This past Sunday was absolutely the highlight of the Sydney Festival for Pickle and me. The city sponsored Symphony in the Domain, a free evening of classical music under the stars, provided by the Sydney Symphony. I'd been looking forward to this performance since I first read about it. We headed down to the train station, tapped on, and, as we waited for our train, I noted that the schedule we'd referenced to plan our trip was for Friday (woops). |
After reconfiguring, it was going to take us well in excess of 2 hours to make it to the Royal Botanic Gardens, where the concert was being held, including a painfully long time on the bus (toting lawn chairs). In addition, the forecast was reporting an 80% likelihood of rain just as the concert was to commence. To Pickle's slight dismay, my determination to attend the event could not be thwarted, and I devised a back-up plan. We tapped off, hopped in the car, and drove in to Sydney Olympic Park, where we'd previously noted an anomalous amount of free parking for the city. When we arrived, after Pickle took juuuuust short of forever to parallel park (but props to him for doing it on the wrong side of the road in the wrong side of the car!), we noted a 2 hour parking limit on the spaces. With the time ticking down, we were faced with chancing a hefty parking fine, spending half our life savings on a car park, giving up....OR coming up with another plan. So, after pausing for a moment for Pickle to bask in the glory of his parking feat, we zipped over to the next station, caught the train, and arrived just in time for the concert.
The clouds were looking a bit ominous as we arrived, but our tardiness was our good fortune, as we chose seats in the peripherals under some thick trees. Our view was great (far closer than the photo above, which I just shot for perspective), and provided some shelter from potential rain. It also provided awesome pre-show entertainment of the flying foxes as they coasted about and hung from the fruit trees around us! Pickle is so tired of me pointing them out (every 2.7 seconds), but I can't get enough of them. They look like small-scale pterodactyls (which I only mention every other time I spot one). I didn't take any this time, but hopefully I'll get some good pics to share at some point.
Prior to the performance, several individuals, including His Excellency General The Honourable Governor of New South Wales and The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of Sydney (they have sliiiiiiiightly grander titles for their politicians here), welcomed the crowd. An aboriginal smoking ceremony preceded the performance as well, which honored the indigenous people of Sydney and across Australia.
The performance was outstanding. The lineup included two pieces that featured award-winning composer and didgeridoo player William Barton. They opened with Barton's 'Birdsong at Dusk', followed by Peter Sculthorpe’s 'Beethoven Variations' for Didgeridoo and Orchestra'. I captured some of the latter in the video below. I really enjoyed Barton's piece. 'Variations' had its moments - at times, it came across as a little school ensemble arrangement-ish to me, though I attribute this to my aversion to the tragically overplayed 'Ode to Joy,' of which there were innumerable references and permutations. Sadly, as a former band director, I suffer from (P)ost (T)raumatic (S)tring (D)isorder, and cannot hear the melody without terrible flashbacks to elementary orchestra concerts. The further it deviated, the more I enjoyed it, though. Here's a bit of the end of the piece...
Having never played the didgeridoo (from sheet music) or conducted a piece scored for the instrument, I wondered how the notation would look, as I assumed that most traditional music for the instrument is
passed down by rote. I managed to locate a sample of the score from the Australian Music Centre. I've provided this here for likeminded band geeks. |
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The second half, which included Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 and Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture proved to be Pickle's favorite. He was "ok" with the first two pieces featuring didgeridoo, but noted that they were less approachable (and that he "liked the 'Ode to Joy' parts, but it might have been more appealing without the wild monkey sound effects"). He was seriously psyched to hear his first live performance of Beethoven's 5th, his "favorite Beethoven symphony"! It was a great night. I kept pausing to let it sink in that I was at a Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert IN Sydney where I live now. Grateful to be lovin' life :) Here's a bit of the grande finale...