Simon Tedeschi and Roger Benedict at the Blue Mountains Theatre: Saturday, August 22, 8pm.
Whispers of awe and exclamations of praise could be heard amongst the buzzing crowd that filed into The Blue Mountains Theatre and Community Hub to await the appearance of pianist Simon Tedeschi and violist Roger Benedict. For those of us who grew up performing and sitting in audiences in the old civic centre, the experience is slightly surreal. It’s an exciting update though: the modern, spacious theatre is a performance venue to which Springwood can be really proud to invite world-class performers.
Tedeschi and Benedict were welcomed warmly to the new stage by a sizeable audience. “There are composers who - by some strange twist of fate - we’ve never heard of,” began Benedict, before proceeding to introduce us to Hans Gal’s Sonata for viola and piano, followed by Benedict’s own arrangement of a selection from Schubert’s Winterreise song cycle.
The material was consistently understated, even melancholy, but both performers are instinctive storytellers. Their need - and ability - to sculpt narrative from even the most fleeting of notes, brought life to an otherwise slow-moving repertoire.
After interval a truly transporting rendition of Brahms’ Scherzo in C minor from the F-A-E Sonata showed the impressive teamwork between Tedeschi and Benedict; but it was the Schubert Sonata in A minor that stirred the audience’s applause reflex between movements, even as they maintained the customary silence until the end of the work.
Much to listeners’ delight, the Blue Mountains Concert Society (BMCS) Steinway piano had been brought out of storage for its first Hub appearance. Every note sparkled in its new surrounds: testament not just to the excellent new acoustics and the considerable talent sitting at its keyboard, but also to the meticulous upkeep and care of the instrument by the society. “That piano is magnificent,” Tedeschi tells me seriously after the show, confiding that he’d love to own one like it.
As the patron of BMCS, Tedeschi is a regular performer in Springwood and one of the first to admit nostalgia for the old civic centre. But for even the most nostalgic amongst us, the Hub is an exciting way forward.
“It reminded me of [Port Macquarie performance venue] the Glasshouse - I just thought ‘wow!’,” enthused Tedeschi.
It’s fairly safe to say the sentiment is shared.
