Pianist Mark Isaacs rises to the occasion

There is no denying Mark Isaacs’s mastery of the piano and the great intelligence underpinning his music.

Mark Isaacs’s music deserves a deeper listening experience

I can remember a time when the choice between watching Nick Kyrgios at the Australian Open and attending a Mark Isaacs concert would have been agonising. Thankfully, today’s technology means one can do both.

Having said that, I wish I could have recorded Isaacs’s performance on Sunday night and listened to it later. With extemporised music as complicated as this, involving an amalgam of influences — chiefly from classical music, with occasional tinges of jazz — it’s difficult for the listener to experience more than the surface at once. The deeper meanings which might emerge once the music has germinated in one’s mind are not available.

Still, I was faced with the music I heard, and had mixed feelings about it. There is no denying Isaacs’s mastery of the piano, the great intelligence underpinning his music and the courage to trust his imagination.

Isaacs says that, at this sort of performance, he is composing for piano in real time. If so, I do not believe that most of these pieces would stand up as individual works. An exception was the fourth piece in his second set that began with a melody accompanied by sparse notes in the left hand. It was so beautiful that it could have been a children’s song or a jazz ballad.

Isaacs retained its exquisite mood to the end, despite the distraction of trains rumbling past. Otherwise what’s been described as his “ferocious intensity” was predominant. He would open gently, then transform the music with restless energy, usually resulting in thunderous octaves or chords in the left hand with rippling runs or arpeggios in the right hand. A similar trajectory was adopted repeatedly, culminating in two-fisted attacks in almost every piece. This created an inevitable sameness, and much of it uncomfortably loud. A more perceptive critic than me might have seen merit in this approach.

Isaacs is such a celebrated figure in Australian music that I was expecting a more relaxed and urbane performance. A warmer audience may have pushed him in that direction and galvanised the music. But the conditions did not favour him. The constant train noise was a distraction, while a tense, rather self-conscious atmosphere in the venue prevailed throughout.

Mark Isaacs, at the Camelot Lounge, Sydney, January 21.