US based Aussie virtuoso pianist Lisa Moore irons out bugs for her return concert
New York-based Australian pianist Lisa Moore made a welcome return to Sydney with works inspired by insects, birds and nature.
Steve Moffatt, Daily Telegraph, Sydney
New York-based Australian pianist Lisa Moore performing in Sydney Opera House’s Utzon Room. Picture: Cassandra Hannagan
Described as the “visionary queen of avant-garde piano”, New York-based Australian pianist Lisa Moore made a welcome return to Sydney with a program of works inspired by insects, birds and landscapes for the latest in the Utzon Music series at Sydney Opera House.
The 60-minute concert neatly melded mainstream composers Robert Schumann, Leos Janacek, Bela Bartok and Alexander Scriabin with contemporary works from the US and Australia, including two works by Sydney composer Elena Kats-Chernin.
Three delicious miniatures from Schumann’s Forest Scenes set – Friendly Landscape, Lonely Flowers and Bird as Prophet – opened the recital and Moore’s meticulous control and storytelling ability were immediately apparent.
Her informal stage manner was also a feature as she introduced the works, making for an intimate and inclusive afternoon in the packed out 200-seat Utzon Room with its wall to wall views of the harbour.
The Russian Scriabin said: “Insects are born from the sun – they are the kisses of the sun”. Those words inspired Moore’s new program which culminated in a performance of Scriabin’s Insects piano sonata.
American composer Meadow Bridgham was inspired by the remarkable life cycle of the cicada for their piece, Seventeen Years, written for Moore. This virtuosic work, given its Sydney premiere here, harks back to the language of the Romantics – plenty of hints of Rachmaninov in the great sweeping arpeggios – as well as using the endlessly shifting chord progressions of minimalist composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich, both of whom Moore has worked with. Glass’s Metamorphosis II – inspired by Franz Kafka’s novel in which the hero wakes up as a cockroach – featured later in the recital.
Bartok’s humorous Diary of a Fly from his massive collection of teaching pieces Microkosmos provided some light relief as the hero buzzes around bumping into things and finally expires after two minutes.
Moore’s poetic, lyrical side was to the fore in three extracts from Janacek’s radiant piano cycle On An Overgrown Path in which swallows chattered and a barn owl refuses to leave the premises with its persistent woo-oo twit woo.
American composer Martin Bresnick introduces his work in the Utzon Room. Picture: Cassandra Hannagan
Two of the composers were in the audience and introduced their pieces. Martin Bresnick was born in New York’s Bronx and the loss of native language from his fractured Jewish-European family heritage persuaded him to compose Ishi’s Song, a “little reliquary” for the last known member of the Native American Yahi people. He walked out of the California wilderness in 1911 and caused a sensation.
Bresnick’s piece opens with a sung transcription in Yahi taken from a recording Ishi made. Written in the vein of Glass and the minimalists, the sequences are built around a repeated note and it was fascinating to watch Moore’s shifting hand positions and fingering to accomplish this.
Kats-Chernin introduced her works, Butterflying – written for the opening ceremony of the 2003 Rugby World Cup in Australia – and Moth Eaten Rag, originally composed for piano and clarinet but here given its world premiere as a solo piano arrangement. She explained that when her family left the Soviet Union in 1975 they couldn’t take much with them, but they couldn’t leave behind their beautifully woven bed linen which was put in a cupboard in their new home. Years passed and by the time she opened the cupboard the moths had done their worst. The holes in the linen are represented by frequent high notes and trills.
Trills and dense harmonies were very much the language of the final work on the program, Scriabin’s Sonata No. 10, known as “Insects”. The dazzling shifts in this work come with a high degree of difficulty, but the Canberra born Moore carried it off with seamless aplomb.