Despair, resolve, reflection

An anthemic tribute to William Cooper

Graham Strahle

For anyone who encountered Compassion, the profoundly moving and beautiful song cycle by Lior and Nigel Westlake from 2013, the prospect of hearing another work from this duo was always going to arouse interest. Would their newest collaboration rise to the same magical level as their first, or perhaps even surpass it? Would it be entirely different?

Ngapa William Cooper (‘Father’ William Cooper, in Yorta Yorta) takes its name and subject matter from a figure whose devotion to the cause of Aboriginal rights has written him into Australian history. Bain Attwood’s book William Cooper: An Aboriginal life story (2021) has helped bring recognition to this pioneering activist; it may have been the catalyst for Lior and Westlake to base their new work on his life. Either way, the book is a helpful starting point for those wishing to learn more about Cooper’s extraordinary protest against Kristallnacht, in which he, along with his family and members of the Australian Aborigines League, marched from Footscray to the German Consulate in Melbourne to serve a letter protesting Nazi violence towards Jews. It is useful information, because Ngapa William Cooper is narrative-based through its seven distinct sections and might lose some of its impact if one does not read the song texts beforehand or cannot pick out all the words. Not all of them were audible in this Adelaide Town Hall performance; by all accounts the same performance a couple of days earlier at Ukaria (an intimate space, ideal for chamber music) was superior auditorily.

Ngapa feels like a bigger and bolder conception than Compassion in every way. It is certainly the more viscerally powerful of the two works. In large part, this owes to its being written for two singers. Lior and Lou Bennett share vocal duties, neither one personifying Cooper but articulating his inward voice through the seven sections of this work: his despair, his resolve, his reflections. These sections are not songs so much as scenas in an oratorio, where singers sing separately in solo, exchange phrases in duet, or walk right up to each other as if merging into one persona.

In two of the sections, ‘The Meeting’ and ‘The Protest’, we hear audio recordings of Cooper’s grandson Uncle Alf (Boydie) Turner reading portions of the letter that was served to the German Consulate in 1938. Thus Cooper becomes a direct participant in the work. The power of these elements combines to make Ngapa a gripping experience. One could enjoy and be moved by Compassion for its sheer contemplative rapture, but this new work is different: it wrests one’s attention and never lets go.

A growling ferment of sound erupts in ‘The News’. The mood is sinister as a solo cello wraps around Lior’s voice and glistening sounds from the ensemble accompany his words about Kristallnacht. The guttural harmonic gestures are unmistakably those of Westlake, and the players are in top-notch form: a tight little ensemble, they comprise the Australian String Quartet, pianist Andrea Lam, double bassist Kees Boersma, and percussionist Rebecca Lagos. With a couple of changes of personnel, it is the same combination that presented Compassion in a highly successful chamber version at Ukaria for the 2019 Adelaide Festival.

‘The Meeting’ starts with a bare fifth in Dale Barltrop’s violin, and the string quartet dances ecstatically. This is a gorgeous score – Westlake at his best. In ‘The Protest’ that follows, the lights turn red and we hear the ensemble work hard in an episode of high virtuosity. The players are right up to the challenge. Rock drumming breaks out and the mood is full of jubilation as Cooper and his comrades unite in their cause. Lior and Bennett soar in anthemic unison.

‘At the End of My Days’ sees the two singers reflect on a life led by conscience and unperturbed by surrounding ignorance. ‘I will have crossed the divide,’ they sing. Telling words these, ones that resonate through the decades to remind us how battles for Indigenous justice are far from over. Rich harmonies rise, perhaps Westlake’s most beautiful music. Can composers ‘do’ beauty anymore? Most surely yes, in the case of Lior and Westlake: here’s another score where it exists in abundance.

One can admire so many things about this new work and its performance. The two voices of Lior and Bennett find a complementary perfection in their shapely lilt and in the heart and warmth of their delivery. Bennett has a wonderfully open expression that is heightened by her poetic gestures. Lior has a unique intensity, placing his notes with special deliberation, like a painter applying paint to a canvas.

If Michael Tippett could present a child of our time in his great secular oratorio of that title, honouring the life of the Polish Jew Herschel Grynszpan, whose actions precipitated Kristallnacht, Lior and Westlake have presented a man of our times in their musical portrayal of William Cooper. It shares the same musical DNA as its forebear Compassion. It is a work of sweeping power and truth. The standing ovations that followed each performance attested to that.

Two American works came earlier in the concert. Bristling with jagged rhythms, Bryce Dessner’s Aheym (‘Homeward’ in Yiddish), from 2009, felt like a fairly accurate encapsulation of contemporary times. The ASQ performed it with terrific speed and conviction. It was interesting to revisit mid-1980s minimalism in the form of Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 3, Mishima (based on Yukio Mishima, the novelist and political dissident who suicided in 1970). Glass’s music, if anything, gains in stature over the decades: it possesses a wistful nostalgia. Played with such loving warmth as it was by ASQ, it was almost like hearing Schubert. g