MY HOMELAND
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Friday May 3 at 7:30 pm
I’ve seen this done once before, in Melbourne, but for the life of me I can’t remember who put that city’s symphony orchestra through the whole cycle. The homeland is that of Smetana, the Bohemian master, who wrote six tone poems depicting various scenes or characters from his country. He starts with Vysehrad, the castle in Prague where the country’s kings had their seat; then Vltava, better known as The Moldau, referring to the river that eventually flows through Prague – the only well-known entity in the cycle and refreshingly picturesque; Sarka comes next, depicting the career of a female warrior with a penchant for killing men; followed by Z ceskych luhu a haju which is usually translated as From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields, gifted with an arresting opening and the only other one of the group that some of us might know; Tabor is fifth, referring to the stronghold of the Hussites which is still thriving; finally, Blanik is a mountain in which King Wenceslas and his knights sleep and will awaken when the country faces its gravest peril. Leading this nationalistic excursion will be Czech conductor Tomas Netopil, so at least you know the performances should be suitably coloured. The QSO’s normal range of full-price tickets falls between $95 and $135, with plenty of fruitful concessions available, but never forgetting the unreasonable $7.20 ‘transaction fee’ or grift.
MATTHEW RIGBY & ALEX RAINERI
FourthWall 2024 Concert Series
540 Queen St., Brisbane
Friday May 3 at 7:30 pm
Part of the ongoing FourthWall series of presentations that have been popping up as the year progresses, this duo recital from violinist Matthew Rigby and pianist Alex Raineri is well-stacked with material. The players open with Beethoven, the Sonata No. 2 in A Major, which is rarely heard compared to the Spring, Kreutzer or the C minor that Brahms is said to have transposed at sight because Remenyi refused to adjust his instrument’s strings for a semitone-flat piano. Then we hear Szymanowski’s solitary Violin Sonata in D minor from 1904 which lasts about as long as the Beethoven. A few touches of Australiana arrive, first in the world premiere of Michael Bakmcev‘s Nocturne; as you can understand, no details are available about this piece anywhere. Another nocturne appears, this one a 1944 miniature by Margaret Sutherland in a deft remembrance of an older native composer. And the duo finishes its entertainment with the Ravel Sonata No. 2 – which is the one we all know and love with its Blues middle movement; yet again, the No. 1 of 1897 is left unexplored. Well, that’s an amiable program, substantial enough to have an interval (you get wine at the break) and the whole thing lasts 90 minutes only. Admission is a straight $35, with a niggling $2.63 booking fee added on by Humanitix.
This program will be repeated on Saturday May 4 at 1 pm.
MOZART REQUIEM
Old Museum Concert Hall, Bowen Hills
Sunday May 5 at 3 pm
If memory serves correctly, this hall space is a small one; judging by the Chorale’s website, few seats are still available and most of those are at the rear or on the side, well out of the full-blast zone. But prices range from $20 to $60 and, as far as I can tell, there’s no surcharge for taking your money. For this reading, the Chorale is associated with the Brisbane Symphony Orchestra which I hope is rich in trombones to follow those agile choral lines. And some basset horns would go down nicely, as well, particularly for those magnificently evocative opening bars to the Introit. The choir’s regular director, Emily Cox, has charge of proceedings and her soloists are soprano Sarah Crane, alto Beth Allen, tenor Connor Willmore, and bass Shaun Brown. On the assumption that the group will use the Sussmayr completion, the experience should last about an hour, give or take five minutes, Everybody who has suffered through the Amadeus film knows that Mozart stopped at the Lacrimosa and a drop in inspiration that hits at the Offertory is remarkable. But the work ends with a recapitulation of the composer’s earlier material that sends us home slightly purified. It’s a great experience but the best Requiem I ever heard was as part of a real funeral in Austria. Even for free-thinking Mozart, appropriateness was the name of the game.
MOZART’S MASS
St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Elizabeth St.
Friday May 10 at 7:30 pm
The QSO moves out of the concert hall and studio to help celebrate the 150th anniversary of the city’s Catholic cathedral. Chief conductor Umberto Clerici directs the Mass in C minor; well, what there is of it. Most of the Credo‘s latter verses are missing after the Et incarnatus, and the Agnus Dei has disappeared completely (if it was ever written). Still, the score makes a formidable composition and fleshes out your big Mozart choral experiences after the Requiem of five days previous. The composer asks for two soprano soloists (Sara Macliver and Sofia Troncoso), a tenor (Andrew Goodwin) and a bass (David Greco) as well as a double choir (Brisbane Chamber Choir and St. Stephen’s Cathedral Schola). As a happy prologue to this swelling act comes Lili Boulanger’s 5-minute setting of Psalm 24 (Psaume XXIV) which uses four horns, three trumpets, four trombones, a tuba, harp, organ, and timbales – as well as an SATB choir. The piece lasts about five minutes but all sorts of preconceptions could surge up when the choir breaks into the French composer’s version of Lift up your heads, o ye gates. Seats are going for between $35 and $135, with a bracket-creeping booking fee gouge of $7.95 per order – and this for an event scheduled to last for 1 hour 20 minutes interval-less; obviously lots of scene-changing and altar rearranging will take up the extra time.
This program will be repeated on Saturday May 11 at 1:30 pm and at 7:30 pm.
ESME QUARTET
Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University
Monday May 13 at 7 pm
This group’s composition presents a puzzle from the start. The original Esmes found each other in 2016 when all members were studying in Cologne. Further, all of them were Korean – and female. At this current point in time, three of them have survived: violins Wonhee Bae and Yuna Ha, and cello Ye-Eun Heo. Jiwon Kim was the original viola, but her place has been taken by a musician with the nationally ambivalent name of Dimitri Murrath (born in Brussels, of course), who also labours under the added distraction of being the ‘wrong’ gender. Still, what can you do but swallow the inevitable incursion of the male? The program that they are presenting begins with Webern’s Langsamer Satz of 1905 that kicks off in C minor and ends in E flat Major, without a trace of the major works in its passage. Continuing this early days strain, we hear Mendelssohn No 2 in A minor from the composer’s 18th year and notable for its Beethoven references. Expanding the Esmes’ horizons comes young Australian (but is the poor fellow still an expatriate academic working in Miami?) Jack Frerer‘s Spiral Sequences from 2018, written when he was 22/3. To end, the ensemble plays the solitary quartet by a 31-year-old Debussy: the night’s only well-known offering. Seats range from $15 to $115, and I can’t find details of any booking fee.
SYMPHONY FANTASTIC
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Friday May 17 at 7:30 pm
The name just doesn’t ring true, does it? Translated directly from the French, this concert’s title is correct, but stupid, particularly when you consider the modern-day degeneration of the adjective’s meaning. Berlioz was dealing with phantasm more than fantasy, as shown by the final two movements, if nowhere else. Nevertheless, the QSO PR team is possibly hoping to drag in the unsuspecting who, given their attention span, will nod off Trump-style in the Scene aux champs, then come to life for those bracing snarls on the way to the scaffold. The rest of us can just marvel at the brilliance of this work’s scale and orchestration while coping with some scene-setting from actor Robert Hofmann; for one glorious moment, when I saw Hofmann’s name, I thought the program might have included Lelio! Chief conductor Umberto Clerici leads the way through Berlioz’s revelations, preceding which we hear two short works. First comes Saint-Saens’ Danse macabre, followed by Ravel’s Tzigane featuring (for about ten minutes) a visitor, Jozsef Lendvay, who happens to be stopping by for this Hungarian/Gypsy compendium. I assume that the visitor won’t be leading the Danse, which may have its prominent violin solo taken by concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto. Anyway, the orchestra will be enjoying an early interval (after about 17 minutes’ playing) before the symphony in this all-French program which you can hear for between $95 and $135 with various concessions, escorted by the customary $7.20 fee per order (has anybody thought of promoting a Senate inquiry into this unjustifiable variable tax?)
This program will be repeated on Saturday May 18 at 1:30 pm
MAHLER’S SONG OF THE EARTH
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Monday May 20 at 7 pm
What is on offer here is not the original version of Das Lied von der Erde but a scaled-down orchestration started by Schoenberg and finished by Rainer Riehn 60+ years later. The ACO will present string and wind quintets, three percussionists, piano, celesta and harmonium. Richard Tognetti and his agglomerated forces will accompany mezzo Catherine Carby and tenor Stuart Skelton as they alternate the score’s six components, from Skelton’s Trinklied to Carby’s Abschied. Before the big song-cycle, the ACO performs Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll – wasted flattery on that unpleasant wife but then he himself was not much in the extra-musical personality stakes. The program’s oddity appears in three songs by Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel in world premiere arrangements by David Matthews. commissioned by the ACO. The titles are Laue Sommernacht, Die stille Stadt, and Bei dir ist es traut. – all from a set of five songs published in 1910 and edited by Mahler who, in his post-Freudian analysis phase, changed a prohibitory attitude to his wife’s composing. A little too late, as it turned out. You can hear this program for $59 up to $166 full adult price; concessions are available but don’t forget the usual QPAC add-on of $7.20 booking fee for your aspirational impudence.
LYREBIRD TRIO
Ian Hanger Recital Hall
Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University
Wednesday May 22 at 7:30 pm
The Lyrebird Trio swept the boards during the 2013 Asia Pacific Chamber Music Competition and its members have maintained their partnership during the intervening years, despite violin Glenn Christensen being occupied in a major role with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and cellist Simon Cobcroft playing principal cello with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Only pianist Angela Turner is a determined Brisbane resident, on the staff of the Queensland Conservatorium and the University of Queensland. Of the three works programmed for this recital, Smetana’s Piano Trio of 1855 is the most substantial, weltering in tragedy from its solo violin first bars. The group will also play Josef Suk’s Elegy Op. 23, one of the most earnest of the Czech composer/violinist’s compositions, if a brief one (coming in at about six-and-a-half minutes long). Moving a little east, the Lyrebirds will play a work by Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov, who escaped from his home country in 2022 at the Russian invasion. His Fugitive Visions of Mozart was composed about 17 years ago, so well before Putin’s army forced its way into Silvestrov’s homeland. Your normal ticket costs $22 but pensioner and alumni concessions reduce this amount. I don’t think there’s a booking fee.
BEETHOVEN 7
Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra
Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University
Friday May 24 at 7:30 pm
To take these young players through Beethoven’s A Major Symphony, here comes Johannes Fritzsch, a welcome and familiar face in this city’s serious music world. Commentators talk about this score’s vivacity, its innate energy, then rabbit on about Wagner’s overblown description of it as the Apotheosis of the Dance; ridiculous, especially when considering the even numbered movements. But it’s both exhilarating and exhausting for any band of musicians to reach a reasonably coherent standard of realization, on top of which you need a very committed body of upper strings. Prefacing the concert will be Margaret Sutherland’s Haunted Hills of 1950, a memorial to this country’s first peoples and their despair at an encroaching, unsympathetic colonial civilization. In the centre of this program stands the usual concerto; in this case, Elgar’s masterpiece for cello of 1919, his last completed major work and still towering over its competition because of its strong-minded, often grim despair coupled with emotional warmth. Soloist on this night is Stirling Hall who is a student at the Con, as far as I can tell. Tickets for students are $25, for concessionaires $35, and for adults $45 with no extra fees or charges.
CHORAL SPECTACULAR
Brisbane Chorale, The Queensland Choir, Brisbane Symphony Orchestra
Brisbane City Hall
Sunday May 26 at 3 pm
Part of the 4MBS Festival of Classics, this event doesn’t really have a program – so far. The Chorale’s websites are taken up with performances of Mozart’s Requiem (see above). The Choir mentions some composers’ names that could lead you down the fruitless path of guessing what choruses could be classed as spectacular. For instance, Brahms: part of the German Requiem, maybe? Or some of the motets, lieder or Song of Destiny/Alto Rhapsody (for the males) excerpts? None of it really spectacular. Then there’s Bach, and some of the unaccompanied motets; or the Jauchzet, frohlocket chorus might qualify, this last-mentioned with the potential to knock your sockettes off. Gounod I don’t know much about in the choral sense except the operas (Soldiers’ Chorus); maybe one of the unspectacular masses (St. Cecilia?) could feature, or that endless list of motets. Wagner can be entertaining according to gender (The Flying Dutchman) or he can fake bourgeois jubilation (Lohengrin and Tannhauser). As for Verdi, well, there’s the Anvil or Aida‘s Act 2, and you can always fall back on the trite Va, pensiero. Mozart has the masses and some marvellous motets but it’s all pretty restrained in resources and content (if they’re not the same thing). Also, there will be a soloist in soprano Mirusia, which distracts somewhat from the choral nomenclature. The combined (are they?) choral forces will be conducted by their musical directors: Emily Cox and Kevin Power; of the orchestra’s new conductor, Paul Dean, I can’t find any mention. Tickets are available from $15 to $60, with a booking fee of $1.25 – which is almost reasonable compared to the outrageous extras charged by other organizations/venues.
O'Connell the Music 