Broadway To West End

Conductor Guy Noble quipped that it’s not often we get to experience the wonder of musical theatre with a symphony orchestra, and how wonderful the feeling was when we do. That’s what happened at yesterday’s QSO concert at QPAC. It was an afternoon to sit back and luxuriate in the sound with superb voices singing a collection of musical theatre’s greatest power-ballads.

Starting with Bernstein’s ‘Overture’ from Candide, the concert got off to a glorious start with a sparkling reading of this flashy orchestral showpiece with its flourishes of brass, piccolos, and seductive strings.

The ‘Tonight’ balcony scene with Tony and Maria from West Side Story followed, introducing the concert’s two premiere guest artists, Lorena Gore and Simon Gleeson. It’s also a wonderful showpiece which never appears dated despite being written in 1957. Gore’s vocals at first had the feeling of an opera singer slumming it, but as the concert went on, she relaxed into a more musical theatre mode. Both performers were centre stage again in the Lloyd Webber tribute, the ‘Overture’ to The Phantom of the Opera, with Andrej Kouznetsov doing spectacular work on the organ, Gore delivering a nicely balanced ‘Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again,’ and coupling with Gleeson on ‘All I Ask of You,’ probably the best vocal duet written in the last forty years.

But the best was yet to come, and it did with the appearance of young baritone Hanlon Innocent. Singing Quasimodo’s ballad ‘Out There’ from Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Innocent filled the hall with such powerful emotion it was palpable. A tremendous and overwhelming performance and one of the highlights of the concert.

Nina Lippmann, a graduating soprano from the Griffith University Musical Theatre course, had the pipes to deliver on Frozen’s ‘Let It Go’, but did better closing the concert with Elphaba’s ‘Defying Gravity’ from Wicked.

The orchestra brought some nice carnival color to the opening waltz from Carousel, whilst Gleeson’s wondrous tenor tones were showcased on ‘Anthem’ (Chess) and ‘Bring Him Home’ (Les Misérables).

The encores were an absolute delight. Gore, dressed appropriately as Mary Poppins, sang a lively ‘Supercalifragilisticexpianlidocious’ assisted by Innocent as the cloth-capped Bert, Gleeson in falsetto-mode with the Phantom’s ‘Music of the Night’, and all four having fun with Sondheim’s Jerome Kern 20s pastiche from Follies, ‘You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow’ and ‘Love Will See Us Through’.

Guy Noble was an agreeable host and conducted the orchestra with élan. Need I say the audience was sated at the finale from this emotional roller-coaster ride. Musical theatre at its best!

Peter Pinne