Music / Night and Now, Canberra Symphony Orchestra at Llewellyn Hall, March 27.  Reviewed by MICHAEL WILSON.

Conductor Jessica Cottis is not short of ambition in programming a concert marrying works by American composer Charles Ives and Australia’s beloved Elena Kats-Chernin with Tchaikovsky’s final symphony No 6 (Pathétique, or impassioned). 

With great confidence, and taking the Canberra Symphony Orchestra through its full range and capabilities, this concert was a gripping journey, and an absolute triumph.

While she has strong local roots, Cottis has become a seriously respected international conductor, dividing her time between Stockholm and London and conducting all over Europe and North America. 

She is commanding but easy in her style, giving a sense that she and the orchestra could tackle anything. Her right hand gives a clear beat, while her left tells the orchestra what mood she wants and gives key entries. A lightness and athleticism on the podium gives dynamic cues.

Charles Ives’ playful The Unanswered Question began the program, with the routines of life depicted precisely by the strings starting at their quietist possible volume – like spider webs ebbing in a light breeze – growing into an adventurous discordant challenge to musical orthodoxy. A final brass call from the rear balcony then hangs in the air, giving a sense of something unfinished. For those not fond of Ives, they only needed to sit through six minutes of him.

Kats-Chernin’s Flute Concerto Night and Now was commissioned by Sally Walker in 2014, and Walker joined the orchestra as soloist to reprise the work.

It’s simply a delight to watch in performance, beginning in a solemn mood, the flute line almost independent of the orchestral scoring, serenading a textured and full sound from strings and woodwind. 

Walker then easily executed technically very complex birdlike runs, and passages where the solo flute interacts first with solo piccolo and then solo violin, singing to each other.

Then the allegro passage transforms the orchestra into a giant concert band with jazzy, syncopated rhythms. Shifting gear into a solo flute recitative allowed Walker to display her technical mastery of the instrument, with trills, flutters, slurs and runs to the very top of its range.

A textured cinematic ending showcased all the strings with brass and percussion in a satisfying climax. That the composer was present to witness this performance added to the audience’s mood of celebration.

In one sense, Tchaikovsky’s masterwork symphony No 6 in B minor Op 74 wasn’t the anchor in the program that one might have expected. But because of the sheer spectacle, of course it was. 

The work’s historical context was explained engagingly by Cottis. Overshadowed and misinterpreted by the celebrated composer’s death only 12 days after its 1893 premiere, the symphony begins and ends in nothingness and exudes a darkness of character.

In the adagio, a bassoon solo introduces the strings, including fun, agile lines from violins and flute, leading into full orchestration in textbook romantic style. 

The allegro con grazia’s unusual 5/4 waltz surprises, but sets the scene for a tarantella and then a march in the third movement involving scales and arpeggios before a dramatic ending. Almost like a death scene from opera, the finale’s pervading melancholy drives through passages of resurgent energy, defiance, frailty, sentimentality, resignation and then peace: the double bass section finishing, alone, with diminishing plucked notes to total silence.  

This was a very polished and impassioned performance of a brilliantly curated set of works, which saw our CSO step up yet again to further extend its reputation.