Scenes from Suburbia

This month the audience at the City Recital Hall will hear the world premiere of a new symphonic work about a shopping centre. Not Chatswood Chase or Eastgardens in particular, but an idealised shopping centre, raised to the mythical heights of Wagner's Valhalla or Verdi's Egypt. The composer is 31-year-old Nicholas Vines, who grew up in Epping and now teaches music theory at Harvard University.

"Living in America I'm constantly struck by how much self-aggrandising there is, which initially is pretty repulsive, but after a while you realise it's nice that they talk about themselves and really value the things they've produced," Vines says. "In Australia we don't try to make our everyday life into something important. The idea of the piece is to mythologise certain aspects of suburbia."

The first two parts of Scenes from Suburbia have already been performed at earlier concerts of the Sydney Symphony's Discovery Series, under the baton of Richard Gill. Traffic lights and overgrown gardens were evoked by Vine's lush and sometimes raucous score, about which Gill expressed both mild bewilderment and strong enthusiasm.

Vine admits that his style of writing is hard to compartmentalise. He describes it as "post-colonial – it's most aligned with English music, but it's not English." If a soundtrack were ever needed for Patrick White's festering depictions of suburbia, Vines has it down already.

The composer says his shopping centre piece is "done in a heraldic style, with a stately song in the middle of it." Perhaps it will be a kind of Fanfare for the Common Consumer? "The shopping centre is the centre of a lot of people's lives," Vines says, insistent on celebrating what many would consider too ordinary for high art treatment.

But we shouldn't take the theme too literally. "It's not a direct representation," he warns. Don't expect to be able to identify movements depicting the car park or the food hall. Vine, a self-confessed "Wagnerian intellectual", admits to being a fan of Kath & Kim, which he considers "both satire and a loving portrayal" of suburbanites. But his music tells us we're not in Fountain Gate any more.

The other work that Gill will conduct and discuss in the concert is also an affectionate portrayal. Perhaps Edward Elgar's most famous piece after the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, the 1899 EnigmaVariations were dedicated to Elgar's "friends pictured within". The names of the 14 people have since been decoded and documented; for example, the enormously popular 'Variation 9' ("Nimrod"), much used for memorial services and as a majestic backing track for historical and nature documentaries, was of his best friend and publisher August Jaeger. But Elgar said there was a larger enigma, while refusing to explain what it was.

Fortunately, Richard Gill is a master of explaining and clarifying symphonic music. In his Discovery Series the orchestra performs a complete movement or part of a work, as well as repeating parts that Gill chooses to comment on. Subscribers love his witty educational style and extravagant judgments about the technical detail he has just teased out of the score.

Unfortunately, between Scenes from Suburbia and the customary wine-tasting afterwards there won't be time for all of Elgar's variations. However, the full set, plus Elgar's marches and many other works, will be conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy as part of the Sydney Symphony's Elgar Festival in November.

DiscoverElgar's Enigma: A Musical Lecturewith Scenes From Suburbia at the City Recital Hall, Angel Place on Tue 28 Oct

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