Melvyn Tan returns for concert celebrating the City of Light

PIANIST Melvyn Tan made a welcome return to Sydney for a concert with the Australian Haydn Ensemble playing a Mozart concerto.

Singaporean pianist Melvyn Tan performed a Mozart concerto with the Australian Haydn Ensemble. Picture: Daniel Aarons

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The last few years in Paris before the aristocratic heads rolled after 1789 were enlightened times when it came to the arts.

Mozart and his mother spent a winter there — an unhappy one as is turned out as his mother died and he failed to crack the French market, apart from his well-received Paris Symphony No 31.

Haydn didn’t visit, but he was commissioned to write six symphonies for the Masons’ Loge Olympique Orchestra, one of which, No 85, was a favourite of the doomed queen Marie Antoinette and is nicknamed La Reine.

The works were commissioned by an extraordinary figure in Parisian culture, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the “mulatto” son of a plantation owner and his African slave Nanon, who rose through the ranks to become a top swordsman, violinist and composer.

These three men, and their relationship to the City of Light, formed the theme for the Australian Haydn Ensemble’s latest concert which saw the welcome return of Singaporean pianist Melvyn Tan.

BEATIFIC

He performed Mozart’s Piano concerto No.18, using a loaned fortepiano. The work was dedicated to the young blind pianist Maria Theresa von Paradis and its joyful first movement features the piano sparring with flute, oboes, bassoons and horns representing the birds and animals in a forest in springtime.

Directing from the keyboard Tan, a regular visitor here and a beatific figure with a ready smile, was on top form, alive to the darker hue of the variations in the second movement and the switch between cheerful and stormy in the finale.

Australian Haydn Ensemble leader and artistic director Skye McIntosh.

The concert opened with AHE leader Skye McIntosh directing the Australian premiere of the second symphony by Chevalier de Saint-Georges, its three short movements very much in the mould of his greater contemporaries and featuring some fine writing for strings, showing that he was after all a virtuoso violinist.

Haydn’s grand La Reine symphony featured the orchestra at their best. Tight ensemble work, excellent soloists and a general sense of the players enjoying themselves — as well as a colourful display of socks from some of the male string players — made this a particularly upbeat end to an enjoyable evening.

DETAILS

● CONCERT: Melvyn Tan with the Australian Haydn Ensemble

● WHERE: City Recital Hall Angel Place

● WHEN: Saturday, July 2