Review: Viva La Festival on 13th October 2024
This review by Trevor Keeling was published in the Townsville Bulletin
Barrier Reef orchestra crowd votes with its feet
With a program that brought an appreciative audience to its feet at the end, Sunday’s concert not only displayed Townsville’s own orchestra at a significant advantage but it was only fitting that the first performance of the newly christened Great Barrier Reef Orchestra was in its new home.
Designed specifically with concert performance in mind, the impressive Denise Glasgow Performing Arts Centre at Pimlico High School was shown off to great public appreciation to an almost capacity audience, which was brought to its feet at the end.
The orchestra was under the vigorous baton ofVenezuelan Portuguese conductor Joshua Dos Santos, making his first appearance in Australia.
Moving with the grace of a dancer, Dos Santos displayed a harnessed but infectious energy and vigour, which saw the orchestra embrace a whole new repertoire in Latin American music.
Beginning with Verdi’s Overture from his 1841 opera “Nabucco”. Considered to be the opera that permanently established Verdi’s reputation, the overture includes the familiar themes from the opera, including the well-known “Va pensiero” or “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” and featured excellent work from the woodwind section.
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C Major was the next item. Clearly reminiscent of Mozart and Haydn and premiering in1800, this is considered to be Beethoven’s somewhat tentative first foray into symphony writing. With none of the drama of later works, this bright and uncomplicated work was performed with great delicacy and detail by the orchestra.
However, it was the second half of the program that saw the orchestra take off, as it embraced the syncopated Latin American rhythms of four scheduled works and two encores.
From Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez’s 1930 suite “Reisado do Pastoreio”, “Batuque” was the Brazilian composer’s tribute to the dance rhythms inspired by the Afro-Brazilian rhythms.
With its compulsive and driving beat, it set the scene for a decidedly different remainder of the program.
This was perfectly complemented by “Dança Brasileira”, an exuberant piece from Brazilian composer Carmargo Guarnieri. This work blended classical music with Brazilian folk dance, originally written as a piano piece in 1928.
It was north to Mexico for Arturo Marquez’ “Conga del Fuego Nuevo”, an energetic and vibrant piece driven by the percussion section.
The section was put to equally good use for the last piece on the scheduled program, Mexican composer Eugenio Toussaint’s “Perez Prado’s Mambos”, a delightful tribute to the Cuban bandleader and composer who popularised the infectious Cuban mambo dance style in the 1950s.
Conductor Dos Santos followed the formal program up with two encores, a Venezuelan folk dance “Joropo” and the ever-popular Brazilian “Tico Tico Samba”.
In summary, an immensely enjoyable extension of the Great Barrier Reef Orchestra’s repertoire, presented as part of the NAFA season.
