DAVID MALOUF SPEAKS

Who better than David Malouf, writing from within and without the Board of Opera Australia, to get to the nitty gritty.

SIRENS AT NIGHT

It was nearly midnight. I was deep in Julian Barnes "Nothing to be Frightened of" and writing words like 'uxorious' and 'shriving' in an old exercise book.

The house was still wide open, the air still. The sound of a siren took a while to jerk me to remember that I wasn't hearing what you always hear in inner Sydney, but I was hearing something I had never before heard down here, on the edge of the National Park, way down an unsealed bush road. Someone must be...the phone rang...it was H, from the nearest property. Her husband C has been called out with the reserves, they could see it, could I see it? The men can't even find their way in and that's why they were trying down our road to a fire-trail which slashes through our place. She'd stay in touch; C would let us know.

Yes, I saw it and was hypnotised for I don't know how long. Bush Fire. It was orange yellow and organic and no more than a kilometre across the gully, probably around our boundary, wherever that is, I don't know.

Everything had been rehearsed and the routine swung in. Fire-pump, water straight from the dam, big fat yellow hoses, roof sprinklers, baths filling, towels and blankets, dogs (where's that bloody young dog, there's ducks on the dam, she must be there) and now K is driving down. H is on the phone again, yes I know it is getting bigger, much bigger, yellow, can't really see smoke at night, it has to climb one small ridge then it is in the house gully...

All you can do is look at it and be thankful that the night was cool with little air movement and the ground still moist from recent rain. The trucks and the men must be there, I can see blue and red flashing lights. What about all the little animals? K is here now. We watch the front widening, actually moving down the gully, which at least is self-limiting. It is bigger, but seems to be moving away.

Now it is morning. There's smoke and two helicopters. One helicopter has a water bag on a very long rope and it seems that it does careful spot drops, the rope length letting him stay high about the draft. The other makes lower sweeping runs, spewing the water in giant yawning vomits. They'd be getting the water from the big dam on the other side of the town road, where they got it some years ago when two fire-fighters perished when a back-burn turned on them when the winds changed.

I rang next door and to my embarrassment woke C who had worked on the ground all night and had only been home since 6.30. I was worried about leaving and going up to the city, which sounded foolish and self-indulgent under the circumstances. I couldn't tell him it was Pinchgut. Off you go and don't you worry, it's all under control, he reassured, not a hint of tiredness in his voice.

The rural fire service, volunteers, people who live in the bush. It gets to you, you know.

PINCHGUT REHEARSAL BLOG

In case I'm not the last to find it, if you're not following the Pinchgut Opera rehearsal blog, then you should be.

Another find is Sarah's very fine research notes on Charpentier.

Joern Utzon 1918 - 2008

Joern Utzon died in his sleep on November 29, 2008, aged 90. He was a Dane, a beautiful Dane.

The Danes are remarkable people, who, by whatever process and influence, have evolved a tolerant society where living together in harmony with each other and with nature takes an uncommon precedence over competitive materialism. They are, to even their surprise, voted as the happiest people in the world. You could do worse than say they have learned acceptance.

Already so much has been said and written about Joern Utzon and his most famous landmark, our most worthwhile and valuable added asset (in fact our only worthwhile added asset if you ask me). I would recommend Francoise Fromonot's "Jorn Utzon The Sydney Opera House" , if you can beg, borrow or steal one.

My thoughts on the building, its position, and the major players, from tricked Aborigine (Bennelong) through tricked music visionary (Goosens) and tricked Danish genius, are on record. Elizabeth Farrelly's orbiturary in The Sydney Morning Herald explores the seismic clash of ego and inspiration in her usual detail. The former editor of Architecture Australia, Davina Jackson, reflects clearly and evocatively on the man and his works; read this if nothing else.

Among Utzons many honours, he recieved an honorary degree of Doctor of Science in Architecture from The University of Sydney in 2003. with this citation:

Chancellor, I have the honour to present Mr Joern Utzon for the conferring of the degree of Doctor of Science in Architecture (honoris causa).

Today, it is our pleasure to celebrate a special symmetry. In 1955, Professor Harry Ingham Ashworth, then Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, drew up the conditions of an International Architectural Competition for the design of a new National Opera House at Bennelong Point.

The competition was won by the then almost unknown Danish architect, Joern Utzon, with a beautifully resolved design. Today it is Australia’s principal architectural monument in the most perfect locus of our wonderful harbour. Born in Hellebaek, north of Copenhagen, in 1918 in what is one of the most beautiful regions of Denmark, Joern Utzon was influenced heavily by his father, Aage Utzon, a naval engineer who designed famous double-ended yachts and managed the Aalborg and later the Helsingor shipyards. He was raised in a proud and solidly middle-class design and engineering family. At an early age, Joern designed pendant lamps and designed and built polished half-scale models of yachts.

It was Professor Ashworth’s strategy to compose a brief for the competition such that only an architect of genius could win. By eliminating all but the most essential requirements, Ashworth ensured that this competition could only be won by the strength of the submitted architectural project. Professor Ashworth was an utterly inscrutable Mancunian, who, behind a bluff exterior harboured a longing for a radical project that would overturn Sydney’s tired architectural status quo. By inviting the Finnish-American, Eero Saarinen, and his Manchester contemporary, Sir Leslie Martin, to be his fellow competition jurors, Ashworth all but sealed off the local architectural network.

Utzon understood Ashworth; he revered him and, after winning the competition, he involved Ashworth in all of his design studio work, like a benevolent uncle taking a friendly interest in Utzon’s visionary project, secure in the knowledge that it was his, Ashworth’s strategic genius that enabled it all to happen.

Ashworth loved Utzon: I think that is the right word for his untrammelled belief in this irreverent young Dane. When Utzon wrote to Ashworth from China to tell him that he had, from his protracted study of a Sung Dynasty architectural treatise, found a way through some of the most difficult design issues of the Sydney Opera House, Ashworth immediately went – armed only with a cheap modern reprint that Utzon had sent him – and convinced his Technical Committee that Utzon had made a significant breakthrough. Ashworth trusted Utzon’s interpretation of Chinese construction, enabling the second and third stages of the Opera House to be assembled from prefabricated elements produced onsite at Bennelong Point.

At the moment that the then NSW Minister for Public Works was removing Utzon as architect for the Sydney Opera House in early 1966, the German Architectural Association, in an unprecedented move, was awarding him its Honour Plaque. Joern Utzon was being recognised as one of the outstanding architects of our time, not so much for the quantity of his architectural works but for the unique quality of expression and ability to define place. He has received many other major prizes, including the RIBA Gold Medal, the Alvar Aalto Medal, the Wolf Prize and the Sonning Prize in recognition of his contribution to the advancement of European civilisation.

Joern Utzon has never returned to Australia, yet he has never forsaken his affection for the place and the people he worked with all those years ago. Indeed, by placing his archive in the Mitchell Library and insisting that it remain unembargoed, Utzon has put himself forever in our care and trust. Utzon’s faith in both human nature and the spirit of enquiry lets him give the people of Australia this unique and precious record of his most important work, the Sydney Opera House, knowing that disinterested study of his drawings and models of this now national treasure will, eventually, achieve his halls, glass walls and interiors.

Bennelong Point was always an important site. Utzon revealed that with his wonderful composition of the two performance halls placed side by side on a vast platform, so as to acknowledge both the city and the harbour. We can only guess at what rush of inspiration led him to this design.

Like any great work of art, Joern Utzon’s Sydney Opera House will always challenge our creative intelligence. By giving us the Sydney Opera House, at tremendous cost to himself, Joern Utzon has made a place for himself in the culture of our country, such that we can now embrace him as a truly great Australian.

Chancellor, I invite you to confer the degree of Doctor of Science in Architecture (honoris causa) on Joern Utzon. As Mr Utzon is unable to be with us today, I present to you his son, Jan Utzon, to receive the award on his behalf.


Whatever else is said by whomever, no one speaks to the heart and mind more than Joern Utzon himself. In perhaps his last interview, I'm not sure, he speaks of the development and importance of the Utzon (I like to be on the edge of the possible) Centre, and of life and art, speaking with his hands, face, eyes, and his very Danish wisdom.

Part I 9:32 The Utzon Centre

after the War, life, design, existence alongside each other and nature (note the quip at 6:32)









Part II 9:41 The Opera House

continuing, and then suddenly (3:30) there he is talking about the Opera House, 450 men, the building emerging, craftsmen, the story of three workers, call it 'Sisu', past fusing with present...








and finally, an Expression of Love

ON HICKOX

The forthright Norman Lebrecht reflects briefly on Richard Hickox and gives his thoughts on his recording legacy in his weekly column from La Scena Musicale:

THE ENGLISH INTERPRETER
The shocking death of the irrepressible Richard Hickox, who died this weekend at 60 in the throes of a recording session, has silenced one of the most entrepreneurial podium characters. A self-starter from the age of three when he took the organ seat while his vicar father preached in Stokenchurch, Buckinghamshire, Hickox founded his own orchestra after coming down from Cambridge and was among the first to canvass City of London financial support while directing the LSO Chorus.

The range of his involvements extended from a festival at the tip of Cornwall to the Sydney Opera House, where he was music director since 2005, and it was typical of the man’s hunger for music that he should have been recording a Holst rarity in Wales this weekend just ahead of the dress rehearsal for Vaughan Williams’ Rider to the Sea at English National Opera (the show will go on tomorrow under ENO’s music director, Ed Gardiner).

His 300 recordings, 280 of them with the Chandos label, ranked him among the ten most prolific conductors on record. If his style lacked the last refinements of elegance and mystique there was no faulting Hickox on passion or detail. His advocacy of English music, in particular, was second to none. He was the first to perform the complete Vaughan Williams symphonies 15 years ago, and his recent London cycle with the Philharmonia was a huge success.

On record, his account of the original 1913 version of the London Symphony is in a class of its own. There is a terrific Carmina Burana with the LSO, as well as the complete choral works of Herbert Howells and a reverential Mendelssohn Elijah that show his feel for Anglican tradition. But it is a Catholic, Edmund Rubbra, whom Hickox espoused more convincingly than any modern interpreter. In the hands of Richard Hickox, the reticent Rubbra began to sound like a full English Bruckner.

Essential Hickox:

Vaughan Williams London Symphony (Chandos, LSO)

Handel Alcina (EMI, with Arleen Auger)

Rubbra 9th symphony (Chandos, BBC Nat. Chorus and Orch. Of Wales)

WHAT-IF

It hasn't been a very good day. I've been having what-if thoughts, the kind of what-if thoughts that you struggle to keep down, meaningless indulgences in a wish for a different outcome that they are, when something dreadful, sudden and permanent happens to someone especially close. I've never consciously felt particularly close to Richard Hickox, but I've had these thoughts. Thoughts about the fatherless children, that anyone should die alone in a hotel room, and wonder even if that is true, hoping it's not. What-if, if the presumptive diagnosis is correct, if he had still been here in Sydney, and fate may have given him access to some cardiac prophylaxis, a coronary stent, an urgent by-pass, another chance. What-if the sustained public criticism of him, right or wrong, had taken it's toll.

This morning I went straight to the garden bordering the front of the house. It has been deliberately planted with Banksias and Grevilleas to bring the honeyeaters, and they did. For several weeks I've been watching two Little Wattlebirds nesting just next to the chimney. Their little nursery cupped two eggs, just a metre off the ground, too close for safety from predators, but bathed in the warm spring sun and surrounded by nectar. The eggs hatched a day apart, little bare pink chicks about the size of half my thumb. What-if the goanna came back. Today the need for reassurance was pressing. And it was there. I hadn't checked for a while, and these little new lives had feathered, their distinctive white streaks already apparent, and their dark brown eyes looked me straight in the eye.

I find it disconcerting when you go eye to eye with an animal. It doesn't happen often in the wild. Late one afternoon, during that hot spell a few weeks ago, the young dog, now nearly 2 (and a joy I don't know how to express) sat staring into the low bushes and mulch just off a path. I followed her gaze. She was face to face, eye to eye, with a red-belly black snake. I dread this encounter, every summers day. She sat still. She didn't stand, didn't bristle and didn't bark. She just looked at the snake. The snake looked back. It was up, head thrust forward, tongue darting, sensing the air. They looked at each other with, and this is something you feel but don't believe, a measure of understanding. It was like they met there everyday. Despite the fear that breaking the dog risks a loss of attention, and a quick fatal dart, I walked slowly away, told the dog that snakes were to be left alone, then after a quick call to follow as the snake watched, we were gone. I gave thanks.

And I give thanks for baby Wattlebirds. Today I broke my promise to keep the camera out of other peoples bedrooms. I needed a record of replacement and regeneration.

Richard Hickox 1948 - 2008

Richard Hickox has died in Cardiff, aged 60, apparently following a heart attack. This is shocking news. The loss is huge.

He leaves behind his wife, three children, an enormous recording legacy, an open wound in the opera world, and with great sadness, I am hanging onto the immediate memory of his recent Billy Budd and The Makropulos Affair here in Sydney, such magnificent farewells he gave us.

Thank you Mr Hickox, and may your family's grief be lightened by what you have given us and left to the world. Your Angel has come.