Bryce Dessner says turning off your phone before a concert can be a political act, as the musician and composer prepares for the first Australian performances of his cello concerto, Trembling Earth, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Dessner, best known as the guitarist and songwriter of the US indie band The National, said stepping away from a phone and being fully present in a concert hall had become a form of activism.
“The experience of coming into the concert hall – to get off your phone, and just be in the room with music, and to feel those things – in a way is a kind of activism,” he said.
The concerto, co-commissioned by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, was written for Russian-born cellist Anastasia Kobekina, who lives in Germany. It has already been performed in Dublin, Berlin and Prague before its Australian premiere in Sydney.
At a rehearsal at the Sydney Opera House, Dessner worked through the piece with Kobekina and the orchestra. Its title comes from a painting of an oak forest by Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch, which Dessner remembers seeing in Oslo.
He said the work was intended to evoke the natural world while reflecting on the damage caused by human beings.
“It’s not a political piece but it’s an awareness of the tremendous instability and conflict in the world – that nature bears witness to human calamity and catastrophe and mismanagement and bad politics,” Dessner said. “What is the experience of the earth through all of this?”
Although The National has supported Democratic presidential campaigns in the United States, Dessner said his classical compositions were generally less overtly partisan. He described Skrik Trio, written after Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016, as an exception.
Kobekina said Trembling Earth explored both the cello’s lyrical, voice-like qualities and what she called its “earthy, primal energy”. The piece moves between contrasting moods, including rhythmic and lyrical passages.
“I really feel that this world of sound that Bryce created will embrace everyone in the room,” she said.
The cellist said she believed the concerto would remain in the repertoire. “I do believe that this piece will be played in 30 years – it’s just so well written for the instrument, and just expands the repertoire that already exists for cello,” she said.
Dessner will also perform with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in a programme featuring St Carolyn by the Sea, a double concerto for electric guitars, alongside Australian guitarist Zane Banks.
A separate programme at Sydney’s City Recital Hall and Melbourne Recital Centre will include excerpts from Dessner’s score for Train Dreams, as well as Aheym, Impermanence and Garcia Counterpoint, his solo guitar tribute to Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia.
“The experience of coming to the concert hall to hear live music, to hear musicians like Anastasia – who has spent her life perfecting what she does, and to hear the Sydney Symphony Orchestra – it’s a very human form,” Dessner said.
