Richard Tognetti
Since 1989 the Australian Chamber Orchestra has been helmed by one Richard Tognetti - a man whose big opinions are as articulate as his musicianship. He spoke to Alexandra Coghlan about The Red Tree, and why classical music should be renamed 'shut-up-and-listen' music...
What was your aim when you became artistic director of the ACO? To turn the orchestra into a group that could proudly play anywhere on the planet. I wanted to take the orchestra to a place where it could play all kinds of music - from collaborations with popular contemporary artists to classical music written 200 years ago - and play it with equal integrity across the board.
You were very young (25) when you started with the orchestra... It puts you on a sharp learning curve, especially as it's a job that brings into play all sorts of extra-musical things in addition to the music itself. But when you're young you're still a bit naïve, and much more gung-ho about jumping into these things.
The Red Tree is a new work being premiered by the ACO that combines projected images from Shaun Tan's picture book with new music inspired by it. How did the piece come about? Lyn Williams runs this extraordinary children's choir - Gondwana Voices - and we've just been waiting for the right project to collaborate with them. It was she who suggested that we look into responding musically to Shaun Tan's works. The Red Tree is actually about child depression - a very delicate and potentially flammable subject, but also an incredibly important and powerful one. Tan's images are just so beautiful, almost luminescent.
Child depression can't have been an easy issue to address... The abstract nature of music allows you to explore all sorts of issues in it in an indirect way, rather than the more literal medium of visual art. So when the two come together you get a powerful impact. If you just tell someone that a work has a message it becomes narrow and stultified, but if you talk in an artistic way it engages with the mind and spirit in a much more open and profound way.
You've co-written The Red Tree with Michael Yezerski. How does the composition process work? Collaboration is a synergising process; you've got to live off the other artist in a very open and honest way, but at the same time respect the other's need for imaginative dreaming. You can't do the dreaming together, so you've got to be honest and open to good debate and criticism.
What do you say to those who argue that classical music is a dead art? Of course it's not dead! That's a fact. There was no chamber orchestra in Australia in 1975 and now there is and we have 10,000 subscribers. There's an incredible life to classical music, but a lot of it happens below the radar because it's hard to discuss it in our alarmist, superficial media culture. We're barely allowed to use the word ‘art' these days, we're supposed to call artists ‘creative workers', which sounds Stalinist, doesn't it? You're not allowed to call things ‘elite' unless you're talking about sport, and to say ‘high art' is almost forbidden. That's why to form an orchestra that has hints of all those things here in Australia is a very difficult thing to do in the first place.
What's the cause of this? The English are spending A$640 million so that kids from whatever demographic and financial background get access to free music education. The Australian arts community can't even enter into a dialogue with politicians about this. They just say it's too expensive and not popular enough.
Do you enjoy ‘popular' music? I listen to Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Crowded House, The Triffids - all sorts really; but it pisses me off when I go to hear a pop act and people are talking, and they've got to play it so loudly that you go deaf. That's the beauty of fine art music - let me be unabashed and call it that - it's shut-up-and-listen music. It's not celebrity-driven. The music is what drives it.
So why should people go to an ACO concert? The most important thing in life is beauty. Style, aesthetics - things that are totally undervalued today: those are the things that transport you.
The Red Tree from July 15-July 20 at The City Recital Hall and The Sydney Opera House.