SHAKESPEARE LEGEND BREWING A STORM

Seeing a Shakespeare legend share the stage with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra is a real treat. Enter John Bell – Helpmann Award winner, Officer of the Order of Australia and the Order of the British Empire, and the founder of the Bell Shakespeare Company.

The name John Bell is synonymous with Shakespeare on the Australian stage, and Umberto Clerici (the QSO Chief conductor) expertly curates this inter-art performance of classical theatre and classical music, all centred around one of Shakespeare’s most well-known works: The Tempest.

Opening with the tumultuous piece by Arthur Honegger, Prelude to The Tempest, the orchestra sets the stage for what is to come: an uproar of emotions. Can you hear whistling winds, violent seas, and the crying of a battered ship in the storm?

Then, timeless words spoken by the man whose voice can make a VCR manual sound like poetry are set against orchestral compositions of what appears to be the most inspiring of Shakespearean plays among classical composers. We are treated to Jean Sibelius’s modernist interpretation of The Tempest in the style described as “incidental music”. The orchestra’s conversation with John Bell is a beautiful, organic exchange between art forms, as if the two were always meant to stand side by side onstage.

The culmination of the program is Tchaikovsky’s The Tempest, Fantasy-Overture. This work was the second that Tchaikovsky wrote in response to Shakespeare’s dramatic works. It was completed in just eleven days, and what a treat it is to hear it performed over 150 years later. Parts of it echo Tchaikovsky’s famous ballets, yet the composition stands on its own evoking magic on the backdrop of nature and its often unpredictable temperament.

To conclude the performance, John Bell delivers perhaps the most well-known words from the play: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” What better way of finishing an evening of Shakespeare performed against orchestral music he himself inspired? Our only disappointment is that only one performance is set aside for this wonderful program, but we are looking forward to the rest of the QSO’s season for 2025.