O'Connell the Music

Selby & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Monday November 2 at 3 pm

On this occasion, these first things sponsored by Selby & Friends are from Brahms, who is going to enjoy a bumper month here in Melbourne. Kathryn Selby and her colleagues/friends at this piano trio recital – violin Andrew Haveron from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Timo-Veikko Valve – are playing instances of the composer making his initial forays into various chamber music genres. To start, Haveron and Selby perform the Violin Sonata No. 1 in G from 1879 which falls gently on the ear from its first easy-going lilt of a melody in 6/4 to the tranquillo coda at the end with its farewell elongation of the last movement’s first motif. Then Valve and Selby work through the ardent Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor of 1865 with its riveting canonic dialogue starting at bar 57 of the first movement, not to mention its brilliantly solid counterpoint across the triplet-rich final Allegro. To end, all three players combine for the spirit-lifting Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major from 1854. In fact, we usually hear the revised version from 35 years later; its emotional warmth and fervour have made it a favourite with every ensemble working in this format, and a masterpiece that Selby has presented many times in this series, always with high success. A standard ticket costs $89, concession and student $69, Senior $87, child under 12 free – and always the transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50 for booking online or by phone. Hard to avoid this fiscal sting if you’re attending the popular afternoon performance.

This program will be repeated at 7 pm.

HAYDN’S OXFORD

Australian Haydn Ensemble

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday November 4 at 7 pm

It is, and it isn’t. The Sydney-based Australian Haydn Ensemble, finishing its first round of visits to Melbourne for the year, is presenting three Haydn symphonies – all latecomers in the composer’s output – but not in their original colours. No: we’re to hear these works in arrangements by the impresario Peter Salomon who was responsible for the composer’s last twelve essays in the form. The first we hear is outside the Salomon-commissioned dozen. The Oxford Symphony No. 92 of 1789 was not actually written for the 1791 conferral of a Mus. Doc. on the composer by the university, but recycled after premiering in Paris two years before. Then comes No. 95 in C minor, written in 1791 and the third in the composer’s chain of ‘London’ symphonies written for Salomon – the only one in a minor key. Last comes tonight’s best-known, the Drumroll No. 103 of 1795 and the second-last in Haydn’s total output. As for the Salomon format (which I’ve not seen for any of these works), the forces used are flute, string quartet and piano which are all present with some extras in our visiting ensemble: flute Mikaela Oberg, violins Skye McIntosh and Matthew Greco, violas Karina Schmitz and Rafael Font, cello Daniel Yeadon, and double bass Pippa Macmillan. A standard seat costs $65, Senior $55, concession $45. You also have to step up with the Recital Centre’s transaction charge of between $4 and $8.50 if you book online or by phone; as the event takes place in the limited space of the Salon, this extra charge is pretty unavoidable.

A LISTENING AIR AND MEXICO TOUR FAREWELL

Affinity Quartet

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday November 6 at 2 pm

A local not-for-profit organization, the Affinity Quartet comprises violins Shane Chen and Nicholas Waters, viola Josef Hanna, and cellist Mee Na Lojewski. All of them have put in their time at the Australian National Academy of Music, Lojewski founding the Affinity group the year after she ‘graduated’, in 2015. This afternoon, the players celebrate the release of their first CD for the Da Vinci Publishing label. A Listening Air is all-Australian its tracks including works by Brett Dean, Peter Sculthorpe, Thomas Misson, and Alice Chance, whose seven-minute contribution is being played here: Gifts from a Thieving Bluebird, written in 2024 for the Affinities and premiered by them in October of that year. As the group is touring Mexico, they are complimenting their hosts with Silvestre Revueltas’ one-movement Musica de feria of 1932 which lasts for a bit over nine minutes. Then the group hits the mainstream with Beethoven: his middle Razumovsky, No. 8 in E minor, published in 1808. This is the one that uses the same melody as Mussorgsky did for his Slava chorus at the Prologue’s end in Boris Godunov. Mind you, the composer’s interpolation of this theme russe is more than a little perfunctory, if not intentionally clumsy. The recital is scheduled to last for about 70 minutes and ordinary tickets are $65, concessions $55, students and Under 30s $30. You have to face up to the Recital Centre’s booking fee of between $4 and $8.50 which demonstrates that, while the Affinity group might be not-for-profit, the MRC can hardly claim the same.

This program will be repeated at 7 pm.

LATVIAN RADIO CHOIR & GENEVIEVE LACEY

Musica Viva Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday November 7 at 7 pm

Not strangers to Australia, the Latvian Radio Choir definitely toured Sydney in 2015 for that city’s start-of-year festival. Here they are again, appearing for Musica Viva Australia under artistic director Kaspars Putnins, collaborating with Australian recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey in a mixed program that goes back as far as Palestrina for some diminutions (perhaps those constructed by Rognoni?) on the five-part motet Pulchra es anima mea of 1584, as well as Jacob van Eyck for one of Lacey’s party pieces: Engels Nachtegaeltje – a bird-imitation gem first published in 1644. As a passing reverence to ante-contemporary choral music, the choir presents Mendelssohn’s 8-part setting of Psalm 22, Mein Gott, warum hast du mich verlassen. from 1844. Then we hit the reasonably modern with Estonian writer Arvo Part and his Magnificat of 1989 and 2001 Nunc dimittis, alongside some home-grown Latvian music in Peteris Vasks‘ eight-line Our Mothers’ Names (written in 1877, revised in 2003) which has to do with pet bird names given in affection to women. A switch to America for Caroline Shaw‘s 2017 setting of Psalm 84 with some unexpected choral effects, including the final bars’ imitation of pattering rain. Then follow two new commissions. The first is Ceremony of Swans by another Latvian composer, Eriks Esenvalds, to lines from the third book by Australian author Alexis Wright. The other is a collaboration between real-life partners Australian-American Hollis Taylor and Australian experimenter Jon Rose. This is Bird on Byrd about which I can find out nothing but assume it will involve Lacey for some twitterings as Taylor is a well-known ornithologist. The tickets are the usual Musica Viva nightmare: dividing the Murdoch Hall into four sections, standard prices range from $65 to $163 (concessions move from $18, to $15, to $12 for the top three levels), Under 40s pay $49, Under 18s pay $20. As usual, you have to meet the transaction fee charged by the Recital Centre of between $4 and $8.50 if you order online or by phone. There are only a few seats left, so this expensive grift is unavoidable.

LA BOHEME

Opera Australia

Regent Theatre Melbourne

Saturday November 7 at 7:30 pm

Can’t wait to get back into the State Theatre. Meanwhile, Opera Australia has to cope with the wide-mawed Regent in Collins Street. Coming towards the end of what the company is laughably calling its Melbourne Season, we are faced with this very popular Puccini, given ten times across the month. The company presents two Mimis – Galina Cheplakova and Valeria Sepe, alongside two Rodolfos – Kang Wang and Paride Cataldo – in alternating performances. The rest of the cast is singular: Alexandra Flood (Musetta), Luke Gabbedy (Marcello), Stephen Marsh (Schaunard), David Parkin (Colline), Clifford Plumpton (Benoit and the Sergeant), Simon Meadows (Alcindoro), Tom Hamilton (Officer), and Benjamin Rasheed (Parpignol). Orchestra Victoria will be directed by Finnegan Downie Dear, the whole production in the hands of Constantine Costi, sets by Dan Barber, costumes from Sabina Myers, lighting controlled by Morgan Moroney. We all delight in the sweeping melodies of Act 1, that dazzling confusion provided by the Opera Australia Chorus and the Opera Australia Children’s Chorus throughout Act 2, the bleak staging and warm resignation in the Barriere d’Enfer scene, and the emotional misery at the opera’s end. But, to its eternal credit, the work moves swiftly in both its stage action and in a strikingly inventive score. Tickets range in an elephantine stretch from $40 to $295 and there seems to be a booking fee of $9.80 – nice work if you can get it.

This performance will be repeated on Sunday November 8 at 2 pm, Tuesday November 10 at 7:30 pm, Wednesday November 11 at 7:30 pm, Thursday November 12 at 7:30 pm, Friday November 13 at 7:30 pm,. Saturday November 14 at 7:30 pm, Sunday November 15 at 2 pm, Tuesday November 17 at 7:30 pm, and Wednesday November 18 at 7:30 pm.

BRAHMS FESTIVAL: FIRST SYMPHONY & PIANO CONCERTO

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Saturday November 7 at 7:30 pm

Here the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under chief conductor Jaime Martin begins a celebration of all things Brahms, beginning with two large-scale scores that dominated their fields for many years, not least because the C minor Symphony took about 21 years to emerge eventually in 1876, realizing expectations that had fallen on the composer to continue German dominance in the form and thereby maintaining a tradition that belonged more in popular imagination than in reality. For all that, the work is a massive construct and its broad paragraphs engross any fair-minded listener. When it comes to the D minor Piano Concerto of 1858, the sense of power, even in the central Adagio, is continuous, with several sterling outbursts that, once heard, are hard to forget. More than in many another concerto, this one depends on a sustained powerful delivery for the driving trills of the first movement and the hurtling punches of the finale which begin in the first bar and resurface across the length of this rondo. For soloist, we are offered Denis Kozhukhin, Russian-born and winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2010. As far as I can tell (and there’s only a recording of some Brahms solo works to jusge), he’s amply hard-hitting when required (also see his Prokofiev War Sonatas recording of 2013) and should hold his own in a hefty give-and-take with the MSO throughout this work. Tickets range from $79 to $136, concessions are $5 cheaper, and the MSO charges $8 if you order online or by phone. The only space that has a sizeable number of seats available is the balcony – a long way from the action.

AUSTRALIAN STRING QUARTET X PARVYN

Melbourne Recital Centre and Australian String Quartet

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Monday November 9 at 6 pm

Houston, we have fusion – in spades, actually. Fot this program of darts and dashes, the Australian String Quartet – violins Dale Barltrop and Francesca Hiew, viola Chris Cartlidge, cello Michael Dahlenburg – sit down with vocalist Parvyn and her husband, multi-tasker Josh Bennett, to present very little that I’ve heard, a few doses of the contemporary, and a swag of Punjabi songs. To begin, the quartet airs Canadian-based writer Marcus Goddard‘s Allaqi of 2009, followed by our own Erkki Veltheim and his What You See, which I assume will involve Bennett, given the composer’s sonority-seeking life trajectory. A little puzzling is the fact that this is also the title of a song by Parvyn, but I’m sure all will come clear on the night. Then we hear a shabad or hymn by Arjan Dev Ji, the fifth Sikh guru who flourished in the late 16th century; I think this is a single vocal line, to be given by Parvyn. Speaking of whom, we now hear four of her own songs: Divine and Huna Lai Jio from the album Maujuda released in 2024, alongside Jara and Anchor from her CD Sa published in 2021. A vault in time back to Schubert for the Andante variations movement from his Death and the Maiden D minor String Quartet of 1824: a bleak set of pages, but that might be the recital’s intended ambience, Last comes a piece by Melbourne-born producer and sound engineer (at least, I hope he is) Max Dowling: Something 29. It’s impossible to find out anything about this piece, even if you wade through the thousand-and-one samples of this artist’s work online. Anyway, all this fits into an hour’s duration, for which you pay $55, with concession holders and students both paying $50. As well, you face the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of anything between $4 and $8.50 if you book online or by phone; at the moment, there’s high availability, so I’d be tempted to turn up at the box-office with cash in hand.

85 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT

Changing Wilds Ensemble

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday November 10 at 6 pm

This recital’s title refers to our position on the Doomsday Clock: a chastening realisation for us all and a call to arms from this sextet of performers. The Changing Wilds Ensemble is headed by Robert McIntyre (composer, co-artistic director, curator) and includes Georgina Lewis (piano, co-artistic director), Isabel Hede (violin), Gemma Kneale (cello), Jessica Aszodi (mezzo) and Savanna Wegman (poet). Reinforcing the ensemble’s dedication to environmental and climate consciousness, they are performing McIntyre’s Our Duty to Care song cycle from 2023 for soprano and piano trio with texts by Wegman. McIntyre is also represented by Time, a passage for solo piano written last year, as well as a ‘straight’ piano trio, enjoying its world premiere and taking impetus from the night’s over-arching title. We begin with some Arvo Part – Fur Alina for piano of 1976 that helped launch his tintinnabuli mode of expression. And we end in Iceland through Olafur Arnalds‘ Zero, a song coming from his 2020 album some kind of peace. Also in the middle of the evening appear three more Australian writers: Stuart Greenbaum with his 800 Million Heartbeats, probably in its piano trio version of 2007; his one-time student Laura Abraham‘s 2023 study for cello and piano, Tomorrow, and years away; and Alex Turley, represented by No. 6 from the eight movements in his Violin Sonata of 2024. The event lasts an hour and seating costs $55, concession $45, to which you add the Recital Centre’s excessive transaction fee of somewhere between $4 and $8.50.

CHAMBER MUSIC BY BRAHMS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday November 10 at 7:30 pm

Three musicians only perform in this recital sponsored by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. For reasons that I can’t explain, we begin with some Mendelssohn. Guest pianist Denis Kozhukhin is playing selections from the Songs Without Words, written between 1829 and 1845; well, he’s got 48 pieces he can choose from and, with a bit of luck, he’ll pick some that we haven’t heard/played too many times. Then we come to the night’s main burden in two Brahms scores. To begin, Kozhukhin performs the Sonata No. 3 in F minor, composed in 1853 and a challenge to pianists ever since, requiring stamina and sensitivity in combination, especially in its outer broad-beamed movements. Then comes the composer’s Horn Trio of 1865 which always sounds to me as coming from much later in the composer’s life. Kozhukhin will be abetted by concertmaster Natalie Chee and principal horn Nicolas Fleury; the interesting factor will be whether or not the latter plays a valved or a natural instrument (Brahms preferred the latter). Tickets are unfathomably complicated; the Murdoch Hall is divided into four levels of expense, from $75 to $105, with concession holders and full-time students paying $5 less (following the MSO’s niggardly attitude to the very young and the very old), with Under 40s getting a seat anywhere for $20. We all face the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50 if booking online or by phone. Apparently, the upper levels are not being used and there are currently over 200 stalls left. Tempting to risk showing up ticketless on the night . . .

BRAHMS FESTIVAL: SECOND SYMPHONY & CONCERTO

Melbouyrne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday November 12 at 7:30 pm

Round Three of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra‘s celebration of Brahms (why?) gives us some big next tries in the symphony and concerto forms. Again under chief conductor Jaime Martin, the orchestra will work its way through the summery haze of the comfortingly relaxed Symphony No. 2 in D of 1877, the most emotionally optimistic in the cycle of four and a splendid exhibition ground for the orchestra’s horns from the second bar on. The finale’s high spirits equal anything you hear in the serenades, the Academic Festival Overture for louts, or the St. Anthony Chorale Variations (well, the last one). Our evening’s first half is taken up with the large Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat of 1881, which also flatters the horn right from the start. Again, the MSO is making best use of guest Denis Kozhukhin who brings a brilliant technical armoury to this compendium score which resolves itself into the most amiable and sprightly of conclusions. Both symphony and concerto sit among the most approachable of Brahms’ works; a pity we rarely (never?) get to hear them matched. Yet again, seats cost between $75 and $127, with concessions a terse $5 cheaper; add on the MSO’s $8 booking fee if you go online or phone to be sure of hearing the concert live. There are more balcony and stalls seats available than for the first event in this series but, to avoid the surcharge by paying cash on the night, you need to keep an eye on the MSO website closer to the date.

BRAHMS FESTIVAL: THIRD & FOURTH SYMPHONIES

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Saturday November 14 at 7:30 pm

A double-whammy here to finish off the symphonic output of this great composer, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under chief conductor Jaime Martin not tempted to split the works and ally them with the two concertos that this festival eschews: the Violin and the Double. Anyway, we hear the Symphony No. 3 in F, quickly accomplished in 1883 and the shortest of the four. Its outer movements have storms and highly-organized outbursts, but each of them ends quietly, even placidly in the case of the reminiscing finale. With the last symphony in E minor, we come to a score that delights and astonishes (quietly) at every turn. Its first Allegro is a combination of tragedy and meandering warmth, moving to the consolatory Romantic for an Andante that honours the horn at its opening and closing bars. Suddenly, it’s Kermesse time for a pounding scherzo that also combines benign rusticity with sentimental warbling. But nothing surprises like the final passacaglia which is almost unrelievedly grim, even allowing for that Blessed Spirits flute solo at bar 97 which seems to me the core of this movement, if not the whole work, which stays remorslessly in E minor for the final cadence. You can keep your Mahlerian swoops and Brucknerian monoliths: this finale speaks to us with more eloquent simplicity and an assurance without bombast. Tickets continue to cost between $75 and $127, with that mealy-mouthed $5 reduction for concession holders. And you have to find the $8 flat transaction fee for ordering online or by phone. So perhaps don’t. This event has the most available seats – plenty all over the hall – at the time of writing (October 9), but then it has no soloist.

ANNE SOFIE VON OTTER & KRISTIAN BEZUIDENHOUT

Classical Music Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday November 18 at 7:30 pm

Once again, the Classical Music Australia organization has brought some remarkable musicians to town for an audience that pays what it can. Tonight, we hear Swedish mezzo Anne Sofie von Otter, who is nothing if not versatile. She will be accompanied by pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout, a guest with the Australian Chamber Orchestra two years ago. As for what they’re performing, there’s lots of Schubert and a bracket from 19th century Swedish writer Adolf Fredrik Lindblad: Nattviolen, Varning, Man tro? Jo, jo!, Vaggvisa, and En sommardag – I’ve no idea when any of them were written. The opening Schubert catch-all begins with Der Einsame (1825), An den Mond (two versions, both from 1815), Der Wanderer an den Mond (1826), Erntelied (1816), Die Sommernacht (1815), So lasst mich scheinen (the third version of 1826), Gretchen am Spinnrade (1814), and Wiegenlied (1826). The second group all come from the Schwanengesang song-cycle of 1828: Liebesbotschaft, Standchen, Abschied, Die Stadt, Am Meer, Der Doppelganger, and Die Taubenpost. The event is scheduled to last for 105 minutes, including a 20-minute interval, and the prices occupy a wide spectrum with the top standard costing $145 and the lowest Supported ones costing $40; you can find out from the Recital Centre website where you fit in. What you can’t avoid is the obligatory and (in this context) nasty Recital Centre transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50 if you order online or by phone. At the moment, about half the stalls are available but that could be because of little publicity.

BRAHMS’ GERMAN REQUIEM

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday November 19 at 7:30 pm

The only element of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra‘s festival that gets a repeat, this work (finished in 1868) bears witness through its encore performance to Melbourne’s ingrained love of choral music. The extra run-through might also have come about because of the presence of Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel who will be singing the two solo interpolations for Herr, lehre doch mich and Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Stadt. The Requiem‘s other soloist will be soprano Alexandra Flood, who will have the great joy of floating seamlessly above the MSO Chorus in the luminous Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit. Jaime Martin, the orchestra’s chief conductor, directs this and the bagatelles that precede: the traditional spiritual Deep River, Alma Androzzo’s gospel song If I Can Help Somebody from about 1945, At the River from the 1952 Set 2 of Copland’s Old American Songs, and the Welsh hymn Calon lan from the 1890s. I’m assuming that Terfel will sing these four; he’s recorded them all, some several times. Preceding all of this, we hear the brisk and bright Concert Overture by 20th century Welsh composer Grace Williams, written in 1932 and dismissed as worthless by the composer herself. All very entertaining, I’m sure, but an oddly miscellaneous introduction to Brahms’ choral masterwork. Seats range from $81 to $139, concessions $5 cheaper, and always you encounter the MSO’s booking fee of $8 if you book online or by phone. Currently, there are plenty of seats available in the balcony and stalls, if you read the MSO’s website counting of ‘100+’ for both levels as being an understatement.

This program will be repeated on Saturday November 21 at 7:30 pm.

BEETHOVEN’S PASTORAL

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Eliusabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday November 21 at 7:30 pm

Saying goodbye over this weekend to 2026’s national touring action, tbe Australian Chamber Orchestra takes us back to 2020 when it recorded the Beethoven Symphony No. 6 in F, a programmatic delight completed in 1808 and a source of Disney-inspired imagery for those of us born at a certain time, Not that Fantasia brings back universally happy memories: my father said it was booed off the screen by the troops in wartime New Guinea. Today, however, in these piping times of peace (ho ho), we’re quite inclined to indulge in cheerful feelings on arriving in the country – certain parts of it, anyway. As a preface, we’re to hear the Coriolan Overture from 1807, a score dripping with tragedy from its opening blasts to the muffled pizzicato ending. Artistic director Richard Tognetti plays the violin solo, ACO principal Timo-Veikko Valve assumes the collegial cello line and Konstantin Shamray takes on the piano part in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto of 1803-4 which became one of my favourite scores when the music audio channel on a flight back from Europe got stuck on this work and part of Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliette– a repetition that seared into my brain for hours. That apart, this work is atypically buoyant and happy in its sharing of responsibilities between soloists, coming to a felicitous conclusion with its bounding polonaise finale. Tha Murdoch Hall is divided into five strata for price differentials, $199 at the top and $69 at the bottom; you can get $10 concessions in the middle three levels; full-time students pay $30 for the bottom three levels and Under 35s pay $35 for the same strata. It’s not apparent on the Recital Centre’s website for this event but the transaction fee of anywhere between $4.50 and $8 obtains if you order online or by phone; there aren’t many seats left for tonight so my cash-at-the-box-office option isn’t really a goer, more’s the pity.

This program will be repeated on Sunday November 22 in Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne at 2:30 pm, and again in the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall on Monday November 23 at 7:30 pm.

WATERSHED: THE DEATH OF DR. DUNCAN

Opera Australia

Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne

Saturday November 21 at 7:30 pm

It was a national tragedy, the Adelaide murder by drowning of law lecturer George Duncan in 1972. Exacerbating its effects, nobody was ever found guilty of killing the gay academic, although suspicion fell heavily on three members of the South Australia Police Vice Squad who were eventually acquitted. A half-century after the event, playwright Alana Valentine and author Christos Tsiolkas collaborated with Brisbane composer Joe Twist to construct this oratorio, presented here as part of Opera Australia‘s ridiculously small Melbourne season. In the twin roles of Duncan and state premier Don Dunstan, we hear South Australian baritone Mark Oates, while bass Pelham Andrews takes on three parts: Mick O’Shea (a constable for a while wrongly grouped with the three accused police officers), Cop and Lawyer. A Lost Boy is sung/acted by Swedish/Maori artist Blake Appleqvist. Brett Weymark conducts Orchestra Victoria and the Opera Australia Chorus, Neil Armfield directs, Ailsa Paterson is set and costume designer, Nigel Levings handles the lights, and Lewis Major is the choreographer – so it’s an oratorio with a difference. The work lasts 100 minutes, and you’d assume there’ll be no interval. Tickets range from $30 to $168, pensioners and students enjoy the same reduction (less than $20) and children pay about half-price. The booking fee for an online or phone transaction is about $10 for a good seat, but you’ve got to ask: why is there any surcharge at all? I’m sure of the dedication of all involved, and all credit to the state that first decriminalised homosexuality in this country as a partial result of this terrible event, and which also sponsored this work. But why make it so hard/expensive to see the piece?

This performance will be repeated on Sunday November 22 at 2 pm, Wednesday November 25 at 7:30 pm, Thursday November 26 at 7:30 pm, Friday November 27 at 7:30 pm, and Saturday November 28 at 7:30 pm

A CLASSICAL CHRISTMAS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday November 26 at 7:30 pm

You’ll find plenty of classical music in this program from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the well-known Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan. He’s a big name in choral music, although we’ve heard precious little of his music here. Nevertheless, he’s taking on some mighty Christmas music, including bleeding chunks from Bach’s Chrismas Oratorio – those six cantatas clubbing together for the season, amalgamated by the composer in 1734 and taking us from Nativity to Epiphany. Preceding these bits, we hear some of MacMillans’s own 2019 Christmas Oratorio which takes in everything textual from the Bible to Milton, and a lot musical including mock-Renaissance, contemporary British choral, percussion bursts and Hollywood lavishness. The Scot’s best-known choral work follows: O radiant dawn of 2007, one of his Strathclyde Motets and a member of the ‘O’ Antiohons. Before the final brace of popularities in Berlioz’s L’adieu des bergers and Handel’s Hallelujah! Chorus, MacMillan has inserted Respighi’s Botticelli Triptych which qualifies for this occasion by having an Adoration of the Magi movement inserted between La Primavera and The Birth of Venus: a meditation between two fabulously orchestrated tone poems. The Choir of Trinity College Melbourne provides the singing; you hope it’s in an expanded form for this large room. And there’s little likelihood that the two oratorios will feature any solos as no individuals are listed on the MSO website’s bill of fare. For a standard ticket, you’re up for anywhere between $75 and $139, concessions an astounding $5 cheaper, with children (Under 18s) getting in for $20. You also have the $8 booking fee if you arrange your seats online or by phone; at the moment (October 10), you can find plenty of space on all three levels of Hamer Hall. Keep an eye on the website if you want to gamble on strolling up on the night with a fistful of shekels.

This program will be repeated on Saturday November 28 at 2 pm.

DRIFTING CURRENTS

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday November 26 at 7:30 pm

On this program, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, led by artistic director Sophie Rowell, has included two well-known scores for string orchestra. To begin the night, the ensemble plays Respighi’s Suite No. 3 of Ancient Airs and Dances, written in 1931 and comprising four movements: a floating Italiana, a multi-partite set of Arie di corte, a fluid siciliana, and a qudruple-stop rich passacaglia. At the end, we hear Suk’s 1892 Serenade for Strings which you don’t come across as often as you do the Tchaikovsky, Dvorak or Elgar. It’s very welcome for its felicitous E flat Major/B flat Major/G Major/E flat Major charm, encouraged in the young composer by Dvorak, his future father-in-law.. Another work for strings alone is Latvian writer Peteris Vask‘s Musica serena of 2015, a short congratulatory present written for the 70th birthday of his friend and proponent, the Finnish conductor Juha Kangas. At the centre of the exercise sits the Cello Concerto by Alice Humphries, a fresh commission for the Perth-originating composer and which is described in all the publicity material as ‘deeply moving’. Soloist is Blair Harris, who is the MCO’s principal chair. By my calculations, the new score will have to last about 80 minutes if the concert is to live up to its two-hour length. Ticket costs are the usual mess: standard seats on a division of the Mudoch Hall into four levels of auditory excellence move between $75 to $150; concessions and seniors pay $15/$20 less; full-time students and children can sit anywhere for $30, and Under 40s can get into the two lowest classes of seats for – you guessed it – $40. Never forget the unscrupulous transaction fee charged by the Recital Centre of between $4 and $8.50 if you’re booking online or by phone. About 170 seats still remain in the stalls; either the balcony-and-wings level is not being used, ot it’s already full; I suspect the former.

This program will be repeated on Sunday November 29 at 2:30 pm.

ZOE BLACK, CAROLINE HENBEST & MOLLY KADARAUCH

Melbourne Recital Centre

Peter and Ruth McMullin Beacon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Monday November 30 at 11:30 am

Where is the Beacon in this building? You’d assume it’s high up, given its name. Luckily, the Melbourne Recital Centre‘s website tells you that it’s on the building’s top level, where in former times the organization’s administration was reputed to frolic. If you find it, you can hear this string trio – violin Zoe Black, viola Caroline Henbest, cello Molly Kadarauch – with yet another version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, published in 1741 and restored to prominence through Glenn Gould’s 1955 landmark recording. Since then, it hasn’t been left alone, enjoying translation into all sorts of instrumental combinations, and even a Jerome Robbins ballet in the early 1970s. Anyway, these three players are ready to treat you to their realization of the composer’s brilliantly inventive feast in G Major/minor, although it’s scheduled here to last an hour which raises questions about their observance of repeats. A standard ticket costs $50, but there are three kinds of seats: dining table seating four, hightable with stools for four, table with banquette lounge for four – which is one way of making you bring along three friends. Or trusting in the kindness/sociability of strangers. At this point (October 10) only hightable seats are available. You still have to face the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50 if booking online or by phone; in this instance, the fee is $7. Good luck to all concerned, not least the audience.

DUSKLIT

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday October 1 at 7:30 pm

A definite gloaming reference appears in this program via a freshly-written work by New Zealand/Australian composer-academic Miriama Young ; DuskLit Meditations, commissioned by the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra. Furthering the composer’s standing as head of composition at the University of Melbourne’s Conservatorium of Music, students from that body will also be sitting/standing alongside regular MCO members as a sort of support group for their creative queen. In a score not really associated with eventide, the combined forces will take on Mendelssohn’s sun-drenched Italian Symphony, written in 1833 and, throughout its first movement, giving us a most benevolent and endearing musical picture of the country as it might have been when the composer first saw it in 1830 – not the wretched Bicycle Thieves reality it has become over the last century. In the evening’s centre stands Andrea Lam, beloved of the ABC’s television programmers, who will be soloist in Mozart’s 1785 Piano Concerto No. 21 in C which holds a central andante of melting emotional depth, on a par with the quiter moments in the last act of the following year’s The Marriage of Figaro. A potential relationship to dusk, then, if overshadowed by its surrounds which are well outside any suggestions of so tief im Abendrot country. Tickets range from $75 to $150 per adult, concession/senior come in at $15 or $20 less, full-time student and child are $30 across the hall, and the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50 continues to blight your financial landscape if you book online or by phone.

This program will be repeated on Sunday October 4 at 2:30 pm.

SIOBHAN STAGG + QUATUOR AGATE + JONATHAN WARE

Melboiurne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday October 6 at 7:30 pm

Here’s an essay in filling out your acquaintance with Genesis – the book, not the band – from a female perspective. Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg allies herself with the Quatuor Agate from France – violins Adrien Jurkovic and Juliette Beauchamp (recently taking over from Thomas Descamps who has moved into conducting, poor sod), viola Raphael Pagnon, cello Simon Iachemet – as well as American pianist Jonathan Ware. Each half of their program opens with a Hildegard reponsory and antiphon – O vis aeternitatis and O quam mirabilis est – both dealing with the wonder of the creation of man (in the first, woman gets a sort of guernsey). The night’s first half continues with Faure’s ten-part song cycle La Chanson d’Eve, written in 1906-10 and offering an oscillation between the first woman’s perceptions and meditations on nature. Then Ukrainian composer Anna Korsun‘s Last Flight of 2023, commissioned by the Agates, followed by our own Anne Cawrse‘s 2020 Advice to a Girl for mezzo+string quartet (or it could be the piano trio version), with Chausson’s 1899 Chanson perpetuelle (actually about 6′ 30″ to 7′ in length) for all participants ending the first half of the evening. After the antiphon, we hear some Australiana in settings of Judith Wright: John Rodgers‘ Failure of communication from 2015, Andrew Ford‘s brief After the Visitors of 2014, and David Hirschfelder‘s 2015 To a Child – all for soprano and string quartet. Then a detour to Sri Lankan/Canadian musician Dinuk Wijeratne for his The Disappearance of Lisa Gherardini of 2022 concerning a heist of the Mona Lisa and which provided a fruitful prize for the Agates at a Banff competition in 2022. Another rarity arrives in Sibelius’ Luonnotar of 1913 in the composer’s own arrangement for soprano and piano; bringing the program’s message home fully, it concerns the creation of the earth by a Finnish goddess. Finishing us off is Medtner, beginning with his Op. 1bis The Angel, the vocal version of a piano piece; followed by the first of his 1924 Op. 46 Seven Songs, Praeludium, to a Goethe text. Tickets fall between $79 and $139, concessions $20 cheaper for middle-of-the-road seats, Under 40s paying a flat $49 for the same middling seats. Everyone who orders online or by phone pays the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of anywhere from $4 to $8.50. The Hall’s upper level is not being used and the stalls are possibly half full at the moment (September 19), so I’d be tempted to turn up on the night with cash.

MARSHALL MCGUIRE EMERGING COMPOSER COMMISSIONS

Melbourne Recital Centre/University of Melbourne

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday October 7 at 2:30 pm

Named in honour of the recently departed (from the job) director of programming at the Melbourne Recital Centre, these commissions celebrate new Australian compositions; in this case, we hear from Nicole Brady and Arie Madden Welti, both University of Melbourne graduates and both yet to decide on what to call their new scores. We’ll be hearing from the two-person ensemble Bronzewing, comprising Katie Yap‘s viola and voice, and Donald Nicholson on harpsichord and electronics. Charlie Sdraulig is the program’s host. I’d suggest that these two new works will be substantial as the program is scheduled to last for 90 minutes (with or without interval isn’t clear). It’s not possible to recommend this event because the content is clouded in mystery, made no clearer by the Bronzewing group’s claim to play everything from Hildegard to Jarre, and with no indication as to where on that spectrum we find Yap and Nicholson tonight, let alone Brady and Welti. On the positive/negative side, tickets are $10 only but you have to find almost half as much again for the Recital Centre’s $4 transaction fee if you order online or by phone. It’s a very specialized event, so I’d be tempted to risk turning up on the afternoon wih lots of 10 cent coins.

ISATA KANNEH-MASON

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday October 9 at 7:30 pm

This scion of the clan, Isata Kanneh-Mason, is a complete unknown to me – unlike her cellist brother Sheku who distinguished himself by playing a solo at the surprise-on-every-corner wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. His older sister Isata is a pianist and is featuring three well-known masterworks from the repertoire in her recital. She begins and ends with Beethoven: the Moonlight Sonata No. 14 of 1801, then the Waldstein Sonata No. 21 of three years later. Not sure why she has decided to give us these well-worn works, unless she has found a new interpretative vein. In between she is presenting Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit triptych, written in 1908 and a very difficult score for any pianist, in particular its rapid-fire Scarbo conclusion. As well, Kanneh-Mason will perform two works by Bulgarian-British composer Dobrinka Tabakova: a short Nocturne from 2008 which is sextuplet doodling with few melodic traces, and the more substantial three-part Halo of 1999 – an exercise in piano harmonics. Tickets range from $79 to $139, with concessions for middling tickets coming in at $20 cheaper, while Under 40s get these middle-level seats for a flat $49. But really, nothing’s flat with the Recital Centre, which charges a transaction fee of anywhere from $4 to $8.50 if you book online or by phone. The upper level of the Murdoch Hall isn’t being used on this occasion, and the stalls are at the moment close to half-empty. Once again, I’d be tempted to front the box office on the night.

CHRISTIAN LI PLAYS BRAHMS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Saturday October 10 at 7:30 pm

Soloist in this program is Australian violinist Christian Li – all of 18 years old and taking on the formidable Brahms concerto of 1878. This work is a major element of the repertoire and we’ve heard some brilliant performances, both live and recorded. Is Li going to open our eyes/ears with a new view of this score that many of us know all too well? Give him the benefit of the doubt: he may show us something new or unexplored through his interpretation. He’s appearing under the heading of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Young Artist in Association, which strikes me as being a powerful sponsorship. On either side of this, Tianyi Lu, the organization’s ex-assistant conductor, conducts Elfrida Andree’s Andante Quasi Recitativo of 1877, and a suite from Tchaikovsky’s 1876 ballet Swan Lake. About the Swedish composer, I know nothing, to quote Manuel, but her Andante is brief – for strings only, with divisi cello from the start (nobody else); 57 bars long and playing for less than five minutes; in E Major and a focused exploration of its opening violin motif; the material striking its creator as good enough to be used several times in different compositions. As for the Tchaikovsky collation, the suite published after his death could have been determined by him, or perhaps not. It usually comprises six excerpts, although there’s one floating around which takes in nine chunks of the score. Standard tickets move from $75 to $127, concessions are a whole $5 cheaper, Under 18s pay $20 – and everybody faces the MSO’s supercharge of $8 if ordering online or by phone. From the MSO website, you can see that there are very few seats available, apart from 70 or so in the unliveable balcony, so you probably have to give in to this body’s voracious appetite for money.

PEKKA KUUSISTO: LEGENDS & LUMINARIES

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday October 10 at 7:30 pm

Finnish violinist and composer Pekka Kuusisto returns to the Australian Chamber Orchestra as guest director and soloist, opening his account with Mozart’s The Magic Flute; well, bits of it as arranged by the visitor. I’m imagining a sort of harmoniemusik for strings with a big dab of Papageno/Papagena. Then Kuusisto plays the solo in American writer Nico Muhly‘s Shrink: Concerto for violin and strings, a co-commission by the ACO and recorded by the violinist in 2021 with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, although it enjoyed its world premiere in 2019 in this hall when the ACO Collective accompanied Kuusisto. All of this is rather odd as the work is listed in the composer’s catalgue as being composed in 2021. Anyway, we rush on to another American with Ellen Reid‘s West Coast Sky Eternal, a fifteen minute score from 2023 that begins and ends in the clouds after a hectic trip downwards. Then we conclude with another arrangement, this time an anonymous one, of Mendelssohn’s 1845 String Quintet No. 2 in B flat, originally written for the usual format of two violins, two violas and cello and here taking in the reinforcement of a double bass or two. So it’s a zig-zag of a program that begins and ends in orthodoxy and moves to the recent/present in its middle, which is just how Kuusisto likes it, they say. The Hall divides into five sections for the ACO, tickets starting at $49 and climaxing at $166; full-time students can get into the lower three ranges for $30 while Under 35s pay a fitting $35 for the same limited areas. Booking by phone or online costs $7 for top-price seats which is close to unavoidable in a smallish space like this one. And, of course, it’s unfair, even if the fee goes down for cheaper seats.

This program will be repeated on Sunday October 11 in Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne at 2:30 pm, and again on Monday October 12 in the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm.

SCHUMANN AND FAURE PIANO QUARTETS

Melbourne Recital Centre and Kristian Chong

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Monday October 12 at 7 pm

We hear two pieces only in this hour-long recital from Kristian Chong and three of his Melbourne Symphony Orchestra friends – assistant concertmaster Tair Khisambeev, principal viola Christopher Moore, and assistant principal cello Elina Faskhi. So far, so familiar. And so is what they’re all presenting. First up comes Faure No. 1 in C minor of 1879, which I’ve found is more popular on chamber music programs than the more involving second essay in the form by this composer but the earlier work shows an impressive lyrical sweep, an amplitude that shines through in the finest Romantic chamber works. Complementing this score, we hear Schumann in E flat, the 1842 companion piece to the composer’s more immediately appealing Piano Quintet, yet this four-movement gem seems more concise, less packed with busy work than its partner, also in E flat. I know it’s another ad hoc congregation of musicians banded together for this event, but they all have impressive qualifications and Chong is the most amiable of catalytic musical agents. A standard ticket costs $55, a concession $45, a student $20. For the top price, if you book online or by phone, you pay a transaction fee of $7 which strikes me as unduly inflated, especially as concession and student tickets attract the same charge. How can this be? I know the Salon has limited places but why penalise students by imposing such a ridiculously high impost?

PAUL LEWIS: MOZART+

Muisca Viva Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday October 13 at 7 pm

The eminent British pianist, perennially circling around specific composers, has centred on Mozart this year. Paul Lewis will be playing two of the composer’s piano sonatas: No 10 in C from 1783 and No. 14 in C minor written in the following year – one of only two in the catalogue not in a major key. They’re an interesting choice, celebrating the composer’s versatility: in the first, all delight and elegance; the second, a Beethoven precursor with a florid central E flat Major adagio . Between these two investigations, Lewis plays some French music. The more familiar is Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse of 1904 which tests every pianist’s ability to weld material into a coherent unit and which I’ve never heard better achieved than in Gieseking’s reading recorded in 1954 (or been stunned by a reading more rapidly completed than his version of 1938). As the evening’s complete unknown, Lewis is giving us extracts from Poulenc’s 15 Improvisations pour le piano written between 1932 and 1959. Don’t know why he’s not playing the lot: they all add up to about 23 minutes. Add that to the Debussy’s 6′, Mozart No. 10 averaging 19′ and No 14 coming in at about 20′ and you have a total of 68 minutes playing time. Even with a 20-minute interval, that comes in at about 90 minutes but the recital is scheduled to last 2 hours and 40 minutes; perhaps Lewis is going to do a lot of talking. The ticketing is a riot: Musica Viva divides the Murdoch Hall into four, prices starting at $65 and apexing at $163, concessions applying to the top three brackets and cutting off $18, $15 and $12 respectively, while Under 40s pay $49 and Under 18s $20. There are very few seats left (25 stalls, 10 circle), so you have to face up to the Recital Centre’s offensive transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50 for online and phone booking.

MOZART SALIERI & PLEYEL

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday October 15 at 7 pm

Paul Dyer and his Australian Brandenburg Orchestra have found some older scores to precede the major work on this program: Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in E flat, written in 1788 and less frequently heard than its companion symphonies, Nos. 40 and 41. But it is a brilliantly enticing work, packed with surprises from adagio introduction to chattering final allegro. For their first creaking novelty, the orchestra gives the Australian premiere of Salieri’s Sinfonia to the opera Cublai, gran kan de’Tartari, which the composer wrote in 1788. Because of its satirical content relating to monarchies, the work was censored out of performance potential, so never heard in Salieri’s lifetime. And Mozart thought he had it tough two years earlier with Figaro. It’s a short experience because the sinfonia lasts less than four minutes. But we next enjoy a world premiere in Pleyel’s Concerto for violone in E flat which musicologists are almost prepared to date as being written in 1779, the work long misattributed to contrabass virtuoso Johannes Mathias Sperger. Tonight we hear the ABO’s own double bass Robert Nairn as soloist and wish him well as he takes us on this completely novel journey, through Pleyel’s Allegro, Adagio and Rondo with the soloist tuned to a scordatura D for that little bit of extra Viennese spice. Ticket details are a nightmare: the ABO divides Murdoch Hall into six levels of aural excellence with $45 the lowest and $167 the premium. Concessions come in at $61 off for the top rank and $31 remission for the fourth layer – no concessions for the bottom two strata. Seniors get much less discount, students are charged $20 for the five lesser sets of seats, while Under 40s pay $36 for places in the second level. Everybody has to negotiate the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of anything between $4 and $8.50 which, as always, is too much for the miniscule service provided for booking by phone or online.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 17 at 5 pm and on Sunday October 18 at 5 pm.

HOPE & BRAVERY: SHOSTAKOVICH & TOMASI

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday October 15 at 7:30 pm

You won’t find a stranger mix than this two-work program. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra plays under American Jonathon Heyward, presently conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra after having packed a wealth of musical experience into his 34 years. The night’s soloist is American saxophonist Steven Banks who is about the same age as Heyward and will be fronting Tomasi’s two-movement Concerto for Alto Saxophone of 1949. A score with underlying jazz suggestions, it’s notable for its first movement irregular rhythms with a penchant for 5/4, and an accompanied cadenza. Then interval and back for the Shostakovich Symphony No. 7, Leningrad, which the composer wrote most of in that besieged city during 1941. The composition has gone through several evaluations – as patriotic sincerity, Soviet propaganda, secretly anti-Stalin, overtly anti-Hitler, a low point in the composer’s output, one of his most universally inspiring achievements. Spare yourself all the angst. The score’s long progress to its powerful conclusion is an engrossing experience, even without the various contexts and programs that have been attached to it. Standard tickets cost between $75 and $139, concession holders enjoying a liberal $5 reduction in cost, Under 18s getting in for $20, with everyone paying the MSO’s transaction fee of $8 per order online or by phone. As usual, the booking website states that there are only 100 seats left in all three levels of Hamer Hall; those numbers turn up too often to be credible and I don’t think there’s a ravenous appetite for Tomasi or Shostakovich.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 17 at 2 pm.

SARAH GRUNSTEIN: BACH’S GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

Jacqui Bonner Marketing & Management

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Salon

Wednesday October 21 at 7 pm

An Australian-born pianist, Sarah Grunstein is making her assault on Bach’s marathon keyboard work tonight. I’ve not come across this performer before, probably because she spends a good deal of time in America, possibly because she is linked more to Sydney where she studied first with my last piano teacher, Nancy Salas. Because this recital is scheduled to last for 90 minutes, it is pretty clear that she will be playing all the repeats, each half of each variation heard twice. That’s something you can’t be sure of these days; in fact, the last three or four readings of the Goldbergs that I’ve heard proved to be half-arsed affairs with either no repeats or indulgence in a select few. So, to have an artist go the extra 45 minutes to give us a compleat picture is worth celebrating. Of course, Grunstein follows a long line of keyboard experts who have recorded these variations, canons and quodlibet but her background both here and in the USA is reassuring. Tickets are simplicity: standard $80, concession $40; no allowance for children – in fact, the Recital Centre blurb recommends that anyone in 15 should stay away. Couldn’t agree more. As for the notoriously changeable transaction fee for booking online or by phone, it’s $7 for both prices; great to see bare-faced avarice in action.

SIR STEPHEN HOUGH IN RECITAL

Classical Music Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday October 28 at 7:30 pm

Pianist Stephen Hough was made a Knight Bachelor in 2022 and, looking at this night’s title, would seem to be proud of the honour; sort of endearing in these times of (the former) Prince Andrew’s disgrace, the uncertainty surrounding an unprotected Sussex household, and the nasty revelations by a one-time brother-in-law about King Charles’s treatment of and attitude towards his first wife. Rising above this tawdry set of scenarios, Hough jumps all over the repertoire in his proffered program. He begins with Drei Klavierstucke by Schubert from 1828 which I have never come across in live performance; remarkable, considering their position in the composer’s output as written just before the last three piano sonatas. Another neglected piece comes in the final Intermezzo, that in E flat minor, from Brahms’ 6 Klavierstucke of 1893. Then a vault to Schoenberg’s 1911 Six Little Piano Pieces for which the title couldn’t be more appropriate. Come back a little – from the 1790s to the 1820s – for the Op. 110 Bagatelles by Beethoven, specifically the brief No. 10 in A Major; followed by the composer’s Waldstein Sonata No. 21 of 1804 where we settle in for something substantial after a bevy of brevities. Keeping up with the standard repertoire, Hough continues (after interval, you’d hope) with Schumann’s Carnaval from 1835 which moves from the declamatory to the pompous with everything in between. To end, the pianist presents his own arrangement of three excerpts from the Sherman brothers’ music for the 1964 film Mary Poppins which he produced for a 2022 Lang Lang CD. At this event, the Murdoch Hall is split into three price levels: standard seats are $90, $110, $140. After that come four other price ranges, depending on how much you’re willing/able to pay; don’t know if your candidacy is means-tested. In the end, you have to pay the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50, which rather saps at Classical Music Australia’s aim at accommodating the penury of us all in these straitened times.

MOSTLY MOZART – PIANO CONCERTO NO. 21

Melbourne Recital Centre & the Australian National Academy of Music

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday October 29 at 11 am

This concert lasts an hour only. We begin with an Australian piece: Nigel Westlake‘s 1984 Omphalo Centric Lecture quartet for marimbas, with punctuation from log drums with three pitches, a splash cymbal and a shaker. The piece seems rather cheerful in character when you consider the cosmic view of existence proposed by Paul Klee who painted the canvas from which this music takes its impetus. Having dealt with the Australian National Academy of Music‘s percussion section, conductor Philip Arkinstall takes another orchestral group or two through Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, written in 1920 as a memorial for Debussy. The original calls for three flutes, alto flute, two oboes, cor anglais, three clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, and tuba; a later version omits the alto flute. It lasts less than ten minutes, like Westlake’s score. Then comes the main work which will be the inevitable total Mozart: his Piano Concerto No. 21 in C with Stefan Cassomenos as soloist and, if I read the publicity material correctly, he will also direct from the keyboard – which will probably be the case with Andrea Lam who plays this same concerto with the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra on October 1 (see above). The work asks for flute, pairs of oboes, bassoons, horns and trumpets, with timpani and the usual string band. And I’d definitely be expecting some original touches from this gifted, adventurous pianist. Standard tickets cost $59, concession a whopping reduction to $52, students and Under 40s both enjoying another startling decrease in cost to $49. You also, if ordering online or by phone, have to produce the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50, imposed for inexplicable reasons when you consider the work involved.

VOYAGER

Australian String Quartet

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday October 29 at 7 pm

For its latest excursion, the Australian String Quartet – violins Dale Barltrop and Francesca Hiew, viola Chris Cartlidge, cello Michael Dahlenburg – is presenting two formidable works from its format’s repertoire. The last time I heard the ensemble was in Brisbane at the Library attached to the Queensland Art Gallery where they played Bartok, but I can’t recall if it was the same as they’re essaying here: No 4 of 1928 in five movements and circumscribed by a massive arch form. After interval come more big guns with Beethoven’s String Quartet in B flat Op. 130, with the original/now-alternative Grosse Fuge finale to follow – or I hope so as it’s listed separately on the program. That makes up quite a task, getting through the quartet’s six movements, including that profound central cavatina, then fronting up for the jagged 16 minutes-plus fugue. Prior to their Bartok, the Australians are performing Irish violist-composer Garth Knox‘s Satellites, written in 2015 for the Kronos Quartet. This score falls into three movements: Geostationary, Spectral Sunrise, and Dimensions. Its language is an amalgam of perfectly assimilable motifs and string-specific effects, as in the first pages which involve a regular pizzicato ‘bass’ with a mesh of sound-delivery techniques and scraps that abruptly shine out; the Sunrise is strong on harmonics and suspense, while the final movement, like the first, is steady, here in a march-like rhythm, but throws around its mobile semiquavers with a frolicsome abandon that you sometimes come across in a snug, although probably not those moments (including the last) where all players flail at the air with their bows. Tickets go for $95, with $25 off for concession holders; Under 40s pay $40 and students get in for $15. All very reasonable but you have to meet the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of anywhere from $4 to $8.50 if you book online or by phone. At the moment, available stalls seats number about 300; the upstairs level of the Murdoch Hall isn’t being used. But a student ticket attracts a fee of $7; that’s the way to encourage the young – slug them half their ticket price for nothing.

BEYOND BOTANY BAY

Excelsis

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday October 30 at 7:30 pm

A choir that has been operating in this city for over a decade, Excelsis throws its talents around lavishly among the city’s Catholic parishes with the intention of brightening up their Sunday masses. Tonight, under musical director Tom Buchanan, the singers will take us through 14 Australian choral pieces in a program scheduled to last for 2 hours 30 minutes (which includes interval). They start with Paul Stanhope‘s This is our home from 2014, followed by Daniel Brinsmead‘s A Soft Day (written some time before 2015), then John Rotar‘s Tune my heart (also a probable date – 2022). A touch of Anzac Day nostalgia comes next with Eric Bogle‘s 1971 And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda as arranged by Nicholas Buc; Hush: On the Death of a Bush Church by Iain Grandage in 1993, the Benedictus from Dan Walker‘s 2014 Mass of Deliverance, and Joseph Twist‘s demanding Lux aeterna from 2011 all add up to a semi-liturgical triptych. Four works by Paul Jarman appear next: Warri and Yatungka of 2002, his 2019 Magna Est Veritas, Pemulwuy from 2006, and the premiere of The Heroes of Gundagai which I believe will be conducted by the composer. Sally Whitwell‘s Byron setting of She walks in beauty (probably a 2007 product), Across the Dark composed by Ben van Tienen (no date available: what is it with these choral composers?) to Michael Leunig’s words, and Ruth McCall‘s 2007 take on Banjo Paterson’s Waltzing Matilda lines bring this impressively catholic program to a close. But will it last for 150 minutes? Somewhere along the night’s progress, Wiradjuri guest soprano Shauntai Abdul-Rahman appears; don’t know where, don’t know when because I can’t track down all the scores. A standard ticket costs $40; the lavish reduction for concession holders is $5; and you have to cope with the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50 if you book online or by phone. I’ve just checked on concession tickets and the fee is $7. The upper level(s) are not being used and the stalls are at the moment half-empty; I’d be tempted to turn up on the night with the smallest denominations you can get.

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS IN CONCERT

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday October 30 at 7:30 pm

I’ve seen this 1990 Tim Burton fantasy once but not in a cinema theatre, so I can’t speak to its effect on a viewer as part of the main. But I do remember feeling manipulated, and not in a welcome tonsorial way. Is Danny Elfman‘s score worth resuscitating? It doesn’t strike me as being exceptionally creative or striking and the more glutinous moments involving a choir tread a well-worn sentimental path. Still, there are three Tom Jones songs interpolated in the film and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra strings will get a good work-out. But you have to wonder if there’s a substantial audience for this tale, which at least comes to a satisfyingly unhappy end. Nicholas Buc conducts. Tickets range between $83 and &127; both concession holders and children pay $5 less, but everybody will pay the transaction fee of $8 per order if booking online or by phone. Which seems to me to be asking for a lot of money for going to the pictures. At the moment, seats are available on all three levels of Hamer Hall, less in the Circle than in the stalls or balcony. And I note that there are not the usual three, if not four, airings available. Still, there are doubtless fans out there who revel in the sight of Johnny Depp with his eyes wide open.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 31 at 7:30 pm.

NIGHT MUSIC

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday October 31 at 7:30 pm,

After some out-of-town performances in Sale and Cowes, this program arrives at the Recital Centre for its final iteration. Across half the night, our Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under concertmaster Natalie Chee will be playing music by Joe Chindamo, this year’s composer in residence with the MSO. Their program begins with his Fantasie auf Nachtmusik which is a re-imagination/re-evaluation of Mozart’s ever-popular serenade for strings of 1787. Composed in 2019 to a commission by the Perth Symphony Orchestra, this vision uses the original with glee, interleaving it with Chindamo’s abrasive flights of fancy. This will be followed by the jazz master’s new Flute Concerto with soloist Eliza Shephard, ABC Young Performer of the Year in 2022. I can’t find any information about Chindamo’s new score except that the MSO commissioned this concerto and it will have to be a substantial piece lasting about half an hour to help flesh out an event scheduled to last 100 minutes, including a 20-minute interval. The evening’s final offering is Mozart’s Linz Symphony No. 36 of 1783, brightened texturally by the presence of a pair of carefully employed trumpets and blessing the listener with vital delight in every one of its four movements. Standard tickets cost between $57 and $105, the concession cost coming in at a staggering $5 cheaper. Under 18s can get a seat for $20 but they, like everybody, will have to pay the MSO’s inordinately high transaction fee of $8 if ordering online or by phone. The event is selling well with only 76 places left in the Circle and the usual noncommittal ‘100+’ in the stalls.

BUSH, BORSCHT & BONN

Selby & Friends

Ptimrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday September 2 at 2 pm

Nearing the end, I’m trying to find relevance in the titles of programs: an interest I’ve avoided for many years but which has come to be fascinating in recent times. For its latest touring program, the Selby & Friends ensemble – in this instance featuring piano Kathryn Selby, violin Susie Park, and cello Julian Smiles – will play trios by Australian senior writer Ross Edwards, Novgorod-born Anton Arensky, and Germany’s pride, Ludwig van Beethoven. Edwards’ work (of either 1998 or 1999, which has now been followed by a newly-composed score in this format) has featured on a Selby & Friends program before: back in 2021, when Selby and Smiles toured with Smiles’ Goldner Quartet (of happy memory) colleague, violinist Dene Olding. You’d have to assume that this translucent work of three movements, lasting about 15 minutes, represents the ‘Bush’ because the composer has certainly laboured to bring that national presence into his work. It’s followed by Arensky’s Piano Trio No. 2 in F minor of 1905. Nowhere near as popular as the writer’s first work in this form, it’s slightly more substantial, lasting about 35 minutes, and notable for its final set of six striking variations and muffled reprise. Perhaps this is where the borscht comes in,although that’s usually considered a Ukrainian dish. As for Bonn’s most famous son, his Piano Trio in E flat Op. 38 of 1803 is an arrangement of his highly successful Septet, with the piano taking over the string lines, the violin substituting for the arrangement’s preferred clarinet, while the cello takes up most of the original’s bassoon line. Whichever way you hear it, the Septet/Trio lasts for about 40 eloquent, mainly optimistic minutes. Tickets are $89 (concession $69), Seniors $87 (not any advantage, then, relying on that card), and students $69; and you have the Recital Centre’s $4-to-$8.50 money-grubbing transaction fee to shell out if you order by phone or online.

This program will be repeated at 7 pm.

MOSTLY MOZART – PLAY WITH FIRE

Australian National Academy of Music

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday September 3 at 11 am

An incendiary morning from those artists-in-completion-mode working at the Australian National Academy of Music, directed by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s associate principal cello (and ANAM alumnus/a), Sharon Grigoryan. Lots of fire to be heard, then, but not so much Mozart who is represented by one of his more obstreperous and brilliant-sounding symphonies: No. 35 in D, the Haffner of 1782. This happy score ends the program, and Haydn begins it with his Symphony No. 59, written in the Esterhaza residence years sometime between 1765 and 1769. It is nicknamed the Fire, because some of its movements were used as incidental music to a play called The Conflagration. After this follow several pieces with more obvious connotations. Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance from El amor brujo will be heard in its original 1915 gitaneria version; in the only performance I’ve heard, this calls for a chamber orchestra rather than the richly padded readings that come with the composer’s later re-vamps. We’ll hear the last of Debussy’s Preludes for piano, his 1913 Feux d’artifice, which you’d have to guess will be given to us in Colin Matthews’ orchestration. Or is it Peter Breiner’s version? Or that by Francis Gorge? Concluding the night’s semi-theme comes another glittering piano original in Scriabin’s Vers la flamme of 1914 – in Leytush’s odd orchestration, you’d suppose. Anyway, it will be a packed hour of music-making which Grigoryan may direct from the first cello desk. Tickets are simple: $59 standard, $52 concession (be still, my beating heart), students and Under 40s $49. Don’t forget the $4-to-$8.50 booking fee that the Recital Centre imposes, milking its clients of more cash with dubious justification.

ORGAN GALA

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Melbourne Town Hall

Thursday September 3 at 7:30 pm

These days, it’s not hard to guess what you’re going to get when you put an orchestra and organ together. Yes, it’s Saint Saens’ Symphony No 3 of 1886, the finale of which was used to risible effect in Chris Noonan’s 1995 Babe film. While the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Finnish-born Emilia Hoving, currently associate with the Royal Philharmonic, the attention-grabbing organist will be English-Australian Joseph Nolan whom I have never heard in action but who is a notable Widor expert. Before the blasts and rumbles from the Town Hall’s fabulous instrument under Nolan’s hands and feet, Hoving takes us through a farrago, beginning with Four Dances from Ginastera’s ballet Estancia, presumably the suite that the composer organized first in 1943. Continuing the earthy motif comes the Suite No. 1 that Guiraud arranged for publication in 1885 from Bizet’s Carmen opera of 1875. This involves the fate theme from the opera’s prelude, the Aragonaise before Act 4, the Intermezzo preceding Act 3, the heroine’s Seguedille, the Dragons d’Alcala interlude anticipating Act 2, and the Toreadors music from the Prelude and Act 4. Even more Latin colour arrives with the atmospherically rich 1994 Danzon No.2 by Mexican composer Arturo Marquez, nicely complementing Ginastera’s concluding Malambo. Bringing the Hispanic/pseudo-Iberian segment to a close, there’s a horn-led tour of the Athenian forest by way of Mendelssohn’s Nocturne extracted from his 1842 incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This event comes as part of a three-day Organ Festival sponsored by the MSO that also includes the Durufle Requiem (see below) and a recital from Nolan. Tickets for this particular concert range between $45 and $105, concessions $5 cheaper, Under 18s paying $20. Also, the MSO imposes an $8 transaction fee if you book online or by phone; you could try just turning up with cash in hand, although the current state of play (or so the organization would have you believe) is that there are 100+ seats available in both the stalls and in the gallery.

This program will be repeated on Saturday September 5 at 2 pm.

Melbourne Town Hall

Friday September 4 at 7:30 pm

This is the second major component of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra‘s short-lived Organ Festival. As you can tell from the title, it will involve the MSO Chorus but our local body will be joined by some visitors: the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Chorus. If you know the Requiem, you’re aware that there are some sections reserved for two soloists; in this case, mezzo Sally-Anne Russell and baritone Simon Meadows. You’d also be interested to know that the MSO itself won’t be in attendance; the only musical support will come from English-Autralian organist Joseph Nolan. Well, that’s all fine; Durufle wrote his Requiem originally in 1947 for vocal forces and organ accompaniment (with a cello obbligato, apparently). Alongside this major work, we’re to hear Faure’s brief (barely six minutes) Cantique de Jean Racine, composed by a still-teenage Faure in 1865 for SATB choir and organ (or piano). Just before the 45-minute-long Mass for the Dead, the choirs will present some more Durufle in his Quatre motets of 1960, composed for a cappella SATB choir, although this disposition swells to seven lines in the opening Ubi caritas, six in the second all-female Tota pulchra es, and stays in the four regular parts for Tu es Petrus and Tantum Ergo – all of them based on the Gregorian chants so familiar to Catholics of a certain generation (mine). This event lasts a little over an hour, so tickets are cheaper than those for the preceding night’s program: standard moves between $50 and $84, concessions are a staggering $5 cheaper, and Under 18s still have to pay $20 – all of it encumbered with the MSO’s $8 transaction fee if you book online or by phone. And wouldn’t you know it? According to the MSO website, there are 100+ seats left in both stalls and balcony!

THOMAS DUNFORD

Melbourne Recital Centre, Utzon Music/Sydney Opera House & Van Diemen’s Band

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday September 4 at 7:30 pm

Sticking around for some solo recitals after his Musica Viva tour with cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, lutenist Thomas Dunford is being sponsored by three organizations, appearing three times in Tasmania (Hobart, Launceston, Burnie), once here, then once more in Sydney’s Utzon Room: an impressive five appearances in six days. What he’s performing here lasts about 75 minutes non-stop and it’s remarkably ‘clean’ – that is, relatively free of arrangements . . . well, except for the last piece which is our old friend, the Chaconne from Bach’s D minor violin Partita (written sometime between 1717 and 1720), and we’ve become used to that on a similar instrument, thanks to Segovia’s guitar transcription (which he recorded to generous acclaim – except from guitarists – in 1959). Dunford begins with Dowland; well, the performer’s British and why give us anything second-best? A praeludium, Fortune My Foe, A Fancy, Semper Dowland Semper Dolens, Mrs. Winter’s Jump, A Dream, The King of Denmark’s Galliard, Lachrimae, and the Frog Galliard make for an impressive opening bracket and one that is too tiring to date individually (ah, the delights of sloth). Then follow Kapsberger’s Toccata No. 6 published in 1604, Joan Ambrosio Dalza’s Calata alla Spagnola printed in 1508, a sarabande and chaconne by de Visee (although these could have been originally written for guitar; who knows without some solid provenance?), Les voix humaines by Marais presumably based on the original piece for viol(s) published in 1701, and the Bach to end. Tickets fall into four groups, ranging from $79 to $139, with concessions of $20 for the middle two, and $49 for Under 40s sitting in those same middle two seat groupings. You pay between $4 and $8.50 for booking online or by phone but, at time of writing (August 8), there are nearly 500 seats available and the Circle/Wings level is not being used. So I’d be tempted to risk turning up on the night at the box office with lots of small change.

NEW LIGHT

Flinders Quartet

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday September 9 at 7 pm

It’s not the first all-female string chamber ensemble to feature in this country’s musical life – from memory, the Astra Society was an all-women orchestra – but the current members of the Flinders Quartet have a wealth of experience between them that speaks volumes for their interpretative maturity. For their latest program, the members – violins Elisabeth Sellars and Wilma Smith, viola Helen Ireland, cello Zoe Knighton – begin with some new lights working in the form with an as yet unnamed premiere construct from Australian writer Naomi Dodd, who was the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Cybec Young Composer in Residence for 2024 and who writes in an amiable, accessible semi-contemporary voice. Then we hear Grazyna Bacewicz’s String Quartet No. 3, a three-movement score written in 1947 when the Polish composer was living in Paris and still able to pursue her career as a solo violinist. It comes in at an average of about 18 minutes. Finally, we hope to have a fresh vision of one of the string quartet repertoire’s staples; Beethoven Op. 127 in E flat. Sitting at the beginning to the composer’s late products in this form, this 1825 work is rarely heard; like the Bacewicz which precedes it, the piece is highly regarded but neglected – I believe I’ve heard it only once or twice in live performance. So this recital has considerable merit for its rare content. Tickets are $55, with a concession/student cost of $10 less. The transaction fee imposed by the Recital Centre for online or phone booking for both is $7; I’d be tempted to risk showing up on the night to avoid this charge, but the group is a popular one, enough so to fill the Salon.

JUSSEN BROTHERS PLAY POULENC

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday September 10 at 7:30 pm

Dutch duo pianists Lucas and Arthur Jussen have made a considerable impact online, thanks to their tapes on YouTube which show the brothers as superlatively synchronised and empathetic in everything from Bach transcriptions to Bartok’s Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra. On this occasion, with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra they are presenting Poulenc’s Concerto of 1932 which is an ideal vehicle for these musicians’ reliable dexterity and subtlety of inflexion in the work’s middle Larghetto movement. Before this, Nodoka Okisawa, chief conductor of the City of Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, takes the MSO through Three Film Scores by Takemitsu which is a strring orchestra compendium of music for Jose Torres (1959), Black Rain (1989), and The Face of Another (1966); it lasts about 12 minutes. A bit more from Japan after interval in Takashi Yoshimatsu’s And Birds Are Still . . . for strings of 1997; an appealing, sentimental piece written with some eloquence in a smooth contemporary idiom. To end, Okisawa brings us back to Poulenc through his four-movement Sinfonietta of 1947 for small orchestra (double woodwind and brass without trombones/tuba, harp, timpani, strings). Janacek, it isn’t; closer to Dorian Le Gallienne, if more intentionally chic. Tickets follow the usual pattern: standard between $75 and $139, concession $5 cheaper, Under 18s $20 – and the MSO’s reansaction fee of $8 per order online or by phone. Whaddya know? The website tells us yet again that there are 100+ seats available on all three levels of the hall; when you’re on a good thing, stick to it – apparently.

This program will be repeated on Saturday September 12 at 7:30 pm.

BRAHMS REQUIEM AND SZYMANOWSKI STABAT MATER

Melbourne Bach Choir and Zelman Symphony

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday September 11 at 8 pm

Didn’t we hear the 1868 Brahms work from this body some years ago, in 2018?? Well, it’s eight years further on and tonight the Melbourne Bach Choir will be enjoying the support of the Zelman Symphony Orchestra rather than its own instrumentalists, all of them under the control of the choir’s artistic director Rick Prakhoff. On that previous occasion, the massive Brahms score was complemented by Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater, as it is here. The night’s soloists will be soprano Helena Dix and baritone Warwick Fyfe for the Brahms, and both these artists with mezzo Belinda Paterson in the Polish composer’s 1926 score. Even with a necesssary infusion of new voices as generational change takes effect, you’d anticipate that enough survivors remain from the earlier performance. Of course, there was a time when the Requiem proved a staple for many choirs, particularly in this country’s major capitals; nowadays, it enjoys an occasional airing and is immensely rewarding for all concerned, especially the solo soprano with that wrenchingly fine Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit choir-escorted aria. Szymanowski’s work shows an expressive depth that proves most welcome from a composer who walks the fine line between diatonicism and dissonance. I hope the singers put in the extra mile and articulate the Polish text, in which language the composer conceived his score. But the program gives an intriguing contrast between some often opaque polyphony and striking, clear textures. Ticketing is more of a Brahmsian character tonight; the hall is divided into four grades, prices ranging from $69 to $119, top seats earning a $20 concession while the remaining three only attract a $10 reduction. Students pay between $59 and $99, depending on their cash flows. Everyone is susceptible to the $4-to-$8.50 Transaction Fee imposed by the Recital Centre, but I’d be tempted to avoid booking online or by phone as, at the time of writing (August 10), less than a third of the hall is occupied.

PIETER WISPELWEY WITH PIERS LANE – NIGHT I

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday September 15 at 7:30 pm

Here’s the first of three recitals from Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey and our own Piers Lane as the sometimes-requisite pianist. If the programs have a running theme, it comes from the scheduling of all three cello suites by Benjamin Britten, the first of them in C from 1964 ending tonight’s offerings. These works were written for Rostropovich and have no escorting line, so Wispelwey will be front-and-centre for this exposition. Mind you, Britten’s scores must be very familiar to him by now; he recorded all three in 1992, then again in 2001, taking another bash at No. 3 in 2008, and putting his talents to the British writer’s service once more with a re-visit of No. 1 in 2010. Tonight’s Britten is in nine movements, most pretty brief apart from the Fuga and Marcia. As for the pairing with Lane, that will give us Prokofiev’s 1949 Cello Sonata in C Op. 119; this is in three movements, was also written for Rostropovich, and lasts the same as the Britten suite – about 25 minutes. Furthering the voice of not-very-Soviet Russia comes the Shostakovich Op. 40 Cello Sonata in D minor of 1934 in four movements, not dedicated to Rostropovich, also coming in around the 25-minute mark on a good day. Wispelwey recorded both this and the Prokofiev sonata with Dejan Lazic in 2003. Lane also recorded them way back in 1988 with Alexander Baillie. Tickets, set on four levels of expense, move from a top of $139 to a low of $79; concessions of $20 are available only in the middle two grades; likewise Under 40s are restricted to the central gradations, both costing $49 for some inexplicable reason. You have to meet the Recital Centre’s Transaction Fee demands of anywhere between $4.50 and $8 but, at the time of writing (August 10), there are about 500 places available, and this recital is not using the Circle and Wings of the Murdoch space. Keep an eye on the Centre’s website; I’d be tempted to speculate in cash on the night.

PIETER WISPELWEY WITH PIERS LANE – NIGHT II

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday September 17 at 7:30 pm

In the middle night of the three recitals being offered by Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey and partly-Australian pianist Piers Lane, the Britten theme persists with his Suite No. 2 from 1967, its five movements premiered the following year by dedicatee Rostropovich. The work’s impetus leads persuasively to a concluding Ciaccona, one of the composer’s most convincing Bach homages across the sequence of three suites. No. 2 lasts a few minutes less than the first of the composer’s essays in this form. On either side, Lane accompanies Wispelwey in two repertoire stalwarts. First is Schubert’s 1824 Arpeggione Sonata which the cellist has recorded three times: 1996, 2009, and 2019. Lane also recorded it – with cellist Tim Hugh in 2015. Although it wasn’t written for the cello, this instrument is the most commonly heard playing Schubert’s string line in the three-movement, 20-minutes-long work, so there’s no sudden desecration involved. To end the night, the musicians play Mendelssohn: Sonata No. 2 in D minor of 1843 which holds four movements and lasts for about 25 minutes. Wispelwey recorded this work in 2011 but, as far as I can tell, it will be new to Lane, who will doubtless take delight in the composer’s active keyboard part. Ticketing follows the same pattern as for the previous recital in this series: standard seats range from $79 to $139; concessions of $20 are available in the middle-of-the-range seating, while Under 40s pay $49 for the same spaces. Everyone has to pay the $4-to-$8.50 transaction fee if ordering online or by phone but currently there are a little over 450 stalls (the only part of the hall being used) on offer.

PIETER WISPELWEY WITH PIERS LANE – NIGHT III

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday September 18 at 7:30 pm

Concluding this series of three recitals featuring Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey and London-born pianist Piers Lane, we hear the last of Britten’s three cello suites, that from 1971 and the most scouring of them all in dramatic terms. This appears to be programmed at the centre of tonight’s proceedings; it might have been better placed at the end because the composer’s language and landscape are as fatalistic and final as he would ever achieve. As pointed out above, Wispelwey has recorded this work several times: in 1992, 2001 and 2008. In this respect, he has joined an illustrious crew including Steven Isserlis, Alexander Baillie, Truls Mork, Rohan de Saram, Julian Lloyd Webber and a slew of others whose names mean little to me. The duo work together at the evening’s start in the Cesar Franck Violin Sonata from 1886, heard here in (you’d have to assume) the famous transcription by cellist Jules Delsart which was heartily approved by the composer. Wispelwey recorded the work in 2002, as did Lane in 2017 with violinist Tasmin Little. Finishing the night, we hear Chopin’s Cello Sonata in G minor, finished in 1847 and quite solid in its four-movement structure (in particular, the hefty initial Allegro moderato) which takes about half-an-hour to accomplish. Wispelwey recorded the work in 1997, the second movement only in 2000, then the whole thing again in 2011. A limited research indicates that Lane hasn’t recorded it at all. Ticket prices have remained the same: they move between $79 and $139 in four divisions, with concessions of $20 available in the central two sectors; Under 40s can get $49 seats in those same middle ranks. You have to pay somewhere between $4.50 and $8 if you order online or by phone but currently (August 10) there are over 500 stalls spaces available (no Circle or Wings seats are being used). Makes you think.

HANDEL AND BACH

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday September 19 at 7:30 pm

A rare Baroque outing for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, working under the direction of harpsichordist Kristian Bezuidenhout who was born in South Africa and raised here, now a London resident. The evening starts with Bach’s Suite No. 1 in C, probably written closer to 1724 than 1731 when all four of the composer’s orchestral suites were completed. This one calls for a pair of oboes, a bassoon, and your normal strings/continuo set-up. It has seven movements, lasts for a little over 20 minutes, and is the one that I know least. Bezuidenhout then gives us his own version of the Contrapunctrus XIV, the incomplete one (which this player has finished for us in his own sweet way) from Bach’s Art of Fugue that emerged between 1740 and 1746. A change of pace to Handel brings us the Overture to Admeto, a 1727 three-act opera, its quick opening pages calling for oboes and strings only. We then continue the D minor setting with the Concerto grosso Op. 3 No. 5 for two oboes, bassoon and strings/continuo; five movements in all, about ten minutes long, coming from a set of six concertos published in 1734 and compiled from different sources, then appearing without the composer’s authority – and today’s musicians complain about copyright crime. A little Bach filler follows with the Sinfonia from a 1726 cantata, Falsche Welt, dir trau ich nicht. This set of 84 bars turns out to be the first movement of the composer’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, complete with two horns, three oboes, bassoon and the usual body of strings and continuo; ah, the joys of recycling. Finally, Bezuidenhout takes his forces through Handels’ Water Music Suite No. 1 in F Major and Suite No. 2 in D Major of 1717, all fourteen movements with a few very familiar items among them: in Suite 1, the waffling horns-rich third movement, the elegant Air and buoyant Bouree alongside Handel’s idea of a Hornpipe; to follow, a more convincing Alla Hornpipe from Suite 2. Prices for seats are a nightmare: standard moves from $43 to $115 across five levels of differing auditory value (really?); concession holders and full-time students pay $5 less in all areas except the worst where there’s no price change; children pay $20 for all but the top-level seats; and don’t get me started on the Groups of 10 schedule which is not available in the cheapest sector. You’ve got to meet the Recital Centre transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50 if you order online or by phone; it’s unavoidable, more’s the pity, because today (August 11) there are only ten seats available across the Murdoch Hall.

CHAMBER MUSIC FOR STRINGS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Iwaki Auditorium Southbank

Sunday September 20 at 11 am

This event from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chamber sub-grouping (no surprises there) has been curated by one of the body’s violas: Jenny Khafagi. The MSO musicians that she has involved swell to their largest number for the Brahms String Quintet No. 2, a highly appealing and summery work of 1891 which asks for two violas (Khafagi and Fiona Sargeant) alongside two violins (Matthew Tomkins and Freya Franzen) and a solitary cello (Rachael Tobin). Coming in at over thirty minutes in length, this work puts a formal capstone on a morning which, up to its appearance, has been American experimental in character, featuring two string quartets. First comes California-born and co-founder of the Bang on a Can collective David Lang‘s brief (about five minutes) wed; originally a memorial piece for piano from a set of eight written in the 1992-97 span, it was not much later co-opted for a 1997 production of The Tempest. What follows is a score that has appeared in local programs several times across the last few years; Caroline Shaw‘s Plan and Elevation from 2015 which was a product of her time (2014-15) as the inaugural music fellow at the Dumbarton Oaks estate. She gives musical interpretations of five aspects of the buildings and (mainly) grounds in the Harvard University research centre: The Ellipse, The Cutting Garden, The Herbaceous Border, The Orangery, The Beech Tree. All five movements add up to an average of 17 minutes. Tickets are $50 standard, $50 concession, Under 18s $20. For this event, staged on its own premises, the MSO is charging an $8 transaction fee for online or phone bookings. Sadly for those among us trying to avoid this ridiculous imposition, the Iwaki room is not large and sells out pretty quickly, especially to those of us who like to see orchestral musicians grappling with close-order, intimate music-making.