Alfred Schnittke’s Trio Sonata — a fusion of “modern” and retro classical music styles — formed the backbone of the first half and Tognetti reprised his performance of the Vasks with its ghostly string choir passages interwoven with virtuosic double stopping, runs and long cadenzas.

A 2014 documentary revealed Henson as a loner fascinated by adolescence and nocturnal suburban ``dreamscapes’’. As a child he didn’t play — there was always too much to be done or made — but when asked about those notorious nude photographs it’s the ``incongruity and unworldliness’’ of youth that interests him.

But, although beautiful and ambiguous, they are also slightly disturbing. The subjects have a fragility which, as Tognetti says, makes you want to comfort ``and also somehow be with them’’.

How to give these works ``a voice’’ was a lengthy and intricate process of filming the pictures and fitting them with a soundtrack that follows the light and darkness of Henson’s Caravaggio-like images.

For the non-human subjects — rows of distant houses, dark leafy glades, dramatic night skies, railway tracks and power lines - the ``sound sculptures’’ of composer Paul Healy worked particularly well.

If there is a criticism, perhaps the program could do with more of these haunting portraits and untitled landscapes.

The concert is repeated at City Recital Hall, Angel Place, on Tuesday, August 20, at 8pm; Wednesday, August 21, at 7pm, and Friday, August 23, at 1.30pm.

DETAILS

● CONCERT: ACO Luminous

● WHERE: City Recital Hall Angel Place

● WHEN: Saturday, August 17