Much of Dark Mofo's musical offering has interpreted "darkness" to mean grinding metal, but this concert by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra offers a much gentler and more subtle interpretation of the festival's theme. Impressively conducted by Estonia's Anu Tali, the program has an otherworldly, ritualistic quality entirely consonant with its purpose – marking the southern hemisphere's shortest day.
Taking place at 10pm in a darkened room filled with incense and lit by six large candles, the lights go out altogether for the opening Gregorian chant, performed in the balcony by the orchestra's chorus. The fact that the singers are invisible to most of the audience makes this ageless music seem all the more uncanny. The lights go up a little for Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, whose tolling bell and wintry strings emphasise the meditative and spiritual aspect of the Estonian composer's work.
John Tavener's Song of the Angel (like Pärt, the English composer was a Russian Orthodox Christian) is performed by the Australian soprano Merlyn Quaife with the kind of "restrained ecstasy" Tavener requested in his notes to the piece. Its structure, in which the voice and a violin line follow each other in parallel before diverging, inspires cosmic contemplation about the Earth once more inclining towards the sun on this solstice night.
The choir returns for a spectral reading of American composer Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium which, despite being based on a chant from the Matins of Christmas, does not sound out of place in June, its closing "Alleluia" resounding through the space. Two more Pärt works follow, including Fratres, at once complex and simple, yearning and comforting, and the more playful Wenn Bach Bienen gezüchtet hätte …
Two challenging works, with virtuoso solo performances by the Chinese violinist Jun Yi Ma, prevent the night from becoming cosy. Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks's Lonely Angel is pensive and tense, while Australian composer Brett Dean's Carlo thrums with suppressed violence, the sampled sounds of sinister chattering and scuffling roughening up the orchestral beauty.
It is a programme that shows us shades of darkness, sending us into the chilly midwinter pondering the deep stuff, except there is more; a midnight concert by Greek-Australian composer Nick Tsiavos. Called Liminal, it features Tsiavos, on double bass, performing with four other musicians: two on percussion, Adam Simmons on saxophone and clarinet, and the extraordinary soprano Deborah Kayser.
To a packed crowd, only a few of whom fall asleep, they perform an hour of music that is influenced by jazz, minimalism and even post-rock but fused with the ancient textures and rhythms of shamanic or religious ritual. It is contemplative and enigmatic, but also pulsating with life.
