Jennifer Koh

Limelight Magazine
By Chris Reid
March 20, 2023
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Fantastical Journeys (Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Adelaide Festival)

Fantastical Journeys and outstanding performances by US violinist Jennifer Koh and Finnish conductor Emilia Hoving.

The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s contribution to the 2023 Adelaide Festival takes the audience on a fantastical journey through all kinds of mythology, from Greek nymphs and faith healers to the folk tales of One Thousand and One Nights.

The concert opened with Jean Sibelius’s tone poem The Oceanides (Opus 73, 1913–1914), which the composer also referred to as Aallottaret, the Finnish word for ‘spirits of the waves’.

In Greek mythology, the nymphs known as the Oceanids were the daughters of Oceanus, the river that encircled the world, and the sea goddess Tethys.

The Oceanides is a lyrical work, opening with a roll of the tympani, and shimmering flutes and harps evoke a gently pulsating sea. It’s a daydreamy piece, moody like the ocean itself, and reaches a stormy crescendo before calm returns. The ASO, under visiting Finnish conductor Emilia Hoving who would be well acquainted with her countryman Sibelius’s music, gave an eloquent performance, with every instrumental group clearly articulated.

Jennifer Koh in Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s Fantastical Journeys. Photo © Tim Standing

Inspired by medieval rituals that responded to the plague, Missy Mazzoli’s violin concerto Procession (2021) invokes myths of a different kind. The concerto was commissioned for US violinist Jennifer Koh, a long-time collaborator of Mazzoli’s, and was written during COVID lockdown, a time when physiological, psychological and societal healing were sorely needed.

Mazzoli’s program note indicates that the concerto, “casts the soloist as a soothsayer, sorcerer, healer and pied piper-type character, leading the orchestra through five interconnected healing spells.”

These spells successively refer to medieval penitential processions; St. Vitus, the patron saint of dancing and entertainment, who could cast out evil spirits; a reinvention of the hymn “O My Soul”; and an evocation of the ninth century Merseburg Charm, a spell intended to heal broken limbs. The final movement, Procession Ascending, returns to the ideas in the first movement to close the story.

In the first movement, Procession in a Spiral, the violin enunciates a desolate soliloquy, interspersed with dramatic orchestra gestures. St Vitus is an ethereal, balletic dance, and the interplay of soloist and orchestral strings creates a web of sound. O My Soul is slow and mournful, commencing in a high register, with violin and flutes combining in a descending cascade of notes, followed by a painfully exquisite violin cadenza.

Bone to Bonebegins with energetic, motoric violin bowing, gradually slowing to a whisper, and the last movement, ‘Procession Ascending’, begins with a haunting bassoon line, slow like a dirge. The violin then enters, and they engage in a ruminating dialogue over a deep bass rumble. The concerto has come full circle, ending with a soft, high-pitched violin gesture, as if evaporating into the air above.

Throughout the work, high pitches in the violins and flutes are frequently contrasted with the earthy sound of basses and brass. It’s as if the violin, as an instrument, represents a soul hovering fitfully above rocky ground.

Jennifer Koh in Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s Fantastical Journeys. Photo © Tim Standing

Mazzoli’s violin concerto is dramatic and intense, and while it illuminates historical approaches to healing, I was mostly absorbed by the compelling performance — the textures and the interplay between violin and orchestra, and Jennifer Koh’s accomplished interpretation, which draws the audience into a writhing psychological space.

The Adelaide Festival and the ASO are to be thanked for bringing Mazzoli’s concerto and Koh, its wonderful exponent, to Adelaide.

The concert concluded with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s symphonic suite Scheherazade (Op. 35, 1888), which was inspired by the legend of a sultan’s wife who avoids her planned execution by intriguing him with her teasingly suspenseful stories.

The composition characterises the misogynistic sultan and the seductive storyteller through contrasting musical voices – blaring horns and basses alternating with an enchanting violin – and the ASO’s guest concertmaster Elizabeth Layton created a delightful Scheherazade whose voice dramatises the telling of each tale.

The ASO under conductor Hoving gave a scintillating performance, memorable for its passion and drama. The ASO winds were especially fine, both in this work and throughout the concert.

In this ASO contribution to the Adelaide Festival, it was good to see a feature work by a female composer, and hopefully, future ASO programming will include a higher proportion of new music and music by female composers as its feature items. It was also wonderful to see Emilia Hoving’s authoritative conducting, which drew out all the character and charm of each work and encouraged the best performances from the players.

Not yet 30 years of age, Hoving has a brilliant career in prospect.

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