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Canberra Today 14°/17° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Strings & theory match up as Peelman draws a long bow

IT is quite irresistible to suggest that Canberra International Music Festival director Roland Peelman was drawing a long bow in titling a string concert “String Theory,” but it turns out that he wasn’t.

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For in a mischievous piece of programming matching the festival subtitle, “Music, Einstein and You!” Peelman successfully drew the parallel between stringed instruments and the abstract “String Theory” of physics while at the same time providing a platform for festival guests the New Zealand String Quartet.

We were to learn in a lively address by quantum physicist Professor Craig Savage that lines, (which have no breadth), vibrate in the same manner as the strings of a violin, (which do). Thus the tensions between Einstein’s gravity theory and the principles of quantum mechanics could be viewed as a metaphor for the very act of musical creation.

The opening performance in a concert held in memory of the late climate scientist, Prof Michael Raupach, was by the quartet of NZ composer Ross Harris’s “Variation 25 for string quartet.” This work, created in 2008, is an homage to the “Goldberg Variations” of J S Bach, created as a short, single movement for string quartet using the Bach as a basis, with contemporary additions reflecting the original.

The second work, “Martin Wesley Smith’s 1982 , composition “For Marimba and Tape”, created on the then state-of-the-art Fairlight CMI digital sampling synthesiser, drew on the considerable talents of percussionist Claire Edwardes, one part of the stars of the festival. This humorous conversation between the marimba and the electronics might seem at first glimpse far away from string theory, but in fact its revelation of musical permutations and combinations set the scene for the slightly extra-terrestrial nature of this concert.

The New Zealand string quartet returned again in force for the third work, John Pathas’ 2004 composition, and “Unbridled, Manos Breathes the Voice of Life into Kastsigar.” This proved to be another homage, this time to the Greek clarino player Mano Achalinotopolous, in a mixture of a melodic prelude and a second movement, creating tension with the first. The brooding, thoughtful quality of this work was consistent with the theme of the day.

There followed Prof Savage’s talk in which he outlined the self-destructive tensions in modern theoretical physics, wisely (considering the lay audience)  drawing examples from the 1970s Philip Glass opera, “Einstein on the Beach” and “Interstellar,” Christopher Nolan’s 2014 science fiction film in which quantum theories gel with the possibilities of time travel.

The final work, by Western Australian composer Roger Smalley, was, in my view, the outstanding triumph of this concert, a performance in which Peelman took up the baton to conduct the New Zealand String Quartet, augmented by Barbara Jane Gilby and Lerida Williams on violin and Kyle Daniel on double bass. Here the  instrumentalists were seated in a “strung-out” configuration high above us in the Shine Dome, violinist Helene Pohl at one end and colleague-violinist Douglas Beilman at the other.

The performance was a seemingly perfect illustration of the tensions between gravity and quantum theories, with the acerbic bass hinting at Black Holes, the plucking of instruments teasing our minds and the sustained strings at the end asking us to consider the complexities of the universe.

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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