October 27 2024
The following article was accessed at https://limelight-arts.com.au/reviews/elgars-enigma-variations-sydney-symphony-orchestra/It is about a performance held in the Sydney Opera House on Oct 25 2024.
Elgar’s Enigma Variations (Nobuyuki Tsujii & Sydney Symphony Orchestra).
Nobuyuki Tsujii’s fireworks and some very personal Elgar bring the crowded house down.
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
Reviewed on 25 October, 2024
by Steve Moffatt on 27 October, 2024
Sydney Symphony’s latest concert was a triumph tinged with sadness, for it was to have marked the much-anticipated debut of eminent British conductor Sir Andrew Davis, who died in April.
Young Canadian conductor Nicolas Ellis stepped in to lead a program featuring exciting Japanese virtuoso Nobuyuki Tsujii in a performance of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 and Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations. As a moving bonus he added Davis’s orchestral arrangement of JS Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue, BWV582 as a starter.
Davis studied as an organ scholar so he brought a fresh eye to his arrangement of Bach’s keyboard masterpiece, his touch more nuanced and transparent and less romantic than the more familiar orchestration by Ottorino Respighi and Leopold Stokowski. He also chose interesting combinations of instruments – piccolo with xylophone, celesta with harp and oboe – for the intricate fugue section and Ellis, a protégé of Yannick Nézét-Séguin, held it all together with firm control.
It made for a fittingly joyful tribute to the former Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony who will always be fondly remembered for his celebratory handling of the Last Night of the Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall.
Since his sensational 2016 debut here playing Beethoven’s Piano concerto No. 3 under Vladimir Ashkenazy, Tsujii (Nobu) has established himself as the ultimate crowd-pleaser with his jet-propelled performances of the repertoire’s warhorses.
Blind from birth, 36-year-old Nobu learns works by ear, working from tapes made for him by assistants and memorising left and right hand parts separately, working out the fingering and marrying the two when he is satisfied. He listens to a conductor’s breathing to follow the entries and what the orchestra is doing.
For this tour he is tackling one of the toughest of all concertos in the notorious “Rach 3” and this was a rendition that brought the packed house to its feet. His intonation was on point, the energy levels were set to extremely high and his technique was close to faultless. There were passages where the piano got away from the orchestra slightly, but what the performance lacked in precise entries and total cohesion it more than made up for in energy and dynamism.
The long cadenza at the end of the first movement was a brilliant highlight – complemented nicely in the following passage by some fine horn, flute, clarinet and oboe moments. Nobu’s sudden violent flourish leading straight into the finale was like a firework going off.
After several curtain calls Ellis led Nobu back on stage for one of his favourite encore pieces, Frédéric Chopin’s Revolutionary Prélude.
The long cadenza at the end of the first movement was a brilliant highlight – complemented nicely in the following passage by some fine horn, flute, clarinet and oboe moments. Nobu’s sudden violent flourish leading straight into the finale was like a firework going off.
After several curtain calls Ellis led Nobu back on stage for one of his favourite encore pieces, Frédéric Chopin’s Revolutionary Prélude.
The SSO has a long association with Elgar’s music, especially under the tenure of Ashkenazy as Chief Conductor, and the Enigma Variations always draw the crowds (it was recently voted No. 8 in the ABC’s Classic 100: Feel Good list, beating his Cello Concerto into 16th place).
On a personal note this was a special occasion for me as my concert companion, a family friend, is directly descended from the composer and, although unfamiliar with his ancestor’s music, he had been looking forward to the occasion with infectious excitement.
He wasn’t to be disappointed by his first hearing of this most personal of all of Elgar’s works with its affectionate, occasionally less than kind, portraits of friends, himself and his wife and even a dog, using a theme – “enigma” as he called it – the origin of which has puzzled scholars and musicians ever since he wrote it 125 years ago.
Ellis kept the temperature just right for this multi-faceted work which builds to a blaze of glory at the end with the big orchestra underpinned by the mighty Opera House organ.
Magnificent.
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