Entertaining, informative, ingenious and artistically satisfying.
Presented by: Sonya Lifschitz and Robert Davidson
Reviewed: 17 March, 2023
Concertgoers keen to close their eyes, sit back and listen to a solo piano recital of new Australian work would be disconcerted by this performance. Certainly not disappointed, but a bit surprised. The result of this collaboration between pianist Sonya Lifschitz and composer Robert Davidson is a curiously entertaining hybrid, combining original piano compositions, still and moving picture projections (always with subtitled text) of eighteen subjects, audio recordings of the voices of most of them, and Lifschitz’s voice, speaking the words of some subjects, as well as narrating. Wearing a headset mic, she is frequently called upon to both speak and play Davidson’s intricate music. Behind her grand piano is a huge screen. No, this isn’t just a piano concert.
Eighteen people, from across a thousand years of history, have been chosen by Lifschitz and Davidson as portrait subjects. They are all women. It is never explained why. The gallery begins with a steadfast Patti Smith, reiterating the need to fight “rules and regulations”. It finishes with Greta Thunberg’s passionate “How dare you?” 2019 speech, with Lifschitz synchronising her voice with Thunberg’s at the climax. Scientists, composers, painters, musicians, playwrights, politicians, refugees, poets and ecologists are represented in this portrait gallery. Where possible, the actual recorded voice of the person is used. Some footage of interviews provide the visual of the person speaking in real time. Sometimes, when only the audio is used, an array of still and movie images relating to the person and the focus of their concern appear.
This all begins to sound like an educational WEA slide lecture with a bit of piano on the side. It’s lots more than that. Davidson’s gimmick is to use the prosody and pitch of each speaker as the starting point for his compositions. Pivotal pitch of each piece sits around the average pitch of the speaker’s voice, with descriptive music tracking variations in pitch, rhythm and emphasis in the subject’s speech. For some subjects, Davidson gives a wry nod to national style. Frida Kahlo’s affectionate description of partner Diego Rivera evokes a Latin feel in the piano score… until you listen to Kahlo’s own voice, and spot those very rhythms in her recorded speech.
The style of this presentation, although unique, is also charming, personal, and intensely interesting. We find out all sorts of odds and ends (about Brahms’ lack of social niceties, Nina Simone’s “take-no-prisoners” approach to dishonest record companies, and how music is healing for Aunty Delmae Barton).
Loudest applause of the evening was for Julia Gillard’s “I will not be lectured by this man about sexism and misogyny” speech. The footage is not simply left to run as if it were a news broadcast. Davidson repeats motifs in speech (much as composers do with musical phrases), allowing each film-with-audio-plus-piano piece to make clear artistic and emotional points.
I was delighted that a portrait of Rachel Carson (prophetic ecological scientist and author of “Silent Spring” – in 1962!) is included.
Intensely topical, and the only personal portraits in the piece, are Asya and Manya, Ukraininan-born Lifschitz’s grandmother and great-aunt. These sisters, sitting on a couch in Melbourne, recollect the horrors of fleeing Kiev in 1941 as Nazi bombing began. They giggle, correct each other and still insist on scoring sibling points sixty years after the event.
Lifschitz’s playing is highly competent. Davidson’s composition is sensitive and free, allowing the cadences of each person’s voice to drive the composition. The collation of remarkable moving and still pictures, meticulously subtitled, and formed into four continuous sections, is an amazing achievement. Much material will have been archival and obscure. Davidson and Lifschitz are to be commended for the meticulousness of the visual, spoken audio, musical and emotional synchrony of the whole work.
Reviewed by Pat H. Wilson
Photo credit: Tony Lewis
Venue: Adelaide Town Hall
Season: Season ended
Duration: 1 hour 25 minutes (no interval)
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