BIRDSONGS
Birds of Tokyo and Queensland Symphony OrchestraQueensland Symphony Orchestra
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Art Centre
Friday September 8
And again, the QSO is seeking contemporary relevance by going into partnership with a rock band, viz. this five-man ensemble from Perth. Needless to say, I know nothing of the Birds of Tokyo’s output except that it is not avian-based; nor is it Far Eastern in flavour. But what’s a bit of nomenclatural misdirection between friends? The QSO publicity machine promises us works like Plans (2011), Lanterns (2014), Anchor (2015) and Good Lord (2020) from the Tokian oeuvre and, as with all such exercises, the QSO will be reduced to filling in the background – both physically and sonically. From limited (very) research, I’ve found that the Perth group has distinguished itself by playing at two AFL Grand Finals – a lesson in futility from my remembrances of these events: who is listening? Tickets range between $95 and $129 without concessions: this is no country for kids and the elderly. That usual $7.20 self-tip applies but, oddly enough, the QSO site has no seats on sale at the time of writing; nothing seems to be sold, but nothing is available. If the event materializes, the QSO will be led in their labours by Nicholas Buc who is well-versed in such trans-media exercises.
This concert will be repeated on Saturday September 9 at 7:30 pm.
UNDERWORLD: AN OPERATIC JOURNEY TO HELL AND BACK
Griffith University Faculty of Music
Conservatorium Theatre, South Brisbane
Saturday September 9 at 7:30 pm
This sounds more menacing than it is. The Griffith tyros will engage in excerpts from three operas dealing with the Orpheus myth: Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and Philip Glass’s 1991 Orphee. Of the Gluck, I know everything; of the Glass, nothing except that it’s the first part of a trilogy that honours Cocteau by setting his film to music. You’d have to think that the Gluck bits would include Chiamo il mio ben, Che puro ciel, and Che faro: a nice night, then, for a tenor/soprano/mezzo/counter-tenor. As for the Offenbach frolic, there’s always the Galop infernal but much of the score involves a chorus or ensembles for the principals. What I’ve heard (today) of the Glass chamber opera shows the same promise as you can hear in Einstein on the Beach and Akhnaten, i.e. none. But that’s all right: we have a theme and doubtless the promised intersection of these three sources will result in an Orphic illumination. The whole is conducted by Johannes Fritzsch while the director is Michael Gow. Tickets are $40, $50 or $60, depending on your standing as adult, concession-holder, or student. As far as I can tell, there’s no credit-card-use extortion fee.
This performance will be repeated on Tuesday September 12 at 6:30 pm, Thursday September 14 at 7:30 pm, and Saturday September 16 at 2:30 pm.
VOYAGES
University of Queensland Symphony Orchestra
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Sunday September 10 at 2 pm
The University of Queensland players come down the river for a night of travel music. They start with a movement from an Hawaiian work by Michael-Thomas Foumai: Raise Hawai’ki: Kealaikahiki, the whole construct celebrating the round-world voyage of a voyaging canoe, Hokule’a, in 2017. It’s an eight-movement choral symphony but I suspect that we’ll be hearing an orchestra-only excerpt. The next trip takes us to Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in the hands of final-year UQ student In Yi Chae. Finally, we travel to Saint-Saens for his Symphony No. 3 in C, the one with the organ, four-hands piano and an irretrievable association with Chris Noonan’s 1995 film Babe. Well, it’s not so much the world-travelling that is the point of this program, but the intellectual and emotional transplantations that come over us while we’re listening. The conductor is local musician Dane Lam who is directing a new Foumai work, Children of Gods, with the Hawai’i Symphony, an organization for which he is all too soon taking on the role of music director. Tickets move from $17 for children and students to $35 for adults, with the usual QPAC fee of $7.20 for handling your booking – the blight continues.
ICONIC CLASSICS
Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Brisbane
Thursday September 14 at 10 am
A Prep to Grade 6 morning where the young ears are attuned to music that sits at the forefront of that art. Truly? The program lasts 50 minutes but there are no details about anything connected with this exercise except that tickets cost $30 each and, for every 10 of these, a teacher gets in for free. That’s one way of ensuring a minimal standard of discipline in what could be a fraught situation. No specific conductor is listed; no particular works are marked down for a run-through. But the aim is to expose these very young people to great music. Can’t go wrong, can you? Especially in the close quarters of the Studio where the audience can get too close and personal with the sound sources and gaze in wonder at the artistry on display. And you’re expecting that from Prep-age children? No, this isn’t going to happen. By the time they approach Grade 6, young people have sometimes acquired the self-control of shutting up for 50 minutes; anything younger and you’ve got no hope. Of course, the program could be structured in such a way that each segment lasts 2/3 minutes – which is about the length of a good Wiggles number. But you can’t reduce many ‘iconic’ classics to that time-span – unless you want to fool your audience that great music comes in pop-song slices.
This concert will be repeated at 11:30 am.
ICONIC CLASSICS
Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Brisbane
Friday September 15 at 10 am
Following from yesterday, the QSO is playing today for students from Years 6 to 10. The program will necessarily change, you’d expect, given that the level of audience naivete will have substantially reduced in this morning’s patrons. By the way, ticket prices stay the same and the stipulation of one free teacher for every 10 paying students still applies. Again, no conductor is listed and no works are scheduled by name. From past experiences at Melbourne school concerts pitched at students in the upper reaches of these ages, you can expect about 5 minutes of tolerant bemusement, even if the work being played is familiar, But you need a charismatic MC or conductor and a few whizz-bang young soloists to encourage your garden-variety students to stay the course. If the orchestra is performing for music students, then you’d have no worries; but your average Grade 9 pupil is not susceptible to anything except the most obvious and loud classic. The organization probably believes in doing public service this way, opening horizons and expanding choices. Maybe so, in a small number of cases, but I believe that a real awareness of great music rarely starts until the age at which these concerts leave off.
This program will be repeated at 11:30 am.
BENJAMIN BRITTEN’S WAR REQUIEM
Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Q, Brisbane Chorale, Canticum Chamber Choir, Voices of Birralee
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Saturday September 16 at 7 pm
A work that has everything to satisfy a Britten admirer. I had an unalloyed enthusiasm for Britten’s work after coming across the first recording with Vishnevskaya, Pears and Fischer-Dieskau, then buying (and working through) the score, as well as relishing the opportunity to revisit all those Wilfred Owen poems that I’d studied five years before at school. Still, after 60 years, the score has many passages of remarkably affecting effectiveness: the Dies irae opening, the conclusion to The Parable of the Old Man and the Young, the pairing of Strange Meeting and In paradisum – all still impress me as showing the composer at his least prissy. As you can see from the list above, a good many of Brisbane’s musicians are participating; they’ll all be needed to cope with the composer’s triple grouping, including a large orchestra and a sizeable chamber ensemble. This night’s soloists are soprano Eva Kong, tenor Andrew Goodwin, baritone Hadleigh Adams, with the whole shebang conducted by Simon Hewett, taking time off from the opera/ballet pit to lead his forces through this flamboyantly sombre composition. There are no concession tickets; prices move from $49, through $65, to $75 although there are few of the expensive ones left.
GUY NOBLE’S GREAT TUNES
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Art Centre
Sunday September 17 at 11:30 am
To celebrate the conductor/host’s 18 years of directing the QSO’s Music on Sundays series, the organization asked Guy Noble to nominate his favourite works and present them to us. It’s a very broad selection he’s put together but I’d guess it comprises pieces that have meaning for him. The program begins with Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel; not the whole thing, I expect, but probably the overture and not much else because no soloists or choir are listed as participating and most of the opera requires one or both. Chabrier’s Espana puts in a welcome appearance; I’ve not heard it live for some time. And another piece of national colour emerges with the first of Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsodies: a mittel-European delight and the sort of thing Bartok could have written if only he hadn’t been so hidebound by reality. We leave Europe momentarily for home with Nigel Westlake‘s Babe Concert Suite which, as far as I can see, involves three parts from the original score. A return to Europe, lurching to Finland for the conclusion to the Sibelius Symphony No. 5 in E flat with its superb move from Lemminkainen’s Return to a swaying sunrise paean. Down to Germany where Weber wrote an Andante e Rondo Ungarese for his viola-playing brother in 1809. By 1813, he’d recast it for a bassoon soloist and this morning we hear QSO principal Nicole Tait fronting this rarely-heard gem. Finally, Noble brings his 80-minute extravaganza to an American close with the end credits from Field of Dreams, the 1989 Phil Alden Robertson film with a score by James Horner. Tickets range from $30 for a child to a top price of $105 for an adult in a good seat – plus the $7.20 handling fee for taking your money.
CLERICI CONDUCTS MAHLER
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Friday September 22 at 7:30 pm
The orchestra’s chief conductor Umberto Clerici is continuing a Mahler cycle begun by Alondra de la Parra during her stint in Brisbane. I don’t know how far she got, or whether she took the process in numerical order so that Clerici is left with the final four: the big rump. In any case, here he goes with No. 6 in A. I’ve heard a complete series in Melbourne from Markus Stenz who was able to negotiate the vast No. 8 in the Exhibition Building as part of a Federation Centenary shindig. Sir Andrew Davis got through all of the nine except No. 8 which was scheduled for a performance at (I seem to remember) Rod Laver Arena. But that fell through thanks to the advent of COVID and I don’t know if it was ever re-scheduled. Anyway, good luck to all connected with this performance because it’s long and arduous – except for the hammer-player who gets his two (or will it be three?) points of exposure in the grim finale. As well, Clerici will give the premiere of Justin Williams‘ Symphony No. 1, a work co-commissioned by the QSO and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra where the composer is associate principal viola, if more familiar to many of us as the alto line in Melbourne’s Tinalley Quartet. Obviously, he was a colleague of the conductor in the latter’s cello-playing days; useful, that old school bow. Clerici speaks of Williams as a late Romantic voice; not actually a help to those of us who want something from our writers that takes into account developments across the last century, at least. Tickets run the usual gamut from $30 (child) to $130 (full adult in a good seat), plus the $7.20 shakedown/booking fee for the sake of it.
This program will be repeated on Saturday September 23 at 1:30 pm
POSTCARDS FROM ITALY
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Monday September 25 at 7 pm
Only six members of the ACO will be playing at this geographically defined program: leader of the second violins Helena Rathbone, a second-rower violin in Ike See, head viola Stefanie Farrands and colleague Elizabeth Woolnough, principal cello Timo-Veikko Valve and his first desk support Julian Thompson. The night starts with a quartet playing the first movement, Venezia Notturna, from Thomas Ades‘ Arcadiana collection; not much to it, especially when compared to other elements in this collection. Valve offers his own arrangement of Bach’s Italian Concerto for an unknown number of participants – possibly a trio, if he’s confident enough. Mind you, the ‘Italian’ name is simply proposing contrasts; in the original, this is achieved by changing dynamics and (possibly) consoles/keyboards. We revert to the solidly Italian with Giovanni Sollima‘s Viaggio in Italia: not the whole thing,, but selections – presumably, ones without a vocal line . . . no, they come from a new version. The original for Schubert-style string quintet has 14 movements, so there’s plenty of scope for choice but, from what I’ve heard, a little goes a long way. Boccherini, that Italian/Spaniard hybrid, is represented by a quintet in the same format as Sollima’s: his Op. 45 No. 1 in C minor – 4 movements, 20 minutes’ worth. And, to end, Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence sextet, given this name because the composer conceived one of the work’s themes in that city when on an Italian sojourn with his brother following a disastrous attempt at marriage, so sensitively depicted in Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers 1971 film. For all its southern inspiration, the work is half-Russian (the later two movements), so the night will end on an ambiguous note (actually, a triad).
VISION STRING QUARTET
Musica Viva Australia
Queensland Conservatorium Theatre,. South Brisbane
Tuesday September 26 at 7 pm
This group – Florian Willeitner, Daniel Stoll, Sander Stuart, Leonard Disselhorst – is based in Berlin and is now 11 years old. The ensemble’s web-site is full of this visit to Australia, still going the full European scream about travelling to the ends of the earth. Which makes you wonder: how old are these people? Anyway, the lads are performing a standard program, with the extra bonus that they play from memory. First off is Bloch’s Prelude of 1925, subtitled Receuillement – about 5 minutes of eloquent late Romantic angst . . . but you could say that about a good deal of the composer’s more popular output. Bartok No. 4 follows, allegedly in C Major and a riveting score across its 23-minute length. The composer had ideas about expanding this work for string orchestra, so it would be handy to see what there is in this composition that is lacking in the Quartet No. 5 that Richard Tognetti recently expanded for his Australian Chamber Orchestra. To end, the ensemble performs Dvorak No. 13 Op. 106. A bit more lengthy, this delighted-to-be-home construct of 1895 lasts for about 40 minutes and helps to flesh out our chamber music experiences of this composer whose quartet output has been confined (in my experience) to one or two well-worn gems. Tickets can cost as little as $15 and as much as $109; I still don’t know whether Musica Viva charges a booking fee for its events but hope springs eternal.
O'Connell the Music 