Rousing return for WASO

COVID-19 curtailed Jess Gethin’s work overseas but freed her to take up the WASO baton ahead of an exciting season

When WA Symphony Orchestra returns to Perth Concert Hall on October 2 it will come with not one but two game changers.

Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana will unite 130 voices and full orchestra in a rumbustious song cycle for the ages that has illuminated commercials and movies for decades.

And they’ll be under the baton of Jess Gethin, long-time artistic director of cross-town rival Perth Symphony Orchestra, now taking Perth’s biggest band on the main stage for the first time.

Gethin conducted WASO in the WA Ballet season of Giselle last year, and will do it again for Dracula in September — both from the pit at His Majesty’s — and recorded the score for WA animated movie 100% Wolf.

“But this will be the first time I’ve worked with them on a main stage,” Gethin says. “We’ve been in talks about the 2021 season, so those discussion were already happening it’s just (the pandemic) has brought those opportunities forward — which is just as well because all my overseas work has been cancelled.”

The WA native — who became Instafamous for “Jessie’s Jump” on stage with PSO in Converse sneakers three years ago — was taking on work opportunities in Asia when the coronavirus hit.

“I was actually there when COVID was happening in February. I came home and I was supposed to go back for a concert with Singapore Symphony Orchestra on the 22nd of March, and a few days before we got the ‘do not travel’ message,” she says.

Gethin, who turned 40 in April, says after nine years at PSO she was up for a new challenge. And, being freelance, she is able to literally jump at any opportunity that comes her way.

“I can work with any orchestra or company if I’m interested in the project,” she says.

With regular maestro Asher Fisch overseas, and guest artists unable to travel, Gethin consulted with WASO to reshape a shattered program.

“It’s a great sense of relief that the orchestra is able to get back to the main stage, everyone’s missed it so much,” she says.

“I think the opening concert is going to be a highlight simply for the grandeur and the presence that Carmina Burana brings.

“I’ve had such a wonderful time exploring the writings, the 24 songs and poems orchestrated by Orff, looking at the history.

“That whole wheel of fortune concept. The writings cover everything that we cover in life. That’s why it’s such an exciting work. They’re powerful and about joy and love and lust and opportunity — and missed opportunity — and destiny and providence, all these beautiful melodies and raw rhythms, and the collaboration with a 130-piece choir and the full symphony.

“If you’re going to return to the stage that’s the way to do it with something that energises everybody, and unites everyone.”

Lead singers Amy Manford, Perry Joyce and James Clayton are also West Aussies who, like Gethin, have had to restructure their year.

“It’s something unique when you get to perform for your home orchestra, it feels like home,” Gethin says.

“You’ve got your music teachers and your family in the audience, your community is right behind you, but it’s also nice that we get to bring all the things that we’ve experienced overseas that people don’t get to see in Perth. I think West Australians really embrace that.”

Bernstein’s Candide overture and Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite No.1 are the curtain-raisers.

The following week opens with another crowd pleaser in Mendelssohn’s Hebrides overture, and another rising talent, Emmalena Huning, playing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5.

Gethin will then rock out her stint with Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8.

“It is just such a beautiful, joyous, optimistic work,” she says. “The way Dvorak treats his thematic material is so beautifully lyrical, the folk-inspired melodies.

“I’m really enjoying working closely with the orchestra on bringing together that real symphonic sound we love so much, that this orchestra does so well.”

Fast forward to November and WASO presents its annual Last Night of the Proms, with conductor Guy Noble, Huning again, soprano Sky Ingram and a pan-European program culminating in the traditional jingoistic singalong.

Then Fisch returns with two of the jewels of Romantic repertoire: Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 played by WASO concertmaster Laurence Jackson; and Beethoven’s mesmeric Emperor Piano Concerto No. 5, with Konstantin Shamray.

Bruch is bracketed by Mozart’s Magic Flute overture and Tchaikovsky’s majestic Symphony No. 4, while Beethoven is complemented by Brahms’ swansong Symphony No. 4.