Review – QSOs Dance Around the World: filled with vim and vigor

By Nahima Abraham

Dance Around the World

Presented by the QSO

Conducted by Umberto Clerici QPAC Concert Hall

South Bank

Brisbane

Umberto Clerici

There’s something to be said about the partnership between music and dance. A timeless pairing, these two mediums have intertwined and will do so for, no doubt, the rest of time. But having the pleasure to witness exactly why we marry music and dance is not something to ponder every day. The Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s first performance of Music on Sundays for the year really took the full house on a pas de deux around the world through the medium of dance music.

The musicians, after a much-needed holiday, bridging the festive season and the new year, were brimming with glee. Some with tanned cheeks, all had a bright energy about them, filling the room with their good spirits as they performed. And what a performance it was.

Under the baton of Umberto Clerici, the orchestra was absolutely filled with vim and vigor – this vitality brought forth in part by the fun, jokes and endless quips made by the conductor. Yet, despite all this fun and good humour, and when it got down to it, Clerici ran a tight ship, much like Ahab and The Pequod, except this elusive white whale was perfection. Did they catch it? You bet.

There were many aspects to this performance that really brought to light why the QSO is Brisbane’s leading orchestra. The performance began with elegance, a Gounod and the antique dance from the ballet Faust, and finished with frantic and syncopated rhythms of Abreu’s Tico-Tico no Fubá that still retained a lightness and calm within it all.

Notable pieces within this 80-minute performance were Voices of Spring, by J Strauss Jr, a valse that was as light as air, and conjured images of elegant dancers in spectacular dance halls, immortalising a sense of timelessness with beautiful movements. Of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t add Offenbach’s Can-Can from Orpheus in the Underworld to this list. Bright, funny, and engaging, the QSO did not disappoint, they tackled this highly frenetic piece with aplomb, yet also retained a sense of play and fun.

There were interesting pieces such as Price’s cakewalk – Dances in the Canebrakes that made you really feel you were sunning yourself in Louisiana, or Bartók’s Rhapsody 2 for Violin and Orchestra, that had first violin/concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto play a solo part that for the most part was certainly intense. Yet, Yoshimoto handled this well, and in her skilful hands, made Bartók seem like child’s play.

As the final notes rang out across the concert hall, and the audience stepped out into the intensely hot summer air, there was slight breeze to the heat, and it truly felt like another year was yet to come. And with it, more wonderful music.