Rupert Guenther; Amos Roach

By Clive O'Connell
March 1, 2005

RUPERT GUENTHER St Paul's Cathedral, February 24;

RUPERT GUENTHER and AMOS ROACH Ochre Gallery, Collingwood, February 25

Young Australian violinist, Rupert Guenther, is playing each Thursday lunchtime during February and March at St Paul's Cathedral. Last Thursday, in a hefty 50-minutes of playing, he presented a suite of seven pieces that he had composed for a church in Vienna, the collection following the well-worn path of the Ordinary of the Mass.

At the start, the composer's inspiration seemed to come from Jewish chant, complete with slight ornaments and a steadily increasing mood of plangency. But later, the language seemed close to Irish folk-tunes - the real thing, not the sentimental snug favourites. For the rest of the time, Guenther played in a regular rhythmic pattern, often confining himself to the use of a scale of unexceptional content, mirroring the hypnotic repetition and circularity of a litany or chaste exercises by Phillip Glass.

The intention was probably to take the listener onto a meditative plane where the familiar provides a sort of mental security, but, what with phones going off in the gift kiosk at the back of the building, the clip-clop of well-shod heels and a background of conversation, Guenther had a hard struggle keeping us focused.

The following day at the Ochre Gallery, Guenther collaborated with didgeridoo player Amos Roach in a fusion recital of works written by the performers to celebrate the spirit of the Kimberleys, for a very responsive audience.

Yet, given the nature of the sound sources, it appeared difficult to generate a convincing partnership. Of what I heard, the most effective music-making came in a subtle mimicry and suggestion of wild birds, which found Guenther using the sound sources of his violin with more aggressiveness and creativity than during the previous day's work in St Paul's where not even one double-stop interfered with his regular, one-note-at-a-time mode of delivery.

Roach is a splendid player, producing a wealth of sounds that summoned up the spirit of the bush and its denizens with extraordinary inventiveness. At certain moments, his and Guenther's collaboration proved mildly effective, as in their musical pictures of rain, but the juxtaposition of sound from the two performers in general terms showed a disjunction - not of inspiration, but of sonorous properties and possibilities. An interesting experiment, one well worth attempting, but not convincing as a composite construct or as a springboard for development.