Month: September 2023

They don’t forget; nor will you

cliveoconnell

VISION STRING QUARTET

Musica Viva Australia

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University, South Bank

Tuesday September 26, 2023

(L to R) Daniel Stoll, Florian Willeitner, Sander Stuart, Leonard Disselhorst

These latest guests for Musica Viva were here on the fourth leg of their national tour after performing in Newcastle, Melbourne and Hobart, from which last they were lucky to escape after sharing the national problem of flight delays/cancellations. Anyway, they got here with a couple of hours to spare and the experience didn’t seem to do them any harm, if you judge the situation by their extraordinary exhibition on Tuesday evening.

The big feature about the Visions is that they play from memory; not all the time, apparently, but all the way on this, their first Australian appearance. It seems that the German ensemble is presenting one program only as they move through all the state and territory capitals except Darwin. They begin with a brief Bloch Prelude, subtitled Receuillement in the best Baudelairean tradition: a five-minute effusion of mild passion. They end with Dvorak No 13 in G Major which celebrates – at length – being back home in Bohemia’s woods and fields after the composer’s mixed American experiences.

But what astounds is their reading from memory of Bartok No. 4, allegedly in C minor. This is a tour de force, not only of the obvious – learning the complex by heart – but also in the energetic certainty of the group’s interpretation. Here, what you are invited into is a radically new way of listening where the performers don’t focus on the printed notes but have internalized them so that their linear relationships aren’t just cerebral but totally physical. No screening from music stands or occasional eye-flicks: these four musicians focus on their collegiality where each knows exactly where and what his contribution is.

The result is that this searing music gains immeasurably, being presented as an unmediated entity and appearing (even though this cannot possibly be true) like a colossal exercise in shared improvisation. Of course, it isn’t: Bartok’s score is a solid object and the Visions work through it like so many quartets have done since March 1929. The difference is that these players have internalized every scrap and prepared it so thoroughly that you feel unshakeable confidence in their work. In the opening Allegro, the shared demi-semiquaver shakes that start at bar 58 have never sounded as uniform; each canonic pattern took on a cutting edge, e.g. the non-fugato from bar 104. Then there was that breath-taking escalation of tension that breaks out at the bar 126 Piu mosso where the action is too swift to imbibe.

Speaking of which, the Lyric Suite-indebted Prestissimo showed the benefits of knowing your place in an organism because it’s in your brain, rather than using the score as an aide-memoire. Here again, the interdependence proved absolute and justified, the ensemble grouping closely around the fulcrum of cellist Leonard Disselhorst as the motivic wisps swelled and faded before that startling burst of glissandi at bar 136, almost the dead-centre of this movement.

Disselhorst set the running for the work’s centre with a highly expressive account of the exposed solo from bar 6 to bar 34, first violin Florian Willeitner then taking over for the tinnitus-like portion of this night-music lento. What struck me here was the apparent freedom available to both players, pitching and weaving their lines with the assurance that their partners knew what they were up to and how they were working through their responsibilities before the meat of these pages emerged in bar 50’s poco allargando. As for the following all-pizzicato Allegro, we were treated to that rarity: exemplary dynamic gradations and contrasts, as in the abrupt forte arpeggiations of bar 63 preceding the triple-piano susurrus of bar 65 and the consequent catch-and-release processes in play up to bar 88’s Un poco piu mosso.

But there were so many other facets to this interpretation that deserve praise. The various pairings came over as razor-sharp in their clarity, rather than slightly sharp-discrepant, as witnessed by the outline of the final Allegretto‘s main theme (beginning at bar 15) by Willeitner and fellow violinist Daniel Stoll. Later, your spirits were elevated by the determination of Bartok’s frequent fierce canons, like that between the violins against Disselhorst and viola Sander Stuart beginning at bars 249/50, then 284/5. And I can’t recall being as struck at percussive simultaneity as in the col legno-punctuated stretch beginning at bar 329: a gripping uniformity of attack lasting till bar 340.

After interval, the Visions worked through the Dvorak work with just the same sweeping stamina, perfectly comfortable with the composer’s sonorous landscape of benevolent contentment. I watched this from the back of the Conservatorium hall which gave an opportunity to relish the group’s timbral warmth, particularly welcome during the Adagio second movement’s progress from that throbbing sul G/sul D initial strophe from Willeitner to the weltering grandioso C Major statement just before the key signature reversion back to E flat Major. In these hands, even that self-indulgently lengthy Allegro con fuoco finale maintained its grip as the group seemed to knot even tighter together while the episodes swept past, including that odd prefiguration of Harry Belafonte at the piu mosso 19 bars after Number 5 in the Eulenberg edition of (about) 1910.

You can argue that this group has numerous advantages not available to others. Three of them have been in the Vision configuration since 2012 – long enough to know each other’s musicianship and still tolerant enough to endure those personality quirks that have driven asunder other ensembles. Willeitner replaced Jakob Encke in 2021 but his slightly-less-than-two-years Vision experience clearly doesn’t tell against him. These musicians still have the heightened perceptions of youth on their side, all being in their very early 30s and I’d suggest at their prime level of physical reactiveness: they move remarkably quickly and with admirable discipline.

Best of all, as their Bartok reading shows, they have no fears of the difficult but show willing to master music that is still taxing after nearly a century since its publication. This readiness to enter fully into their work gives you hope for their future, although it’s probably expecting too much to expect that they will eventually be able to give a complete Bartok cycle from memory, for example. Despite that, I’m afraid that the Visions have spoiled us; from now on, I’ll be remembering their confidence and ensemble virtuosity when faced with any normal string quartet complete with music stands, no matter how essential these may be. Irrational, I know, but this group has set a remarkable precedent, regardless of what follows from them or anybody else.

Enthusiasm limited by naivete

cliveoconnell

TANGO FANTASY

Ken Herrera

Move Records MCD 649

The composer/pianist presents four of his works on this disc: two short isolated pieces, and a pair of collections, finishing with the five-movement, 33-minute-long Tango Fantasy. Herrera studied piano at the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Music, then moved into composition. He appears to be self-taught in this latter field and – unfortunately – it shows. You’re not getting many contemporary sounds here; Herrera is content to manipulate a harmonic vocabulary of rudimentary proportions and his professed devotion to the tango is not persuasive when it comes to putting that particular dance into his own language,

For instance, the opening Tango Waltz begins with some flourishes that might suggest a tango but, 30 seconds in, the piece has settled into a 3/4 rhythm. Following this straightforward move to waltz-time, Herrera doesn’t move out of it. Furthermore, the melodic content is rather wayward; sure, there are repetitions of his basic tune, punctuated by episodes that have little relation to anything but themselves. Apart from a well-pedalled scale eruption about two-thirds of the way through, there’s not much here to raise expectations of virtuosity; some flourishes are welcome but the 2018 piece is couched in a pre-Nino Rota/Fellini atmospheric without the original’s spartan melancholy.

Pairing up with this waltz is the album’s other brevity, Herrera’s Third Nocturne from 2012 which aims to suggest a Latin American night spot complete with its atmosphere-establishing piano in a blending of bossa nova and blues. Well, you get the first-mentioned’s rhythm, all right – it obtains throughout – but the blues consists of some predictable chords and not much besides. Our nocturne isn’t in the Field/Chopin line but more along the lines of something you might hear at a cocktail bar; sadly, not one where you’re tempted to tip the pianist. As with the waltz, the piece sounds aimless in its right hand which wanders at its own sweet will in a chain of 7th chords and tinklings.

Herrera’s first major construct is a Suite dating from 2013. The inspiration comes from Bach – a laudable aspiration, although the shape of the collection puts it closer to Grieg’s Holberg or even the Karelia of Sibelius although its four elements are given non-suggestive tempo titles: Allegro, Allegro, Andantino, Presto. The first is proposed as an introductory toccata but the only shadow of that form comes close to the end in a quasi-improvisatory passage that recalls some of the foibles of Sweelinck. For the most part, it proceeds like a fitful study with left-hand cross-overs for excitement, building to a loud highpoint rather early in proceedings but, like a Buxtehude toccata,. owning several sections.

At the end of this opening, you’re also left with several questions about the movement’s harmonic shape which tends to follow a predictable path, if sometimes an ungainly one because it veers off from its own patterns more than little self-consciously. We’re in much more solid Bach territory with the second Allegro which begins like one of the Inventions but lacks the rigour to follow a simple contrapuntal matrix, the left-hand settling into a bass role where you expected a mirroring of the initial statement. Progress is sometimes quirky, but not in an adventurous way – for instance, a sequential pattern is held up for a moment when a repetition is interpolated so that you’re left feeling unbalanced when the sequence is resumed. Later, when the left hand gets hold of the initial line, the treble provides a functional harmonic accompaniment rather than a complement. At about the 1’30” point, we enter a new world of repeated chords for a moment, returning almost instantly to the suggested/unrealized linear interplay of the opening.

Herrera sees this as a lively dance movement; to me, it’s more in the nature of a march in that I can’t see any potential choreography beyond a military stamp. When it comes to the obligatory slow movement, we are offered an Andantino that opens with a simple old-fashioned melody, followed by a series of episodes that numb with their predictability in terms of shape and modulations. Added to which, the composer reaches some points where inspiration is at a premium and we experience a good deal of repetition and note-spinning, e.g. at about the 3′ 50″ mark and at 5′ 00″. An abruptly determined conclusion sits at odds with the placid opening; it’s as though the writer has turned semi-aggressive and avoided a tempering of his mood.

When we reach the Presto, Herrera points to the gigue conclusions to Bach keyboard suites and proposes a further historical reach by wanting to summon up the Irish jig spirit as well. He opens bravely, with a flourish that hints at Litolff’s Concerto Symphonique No. 4 Scherzo before we reach a melody peppered with hemiolas. Before long, the jig has turned into a momentary waltz, then coming back to jig with some slight suggestions of a blues chord or two. A descent to the bass register moves us back into the land of the totally expectable, followed by a rise in alt – and we’re back to Litolff, albeit rather laboured. A chromatic rise brings us to a reprise of the opening material, and a soft-dynamic ending with preparatory booming bass and ornamental sextuplets on top.

This is the most effective of the suite’s movements, mainly because of its energy and occasional charm, yet it still leaves an impression of beating the bounds through interludes – to the point where the exercise sounds like a disjunct rondo.

But there’s more. Herrera’s final offering is the 2016 Tango Fantasy in five movements that begins with a solid Andante – Allegro – Allegretto – Presto sequence. The opening is a sort of recitative, beginning with a single line that acquires another as well as some gruff bass burps before reaching for some chord chains that would have satisfied more if the composer had been more severely self-critical, giving coherence to his modulations and animating the piece by using his instrument’s outer reaches with some purpose.

The remaining three sections are all tangos, taken at various speeds, the fourth being something of a recapitulation of the second although the pace doesn’t justify the Presto label. I found it difficult to detect how the Allegretto was related to anything else, although it opened in a quasi-improvisatory manner that suggested the piece’s first pages/bars. But a great deal of territory is covered by the fantasy nomenclature, so – as with Chopin and Schumann – you just have to go with the prevailing flow. We now come to a Vals – Allegro vivo which follows a similar Rota-type insouciance as we heard in the opening Tango Waltz; the main tune opens deftly enough but fails to live up to its promise with a rather aimless consequent to its initial statement. Here the intention is clearly to spike up the piece’s orthodox harmonic scheme with some wrong-note interpolations. That might have come off if the overwhelming tenor of the movement was not so traditional at its many harmonic fulcrum points. Added to this, some of the movement’ phrases didn’t balance; and you’d be working hard to find much vivo in these pages.

Now attention turns to the Milonga, the tango’s precursor; this movement is also set up as a Presto, which it isn’t. Here is a harmonically orthodox dance with some traces of the habanera’s triplets and at least four passages of fortissimo writing that come straight from the Lisztian handbook of virtuosity if not as dynamically sustained or as digitally taxing as in the Hungarian master’s workplace. An Andantino opens questioningly but follows an inchoate path, taking its time before settling into a languorous tango, then seeming to doodle a melodic path leading in no particular direction. In fact, this whole movement struck me as aimless if centred on a minor tonality (G?) – as is so much of the music on this CD – before a concluding over-emphasized tierce de Picardie.

at the start of the concluding Presto, Herrera introduces a key motif of five consecutive semiquavers rattled out like automatic fire before moving into a Piazzolla-reminiscent melody that gives a format to this rondo-tango which comes equipped with a substantial coda. Again, I’d question the tempo direction which, to my ear, sounds in actuality more like a tempo di marcia. But the real problem comes not from the piece’s impetus, which is well-sustained, but from the diffuse nature of its harmonic ramblings which lead into some thorny thickets before moving back into diatonic safety.

Nothing wrong with being a tango tragic. Never forget that splendid man-of-letters Clive James and his installation of a special room in which he could practise this specific dance: that’s enthusiasm. But, for a composer, you have to add something original to a field that boasts the riches of Albeniz in D, Por una cabeza, La Cumparsita, Besame mucho, and even Libertango. This CD is the work of a talent that appears devoted to this specific form but his output needs more focus, not to mention more sophistication.

Three sonatas from a new/old voice

cliveoconnell

TREING TO REMEMBER WHAT I CHOSE TO FORGET

Trish Dean, Graeme Jennings, Alex Raineri

Move Records MCD 642

Yet another compositional voice that has passed me by, Millward is best known for his collaborations with film makers and stage artists, although chamber music is a respectable element in his catalogued output. His language runs to the jazz/popular/sonic art vocabularies and his performances seem to tend to pre-recorded. In fact, much of his work has been recorded on three CDs, including a piano works collection by Sally Mays. Matters are further complicated by several works being sub-sets or spin-offs from larger constructs; it’s an instance of cross-transference, something like trying to chart Sculthorpe’s string quartets.

Still, this recording is Millward’s first for Move Records and it features three exceptional musicians. Despite the suggestive titles – Trying to Remember What I Chose to Forget; Contact – Connect – Tracer; Sadness to Madness – all three of the works presented are good old-fashioned duo sonatas. Pianist Alex Raineri is the constant thread in all three works; violinist Graeme Jennings performs the 2019 violin sonata (Trying to Remember . . . ), then tries his viola hand at the second (Connect etc.), written in 2021; Ensemble Q’s Trish Dean manages the two-movement cello sonata which came to fruition last year.

To begin, I’m having trouble with the composer’s CD title which applies not just to the violin sonata but also to the other two works. In essence, Millward is facing us with sounds that he has in his memory as well as sounds that he has chosen to obliterate from his memory – which is a mental tour de force that you confront at your peril. What is being proposed is a scouring confrontation with the self where you easily take into account the positive facets of your personality/identity, at the same time as facing up to events or characteristics that cast you in a less-than-flattering light. Further, Millward proposes that this admission of the traits we decide to eliminate isn’t just a personal failure but a cultural one.

I don’t think any of us would have an argument with this last projection. You only have to look at any arguments against the Voice to encounter a world of unconscious admissions of cultural failure – obvious time-honoured maltreatment dismissed in favour of self-righteousness, led by a character who seizes on Farnham’s words, ‘try and understand it’ while missing the relevance, inherited from his former career, of the lines, ‘How long can we look at each other/Down the barrel of a gun?’ So Millward has concerns with an unassailable truth: we do choose to forget – what we find uncomfortable, unpleasant, unconscionable.

How this translates into his music remains a mystery that could only be solved by a psychological journey into his compositional practice, an analysis separating the wheat from the one-time tares. But then you’re faced with discerning what the composer wants to use as material, has always wanted to use, and presents – but alongside or in between other compositional matter that has been ignored quite consciously and can now be recalled! It’s an intriguing double-take but I fear many of us won’t rise to Millward’s expectations, content in our intellectual sloth to take his work as a composite – that is, if we aren’t being confronted by an entire creative swathe that involves the formerly-repressed rising to the surface intact: not alongside, but instead of the consciously accepted inspiration for the composer’s products.

The CD’s title work opens with Partial Reflection in which Raineri’s part dominates for its block chords while Jennings presents a Hindemith-like strong, if meandering line. The contrapuntal interplay between both instruments is occasionally intense in its tautness but then gives place to some lyrically soaring flights for the string player, especially towards the movement’s conclusion while Raineri proposes an atmospherically varied backdrop. A meditative break follows in Memoire Omissions where an unhappy nocturne finds cells repeated, extended, varied, shared with sudden patches of orthodox harmony penetrating the atonal texture that dominates proceedings. A sudden burst into action from both players heightens the outward tension before a return to the opening’s melancholy reserve and a few aggressive concluding bars.

Which take us through an attacca into the final Tangled Tango. About a minute of violin cadenza reminiscent of Tzigane precedes Raineri’s entry into the partnership before the work’s progress becomes a sort of tango, if one that you wouldn’t have much luck dancing. After a dynamic climax/collapse, the players move into a tranquil zone that eventually takes up the tango rhythm en clair about 2/3rds of the way through before becoming a rather strident exercise in opposing and complementary ejaculations. A return to the tango prefaces a menacing conclusion on a looped phrase that suddenly cuts itself short. For sure, the tango (which bears an odd similarity to a polonaise at certain spots) is a miscellany of sectionalized inventiveness; as with its predecessors, I find it hard to trace the elements or to appreciate what Millward is doing with them. Adding to the unsettling character of this work, Jennings sounds under-miked in the opening movement, a second-stringer to the piano’s aggression.

On to the slightly longer (9 seconds) viola sonata and we seem to have landed in more immediately digestible territory with Raineri outlining a steady quaver pattern rather like an Alberti bass, the viola giving us a lean, meandering melodic line. Both instruments work into an angular duet that follows a steady pulse and into a well-integrated partnership. A change of mood actually means a change of output and emotional prospects with some savage double-stopping for the viola and a willful piano percussive exhibition. The closely-argued relationship of the first section is here a more frantic creature: the quaver pattern persists but much more explosively and fiercely. There is no relief: the pressure is maintained and the movement ends abruptly.

So why call it Contact? Possibly because of the duelling brought into play, both instruments intertwining but also exploding against each other’s activity. Further, the juxtaposition of moderate and rapid tempi exposes a dual arena of sorts in which the tactile scenario is pursued consistently, if under two different guises. It’s a more placid scene in the following Connect, the amiable soundscape a throwback to English impressionism. Where the viola weaves another generously lyrical line, the keyboard ranges across its compass in support as well as shifting backgrounds. The whole piece reminds me of Cyril Scott’s Lotus Land – which is probably being a bit unfair to both writers. But they share a kind of directed languor, relieved by an occasional spurt of temperament.

As for the concluding Tracer pages, I can only conclude that this refers to one instrument following the other’s path. From the opening, Raineri sets the pace while Jennings punctuates with decorative interpolations that distract from the somewhat steady keyboard progress. Then the roles are reversed and the movement soldiers on, like a hard-worked sample of kammermusik. Eventually, the moto perpetuo aspect dies off for a terse viola cadenza, before we return to the same patterns as the opening and the sonata ends on a question mark, like Petrushka.

Mind you, I could have this all wrong and Millward could be following a quasi-military inspiration; the contact-connect-tracer sequence might have something to do with warfare. But I doubt it; whatever the tracer suggestion, I don’t think it refers to bullets. Without a score, it’s impossible to discern the parallel contours (if there are any) of both instrumental lines and, while there is plenty of mimesis, it’s hard to see a continuous layering of timbres and melodies. Still, the performance is assured and clean, Jennings’ pitch invariably true and Raineri giving his part a welcome clarity, especially in the outer movements.

The cello sonata’s two movements are called, rather obviously, Sad and Mad. In the first, both performers seem to be goading each other into depression, Dean’s cello leading the way into an emphatically dour emotional landscape. Indeed, it’s a rare moment when the string voice isn’t clearly in the ascendant. A brief outburst of staccato high notes for Raineri is one of the few points of piano exposure, even if the instrument’s timbre is used deftly at either end of this movement to reinforce the cello’s low moans.

Another attacca launches us into new territory, the piano rumbling in its lowest register against a striving cello circling on itself. And suddenly we emerge into the relative light of a partnership that follows a coherent path for a few measures, only to lapse into a downward cello solo. The music takes a turn for the manic, the piano producing a chain of hand-muffled notes; followed eventually by eruptions, a high tinkling/near-harmonic that suggests mental disarrangement, if not an absence of mental control. But this is followed by a quietly balanced cello lyric, sensitively carried forward by piano chords, before the final ascent to a high sustained note that wavers (intentionally, you’d hope) into something like those woodwind multiphonics that were so popular in the 1960s.

Is this all intended to depict a crazed state with occasional facets of crisis and release? I suppose so and it’s effective in its chameleonic shifts from one phase to another and back. Certainly, it’s a fine demonstration of performance involvement from both executants who appear to be comfortable with Millward’s language and technical demands. The cello and violin sonatas share common ground, in particular a mobile dissonance that impresses for its clear sense of purpose, as opposed to the relative sweetness of the work for viola and piano. Nevertheless, the composer’s triple offering here is challenging and he is content to offer a fairly abstract set of observations to explain his field of operations; hence the diffidence of the observations above . Not a new voice, then, given the composer’s substantial academic and professional career, but one well worth knowing.

Diary October 2023

cliveoconnell

A QUEER ROMANCE

Michael Honeyman and Sally Whitwell

Opera Queensland Studio, 149 Grey St. South Bank

Friday October 6 at 7 pm

As for picking lyrical products for this song recital, I don’t think baritone Honeyman and his accompanist will have much success – that’s if the adjective ‘queer’ relates to sexuality and isn’t just used as a general term for off-centre or outre. You could go for the Michelangelo Sonnets of Britten – no: they’re written for tenor. What about Poulenc’s songs for Bernac? Fine, but you look for sub-texts in vain across the work of this repressed writer. You might have better luck with Ravel’s L’indifferent or Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis although both are heard more often/successfully from female singers. But an actual romance along LGBTQI lines expressed in unambiguous music is pretty hard to come across; lots of hints and possibilities, very little that’s explicit . . . or maybe I haven’t heard of it yet. As for Honeyman, my experience has been limited to his Opera Australia appearances, best exemplified in a towering King Roger that threw the rest of that particular Melbourne season (2017?) into the shade. Whitwell I know nothing about, but she’s a Sydney musician and that city’s musical life hasn’t impinged on my consciousness for over 60 years. The recital is sponsored by Opera Queensland. Tickets range between $77 and $85; I don’t think there’s any credit-card gouging.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 7 at 2 pm.

NOCTURNE

Orava Quartet

The Edge Auditorium, State Library of Queensland

Saturday October 7 at 7 pm

The city’s favourite ensemble of this shape is offering a delectable 90-minute program in a string quartet-favouring location, with a close acoustic from memory. The players – violins Daniel Kowalik and David Dalseno, viola Thomas Chawner, cello Karol Kowalik – open with Borodin No. 2 which features a slow-movement Notturno familiar to all lovers of the musical Kismet, not forgetting the Scherzo which, with its second theme, gave us Baubles, Bangles and Beads. But it’s a satisfying work in its own right, making me wonder yet again: why don’t we ever hear its predecessor based on a theme from a late Beethoven quartet? Then come the Five Pieces by Erwin Schulhoff of 1923 which show a facility that this composer possessed when pushing beyond Les Six. Finally, the Oravas offer us Sculthorpe’s String Quartet No. 9. Commissioned in 1975 by Musica Viva Australia, it’s a work I’ve not heard for many years. But you could say the same about most of the Australian writer’s output in this form, all of it very approachable. This occasion also marks the launch of the ensemble’s second album, for which no details are available. Tickets range from $25 to $69, organized through Eventbrite who will probably charge you for their services, limited as they are.

THE DINNER PARTY

Ensemble Q

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday October 8 at 3 pm

The Ensemble is celebrating a famous dinner on the night of Strauss’s Salome premiere in Graz. Those present included Schonberg, his students Berg and Webern, his brother-in-law Zemlinsky, his idol Mahler, as well as Strauss himself and Puccini (in town for the spectacle). By some clever programmatic variety, we will hear Schonberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces of 1913, Berg’s Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano from the same year, and Webern’s Three Little Pieces for Cello and Piano from the following year. Puccini is represented by his string quartet lament Crisantemi, composed way back in 1890 between Edgar and Manon Lescaut. Zemlinsky produced his 4-minute Humoreske for wind quintet in 1939 after escaping the Nazis. A neat confederation comes in Schoenberg’s 1920 arrangement of Mahler’s 1885 Songs of a Wayfarer for flute, clarinet, string quartet plus double bass, piano, harmonium, triangle and glockenspiel. Then, the night’s second half is all-Strauss: the Piano Quartet Op. 13, contemporaneous with Mahler’s song-cycle; and Till Eulenspiegel – einmal anders! in which the Austrian academic Franz Hasenohrl in 1954 reappraised the 1895 tone poem by reducing its content by about half and cut the orchestral forces to a violin-double bass-clarinet-bassoon-horn quintet. Don’t know who’s participating in any of the above except for baritone Shaun Brown who sings Mahler/Schoenberg’s four lieder. It’s at QPAC, so the tickets range from $55 concession to $75 full, with the gross impost of $7.20 as a penalty for giving up your Sunday afternoon.

EUROPEAN MASTERS

Academy of St. Martin in the FieldsAcademy of St Martin in the Fields Academy of St Martin in the Fields with Joshua Bell

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Wednesday October 11 at 7 pm

This famous British ensemble has allied with super-duper American violinist Bell, currently the Academy’s music director, for a tour that involves three nights in Melbourne’s Recital Centre (audience limited to 1,000), three nights in Sydney’s Opera House (God knows how many it holds after the latest re-configuration) and two nights in Brisbane; blessed be the east coast. I’ve heard them once at home and once in Melbourne; no question but that this group is top-notch with a burnished output that has been delighting us for 65+ years. The European writers that they’re presenting begin with Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, yclept Classical because it offers a modern-day (1916-17) Haydn flavour. It’s fine as long as it isn’t turned into a rapid-fire onslaught in the outer movements. I believe Bell will be front man for Bach’s A minor Violin Concerto BWV 1041; you see, this night’s work is emphatically popular and such a warhorse should go down a treat. The director will also probably take prime position for Saint-Saens’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, in which I can already hear the sparks flying in the concluding Piu allegro. To end, Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony – his last in the form (probably because it took him so long to finish) and notable for its absence of breaths between movements and the snappy Scots references in the scherzo and finale. Tickets range from $89 to $199 (no concessions); well, they all need recompense for coming so far, don’t they? While splurging on this, never forget QPAC’s extra impost of $7.20 on any order.

CLASSIC GRANDEUR

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields with Joshua Bell

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday October 12 at 7 pm

Following its array of popular favourites from last night, the Academy and its music director go straight for that old-time religion with a program that could have come from the 1930s. We are beginning with Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro and it’s almost a certainty that Bell and his forces will spring no surprises with this brief burst of brilliance but will mount a crisp presentation; mind you, what else can you do? Bell steps forward for the Beethoven Violin Concerto which will be punctuated by the soloist’s own cadenzas; fair enough, as the composer didn’t supply any himself and who needs Kreisler’s any more? I can remember Nigel Kennedy playing them with timpani support on one of his visits here – probably taken from Beethoven’s own arrangement of the work for piano and orchestra. In any case, Bell’s cadenzas have been around for a while without causing controversy. And we return to Mozart for the Symphony No. 40 in G minor: the most popular of the set and a challenging task for any group of players faced with its inspired bravery and emotional conviction. Tickets cost the same as at last night’s event – $89 to $199, with the same booking-fee exaction of $7.20. Perhaps it’s worth the expense to see these fine flowers from Britain’s musical garden on display.

HEARTLAND CLASSICS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday October 13 7:30 pm

The orchestra’s one city concert for this month does come from the centre of Europe, beginning with the Hungarian frolic of Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta from 1933, oozing national colour and verbunkos format. It’s a friendly suite with some flattering orchestral work, particularly for clarinet which will give Irit Silver plenty of scope to exercise her skills. An Armenian guest then comes forward: violinist Sergey Khachatryan. This youngish (38) musician will take the solo line for Mendelssohn in E minor, which is about as close to music’s early Romantic heartland as you can get and the acme of the composer’s achievement in the concerto format. After this German effusion, we’ll hear Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor from 1885 which certain commentators put at the forefront of the Czech composer’s output, despite the prevalence of the New World on every major orchestra’s annual schedule as the years roll on. I’ve a sneaking affection for this score as I first encountered it at the Melbourne Conservatorium where Noel Nickson conducted it in the early 1960s while I sat at the back of the violins and heard student tentativeness in full cry for the first (but not the last) time. Anyway, the conductor here is Otto Tausk from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Tickets full-price fall between $90 and $130, but concessions are available; still, you can’t avoid that swingeing booking fee, no matter where you sit or what price reduction you manage to acquire.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 14 at 1:30 pm

FLORESCENCE

Australian String Quartet

Ithaca Auditorium, Brisbane City Hall

Thursday October 19 at 7 pm

Here’s a fairly well-travelled group. Not that Brisbane is a constant on its touring schedule these days but, unlike quite a few other string quartets on the national scene, the ASQ doesn’t neglect us entirely. The ensemble – violins Dale Barltrop and Francesca Hiew, viola Christopher Cartlidge, cello Michael Dahlenberg – has survived the Great Interruption and comprises the same personnel format as when I heard the group some years ago. As for what they’re playing in this well-polished, atmospherically cold space, it starts with a Movement for String Quartet, written in 2020 by Justin Williams, associate principal viola with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and a founding member of the Tinalley Quartet (although that ensemble hasn’t been heard of for some time now). This brevity (the composer’s first creative gambit) is followed by Haydn in B minor, first of the six in the Op. 33 set and the only one of them not in a major key (although the composer has his little ambisexual harmonic jest at the start). I assume there’s an interval break (after about 36 minutes’ playing) before we jump back to Purcell’s Fantasia No 6 in F which is a substantial work, considering most of its companions. To end, we have Dvorak No. 14 in A flat, the last of the composer’s output in this form and nowhere nearly as well-known (or performed) as No 12, the American (once called the Nigger, especially in slavery-enriched England). That’s a very original program with nothing familiar about it – and so to be highly commended. Tickets? $33 to $78 with no apparent extra charge: another cause for commendation.

THE NEW WORLD

Southern Cross Soloists

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday October 22 at 3 pm

The Soloists are going all-American in this all-things-to-all-men compendium which begins with Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, last heard here from the Australian Chamber Orchestra on August 7; this time, in its string quartet format. Then we are treated to a bit of ersatz Americana in the Largo from Dvorak’s New World Symphony, Goin’ Home; presumably being sung to words provided by the composer’s American pupil, William Arm Fisher . . . otherwise, why not just stick with the piece’s original title? Then comes Artie Shaw’s Clarinet Concerto of 1940 which makes hay with the composer’s big band sunshine. The ensemble hits the inspirational if imaginary national vein with Three Scenes from Aaron Copland’s Rodeo ballet – which is odd as the usual collation features four of the work’s original five scenes. Konstantin Shamray will play his reading of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue; presumably as a piano solo, but you can’t tell with the Soloists. The final essay is a Piazzolla (well, he lived in the USA for 10 or 11 years): Fuga y misterio which comes from the composer’s opera Maria de Buenos Aires. It’s a frustrated tango, or so it seems to me, despite its formal qualities that sound as natural as the instrumental section to Bernstein’s Cool. In the program’s centre is an as-yet unnamed new work/collaboration between guitarist John Jorgenson (of Elton John band fame) and Chris Williams, the Soloists’ Didgeridoo Soloist in Residence. You’d suppose that the work will feature both composers as executants but – apart from Shamray – other participants on the night remain anonymous. Tickets are from $35 (student) to $85; it’s QPAC-sponsored, so have your extra $7.20 ready.

SONGBIRDS

Ensemble Offspring

Brisbane City Hall

Saturday October 28 at 7:30 pm

Is this group in a state of constant expansion or contraction? Last time I looked, it appeared to be a mixed trio; from its website, you’d think it was a sextet. For this particular program, three sound-sources are nominated: flute, clarinet and percussion. This last is certainly the ensemble’s founder/artistic director Claire Edwardes whose name is well-established among adherents of Australia’s contemporary music activity. The flautist will be Lamorna Nightingale, the clarinets negotiated by Jason Noble; these musicians have participated in Offspring recitals earlier this year. Three composers are singled out for mention on one particular informational platform: Gerard Brophy, Fiona Loader, and Nardi Simpson All three will be represented by some ‘beloved’ works. We know that they’ll be Australian birds – Brophy’s 2019 Beautiful birds, Loader’s Lorikeet Corroboree of 2015, perhaps Simpson’s Of Stars and Birds (which you can see the Offspringers play on YouTube). And then we move away from the avian and more to the environment with two Hollis Taylor/Jon Rose collaborations in N’Dhala Gorge @ Ross River and Bitter Springs Creek 2014, alongside Brenda Gifford‘s Mungala (Clouds), Ella Macens‘ Falling Embers, Alice Humphries‘ The Visitor (Sorry, I can’t stay), and Bridget Bourne‘s Wood Grooves – all written between 2018 and 2022. Tickets aren’t yet on sale.

KINGS AND CASTLES

South East Queensland Symphonic Winds

Old Museum, Bowen Hills

Sunday October 29 at 2:30 pm

A few unusual features about this event, which is the only one in October’s calendar for the Old Museum that appeals. First, it’s a dress-up event: you come attired as a king (or queen) and you could win a prize – an initiative that would spark up many a more grave event at QPAC. Second, the program is remarkably broad – and vague. The 60-piece ensemble (that’s a massive lot of winds) under Adam Pittard is promising a feast of music from around the globe – royalty of all types and times. We will hear musical insurrections (Khovanshchina? Va, pensiero?) and Holy Grail quests (Parsifal? or more likely Indiana Jones?). Geographical locations move between Ancient Persia – we could all do with a dash of Ketelbey, or a few selections from Kismet – and the Kingdom of Siam, which for many of us is forever associated with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I. The Winds choose their repertoire from light classical, Broadway musicals, movie themes and original compositions; some of my suggestions above might obtain, although perhaps not the Wagner and Mussorgsky operas. Tickets fall between $19 and $24, a dollar extra if you buy at the door. And there’s a 2% credit card fee – a matter of cents, I suppose, but necessary?