Sydney Symphony and Vladimir Ashkenazy – the perfect duo

Ashkenasy's Favourites: Tchaikovsky, Strauss & Walton
The Sydney  Symphony
Sydney Opera House  Concert Hall
May 17

Walton's First Symphony may have been regarded as modern, dissonant and appallingly difficult to play when it was first performed, but the Sydney Symphony made it seem like a perfectly controlled runaway train.

Conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy knew what to do with the piece, allowing its modernist elements to be fully appreciated.

Its shocking newness and novelty were gone but there was still a realisation that the work marks a change from English rural romanticism to a form which acknowledges a changed society and a changing world of music.

Walton knew he was writing a work which reflected the dark days of English society. It mirrors the fractured times and seems to prefigure the coming world war. It is a symphony filled with depression and despair, but there are also moments of joy and beauty.

Ashkenazy is a skillful conductor, carefully controlling the great crescendos and haunting passages – as well as the more regal sequences – with a vast array of gestures, from the intimate nods he gave to some players through to the sweeping flourishes with which he spurred on the orchestra.

The first half of the programme featured Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture and Strauss's Concerto for Oboe and Small Orchestra.

Voluptuous reading

The Tchaikovsky was given a voluptuous reading which brought out the strong  emotional qualities of the music. Ashkenazy seemed to fully understand the blighted lovers' tale, managing to get the orchestra to  provide exquisite musical portraits which summed up the essence of the characters.

The Strauss work was played by soloist Hansjorg Schellenberger, a giant of a man in whose hands the oboe looked like a piccolo.

He appeared to battle with the orchestra around two melodic lines which only occasionally merged, the oboe winning each time and the soloist displaying a look of triumph at the conclusion of each of his solo passages.

Ashkenazy, who is in his fifth season as the orchestra's principal conductor, is magnificent. But he is also great showman and though diminutive – he was two heads shorter than soloist Schellenberger – he managed to inhabit the stage as though it were his personal domain.

He chatted with players and gave full acknowledgement of their efforts, even presenting individual roses to some musicians at the end of the concert.

Over the next few weeks the orchestra will be playing a range of works, including Mozart's Gran Partita (May 30), the Sainte-Saens Organ Symphony (June 5-8) and the Spellbound concert featuring Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Song of the Nightingale, along with Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor.