OLIVER SCOTT & ALEX RAINERI
FourthWall Arts
540 Queen St. Brisbane
Friday February 9 at 7:30 pm
As Brisbane’s serious music year slowly grinds into action after an interval of almost two months of torpor, the path back is led by the individual who saw us into the Christmas season: Alex Raineri. who turned 30 last year and has put in more useful organizational work than most of his peers accomplish in their lifetimes. FourthWall Arts is the venue for the Brisbane Music Festival and is starting its own recital series with this event in a little under a month; I’m assuming its genesis comes from Raineri who is not one to let the months slip by as passively as others. Not that he’s going out on a limb with this evening’s program. He and cellist Oliver Scott (a BMF performer) will work through Beethoven’s Sonata No. 2 in G minor, with the happy G Major rondo second movement to finish; then Brahms No. 2 in F Major, the less appealing of the two but a mighty example of what a difference 20 years makes; and Arvo Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel which I’ve heard in performances that last 4, 10 and 45 minutes. As this event is scheduled to last for 90 minutes, and there’s an interval with a free glass of wine thrown in, I’d think that its duration will be somewhere between the last two lengths. But all bets are off: it’s Estonian minmalism, and slow-moving at that. Tickets cost $35 each, with an add-on or two: a $2.39 booking fee, with a GST of 24 cents on the booking fee! It’s a bleak new fiscal year we’re facing: God bless us, every one!
This recital will be repeated on Saturday February 10 at 1 pm.
AN ITALIAN VISTA
Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, SouthBank
Saturday February 10 at 7:30 pm
This program will be repeated on Sunday February 11 at 3 pm.
A lot of this evening’s content is Italian of a kind. The only solidly national work comes with Puccini’s Crisantemi. the composer’s last essay in string quartet writing and a lament for his pal, the Duke of Aosta. You’d have to think it will be given in a string orchestra version, as in its once-frequent presentations by the Australian Chamber Orchestra. The QSO’s major offering will be Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, known to us all as the Italian and representing a youngish German’s reactions to his pilgrimages in that country. To my mind, the finest moments come at the start with that breathless introduction and the hurtlingly infectious first subject. Mind you, it’s all a bit chocolate-box for me, especially after exposure to the seediness of the country from north to south; a better set of images comes from Berlioz’s Harold. But the odd man out appears at the start when concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto takes her forces through Grieg’s Holberg Suite, written to celebrate the prominent Danish-Norwegian playwright whose work I’ve never seen, heard or read. Doesn’t matter: the Suite is a generous masterwork, packed with brio and sentiment and a delight as long as the performers are disciplined. The whole thing lasts an hour and tickets cost between $79 and $35, with the usual outrageous booking fee of $7.95. How can any organization justify that flagrant over-charging?
RIVER
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Monday February 12 at 7 pm
Here’s another of this organization’s visual-aural extravaganzas. The last one I witnessed was here in Brisbane: The Crowd and I, some time in August 2022. ACO artistic director Richard Tognetti and Jennifer Peedom follow their collaboration on Mountain with this look at the world’s waterways, natural and manipulated, with plenty of aural/visual meshes of which I’m sure that some will startle and surprise. What is the music to go along with the pictures? It’s an even more eclectic hodge-podge than usual, with some scraps to satisfy the conservative ACO patrons, along with some boppy numbers to entertain the great unwashed. Bach and Vivaldi will sound: the former’s Chaconne, the latter’s slow movement from RV 232 and opening pages of RV 578. Add to these the Vivace in Sibelius’ Voces Intimae D minor String Quartet, the Ruhevoll that occupies centre stalls in Mahler’s G Major Symphony, Ravel’s String Quartet’s Assez vif, the retrospective O Albion from Ades’ Arcadiana, with a mellifluous gob-stopper in Peters Vasks’ Vox Amoris (please God, not the whole thing). Tognetti scores himself in as a writer, but I can’t pick out which tracks belong to him and those that come from adjunct composer Piers Burbrook de Vere. Didjeridu player William Barton participates as soloist and composer of Wildness, Ritual, and Spirit Voice of the Enchanted Waters. Radiohead takes up space with their Harry Partch (In Memory Of) which has the benefit of lasting between 5 and 6 minutes and might be sung by the ACO’s Satu Vanska. Jonny Greenwood from that group is also listed as a composer but of what, I’m not aware, apart from his string-arrangement support for the Harry Partch song. Tickets range from $25 to $166, with a huge booking fee of $8.50 - for a $25 ticket??!!
WORLDS COLLIDE
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Sunday February 18 at 11:30 am
This program launches the QSO’s Music on Sundays series and is billed as something of a travelogue. All right, then. Conductor Douglas Boyd opens with Australian composer Harry Sdraulig‘s Torrent from 2021 which has been played by both Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras; based on previous experience, I’d say that here is a voice worth attention. After this fanfare, four of the QSO principals come forward for Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for wind soloists: oboe Huw Jones, clarinet Irit Silver, bassoon Nicole Tait, horn Tim Allen-Ankins. Not the whole work, sadly; only the middle Adagio. Moving a little sideways geographically, the focus changes to Dvorak’s New World Symphony (only the boisterous movements 3 and 4). Cross the Channel for Welsh writer Grace Williams’ Penillion, but only the first movement of the four will be heard. Dart back across Europe for Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from the opera Prince Igor that we’re never going to see on these shores; very colourful and spilling over with great tunes but it’s a pity that the excitement won’t be ramped up by including the original’s chorus. Running time is 80 minutes, without an interval, and there’s the usual $7. 20 booking fee-for-bugger-all added on to ticket prices which range from $76 to $109; concessions are available.
LONG LOST LOVES (AND GREY SUEDE GLOVES)
Anna Dowsley & Michael Curtain
Brisbane Powerhouse
Thursday February 22 at 7 pm
In a departure from usual practice, Musica Viva is presenting this display case at the city’s Powerhouse, which is hard to get to for those of us over-challenged by Brisbane’s night traffic. Still, I’m sure there are many good reasons - acoustic and environmental - why mezzo Anna Dowsley and pianist Michael Curtain have been assigned this venue to present some of the Cabaret Songs by veteran American composer William Bolcom. Like a select few, I’ve had no exposure to Bolcom’s music – neither the light, nor the heavy – but am intrigued by his life-long ambition to bridge the divide between popular and serious music. On this occasion, however, it seems that the one will preponderate over the other. Mind you, it’s hardly the American writer’s fault that Britten has predisposed me to discount this genre; added to which, the high reputation of Weill has always left me at a loss. But then, ‘cabaret’ covers a multitude of sins and, where the definition is so wide, the hope must also be generous. If you can negotiate your way to New Farm, this night’s Bolcom celebration might be just what the entertainment doctor ordered. Tickets range from $40 to $115 and even this ultra-trendy venue doesn’t stint on the service fee (what service?) - here, $7.20.
UMBERTO’S MAHLER
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Friday February 23 at 7:30 pm
The orchestra’s chief conductor, Umberto Clerici, pursues his ambition to drag us through another Mahler odyssey. This addiction to present all nine of the symphonies has recently taken on renewed interest with the arrival of the Maestro film that sort of chronicles the life of Leonard Bernstein, its musical climax being a heaving rendition of the final pages to the Symphony No. 2 with Bradley Cooper giving a pretty good impersonation of the fabled conductor’s histrionic look-at-me style (admittedly, I only saw him once live). As far as I know, the only successful complete cycle achieved here was that of Markus Stenz during his Melbourne Symphony Orchestra suzerainty. I don’t think Sir Andrew Davis was able to conduct his finale, a projected No. 8 at Rod Laver Arena. And I’m pretty much in the dark as to other attempts. Good luck to Clerici who’s setting up his own artistic hijrah, here reaching a major milestone with No. 7 that sprawls in its outer movements which surround a pair of Nachtmusiken and a scherzo, the whole eventually optimistic (but you could say that about most Mahler finales). Tickets range from $95 to $135 with concessions available (a child gets in for $35, if she/he wants to), with the inevitable $7.20 sting. Fortunately, nothing else is programmed (I vividly recall Stenz partnering No. 2 with Ives’ The Unanswered Question; what a pairing was there, my countrymen).
This program will be repeated on Saturday February 24 at 1:30 pm
O'Connell the Music 