Review: WASO’s Baroque Brilliance at His Majesty’s Theatre

WASO’s Baroque Brilliance at His Majesty’s Theatre
Thursday, May 1, 2025

Although the WA Symphony has settled comfortably into its temporary Winthrop Hall home, the orchestra’s restless spirit sees it still on the move. No stranger to His Majesty’s Theatre, having performed there countless times with the WA Ballet and Opera, it is nonetheless a rare occasion to see the orchestra swarming the main stage, not cloistered away in the pit beneath. Last Thursday night was one such rarity when, under the direction of guest concertmaster Shaun Lee-Chen, WASO presented a brilliant program of eighteenth-century music.

Four Baroque composers were represented—two household names, Antonio Vivaldi and George Frideric Handel, and two lesser-known ones, Jean-Féry Rebel and Johan Georg Pisendel.

The orchestra was greatly reduced for the show. More chamber than symphony, there were eight violins, not the customary eighteen; four, not eight celli and violas; and one, sometimes two, not six double basses. The winds were limited to three each of horn and trumpet, two oboes and bassoons, and a flute, piccolo, cor anglais, and contrabassoon, while the whole was rounded out with timpani, percussion, and those essential baroque ingredients, a chamber organ and harpsichord. This deck was shuffled considerably in the course of the concert—no two pieces utilised the same orchestration.

The usual images that come to mind when we think of baroque music are courtly dances and golden landscapes portrayed in intricate figures and ornate curlicues. This is not always the case.

Jean-Féry Rebel’s Le Chaos, which opened the show, began with a crashing chord that utilised every note in the D minor scale. Some 170 years ahead of Schoenberg, the aptly named Rebel was already nudging onto the twelve-tone technique. Granted, his chaotic chord doesn’t ruffle the ear quite as angrily as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, but it makes a pretty good fist of it.

Until the chord came crashing back to end the piece, the music ascended into a more melodic, though still heavy, grandeur depicting the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. To achieve this, as Yvonne Frindle put it in her program note, “Rebel ‘enslaved himself’ (his phrase) to ‘received conventions’ of instrument colour and melodic gesture that his listeners would recognise.” In other words, he stepped back from the precipice onto the more stable ground his less adventurous audience was comfortable with.

Even so, it was a stirring start to the show. The full string contingent, with harpsichord, flutes and bassoons, depicted a darker view of the cosmos, more modernist than the typical 18th-century harmony of the spheres.

A shuffle of wind players leaving the stage heralded the start of the second piece, Vivaldi’s In wrath and most just anger. The silence that followed their exit was broken by rapturous applause as soprano Sara MacIiver, the darling of the Australian opera circuit, swept onto the stage. She cut a striking figure, her vivid silk gown matching precisely the sunset hues projected onto the baffle boards above the stage. Her soaring voice brought the strings and harpsichord into sharp focus.

The piece began with a typically vivacious violin flourish, Vivaldi at his jolly best. Described by Denis Arnold as a concerto for voice, this first movement is unrelenting in its unison playing, the voice arpeggiating through and around the strings like a ‘mad violin,’ as one soprano put it.

The second movement was more reflective, a recitative. Macliver’s soaring voice was accompanied by turns with spare strings (two violins, one viola) and an octet with bass and celli as well. She sang plaintively, with perfect clarity, so darkly sweet.

The third movement was again allegro, frenetic and florid, leading into the closing Alleluia, its single repeated word freeing Macliver’s voice to become a pure instrument.

Continuing the violin theme, the third piece on the program was a concerto by Vivaldi’s old mate Johann Pisendel. Both renowned violinists, ‘the Red Monk,’ as the ginger-topped Vivaldi was fondly known, often composed music specifically with Pisendel in mind. This piece gave Shaun Lee-Chen the chance to air his virtuoso violin talents. And air them he did.

It was clear from the first movement that Pisendel had a sense of humour. The first violin solo was hauntingly beautiful with just a hint of irony, but there was a laugh-out-loud joke at the end of the movement. In between, the orchestra engaged in a more courtly passage, something for a summer’s evening on the palace steps.

The second movement was similarly majestic, notable for guest keys player, Stewart Smith trading lines between the chamber organ and harpsichord, while the third, in its courtly charm, had strong echoes of Bach—‘my aching Bach,’ as James Joyce was wont to quip.

Throughout, Lee-Chen’s playing was superb.

A general interest in historical music is reflected throughout Shaun Lee-Chen’s many and varied musical activities. Artist in Residence at the UWA Conservatorium of Music, Chair of its Violin Studies, and Concertmaster of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, from 2006 to 2015 he was a member of WASO. An internationally renowned performer, in keeping with his fascination with 19th-century violin pedagogy, he plays a Giuseppe Rocca violin.

The second half of the concert comprised an ingenious melding of Vivaldi and Handel: the rather short and sublime Sinfonia in B Minor (At the Holy Sepulchre) segued, via a stunning snare roll, into the dramatic Music for the Royal Fireworks.

The Vivaldi of the Sinfonia was an older, more measured composer. Working strictly within the religious framework of Holy Week (he was, after all, a monk), when playing of the organ was not allowed, the work is composed for a quintet—two violins, viola, cello and bass.

The first slow adagio molto movement morphed straight into an even shorter, swifter allegro ma poco one. The whole was deeply moving, reflective, and somewhat mournful. The tormented and dissonant music captured the duality of old age: looking back wistfully on the lost vigour of youth and ahead sadly to the inevitable fading of the light.

The sharp snare at its end came as a startling shock that both shook the audience out of its reverie and summoned the full orchestra back onto the stage.

It was fitting that this magnificent show should end in fireworks. Rich and courtly, uplifting and exuberant, from the marching beat of the snare through the rolling rhythm of the timpani to the fanfare of trumpets, the first movement was so vivacious that at its end the audience broke protocol and erupted into lively applause.

The second movement, a bourrée led by the strings and bassoons, was a counterpointed sprint with a lively yet meditative melody. This was followed by a grand dance, a brisk walk through a blooming garden in the languor of a hot afternoon, and then the fast and regal, horn-led fireworks.

The final movement was again reflective, swift but spare, as Handel played the various sections of the orchestra off against each other, the music jumping from one to the other, then back again. Another spectacular drum roll heralded a final fanfare of horns and a superb ritardando ending.

The audience was rapt—their massive applause led to three curtain calls.

The Maj was the perfect venue for this concert. After the flat auditorium of Winthrop Hall, the enhanced sightlines of the raked seating were a welcome change—those in the dress circle were able to look down on the full depth of the stage. The baffling above, shipped up from the Albany Entertainment Centre specially for the show, deadened the booming acoustics that traditional theatre demands and allowed for a very sweet, clear and full orchestral sound.

The players, too, dressed differently for the occasion. No white-tie affair, the men wore simple black suits with white shirts and Windsor-knotted ties, more like a jazz band of freelance sidemen. Most of the ties were black, but there were a few multicoloured and striped ones and, in the back row, a silk crimson one the same hue as Sara Macliver’s frock. Being an unseasonably warm night, the audience too were dressed down. Together, this gave the show a delightfully relaxed feel.

Although WASO’s next concert will be back in Winthrop Hall, others over the next few months will be presented in Government House Ballroom and the State Theatre Centre, mainstage and studio. Both the orchestra and its audience are being kept on their toes this peripatetic year. That’s not a bad thing as it gives WASO’s 2025 program a twist as intricate as a well-tied Windsor knot.

IAN LILBURNE

Photos by Rebecca Mansell