Cygnus Arioso String Orchestra’s summer camp concert at WAAPA gives voice to young and emerging musicians

Classical music’s timeless appeal seemed to pause the clock for Cygnus Arioso String Orchestra’s summer camp concert at WAAPA on Saturday, giving voice to young and emerging musicians. Nigel Westlake’s contemporary work Out of the Blue opened the bill with busy violas, strident violins and pizzicato cellos and basses in pulsating offbeat rhythms, throwing the ensemble around the hall in a perpetuum mobile of youth and enthusiasm. Intense focus and artistry blew off the somnolence of a summer afternoon then fell back to lyrical musings from concertmaster William Huxtable over fragmentary accompaniment. Listless wondering gave way to swooning harmonies, dream-like in texture, before principal cello Isaac Davis led a reprise of the initial scurrying syncopation to close. Retuning reset the mood for Felix Mendelssohn’s String Symphony No.7 in D-minor, its opening Allegro movement broaching the classical palette with light and shade in full measure. Plangent tutti attack gave way to rhapsodic meditation as successive waves built a richly pleasing soundscape. Dynamics and tempi were deftly varied under Huxtable’s lead; the absence of a conductor being a hallmark of CA director Akiko Miyazawa’s “COVID-19 silver-lining project”, now broaching a new era of disruption with the closure of Perth Concert Hall. The Andante second movement matched its label in lush violins answered by violas. When cellos then basses chimed in, the full harmonic range suffused the room. The Menuetto third movement returned to drama in call and response across the ensemble, dance-like in the exchange. Cellos led out the Trio segment, picking up the pace fugue-like in a brief interlude before renewed drama in the Allegro Molto finale drew heroic phrases from each section and a robust conclusion. After the interval, Beethoven’s last string quartet, No.16 in F major, was reimagined in principal bassist Oakley Paul’s orchestral arrangement. A questing flurry from principal violist Aaron Dungey flipped the switch to Beethoven’s darker perspective, in contrast with the child prodigy Mendelssohn. Individual lines of the quartet rolled out like volleys, symphonic in scope yet neatly interleaved as in the original, its rubato and pauses delivered with aplomb down to a graceful dismount. In the Vivace second movement, ripples of melody over rampant cellos and basses rose above turbulence like a bird in flight, alighting at last in a triumphal cadence. Easing gradually into the Lento assai third movement, multi-layered sound took on a choral quality, numinous and soulful; gossamer-light in texture, fading to a blissful conclusion. Stern chords set the tone for the fatalistic finale, the score labelled “Grave” and inscribed with the words “Muss es sein?” (Must it be?). Portentous bass melody and assertive echoes in violins and violas built then released tension in a billowing cloud, attentive and closely attuned. In Paul’s setting, Beethoven seemed to have anticipated Mahler’s “music from beyond” by several decades with its pondering of inexorable mortality. Yet the joyous Allegro conclusion showed the flip side of the coin, evoking and celebrating acceptance. Cygnus Arioso returns to the stage on February 16 at UWA’s Callaway Auditorium with Symanowski and Strauss: Myths and Romantic Ardour. Tickets at cygnusarioso.com.