Wednesday May 2
ALCHEMY
Selby & Friends
Tatoulis Auditorium, MLC Hawthorn at 7:30 pm
Appearing with Kathryn Selby on this tour are violinist Vesa-Matti Leppanen, concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and cellist Timo-Veikko Valve, principal with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and a regular at these recitals. Escorted by this Finnish-born duo, Selby brackets her night with arrangements, the more intriguing a transcription of the Brahms B flat Sextet for a piano trio combination. This was carried out, I believe, by Theodor Kirchner of whom the composer said, ‘Not I, and certainly no one else, can make arrangements of my works as well as Theodor Kirchner.’ In fact, Selby & Co. give us a double dose, beginning their operations with another Kirchner arrangement, this one of Schumann’s Six Pieces in Canonic Form which were written for that odd hybrid, the pedal piano. The ‘pure’ component in this program is Arensky’s Trio in F minor, the second of the composer’s pair in this form and much less well-known than its D minor predecessor. This rarity fleshes out one of the year’s more recherche exercises in the Selby and Friends season.
Friday May 4
AN EVENING IN VIENNA
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Melbourne Town Hall at 7:30 pm
It’s all operetta tonight, with Benjamin Northey conducting the MSO and its Chorus in scraps from the Strausses and Lehar. Details are sketchy but we are promised The Beautiful Blue Danube and Voices of Spring waltzes from The Son, the second of these calling for a soprano soloist while the first, in its original format, required a male chorus. On this occasion, the soprano will be Emma Matthews, who will also sing arias from Die Fledermaus and The Merry Widow; I’m guessing she’ll be launching into Mein Herr Marquis or/and Klange der Heimat from the former, and Es lebt’ eine Vilja’ from the latter. Oddly enough, Viennese music of this school seemed to be part of this country’s aesthetic DNA in the first half of the last century and it still retains many enthusiasts who will probably pack the Town Hall. Perhaps I have a lingering surfeit from my mother’s family, all of whom were addicts, but I get more impatient than most with contemporary performances of these well-worn pages. Does anyone remember Willy Boskovsky’s visit here many moons ago? After that, much of the Strauss we now hear live seems pedestrian.
Saturday May 5
RICCARDO MUTI
Australian World Orchestra
Hamer Hall at 7:30 pm
This time around, the AWO plays two nights in Sydney before coming to Hamer Hall – poor loves. No soloist is scheduled and the organizers are pinning their publicity on Muti’s participation. Well, I suppose it will be interesting to see the formidable Italian opera conductor just as he is approaching his final active years. The program will comprise the Brahms D Major Symphony and Tchaikovsky No. 4: two solid bulwarks of the symphonic repertoire that you can hear pretty much annually during the normal run of MSO concerts. Also, we are promised a ‘Verdi surprise’, which can only refer to one of the composer’s three neglected sinfonias because there’s nothing else in the catalogue written for orchestra. But wait: could we be treated to an operatic scrap? Say, the Triumphal March from Aida? Or the Overture to La forza del destino? Yes, my money’s on that sort of ‘surprise’ – a theatrical extract to sit comfortably alongside (or between) the two symphonies.
Sunday May 6
THE FOUR B’S
Team of Pianists
Barwon Park, Winchelsea at 2.00 pm
If you’re in the neighbourhood, you could do worse with your day in the country than visit this stately if isolated home where senior Team artist Robert Chamberlain tours music’s Four Big B’s with the assistance of Robert Schubert’s clarinet and the cello of Josephine Vains. Bach is represented by one of his gamba sonatas, the D Major BWV 1028 – yet another of those works we know about but rarely hear. Naturally, Beethoven’s Gassenhauer Trio gets a hearing – one of the few well-known works for this particular combination of instruments. As well, the group plays Brahms’ Clarinet Trio in A minor, one of those superlative late flowerings in the composer’s life that came into existence because of his friendship with Richard Muhlfeld. And, in the centenary year of his birth, we will be treated to music by the last great B. Not, it’s not Boulez but Bernstein: his Variations on an Octatonic Scale, unpublished in the composer’s lifetime and originally written for recorder and cello but available in a B flat clarinet/cello arrangement. . . which is what you’ll probably get here.
Monday May 7
JAZZ & BLUES
Markiyan and Oksana Melnychenko
Melbourne Recital Centre at 6 pm
A fine Melbourne University faculty violin talent and his pianist mother are taking the high road in a tribute to the influence that jazz has had on 20th century music . . . some of it. There’s no arguing about the blues and Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2, mainly because of the title that the composer gave to his strutting second movement. And at least two of Gershwin’s Three Preludes have strong jazz connections, even if the last one seems to me more reminiscent of a Latin American dance; the Melnychenkos play the Heifetz arrangements of them all. Speaking of the Heifetz-Gershwin connection, the program also offers some selections from the great violinist’s appraisals of Porgy and Bess: take your pick from Summertime, My Man’s Gone Now, A Woman Is A Sometime Thing, Bess, You Is My Woman Now, It Ain’t Necessarily So, and a Tempo di Blues which may be based on There’s A Boat That’s Leaving Soon For New York. The program’s odd man out is Korngold, whose incidental music to Much Ado About Nothing has some splendid moments but nothing that strikes me as jazzy, although I could be wrong. In the composer’s own violin/piano suite, there are only four movements out of the original 14: The Maiden in the Bridal Chamber, Dogberry and Verges, Scene in the Garden, and Masquerade: Hornpipe.
Thursday May 10
BEETHOVEN’S EROICA
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Hamer Hall at 7:30 pm
Tonight we are being treated to Sir Andrew Davis’ interpretation of the epoch-making Symphony No. 3. Is there anything new to find in this score? Well, never say never but I think we should be resigned to a decent run-through, at best. Keeping the tone upbeat and triumphalist, Moye Chen will be soloist in Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1; the Chinese pianist won the George Frederick Boyle Prize at the 2016 Sydney International Piano Competition – in other words, he came third. Setting the orchestral ball rolling is Carl Vine’s Concerto for Orchestra. Vine is the MSO’s Composer in Residence for 2018; this work is not one written during his term of office but a 21-minute score composed for the West Australian Symphony Orchestra four years ago.
This program is to be repeated on Friday May 11 in Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University, and in Hamer Hall on Saturday May 12 at 2 pm.
Saturday May 12
THE HARPIST: XAVIER DE MAISTRE
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Melbourne Recital Centre at 7 pm
Yes, the Frenchman is a harpist; it remains to be seen if he is the one. What the ABO is presenting to make the case for de Maistre’s superiority amounting to absolute pre-eminence is a mixed bag. We’ll hear Boieldieu’s Harp Concerto in C from 1800 and a collection of Basque/Spanish encore pieces/transcriptions. There’s Ravel’s piano solo Pavane pour une infante defunte, the orchestral Spanish Dance from Falla’s La vida breve opera, and the Recuerdos de la Alhambra that Tarrega wrote for guitar. The ABO itself contributes the Mozart Symphony No. 20 and C. P. E. Bach’s 10-minute Symphony No. 1. At the end, I thought that the orchestra was going to take on Smetana’s Moldau but this magnificent symphonic poem is a de Maistre solo specialty: he has recently recorded a late 19th century transcription of it by Czech harpist Hanus Trnecek.
This program will be repeated on Sunday May 13 at 5 pm.
Thursday May 17
FRENCH ARIAS: GRETA BRADMAN
Melbourne Chamber Orchestra
Deakin Edge, Federation Square at 7:30 pm
A soprano who impresses more each time you hear her, Greta Bradman will be soloist at this concert which contains no real arias as far as I can tell. I hope she is presenting Debussy’s Verlaine setting Clair de lune (Votre ame est un paysage choisi) and the MCO is not going to treat us to an orchestral version of the too-familiar Suite bergamasque piano solo. Without doubt, Bradman will sing the six Ariettes oubliees, also Verlaine texts and strong indicators of the composer’s vocal music character. Chausson’s Poeme for violin and orchestra will most probably be headed by artistic director William Hennessy; Faure’s delectable Dolly Suite in Henri Rabaud’s orchestration also appears, as does more Debussy: La soiree dans Grenade from the Estampes triptych, and some selections from the Children’s Corner Suite – all of which piano music is being arranged for the MCO forces by someone as yet unidentified. On top of this melange comes the premiere of Calvin Bowman’s Ophelie, which brings Bradman back into play; other details are currently not available although the title suggests more Harriet Smithson than Shakespeare.
This program will be repeated at the Melbourne Recital Centre at 2:30 pm on Sunday May 20.
Friday May 18
INTERNATIONAL BAROQUE
Australian National Academy of Music
South Melbourne Town Hall at 7:30 pm
This celebration bounces off with some of the dances from Terpsichore, that excellent collection by the versatile Michael Praetorius. Director/cellist Howard Penny then takes his young players and ANAM enthusiasts on a (mainly) Baroque tour d’horizon with a Sonata a 10 by the Moravian writer Pavel Vejvanovsky, the Sonata No. 2 from Georg Muffat’s Armonico Tributo, the startlingly-titled Hipocondrie a 7 concertanti and the Sinfonia from the oratorio I penitenti al sepolcro de Redentore by Zelenka, the Balletto No. 1 di zingari by Schmelzer, C. P. E. Bach’s Symphony in F Major (Which one? There is a choice of three) and a Sinfonia from his father’s Christmas Oratorio (I presume the G Major gem from the second cantata with the quartet of oboes da caccia and d’amore, ho ho). Handel is heavily represented by his Concerto a due cori No. 2 in F, the overture to his oratorio Jephtha, and selections from the second Water Music Suite, although why only selections puzzles me because the whole collection lasts less than ten minutes.
Sunday May 20
A FRENCH CONNECTION
Team of Pianists
Rippon Lea at 6:30 pm
For a recital directing us north of the Pyrenees, this one starts with a geographical clanger. Violinist Elizabeth Sellars and Team member Rohan Murray begin the night with Beethoven’s A Major Violin Sonata; no, not the Kreutzer, nor the No. 2 from Op. 12, but the Op. 30 No. 1 that many of us have never heard in live performance. Where the link-up with France lies, I can’t fathom. Anyway, the musicians then move into Faure’s Op. 13, another A Major Sonata and the more popular of the composer’s two in the form. Georgy Catoire’s Elegie may have a French title but the composer was Russian, albeit one with French heritage. The night ends with two Debussy arrangements: the art song Beau soir from the composer’s mid-teens, and La fille aux cheveux de lin that brightens up the first book of Preludes for piano.
Tuesday May 22
BACH AND HIS WORLD
Tafelkmusik Baroque Orchestra
Melbourne Recital Centre at 7 pm
The Canadian ensemble is back for its third Musica Viva-backed tour, this time concentrating its efforts on the Baroque giant. What distinguishes Tafelmusik’s presentations is the organization’s use of screen projections, as well as a spoken commentary, the which combination provides both a visual and a verbal environment. All very nice but what counts is the music and, last time these musicians were here with their House of Dreams project, I found the playing capable enough but bland. Tonight, the players are offering the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 – all 12 minutes of it; the Orchestral Suite No. 1, most stolid of the four; and excerpts from the Goldberg Variations, which I’m guessing will not be left to a solitary keyboard player for negotiation. You’d have to go along with a benign predisposition if only because of the music’s quality but I’m hoping the backdrop doesn’t take over to the extent that it did back in 2015. Oh, the group has a new director/first violin: Elisa Citterio.
This program will be repeated on Saturday May 26 at 7 pm.
Monday May 28
BACH & DISTLER
Ensemble Gombert
Melbourne Recital Centre at 6 pm
The Bach is the motet Jesu, meine Freude: one of the most complex of the six works in this form by the composer and a test of any choir’s precision of pitch and differentiation in choral colour. With Hugo Distler’s Totentanz, the singers take us into a less assured spiritual landscape but one that would be at least slightly familiar to Ensemble aficionados because the organization presented this work at the Xavier College Chapel in September 2016. It presents a striking sequence of choral and spoken scenes, the crux of the matter being Death’s invitation to his dance, extended to rich and poor, young and old, the musical complexion dissonant but disarmingly aphoristic.
Thursday May 31
Thomas Hampson
Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm
Heading towards his middle 60s, American baritone Hampson is here to take part in the Recital Centre’s Great Performers series. Is this his first Melbourne visit? I can’t recall his name emerging from the lists of visitors over previous decades. While next Thursday he will sing Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under Andrea Molino, thus giving us a sample from his most highly acclaimed field of operations, this MRC recital program is yet to be finalised. Among the composers to enjoy the singer’s services (and those of his accompanist, Maciej Pikulski) are Rossini, Schubert, Saint-Saens, Mahler, Copland – ‘and others’. Which sounds to me as though the bones of a program have been assembled, and space has been left to add some artificial limbs or whatever comes to hand between now and May 31.
O'Connell the Music 