Edinburgh International Festival review: Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Published on Wednesday 1 September 2010 12:58

Sydney Symphony Orchestra Usher Hall, Edinburgh *****

As A celebratory tribute to conductor Sir Charles Mackerras, Honorary President of the Edinburgh International Festival, who died just a few weeks before he was due to appear at the Usher Hall, Wednesday evening's concert there could not have been bettered.

Three heartfelt spoken tributes were followed by short excerpts of favourite composers, Mozart and Janacek, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra – where he started his career as an oboist – in magnificent form playing Elgar with Australian composers Ross Edwards and Peter Sculthorpe sandwiched in between.

Edwards' Maninyas: Concerto for violin and orchestra takes its name from his own term for the dance-chant style of much of his music, originating from the natural environment around him. A compelling hybrid of influences, Edwards' sound world is an open-hearted one with soloist Dene Olding totally in command of its snappy, spinning folk-dance-like rhythms as much as the reverential middle ground.

With the dramatically expressive Vladimir Ashkenazy on the podium, the orchestra brought precision coupled with enthusiastic freshness to everything they played. Although it was Elgar's In the South and Enigma Variations that unleashed the orchestra to thrilling full strength, the affectingly distinctive voice of Peter Sculthorpe and his Memento mori afforded a different sort of emotive colouring, especially in its use of the recurrent Dies irae theme.