Thursday May 4
BETWEEN STRINGS
Katapult
Melbourne Recital Centre at 6 pm
A kick-off for the Metropolis New Music Festival, this program comes from ‘ a trio of internationally acclaimed soloists’ and is part of a Festival sub-set called the Resonant Bodies Festival. As far as the actual players go, they include Dylan Lardelli, Lizzy Welsh, Laura Moore, and an extra body in Eric Lamb. Lardelli is a New Zealand-born guitarist; Welsh is a Melbourne resident and is practised on both violin and baroque violin; Moore is a Sydney-based baroque cello and gamba specialist. The outsider, Lamb, is an American flautist. As for their program, there’s a new work by Lardelli, as yet unnamed; Melbourne son Vincent Giles’ silver as catalyst in inorganic reactions and also an apparent spin-off, . . . of sediment; New Zealand musician (I think) Nancy Haliburton’s Music for Guitar; another unnamed piece by Chris Watson, the senior British composer (again, I think); and Austrian conductor Roland Freisitzer’s Music for Eric Lamb of 2015. It’s a lot to fit into an hour but variety is the spice of new music recitals.
Thursday May 4
Metropolis 1
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm
The MSO’s contribution to this festival seems to have shrunk behind my back to two programs instead of three. And the definition of ‘new music’ also has undergone something of a sea-change. This night opens with a gem from the orchestra’s Composer-in-Residence, Elena Kats-Chernin: her re-version of the Prelude and Toccata from Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo. To balance this, the C-i-R has produced a real new work for the occasion in Ancient Letters, although the title suggests a provenance older than the late Renaissance. Conductor Brett Kelly (or is it Mahan Esfahani, who shares leadership duties and is apparently making a harpsichord contribution?) will revive Brett Dean’s Carlo, the Australian composer’s 20-year-old monument to the murderous Prince of Venosa. Guest soloist Joseph Tawadros fronts his fresh Oud Concerto and the night is rounded by Boulez’s 1985 Dialogue de l’ombre double, a stunning near-20 minute solo, here in an authorized version for the night’s second/third? soloist, recorder player Erik Bosgraaf, the performer reacting as he moves across the music stands to a pre-recorded tape of himself.
Thursday May 4
Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
Hamer Hall at 8 pm
This ensemble is here for the first time ever, so I know nothing about them. Not that they’re spreading their riches lavishly; just the one program performed for one night here, the following night in Sydney, and it’s home, James. Their conductor is Jaap van Zweden, who is shortly going to take up a post as chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic as well. The program is not exactly breaking new ground, apart from a work by one of the orchestra’s composers-in-residence, Fung Lam; Quintessence was premiered in 2014 and has been performed by the HK Philharmonic every year since. The main work is Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and guest Ning Feng, with his MacMillan Stradivarius, fronts the Mozart Violin Concerto No. 4.
Friday May 5
LA SONNAMBULA
Victorian Opera
Hamer Hall at 7:30 pm
VO is making a habit of Bellini concert stagings – Norma and I Puritani in previous seasons – so we’re inured to the disbelief suspensions required for this smaller-framed masterpiece. Jessica Pratt sings Amina and here’s hoping she has a happier time than she endured in the company’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Another survivor from the Donizetti, Carlos Enrique Barcenas, has the role of the sleepwalking heroine’s fiance, Elvino; Greta Bradman is the advantage-seeking innkeeper Lisa; Paolo Pecchioli features as the nobleman with the revolving bedroom door, Count Rodolfo, while Roxane Hislop appears as the heroine’s foster-mother, Teresa. As yet, I can’t find details of who will take the role of Alessio, the song-writer who has the misfortune to be devoted to Lisa. Richard Mills conducts and this is a one-night only presentation scheduled to last three hours, which seems pretty excessive unless the interval is a gargantuan one.
Saturday May 6
THE THINGS THAT BIND US
Latitude 37
Melbourne Recital Centre at 6 pm
In an unexpected change of repertoire, this period music trio takes on a contemporary field as part of the recitals in this year’s Metropolis New Music Festival. The players cast a wide net, with music from Iceland, the UK and America, as well as New Zealand and Australia. Two works from Maria Huld Markan Sigfusdottir will enjoy an airing: Clockworking for violin, viola, cello and electronics will present the players with a how-many-of-us-are-there challenge, while Sleeping Pendulum calls for only a violin and an electronics operator. The music is pleasant enough – starkly folksy, if anything. David Chisholm’s 2011 Trick fits Latitude’s personnel, as far as I can hear; for bass viol alone comes Lines Curved Rivers Mirrored from 2014 by British writer Edmund Finnis; then follows the delightfully named Slow Twitchy Organs by that brilliant American arranger, Nico Muhly – I’ve heard Fast Twitchy Organs which is electronics only, I think, but not this one; New Zealand’s John Psathas is represented by a piano solo, Waiting for the Aeroplane from 1988, close to the first thing he wrote; Australian Brooke Green’s Reza Barati is a 2016 elegy for the Iranian refugee killed on Manus Island, written for gamba solo, viol consort and drum; and finally comes the work that gives the night its title, a 2013 piece by Australian Luke Howard for organ, violin and gamba.
Saturday May 6
METROPOLIS 2
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm
A night of excess; there’s too much here. Brett Kelly conducts but Mahan Esfahani is also billed as ‘play conductor’. We begin with Ligeti: the Passacaglia ungherese for solo mean-tempered harpsichord (Esfahani). Which is followed by Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 6 (the Brandenburg No 4 re-arranged). A recorder concerto by Dutch composer Willem Jeths will enjoy its Australian premiere from Erik Bosgraaf, its dedicatee. A Vivaldi violin concerto in A minor has been transcribed for oud by the ubiquitous Joseph Tawadros who presents it tonight; British composer Anna Meredith’s Origami Songs, also written for Bosgraaf, end the program. And somewhere in the middle come two works from the Cybec Twentieth Century Composers Program earlier this year: Ade Vincent’s The Secret Motion of Things, and Connor D’Netto’s Singular Movement.
Saturday May 6
FRAGMENTS
Alicia Crossley
Melbourne Recital Centre at 10 pm
This is the Metropolis New Music Festival’s last gasp and it features a solo artist in recorder player Alicia Crossley. She kicks off with Bach – the whole G Major Cello Suite arranged for one of her instruments. Another familiar name is Debussy whose Syrinx for solo flute will also be moved across to a new/old medium. From her own recording Addicted to Bass from 2015, Crossley performs Andrew Batt-Rawden’s E and Mark Oliveiro’s Calliphora, both for bass recorder and electronics. Johann George Tromlitz, a contemporary of Haydn, was a flute master of that time; Crossley performs one of his partitas as well as contemporary Dutch writer Jacob Ter Veldhuis’ 2003 work for oboe and ‘soundtrack’, The Garden of Love. This last, the Bach, Debussy and Tromlitz have also been recorded by Crossley on the Move Records label.
Sunday May 7
ACO SOLOISTS
Australian Chamber Orchestra
Hamer Hall at 2:30 pm
Eschewing the attractions of visitors, the ACO uses its own people as front-runners for this latest program in the national subscription series. Satu Vanska is director in her husband’s absence and she takes solo responsibilities in Locatelli’s Harmonic Labyrinth Violin Concerto in D Major. Glen Christensen partners her in Vivaldi’s Concerto in G minor for Two Violins and Cello, that bottom line taken by principal Timo-Veikko Valve, who also gets exposure in an arrangement of Debussy’s Cello Sonata. The program ends with Mendelssohn’s Beethoven-quoting String Quartet No. 2 in a string orchestra arrangement. The odd men out are a new work, as yet unnamed, by Western Australian-based James Ledger, and an Andante for Strings, the slow movement from the String Quartet of 1931 by American innovator Ruth Crawford Seeger, Pete’s step-mother.
This program is repeated on Monday May 8 at 7:30 pm
Thursday May 11
BENJAMIN NORTHEY CONDUCTS SIBELIUS 2
Melbourne Town Hall at 7:30 pm
Well, the youngish Australian conductor studied in Finland, so we’re expecting something of an affinity for this most popular of the composer’s seven symphonies; not that studying there or even being a Finn gives you much of an edge in these internationalist days. The night’s first half is all-Beethoven: the Coriolan Overture, then the Emperor Piano Concerto in E flat where Stefan Cassomenos is entrusted with the solo part. I suppose this last is what will bring in the punters and hopefully justifies the MSO presenting this Prom (or have they discarded that nomenclature?) on two consecutive nights.
This program will be repeated on Friday May 12 at 7:30 pm.
Saturday May 13
BAROQUE JOINS THE CIRCUS 2
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra/Circa
Melbourne Recital Centre at 7 pm
I thoroughly enjoyed the last collaboration between the Brandenburgers and the Circa troupe in a French Baroque program, part of the orchestra’s 2015 season. The focus has moved south this time round to Spain and, while actual details are currently lacking, the program will include works by Monteverdi, Falconieri, Kapsberger, Merula and Cazzati – none of whom, as far as I can see, ever visited Spain. The orchestra has mined its own Tapas CD, which features tracks of music by each of the above-mentioned composers. But then, most of the time your attention is focused on the acrobats and their extraordinary feats.
This program will be repeated on Sunday May 14 at 5 pm
Saturday May 13
TOGNETTI: PENDERECKI & BRAHMS
Australian National Academy of Music
South Melbourne Town Hall at 7:30 pm
Taking up a residency at the National Academy, Richard Tognetti directs a program split in two. He concludes operations with the Brahms Symphony No. 1, that much-deferred and well-worth-the-wait product of the composer’s 43rd year. By way of a lead-in, the ANAM forces perform Penderecki’s 1961 composition for 48 strings, Polymorphia, and the more famous Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, written a year earlier for 52 strings. In between the Polish master’s works comes Jonny Greenwood’s 48 Responses to Polymorphia, a construction that the Radiohead personality wrote in collaboration with Penderecki. All very neat, concise and inter-related but you’ll need the interval to carry out some mental gear-changes, swerving from 40 minutes of mid-20th century (pace Greenwood’s 2011 homage) experimentation to late 19th century conservatism.
Tuesday May 16
Angela Hewitt
Melbourne Recital Centre at 7 pm
Of course, there’s Bach: two partitas – No. 1 in B flat and No. 4 in D: well-known quantities just waiting for the clarifying exposition of this expert performer. It’s a solid dose; Hewitt’s reading of both adds up to about 40 minutes’ worth. Then comes a selection of Scarlatti sonatas, as yet unspecified but you’d expect about six of them, probably extracts from the pianist’s Hyperion album of 16. Hewitt vaults across time for a bit less than 20 minutes of French music in Ravel’s Sonatine and Chabrier’s Bouree fantasque, both also recorded on Hyperion. Oh well, you play to your strengths but, for the dedicated fan, there’s nothing new here.
Angela Hewitt will perform a second program on Saturday May 20 at 7 pm, including Bach’s Partitas 2 and 4, and two Beethoven sonatas: No 2 in C minor and the Moonlight C sharp minor.
Saturday May 20
MSO + JAMES MORRISON
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Hamer Hall at 7:30 pm
After a day-time effort for the younger set (Fri May 19 at 10:30 am for Years 7-12), this is an event for those aged over 13 and ‘all adult lovers of jazz’. Trumpet veteran James Morrison, one of the most recognized characters in the field, is the focus on this limited odyssey of a night. For the jazz/classical fogies, Benjamin Northey conducts the MSO in Gershwin’s tone-poem An American in Paris and the Symphonic Dances from Bernstein’s West Side Story. The rest is less substantial, although covering a wide ambit. There’s Spencer Williams’ Basin Street Blues of 1928, Ray Henderson’s The Birth of the Blues from two years earlier, Benny Goodman’s Seven Come Eleven for his own sextet in 1939, and Cat Anderson’s El Gato, written for Duke Ellington and the Newport Festival of 1958 – a real test for Morrison. Other items will be Miles Davis’ All Blues, also from 1958; an Afro-Cuban classic, Manteca, by Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo and Gill Fuller; Weather Report‘s Joe Zawinul’s classic 1977 fusion gem and homage to Charlie Parker, Birdland; then back to 1931 for Ellington’s It Don’t Mean a Thing. Pretty comfortable listening, nothing too confrontational and experimental, but then the night has to showcase Morrison’s trumpet and much of this will carry out that mission very well.
Sunday May 21
SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE
Team of Pianists
Rippon Lea at 6:30 pm
With an obvious Scotch touch and a promised Australian twist, this night in the National Trust stately home’s ballroom stars three singers – Icon Trio – and the Team’s own Robert Chamberlain. Soprano Justine Anderson and mezzos Vivien Hamilton and Jeannie Marsh will lilt their various ways through Ye Banks and Braes, Charlie is my Darlin’, the Eriskay Love Lilt and a few other songs that generally lie undisturbed in the Caledonian ersatz-folk musical crypt. As well, there’ll be no forgetting Beethoven, who arranged more than his fair share of Scottish airs for sundry vocal combinations. And contemporary Scottish lights get a guernsey or three; first, the prolific John Maxwell Geddes will have three extracts from his Lasses, Love and Life song-cycle expounded; we’ll hear two pieces from another cycle – William Sweeney’s five-part Luminate: from the Islands; the genders remain imbalanced despite the presence of three excerpts from Claire Liddell’s Five Orkney Scenes; Chamberlain gets to play music by Manchester-born Peter Maxwell Davies and the nationalistic drum beats loud with some more keyboard scraps from Percy Grainger. Oh, and there’ll be a few Burns recitations to ram the message home.
Thursday May 25
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN
Melba Quartet
Melbourne Recital Centre at 6 pm
What you see is all you’ll get – or is it? The Recital Centre’s handbook promises a two-hour program in the Salon but the only work scheduled is the great Schubert quartet. For the sum of $199, you and a select group of 64 others will also enjoy preliminary canapes and Narkoojee Winery drinks before and after the performance, an introductory address from the organisation’s executive director Richard Jackson, and the opportunity to mingle with the performers (violinists William Hennessy and Elinor Lee, violist Keith Crellin and cellist Janis Laurs) after they have expended their energies on one of the most draining works in the chamber music repertoire. As they say in the world of PR, enjoy.
Thursday May 25
MSO PLAYS PETRUSHKA
Hamer Hall at 8 pm
Bramwell Tovey, that amiable British pianist/conductor/raconteur, is back in town for a night of Russian music, more or less. There’s no denying the provenance of Stravinsky’s great ballet of 1911, written before the composer said goodbye to his motherland for many decades; of course, this is the 1947 revision, carried out from the physical safety if copyright badlands of the United States. The best-known Russian piano concerto, Tchaikovsky No. 1 in B flat minor, will enjoy the services of Cuban-born Spanish resident Jorge Luis Prats who I believe is performing here for the first time. He is of an age with Tovey so I’m expecting a steady two pairs of hands on the score. Russian at one remove, Elena Kats-Chernin is this year’s Composer in Residence with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. To celebrate her position, she has produced Big Rhap and tonight will be its world premiere. The Tashkent-born composer can always be relied on for accessibility.
This program is to be repeated in Costa Hall Geelong on Friday May 26 at 7:30 pm, and again back in Hamer Hall on Saturday May 27 at 2 pm.
Saturday May 27
STEFAN DOHR: FANFARE & FANTASIES
Australian National Academy of Music
South Melbourne Town Hall at 7:30 pm
Dohr has been principal horn with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for 24 years, which is testament to his enduring ability and sense of service – although, once you have a job like that, where else can you go? He is taking the Academy brass musicians (and others) through a program of ten segments, beginning with the famous and uplifting Fanfare from Dukas’ ballet, La Peri, followed by some more Dukas in the horn test-piece Villanelle arranged with brass accompaniment. Thierry de Mey’s Table Music, where three or more performers percussionize on available table-tops, provides a break, after which the Belgian-French fin de siecle ambience continues with Trois Melodies by Debussy, arranged for trombone quartet. Slovenian composer Vito Zuraj jolts us back to de Mey territory with his Quiet Please from 2014, a construct for three brass mouthpieces. Back where we belong come Henri Tomasi’s Fanfares liturgiques – well, the final Good Friday Procession from this 1947 suite for brass, timpani and drums. No concert of this nature would be complete with Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, derived from the splendid Third Symphony. Chou Wen-Chung’s Soliloquy of a Bhiksuni for trumpet solo, brass octet and three percussionists continues the American connection briefly, only to have the night wrenched back to the mainstream with a Tristan Fantasie involving 6 horns, which I assume will offer a digest of the Wagner opera’s main points of interest. But finally, The Great Satan has the last word with a suite from Bernstein’s West Side Story – arranged for brass and percussion, of course.
Monday May 29
Nikolai Demidenko
Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm
Two composers only on this program – Scarlatti and Schubert. Like Angela Hewitt (see above – Tuesday May 16), Demidenko has recorded some of the sonatas – 39 on two albums – so he’s got a lot to choose from. As with Hewitt, at the time of writing, which ones he will perform has not been determined; well, not to the stage of telling us. He has also recorded one of his Schuberts – the A flat Impromptu from Op. 90. But the big C minor Sonata, one of the great final three from the composer’s last months, is a fresh offering. Mind you, I’d be content to hear this musician play even his beloved Medtner live; like Garrick Ohlsson, he enriches us by the insight and devotion he invests in large-scale and small works alike.
O'Connell the Music 