“Australian-ness”: the AWO’s superpower
Tony Senatore
<tonysenatore007@gmail.com>“Australian-ness”: the AWO’s superpower
Lily Bryant
August 31, 2022
Maestro Zubin Mehta and the Australian World Orchestra rehearsing at Iwaki Hall, Melbourne, 2022. Photo © Heidi Victoria
There’s a palpable excitement in the rehearsal room as the musicians of Australian World Orchestra come to the end of a soft, sustained chord, and the first tea break of the day is imminent. Legendary conductor Zubin Mehta drops his baton to indicate the end of rehearsal, and a chorus of foot stamps and knee slaps erupts from the players; most likely in anticipation of coffee, but also of a reunion they’ve been looking forward to for far too long.
After a couple of seasons somewhat curtailed by COVID, the Australian World Orchestra (AWO) is rehearsing in Melbourne, fresh from wowing international audiences at the Edinburgh Festival and BBC Proms – and the players couldn’t be more pleased to get the band back together.
“It was very cool”, says Andrew Bain, playing Principal Horn with the orchestra this week, off the back of their UK tour. “Playing with a group of Australian musicians at BBC Proms was really really special. It was just an amazing experience to be in Royal Albert Hall, and such a significant occasion for Australian music.”
“This version of AWO is a very special one because Zubin’s come back – it’s great to work with him again. Because of the pandemic we haven’t been together as an orchestra for a long time, so it was really special to make that connection again with people who’ve played in the orchestra.”
A unique initiative that has soared to international acclaim, the AWO brings together Australia’s top orchestral exports – from both around the country and the world – together in an ambitious festival-style orchestra program. Artistic Director and founder Alexander Briger has witnessed the orchestra’s meteoric rise since its inception in 2010 and first performances in 2011.
“It’s just attracting so much attention, which I’m thrilled about,” he says. “Everyone is giving their utmost everything to it. It just goes to show how huge the pool of players from Australia is.”
Sharon Grigoryan, acting Associate Principal Cellist of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and former member of the Australian String Quartet, laughs as she tells me about what it’s like to be back at “Grey-YO”.
“It completely feels like going to youth orchestra tour again, in the sense that there’s just such a sense of excitement and everyone is playing every single note like it’s the last day they’ll ever play”, she says.
Maestro Zubin Mehta and the Australian World Orchestra rehearsing at Iwaki Hall, Melbourne, 2022. Photo © Heidi Victoria
“Something I really love about AWO is that there are old familiar faces, some you work with all the time, and some you haven’t seen in a decade and you rekindle old friendships. There are also new faces, so you make new friends, just like in the Australian Youth Orchestra.”
“There’s this real festival excitement about AWO, and that’s part of the fun – figuring out how we all slot into each other and form this little supergroup within only a couple of days, and it’s very exciting. It comes together like a tsunami of energy that just keeps on gathering force and gathering clarity exponentially as the days go by.”
“Supergroup” is an apt description, considering the high-profile positions many of the musicians occupy in some of the world’s most prestigious orchestras. But with limited rehearsal time, does the meeting of such a vast breadth of orchestral traditions become a question of too many cooks?
“It takes a little bit of time for the orchestra to gel but what’s amazing is that the collective will to make things sound great is extremely strong,” says Bain, whose normal role is Principal Horn of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. “It doesn’t take long for the orchestra to sort of find a common ground, even when you’ve got people from American schooling or Australian schooling or who’ve played in Europe for a long time, peoples’ willingness to meet in the middle and come together is one of the unique things of this orchestra. The cool thing is you get the best of all worlds as a result.”
When rehearsal starts back after the tea break, the hugs and handshakes are exchanged for a sea of steely focused faces. With Music Director Emeritus of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Zubin Mehta at the helm, creating world-class music is just as important as the musicians’ camaraderie. Mehta is leading the orchestra through what is for them a very familiar piece: Strauss’s Don Juan, one of three of Strauss’s sublime tone poems being performed by the AWO in Melbourne and Sydney.
In a particularly tricky passage that flits rapidly between string instruments, Mehta slows down the tempo, encouraging the players to phrase instead of “scrambling through the notes”. After many minutes and many gruelling repetitions, relieved smiles break out when he breaks the tension with a tongue-in-cheek remark, “the violas played it the best”.
Despite it being his first AWO tour, violinist Noam Yaffe is no stranger to Mehta’s trademark brilliance, having played with him regularly in his orchestral day job with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
“I’m just amazed at his stamina and energy”, Yaffe says. “It’s just incredible, the longevity of that career and the people that he’s worked with, the history and the anecdotes that he can just regale us with. He’s an incredible musical presence.”
“The way he rehearses, you know exactly when he wants to get down to business, and you know when he’s a bit more convivial in allowing that. But especially when you’re sitting in the back of the section, you want to be careful that your chit-chat doesn’t cross over into being disrespectful. It’s a weird organism, an orchestra; you definitely have to subsume yourself into being part of a larger whole, which includes knowing when to be quiet!”
Maestro Zubin Mehta and the Australian World Orchestra rehearsing at Iwaki Hall, Melbourne, 2022. Photo © Heidi Victoria
Briger has witnessed Mehta’s combination of collegiality and diligence from the outside. “Sometimes with conductors, it just clicks with an orchestra, and it just clicked with this orchestra and him. And he’s tough with us; he’s firm and you can tell if he’s not happy. He wants it to be as best as it possibly can.”
AWO’s enduring relationship with Maestro Mehta began in a manner truly reflective of Australia’s tight-knit musical community, thanks to a personal relationship with AWO’s longtime Principal Oboist, and a passion for the pitch.
“It actually came to be through Nick Deutsch”, Briger tells me. “Because he played in the Israel Philharmonic, he knows Zubin, and when we were discussing after the first gig how to take this orchestra to the next level, we all thought we needed to get an international conductor. Everyone said ‘you’ve got to get Zubin!’”
“Nick and I went to Vienna to meet with him, when he was conducting the IPO on tour. By that time, he’d already said yes and I wanted to go in and discuss the program and rehearsal schedule, and nothing got done. All we talked about was cricket, it was hilarious!”
Mehta’s path to involvement with AWO speaks to one of its superpowers; its undeniable Australian-ness. At once both an incredibly insular and widely-spread community, Australian musicians are uniquely positioned to create something greater than the sum of its parts, says Bain.
“We all grew up in Australia so we all have this commonality of the country, not necessarily the musical culture but overall culture. Growing up in Australia we are quite isolated from Europe and the US, and it means that we need to make a little bit more effort to learn the styles or to get the information that is readily available in Europe already. I think this breeds an incredible amount of flexibility, and willingness to learn and willingness to adapt to the environment that creates the unique sound and the unique approach of AWO.”
And even after decades of playing in the world’s most revered orchestras, the musicians of the Australian World Orchestra still call Australia home.
“I still live and work within Australia, so to me, I find it fascinating mixing and socialising and playing with these Aussies that have been in another country for decades because I can see the English and German or Austrian or American influence on them”, Grigoryan tells me. “But then I was having a lovely conversation with another cellist who has been based in Germany for decades, who was saying the opposite; that for him it’s like a tonic for an Aussie who’s been overseas for so long, to hear that Aussie twang and just that Australian sense of humour. So it goes both ways, I think both sides enrich each other.”