By Clive O'Connell
MUSIC
BEETHOVEN 2 - 3.5 stars
ANAM Orchestra
Australian National Academy of Music, May 15
At ANAM, if you turn your back for a few months, everything changes; perhaps not completely but enough to require a quick adjustment in perception and appreciation. Alumni pass through to re-emerge in local organisations or move off-shore, while plenty of fresh faces move in to the South Melbourne headquarters, ready to cap off their education in the country's finest musical finishing-school.
Cellist Howard Penny of the Australian National Academy of Music.Credit: Stephen McKenzie
Fortunately, the ANAM staff undergo a slower rate of change-over, like eight-year veteran Howard Penny who directed last Friday's program of mainstream repertoire. Rather than using a baton, Penny oversaw his young players' work from the principal cello's chair, leading an ever-enthusiastic band through the Bach D Major Suite and two symphonies: Haydn's Military No. 100, and the ebullient early Beethoven in D of this concert's title.
The best wine came first at this feast, through a finely-judged reading of the Bach work, all five wind giving a clean and accurate counterweight to a disciplined, if bass-heavy string ensemble. Not attempting a period-style interpretation, the performers conveyed the brisk dances' rollicking good humour and brought an impressive dynamic to the long.
In contrast, the Haydn featured a confronting volubility in this over-resonant hall, wind and percussion in tandem dominating the even-numbered movements' fabric. Fortunately, the Beethoven symphony fared better; if the strings' figuration occasionally disappeared beneath the unabashed brass and a sterling woodwind octet, the collegial vitality, almost spilling over in the final allegro, gave evidence of that music-making relish embodied by ANAM at every re-incarnation.