Review: ZOFOMOMA, Melbourne Recital Centre

With 20 fingers, 15 composers, and 15 artworks, ZOFOMOMA is a creative and jubilant spectacle.

Pianists Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi. Image: Musica Viva.

It is fun to watch Eva-Maria Zimmermann and Keisuke Nakagoshi play the piano. The duo, based in San Francisco, share the one instrument on an otherwise empty stage. They call themselves ‘ZOFO’, a ‘twenty-finger orchestra’, and move together with fluid precision and exceptional co-ordination. Both are charismatic performers who deploy flourishes of foot stomping and vocalisation in crescendos of tension, occasionally manipulating the internal strings of the piano to various effect. It’s a creative and jubilant spectacle to behold.

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San Francisco’s Amaranth Quartet offers world premieres in its D.C. debut

Four women formed the Amaranth Quartet at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 2014, and the group made its Washington debut Wednesday night, closing out the season of free concerts at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The results were mixed, with two intriguing world premieres bookended by less assured performances of older music.

Sahba Aminikia, an Iranian-born composer, is also based in San Francisco. His one-movement quartet “Rhyme by Rhyme” sets a poem of that name by Tahirih, the pen name of Fatimih Baraghani, a leader of the nascent Babi religion who was executed in Iran in the 19th century. Most of the piece is a sort of chaconne, in eight-measure segments over an octave ostinato that begins in the cello. Percussive strikes on the bodies of the instruments and pizzicato motifs recalled traditional Persian music. The four musicians read the phrases of the poem, translated into English, in rhythmic repetitions that achieved a hypnotic effect.

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ZOFO (MUSICA VIVA AUSTRALIA)

Surely everyone who has listened to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition has wondered about the original visual inspiration for this famous suite. Most of the art by Viktor Hartmann that stirred the composer has been lost, but six extant works can, with some certainty, be linked to various movements. While on the one hand there is a natural curiosity about the initial inspiration, the music has developed a life of its own; its vibrancy so strong that it has inspired countless visions in the minds of listeners, not to mention many colourful orchestrations including the one by Ravel.

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