FEMALE COMPOSER CONCERT
School of Music, University of Queensland
Level 4, Zelman Cowen Building, University of Queensland
Monday July 1 at 6 pm
As usual with events that feature student participants (and initiatives like this one that are student-led), information amounting to specifics is vague, the project well-meant if amorphous. Some names are inevitable – Clara Schumann and Amy Beach, who has recently rocketed to stardom as one of the few American women music writers of any note since the country gained its independence. Others are known but generally not honoured, like Ethel Smyth and Louise Farrenc. Of course, we will explore the Australian repertoire as well, even if the only named writer is Sally Greenaway, while the others number current and rising composers from within the UQ School of Music – which is fair enough although you have to worry about gender-centric occasions like this one where today’s commentators and critics are expected to praise without stint, regardless of quality. As far as I can tell, this event is free but you have to register on the school’s/university’s website.
DIDO AND AENEAS
Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Thursday July 11 at 7: 30 pm
When I first moved to the Gold Coast, I came into the capital to watch the opening night of a collaboration between these two organizations that centred on Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. The Circa troupe has been a notable contributor to the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s entertainments and one of these has been brilliant in mining a link between athleticism and musical performance, but the Gluck exercise failed to convince – basically – that the acrobats/gymnasts were informing the opera. Mind you, I had the same reaction to an effort by director Stephen Page working for the Victoria State Opera and investing his efforts into giving this opera a new Bangarra context. The trouble is a disconnect between what you hear and what you see. Will this be the case for Purcell’s small-scale work? Probably. As with Gluck’s revolutionary masterpiece, the cast for Dido and Aeneas is small: Anna Dowsley sings the Queen of Carthage, Katie Stenzel her handmaiden Belinda, the casual Trojan refugee is Sebastian Maclaine, and the Sailor who gets to lead that wonderful bounding chorus is Lachlann Lawton. No mention of who is handling the supernatural roles – yet. Conducting the hour will be Benjamin Bayl with Yaron Lifschitz from Circa directing and stage designing. For all that, the best reading I’ve heard of this opera came in a concert by ‘Les Arts Florissants’ in Melbourne’s Hamer Hall over 20 years ago: a luminous and unforgettable night. Tickets cost between $65 and $129, with the usual overcharge of $7.20 as a transaction fee.
Further performances will be presented on Saturday July 13 at 1:30 pm, Tuesday July 16 at 6:30 pm, Thursday July 18 at 7:30 pm, Saturday July 20 at 7:30 pm, Tuesday July 23 at 6:30 pm, Thursday July 25 at 7:30 pm, and Saturday July 27 at 1:30 pm.
LEV VLASSENKO PIANO COMPETITION AND FESTIVAL – GRAND FINAL
Conservatorium of Music, Griffith University
Conservatorium Theatre
Saturday July 13 at 6 pm
It strikes me that not many people in the country’s general public outside of Queensland know much about this competition which is one of the major piano events in our music competitive calendar. Slightly longer than the big Sydney marathon, it runs from its first rounds starting in Sydney on Wednesday June 19 to the grand final on this date. There’s room for some stabs at contemporary work but the main fare is solidly traditional; just look at the list of prescribed concertos. More than a little bemusing is the list of finalists which includes some names from previous Vlassenko competitions. Still, unlike Sydney, the Brisbane exercise seems to involve only locals (including, for some strange reason, New Zealanders), and it’s held every two years rather than Sydney’s usual rate of every four years (recently disrupted: thanks again, COVID). Tonight, I assume that it’s concerto night because the Queensland Symphony Orchestra is involved, although the conductor isn’t mentioned. It costs $90 for the right-hand side of the hall, $110 for the left – which makes no sense, but such a distinction never has. Fortunately, this event has managed to escape the bad publicity and overt recriminations that the Sydney event enjoyed in earlier times; probity, thy name is Queensland.
XANADU SKY
Nickson Room, Zelman Cowen Building, University of Queensland
Thursday July 25 at 1 pm
This group is (on paper) a sextet, founded and headed by percussionist Claire Edwardes. The group is a touring one and this particular program involves three musicians: Edwardes, double bass Benjamin Ward (unlisted in the ensemble’s website but a 15-year-long member of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra), and piano Alex Raineri (without whom no chamber music recital in Brisbane is complete but who isn’t an Offspring member as such). Anyway, the program is impressively eclectic, starting with American writer Caroline Shaw‘s 2012 Gustave Le Gray for solo piano, which takes Chopin’s Op. 17 A minor Mazurka as its kicking-off point. Next is a two-year-old double bass solo by First Nations writer Brenda Gifford called Walimbaya (Return) that was given its Canberra premiere two years ago by Ward. We move to Andrian Pertout‘s Musica Battuta of 2016 which exists in nine versions; possibly this one will most likely be the percussion one as Edwardes is slated to play a solo, and good luck with what promises to be mathematical dynamite. Last and longest will be an Australian premiere: (another American) Sarah Hennies‘ Spectral Malsconcities from 2018 which involves all three of these instrumentalists (Edwardes on 4-piece drum-kit, with appurtenances). This score lasts for about about half an hour and consists of repeated sequences of bars – anywhere from 30 times to 8 – and is a splendid example of superimposed rhythms that don’t settle into anything solid but wear you down by simple aural intrusion. Offspring’s recital is free but you have to register on the University’s website, just as for the ‘Female Composer Concert’ on July 1.
THE CHOIR OF KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Thursday July 25 at 7 pm
Back again for another Musica Viva appearance or nine, this famous choral group is presenting two programs which will be heard only in Sydney. The rest of us – Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane – will not be treated to the Stravinsky Mass or Tallis’ Videte miraculum but will have to make do with Zadok the Priest and Durufle’s Requiem. Also being sung is Bainton’s And I saw a new Heaven which is splendid Anglican affirmation but only brings resentful thoughts to my mind about how Bainton refused to employ Schoenberg at the New South Wales Con where he was director because he was scared of the contemporary, preferring to bore Sydney witless with works by his fellow Brits. Still, he was blinkered enough to have ignored Bartok and Stravinsky as well, evident from his concert programs and puffery for conservative languages, keeping Sydney in the serious music backblocks for decades. As well, we get to hear a new commission in Australian composer Damian Barbeler‘s Charlotte; that’s a compulsory part of both programs for maximum exposure but the positive thing is that the composer is well-known for his multimedia efforts, so there’s a chance that the singers will branch out from their usual style of presentation. But probably not. Daniel Hyde has been the choir’s director since 2019, but is this his first time on an Australian tour? I think it might be. Tickets are currently only available in the rear stalls ($55 to $102) and the balcony ($55 to $130) and I don’t know about any excessive scrounging fee.
A HEAVENLY VIEW
Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Bank
Friday July 26 at 7:30 pm
To be frank, I’m almost longing for a performance of the Mahler Symphony No. 4 as the composer wrote it. Over the past few years, we’ve become very familiar with Erwin Stein’s reduction for Schonberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances. On this night, we get to hear Klaus Simon’s re-working of 2007 for the Holst Sinfonietta playing in Freiburg. The woodwind are one each (flute/piccolo, oboe/cor anglais, clarinet/bass clarinet, bassoon), one horn, two percussionists, piano, harmonium or accordion, and a single member of the five string sections, with a maximum allowable of 6-5-4-3-2. This is the composer’s most approachable symphony with a form in each movement that is easy to assimilate, as well as some brilliantly pointillist orchestration, the score ending in a lied: The Heavenly Life, extracted from Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection. Soprano soloist in this will be Alexandra Flood, while the QSO concertmaster, Natsuko Yoshimoto, is directing the work which is scheduled to last for 1 hour 20 minutes without an interval. This last factor takes me by surprise because I’ve not come across an interpretation that can stretch to an hour. Tickets cost $79 for an adult, the usual laughable reduction to $71 for concession card holders, and $35 for students and children. Don’t forget the intrepid QSO overcharge of $7.95 for handling your business.
This program will be repeated on Saturday July 27 at 3 pm.
MASS IN BLUE
Old Museum, Bowen Hills
Saturday July 27 at 7:30 pm
A jazz quartet – piano, sax, bass, drum-kit – appears to be the only backing needed for this program that centres around English composer Will Todd‘s mass written in 2003 and which asks for a soprano soloist as well as your usual SATB choral body. I’ve listened to parts of it and its sound-world is moderately groovy if more than a bit self-conscious, as I’ve found be the case whenever jazz is used as the basis for liturgical music of any kind. The whole business of jazz-in-church also reeks of patronizing your audiences if they’re believers because, to put it mildly, that sound-world isn’t compatible with the transcendent properties of the church’s rituals and ceremonies. Still, it’s worth a try, isn’t it? I’d say no but that’s no reason not to experience this performance which is taking place in a wholly secular environment. As well, the Choir and a pianist and double bass will present George Shearing‘s Songs and Sonnets from Shakespeare, premiered in 1999 and made up of the following: [Come] Live with me and be my love (which I always thought was Marlowe), When daffodils begin to peer from The Winter’s Tale, It was a lover and his lass from As You Like It, When daisies pied and violets blue from Love’s Labours Lost, Who is Silvia? from Two Gentlemen of Verona, Fie on sinful fantasy from The Merry Wives of Windsor, and When that I was and a little tiny boy from Twelfth Night. In other words, no sonnets at all. Tickets range from $20 to $60, but don’t expect much of a reduction for your concession card; they’re available for $55. For all that, there’s no handling fee.
FAREWELL TOUR
Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre
Saturday July 28 at 2 pm
At the age of 77, this well-loved Australian pianist, given temporary immortality in the 1996 film Shine for which Geoffrey Rush won the Best Actor Academy Award, is leaving the concert-giving platform. I’ve seen Helfgott play two or three times, the first with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 which was given to a packed house and greeted with inordinately ardent applause. But it struck me then that people were reacting to the man rather than his interpretation, admiring him for coping with his condition and actually getting through the concerto, even if the journey was not without exaggerations and distortions. But over the past 50 years or so Helfgott has managed to follow a career of sorts, emerging every so often to show his oddly touching personality and stage mannerisms. The big attraction this afternoon will be the afore-mentioned Rachmaninov concerto in a two-piano arrangement made by the composer in 1910. Helfgott’s partner in this exercise is British pianist Rhodri Clarke – good luck to both, but they actually recorded this work in 2017. Also, the program contains favourite pieces by Chopin (Helfgott’s recorded all the populars like the Raindrop Prelude, Fantasie-Impromptu, A flat Polonaise) and Liszt (could be La Campanella, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Funerailles, Un sospiro, the B minor Sonata). If you want to see a legend (not flawless by any means) for the final time, you can get in for between $69 and $109, plus the add-on of $7.20 imposed by QPAC for inexplicable reasons.
O'Connell the Music 