Sydney Youth Orchestra pays tribute to Richard Gill

The music world has been celebrating the life of Sydney conductor Richard Gill who died in October and the Sydney Youth Orchestra has paid a fitting farewell.

Richard Gill, who died in October, was farewelled by Sydney Youth Orchestra in their latest concert.

• Barenboim’s Brahms balm
• Mixed bag of Beethoven
• Mahler from the top shelf
• Song and dance man Bill Murray

The music world has been celebrating the life of Sydney conductor, composer and educator Richard Gill since he died in October and this week it was the turn of Sydney Youth Orchestra to farewell the much-loved musician with a tribute concert of music by Richard Strauss.

Gill’s career was launched 40 years ago in the Conservatorium’s Verbrugghen Hall when he was chief conductor of the SYO, so this was an evening of special relevance.

Under its present chief conductor Alexander Briger, this orchestra is not afraid to tackle the big works — they recently gave a magnificent performance of Bruckner’s massive Eighth Symphony — and they play with maturity well beyond their years. Close your eyes and you could be listening to a fully-fledged professional symphony orchestra.

This program was no exception to Briger’s ambitious rule — in fact in some ways it was even more challenging than previous concerts, combining as it did one of Strauss’s showpiece tone poems with his valedictory Four Last Songs and three excepts from his big-hit opera Der Rosenkavalier.

As Briger said in a short address before the final work, the inclusion of opera was a first for many of the members of the SYO and was a genre particularly close to Gill’s heart. He headed up Victorian Opera for seven years.

EROTIC

The program started with Strauss’s first tone poem, the erotically charged Don Juan. This was a near-perfect performance with Briger keen to show off his star woodwind and brass sections.

Concertmaster Marcus Michelsen led from the front with some fine fiddle solos and principal oboe Miriam Cooney deserved her ovation. The all-important horn section — Strauss’s father played the instrument and it always features large in his music — was in superb form, led by Andrew London.

Barker has lost nothing of her dazzling technique, excellent diction and radiant timbre

The Four Last Songs saw Cheryl Barker’s welcome return to a Sydney stage after too long an absence. Hers was a compelling and moving reading of the composer’s farewell to music, dedicated to his soprano wife Pauline.

At 58 Barker has lost nothing of her dazzling technique, excellent diction and radiant timbre. These four settings of poems by Hermann Hesse and Joseph von Eichendorff exploit the singer’s range and control to the full and Barker was more than equal to the task.

Alexander Briger conducted Sydney Youth Orchestra’s program of music by Richard Strauss.

The SYO again were in fine form with Briger bringing them to a spine-tingling climax in the third song, On Going to Sleep, “sleep” meaning death in this case.

The evening closed with three magnificently sung excerpts from Der Rosenkavalier, featuring a long duet between Sophie (soprano Emma Pearson) and Octavian (French mezzo Caroline Meng) before Barker as the Marschallin joined them in the wonderful trio.

Barker’s husband, baritone Peter Coleman-Wright, made a brief appearance as Baron Ochs to bring the concert to a close.

DETAILS

● CONCERT: Sydney Youth Orchestras

● WHERE: Verbrugghen Hall, Conservatorium

● WHEN: Saturday, December 8