AYO JULY SEASON CONTINUES - MEETING DAUSGAARD
Day 5 - by Natasha Conrau
It’s been a busy few days full of tutorials, sectionals, tutti rehearsals and a whole lot of walking to and from the ABC. After a few late nights of hard work on the Nielsen and Debussy, we had a free night and a large proportion of AYO-ers took this opportunity to go to the Sydney Symphony's concert at the Opera House. In the first half we heard Sibelius’s Violin Concerto played by a young Armenian violinist by the name of Sergey Khachatryan, who completely stunned me with his drama and intensity, which he upheld throughout the whole concerto. I've never seen vibrato that fast! In the second half the Sydney Symphony performed selections from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, which is a nostalgic favourite of mine as I used to listen to it frequently as a child. The Sydney Symphony's performance was quite something and I left feeling elated and musically inspired, as many of my fellow AYO audience members did.
The next morning we met our conductor for the season, Thomas Dausgaard. He immediately engaged us with the way he spoke, especially with his intriguing accent that one could almost mistake as English (he’s Danish!). As an introduction, he gave us a small part of his insight into Nielsen’s legacy in Denmark and the significance of such a composer in a small population of 5 million. This made me realize just how lucky we are to be playing this music in a city so far from where it was written, yet conducted by someone with such a close connection to and understanding of the composer's music. When we began playing the Nielsen, I was struck by the way he so precisely communicated what he wanted without saying a thing. His facial expressions and theatrical body language indicated the exact character, emotion, phrasing and articulation he wanted throughout the work. When we got to La Mer, so many moments I had been unsure of how to play were suddenly easy and logical. He quite vividly brought the music to life in such a short period of time and I await the next rehearsal with a ridiculous amount of anticipation!





