Month: November 2024

A broad gamut for the cello

cliveoconnell

BEING

Daniel Pini

Move Records MCD 622

Cellist Daniel Pini comes from a well-known Australian string family. His father Carl founded the Australian Chamber Orchestra, handing over artistic leadership to Richard Tognetti about 200 years ago, and he led the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in the first half of the 1990s. I also remember a string quartet performance (part of an all-Beethoven cycle?) he led which was held in the Athenaeum Theatre many years ago. As well, Daniel Pini’s mother, Jane Hazelwood, still plays with the violas in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and some of his siblings are also musicians.

This is Pini’s debut CD album and he is promulgating local composers and their solo cello works with a will. Brett Dean provides the longest work in Eleven Oblique Strategies, written in 2014 for that year’s Emanuel Feuermann Competition held in Berlin. Carl Vine‘s 1994 Inner World for amplified cello and pre-recorded tape (the best kind) is next in size, followed by Liza Lim‘s Invisibility written in 2009 for French composer/cellist Severine Ballon. Red Earth, White Clay was written for Nicholas McManus by Victoria Pham in 2018, the product of an archaeological expedition to Sri Lanka during that year. As for the briefest piece, that comes from Deborah Cheetham Fraillon in her Permit Me of 2020, commissioned by the Canberra Symphony Orchestra and first performed by principal cello Patrick Suthers.

Dean’s work takes its impetus from a collection of aphorisms published in 1975 by Brian Eno of ambient music fame and visual artist Peter Schmidt. These mots were intended to provide either inspiration or stimulus, depending on the respondent’s state of play (or non-play), Dean’s first piece, Listen to the quiet voice, offers specific cells – quite a number of them – and hardly finishes elaborating some of them before he moves into the next piece without a pause: A line has two sides. This employs a vaulting interval that could derive from the first piece’s opening gambit, but the strategy concludes with a catchy, skipping motive familiar from the centre of the initial piece.

Don’t stress one thing more than another acts as a moto perpetuo in which the performer simply churns out notes in a repetitious pattern that obeys the instruction of not emphasizing anything. Until its ending when the action changes in dynamic to strong assertiveness before moving to a study in concentration with Look at a small object, look at its centre which revolves around an insistently repeated note with arabesques spiralling out from it. This piece is notable for the fulcrum study moving out-of-kilter into descending quarter-tones; possibly, an excess of concentration is implied.

When we arrive at What are the sections sections of?, Dean outlines some more cells that appear to juxtapose rather than intersect – a glissando mimicking the work’s opening gesture, a skittering dance fragment, finally a single yearning note that seems to be played consecutively on two different strings. Possibly, the answer to this segment’s question is that the sections are just sections – discrete, not sub-sections. Or perhaps the proposal goes in one ear and rattles in empty space, as so much does with me these days. In Don’t be frightened to show your talents, the composer revisits Strategy Three with a fast-moving chain of notes that gradually move from the cello’s bass to its centre before entering a new field where virtuosic double-stops interrupt the flow and the forward motion moves up the instrument’s register in a splendid mimesis of 19th century concerto writing.

This continues throughout Disciplined self-indulgence which consists almost entirely of double-,triple- and quadruple-stops with an accent on the last of these as the level of intensity – already sharp – rises to an extreme level. Suddenly, we are faced with a striking descending figure in single notes that prefaces Bridges – build – burn. We begin with a powerful rhetoric that returns to the slashing quadruple stops of the previous section, before the fabric slowly collapses in a descending sequence of tremolo shakes, moving down the cello’s range until an inevitable silence.

Ghost echoes is the longest of these short pieces and, as you’d guess from its title, the most ephemeral as we occupy a soundscape where nothing rises above the piano level; in fact, much of its length sounds to be played in pianissimo territory: a music of suggestions, inferences only with a few clear remembrances of aphorisms past. For the Buddhist Disconnect from desire, the composer asks for his player to administer a series of double-stops non vibrato, surely projecting the absence of emotion as a state of what I can only describe as mobile stasis; the music changes notes and register but the effect is a dissociative one.

To end, we are In a very large room very quietly where the atmosphere is just a tad less soft than in Ghost echoes and the sound palette is rich in harmonics and shadows, with a final hint of the leap at the opening to the whole work. Which makes a splendid, challenge-filled contribution to the solo cello repertoire, putting an interpreter through plenty of hurdles and sustaining a sure continuity as Dean juggles his brief bursts of activity with fine craft. I’m still a bit doubtful about Pini’s realization of some high-pitched, soft sections which seemed to waver in their security. But the work convinced for the player’s realization of its inbuilt dramatic shifts in attack and colour.

How big is Vine’s Inner World? It’s a multi-partite entity, for sure, which begins promisingly enough with a series of arresting gestures: a minor 10th vault upwards, sets of demi-semiquavers and hemi-demi-semiquavers, rapid flourishes after sustained notes, further and more elaborately finished variants on that initial springboard – then a tape is added, based on sounds generated by the piece’s original performer and dedicatee, David Pereira. Once this new voice enters, the piece embarks on an often predictable path with two fast segments urged on by a regular motor rhythm surrounding a lyrical, rich nocturne.

The opening sounds like free-fall where the approach is rhapsodic, with the live cello following a lyrical path while the tape provides background colour. This makes for a ‘modern’ sound if not too adventurous, even by the standards of 1994, But then a sequence of tape sparkles and a kind of duet between taped and live cello take over; the sparkles transform to a cimbalom punctuation and the duet/canon continues with more intensity, although the taped component leaves the imitative set-up quickly and opts for harmonic distancing.

The slow middle-or-thereabouts segment gives space to the live cello outlining a slow neo-diatonic melody with an active but hazy background from the other sound source. Some almost menacing taped glissandi and percussive knocks with an overload underpinning pulse bring us to the happy final section where notated and electronic glissandi lead to a happily concordant coda. complete with common-chord quadruple stops from Pini and an abstention from discord that would warm the heart of any reactionary who has endured those previous indications of experimentation.

A good deal of the tape content employs familiar electronic tropes, like the falling bird calls that eventually end the piece, blocks imitative of organ chords, percussive bands that propel the work’s progress with as much subtlety as a rock drummer. I’m not experienced enough in the field to tell if all this material came from Pereira’s instrument or whether some of it was manufactured by studio equipment, but the resulting entity impresses as a suite springing from the work’s first flourishes; rather like Dean’s Strategies.

Lim operates on an aesthetic level far beyond my ability to imbibe fully, but her scores offer an overwhelming breadth of sounds and timbres, each refined and directed to allow for little deviation. She presents a world of subterranean shifts in dynamic and textural shivers across the canvas of Invisibility which calls for two bows: one orthodox, the other with the hair plaited around the stick. To be honest, I don’t understand how the latter produces continuous sounds, but it works – in this recording and in other YouTube performances.

Still, the sonic output stretches the instrument’s array of sound production, even when the player shifts to an orthodox bow when the score accelerates its level of ferocity and initial bite. Towards the work’s conclusion, the player is called upon to use both bows simultaneously, the plaited one eventually ranging up and down the fingerboard in an eerie conjunction of the earthbound and the otherworldly. And that, to me, forms the attractiveness of the experience: a double-barrelled world where nothing can be anticipated and your ears are stretched by the whole engagement.

Easier to imbibe, Victoria Pham’s Red Earth, White Clay appears to exist in discrete sections that might have thematic links but presents on the surface as moving into distinct atmospheres through changes in pulse (where there is one) and the presence of key motifs. The composer’s intention is to revisit the sights and sounds of a dig in which she participated at the northern tip of Sri Lanka. During the central pages of the piece, we have aural references to village/tribal dancing through a repeated bass note punctuated by a melody and some brisk chords. The outer sections that mirror each other (with a bit of Bach suites-like broad-beamed arpeggios suddenly emerging) might pertain to the dig site itself and the impossible-to-convey title of the score.

Pham’s vocabulary, despite glissandi and other gestures towards the contemporary (including some striking harmonics), is conservative, the work beginning with emphatic suggestions of G and D minor; even the post-dance-chugging segment presents a melodic flow that is packed with Romantic nuances. In harmonic sympathy, Deborah Cheetham Fraillon employs an even more limited language in her Permit Me which opens with an A minor cell and stays with that tonality for much of its little-over-three-minutes’ length. The composer projects a mournful ambience, suggesting a lament or at least regret, peppered up slightly in the centre by an abrupt burst of action.

Still, I don’t know for what the composer is asking permission; every time I see those words, I’m reminded, in my culturally blinkered fashion, of the heroine’s address to Bunthorne in the Act 1 finale to Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience. But you’d have to suspect that Cheetham Fraillon’s intentions are more severe, given the brooding quality of this near-elegy.

The CD is not a long one – about 49 minutes’ worth. Nevertheless, it’s a wide-ranging compendium of solo cello compositions written over a 26-year stretch, demonstrating the broad gap between the innate complexity and sophistication of senior writers when opposed to the reversions embraced by younger voices to that old-time creation. Pini’s performances, as far as I can tell without scores, are temperamentally faithful although a few details in the more complex works come over as wavering, uncertain, and I suspect that he takes the occasional rhythmic liberty. But he’s to be congratulated on putting his talents at the service of local creative minds, some of them highly demanding.

One more time

cliveoconnell

MUSICA ALCHEMICA

Musica Viva Australia

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University, South Bank

Wednesday November 20, 2024

(L to R) Lina Tur Bonet, Kenneth Weiss, Giangiacomo Pinardi, Marco Testori)

Apart from some weirdness in presentation, this recital finished off Musica Viva’s Brisbane year quite neatly. The ensemble of four in this Alchemical current incarnation makes a congenial collegium in itself, even if the dynamic balance favours the top line. Mind you, the group’s personnel has changed radically over the years, not least in its participating numbers. But these touring players show a reassuring expertise and their leader worked hard to give the product plenty of Baroque spice through her attack and frequent flights of virtuosity, climaxing in an energetic demonstration of skill in Corelli’s La Folia Violin Sonata in D minor.

Spanish violinist Lina Tur Bonet founded Musica Alchemica some time ago; I can’t be more precise because its genesis seems to have been brought about for an undated performance or two of Handel’s Alessandro under Alan Curtis – which must have taken place some time before the American harpsichordist’s death in 2015. Still, I’ve no idea when Bonet herself was born; to be fair, I can’t find out the birthday of her ensemble’s archlutenist Giangiacomo Pinardi, either. Kenneth Weiss, the Alchemica’s American harpsichordist, is 61 and cellist Marco Testori is 54; Pinardi looks as though he’s more a contemporary of Weiss but it’s unfair to judge on appearances, isn’t it?

For the recital’s first half, Bonet began and ended with two of Biber’s Rosary Sonatas, opening with The Annunciation No. 1 and finishing with The Crucifixion No. 10. Between these, we heard a Sonata a 2 by Cima, Schmelzer’s Sonata Quarta in D Major, and Muffat’s familiar Passacaglia in G minor for harpsichord solo with its 23 variants that involves repetitions of each one (not universally applied). Corelli began and ended the post-interval content, starting with the Op. 5 G minor Violin Sonata, concluding with the afore-mentioned Op. 5 No. 12. In the centre came Telemann’s Cello Sonata in D Major, a solo lute Toccata by Piccinini and Westhoff’s little Imitazione del liuto, with Bonet keeping to a pizzicato account of the melody (obvious, given the piece’s title) while Pinardi took the underpinning in this gentle 40-bar miniature.

Speaking of weirdness, Bonet began her Annunciation by entering from the rear of the theatre and slowly progressing down the stalls’ aisle during the Preludium, joining her confreres onstage for the Aria and Variations, then the submediant-dominated 11-bar Finale full of fierce razzle-dazzle. Cima’s small-scale sonata for violin and violone gave us an amiable exercise in fleshed-out continuo and lashings of florid ornamentation. In my 1958 Erich Schenk edition, the work takes on the nature of a suite halfway through with a sarabande and gigue doing the rounds before the composer moves to a gradually accelerating sectional set of concluding pages. One of my lasting memories of this is Testori’s use of his cello as an unwieldy guitar for the opening strophes. Mind you, he could have maintained the impersonation for much longer as Cima uses the same 4-note descending bass sequence for three-quarters of the work’s length.

But the performance wound up being another Bonet showpiece across the final presto. Something of a relief, then, to experience Weiss’s measured, faultless articulation in the Muffat passacaglia. More than other interpreters I’ve heard, this musician employs rubato to keep the score elastic rather than plodding and predictable, so avoiding rhythmic tedium. Then it was back to Biber in G minor with a nearly comprehensible explanation of the scordatura tuning that makes the set of 15 sonatas so remarkable in its changing of timbres. Once more, a triumph for Bonet with an unexpectedly arresting depiction of the three crosses positioned at the start and an impressively fierce 10-bar earthquake simulation to bring the sonata to a close.

But Bonet is celebrated for her unique approach to these sonatas which have not only gained in performative intensity under her hands but also enjoy a solid fleshing-out, thanks to the timbral complexity that comes with this trio of mobile and responsive escorts. Much the same level of authoritative embellishment emerged in the Corelli G minor Sonata which was loaded with rapid flashes of fioriture, especially in the two Adagio movements. The second of these, if I remember, cut back participation to violin and harpsichord, which change of textural character made for a welcome relief. and a minor point that impressed came through Testori’s cello line which enjoyed an occasional burst of unexpected independence/exposure.

This player’s volume didn’t carry that well to the back of the hall from where I heard this program’s second half. You could enjoy his warm account of the Telemann sonata’s first Lento, which progressed with hints of majestic instancy while avoiding laboriousness. Still, the instrument’s gut strings’ output was frequently undercut later by the archlute/harpsichord continuo, although these supporters obligingly recessed themselves in the ensuing Allegro. For the 21-bar Largo, Testori’s backing dropped back to Pinardi who maintained a fine discretion with both musicians allowing each other a noticeable freedom of rhythm.

Pinardi then performed what I assume was one of the eight toccatas from Piccinini’s second volume of Intavolatura di liuto. This sounded much like a free fantasia in character, the performer treating the score’s bare bones with an intriguing originality in his approach to tempo and dynamic, the whole concluding in an audibility-challenging pianissimo. Further gentillesse came with the Westhoff 6/4 versus 4/4 duet, engaging for its embrace of the intimate and so prefiguring the night’s flamboyant finale.

The last sonata in Corelli’s Op. 5 collection consists of 23 variations on the well-known La Folia or Les follies d’Espagne theme. The composer distributes his varying technical demands across the whole sequence and Bonet led the charge with impeccable musicianship and authority. But, to be honest, I found this offering sounded like over-gilding the period lily – and a compressed one, at that, while Corelli rang his changes on the violinist’s bravura and drive, double-stopping her way to an applause-rousing last gasp for this event.

Bonet is very well-versed in the Corelli Op. 5 as she recorded them with Musica Alchemica in 2017 (you can hear the whole set on YouTube) and framed her recital around these and the Biber works to invite us over ground that is very familiar to her. I know she recorded the Westhoff Imitazione in 2020 and possibly this program’s particular Cima sonata on a CD that involved some other instruments than those appearing on this night (harp, double bass).

But there’s nothing to say that you can’t go over old triumphs; pretty well everyone we see on the concert stage-platform does the same, even if that makes you admire even more those artists who are on an unending exploration of repertoire and present you year after year with music that they are shaping in front of you, rather than refining works that they have been playing for years. True, Bonet has to hone a changing ensemble to cope with her program choices and her own musicianship and skill never falter; well, they didn’t last Wednesday night. And, without doubt, there’s great pleasure to be derived from observing a musician at the top of her game.

Highlands and Lowlands

cliveoconnell

SCOTLAND UNBOUND

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday November 11, 2024

Sean Shibe

To shut up its Brisbane shop for 2024, the ACO went all Hibernian on us, showcasing the talents of Scot-Japanese guitarist Sean Shibe. The visitor began on your normal everyday guitar – Spanish or acoustic or classical – treating us to a Scottish lute solo extracted from an early 17th century collection and ended the night on electric guitar with selections from rock musician Martyn Bennett‘s Bothy Culture album of 1997. Between the two, the guest played a couple of vignettes, a guitar concerto from Canada and a sort of aural rort by American composer Julia Wolfe.

In all of this, the arranging hand of James Crabb loomed large. The Scottish accordionist/friend of the ACO was responsible for the three orchestra-alone efforts in the night’s first half, as well as arranging the Wolfe and Bennett works for guitar and strings. Indeed, arrangements were all the go on this occasion, Shibe himself transcribing the initial lute piece, an impossible-to-trace George Duthie responsible for a guitar-plus-strings arrangement of James MacMillan‘s From Galloway bagatelle, and Crabb again putting his talents to the service of another guitar/strings transcription, this time a version of Friedemann Stickle’s Da Trowie Burn.

Much of this program’s initial content proved easy enough to take in. From this showing, Shibe is not promoting the last word in Scottish musical modernity as a good deal of his native-made material was folk music or indebted to that branch of the art. The initial A Scots Tune proved amiable enough, a solo to concentrate focus, even if its later stages sounded harmonically suspect for the period, preparing us for the wry mini-dissonances of MacMillan’s brevity which was originally a piece for solo clarinet, complete with quickly arpeggiated chords. It’s a slow-moving lyric with a moody ambience that unfolded gently enough, without raising any stress levels in participants or audience.

The possibly/probably non-existent Stickle left behind a quietly atmospheric melody in Da Trowie Burn, the main interest in this Crabb setting lying in its occasional hemiolas. Shibe and the ACO made this arrangement into a mildly interesting conclusion to the guitarist’s opening round of activity but it re-activated the perennial problem of what to do with a folk tune once you’ve played it; unless a singer is involved. There’s precious little, except to repeat with elaborations. Still, this introductory gambit left you impressed with the guitarist’s restraint and ability to establish his homeland’s musical traits.

Speaking of perennials, ACO artistic director Richard Tognetti then led his ensemble through three Crabb arrangements, the first named Ossian by Victorian-Edwardian fiddler James Scott Skinner. Most of us would subscribe to the theory that Ossian was a fictional poet and a few of us might believe that Skinner was happy to trade on the legend. His original melody follows the melancholy path already set up in this program with its only distinction an un-flattened leading note; I can’t remember if Crabb followed this peculiarity.

The next piece, Niel Gow’s Lament for the Death of his Second Wife (by the eponymous lamenter) gave us a very well-known Scots melody but, by the time Crabb’s changes had finished ringing on it, I’d had enough. Certainly the tune is expressive in its rising, falling and fluency, but it came in a chain of folksy products and I, for one, grew impatient with the Robbie Burns’ quaintness that had prevailed for about a quarter of an hour so far. Which is not to say that the performances were under par; just that a lot of it sounded . . . well, unremarkable. Even the final part of this ACO-only trilogy, the traditional Shaun Robertson’s Rant, resurrected from Tognetti’s music for the 2003 Master and Commander film, raised the temperature only slightly, until the strathspey turned into a reel imported from Northumbria and a rush of blood raised expectations before the evening’s major element.

Cassandra Miller wrote her Chanter guitar concerto for Shibe. It’s based in part on the sound of his singing, and then somehow singing in his sleep – all the time following the lead (live or recorded, I don’t know) of smallpipes player Brighde Chaimbeul. Miller points to the chanter of her title as that part of the bagpipes that changes the instrument’s notes, the recorder-like attachment that sticks out of the bottom of the bag/wind-sack. I’m assuming that Shibe’s singing and sleep-singing bear on the chanter’s melodic potentialities in some way.

You might be able to trace the work’s five sections if you could rouse yourself from the trance that Miller wishes to establish. No problems with the first section, Rippling, but then the divisions became blurred, possibly distinguished by the upward or downward motifs that were articulated at great length by both soloist and strings. So we moved unknowing through Bellow-breathing, Sleep-chanting, and Slowing Air before coming to the change in character that heralded the coda, Honey-dreaming. Nothing disturbs the placidity of the score’s central parts where the repetitions are mind-numbing. For those of us not given to satisfaction with seemingly endless mantras, Chanter became irritating when you (I) started wishing for a change in timbre or pulse..

But I can’t improve on the observation of my neighbour at the end of it all. As we filed out of the Concert Hall doors in something like a communal daze, she muttered, ‘It does go on a bit.’ To which I felt like shouting, ‘A BIT?’ Perhaps, with another hearing, I might find subtleties of delivery in Shibe’s solo line, or shades of timbre in the string orchestral backdrop. There may be closely devised alterations in the movements’ rhythmic structures, or unremarked harmonic deviations across the general fabric. On the other hand, it’s more probable that what you hear is what you get.

After interval, Shibe returned for Wolfe’s Lad; like Miller’s concerto, it is enjoying Australian premiere performances across this tour. Originally composed for nine bagpipes, the work is an angry contemporary three-movement tombeau for the death of a friend. It begins with (Drones) which presents exactly those, verging in and out of a minor 2nd, expanding to an upward-moving scale with the use of rapid in-your-own-time glissandi to colour the melange. To 3end (I think), we move back to a unison, strung out to great length.

I missed the changeover to The Slow Melody which somehow emanated from (Drones); possibly this segment arrived with the scalar motion mentioned earlier. Still, we all were aware of The Fast Melody which was couched in what sounded like a 6/8 rhythm and shared in the biting rage that typified the work’s opening. You take the point that the composer is aiming at a bagpipes imitation in this final quick section, noticeably in the strings’ activity. Throughout, Shibe’s guitar dynamic tended to dominate, at times wailing over everything else to fine aggressive effect. In certain moments, this composition came close to verging on contemporary music-writing but, for the most part, its progress – for 2007 – didn’t move into new ground.

Serving as a hiatus between Shibe’s two electric guitar exhibitions came Hirta Rounds by Irish-born David Fennessy. This modern take on the tone poem concentrates on a now-deserted island off the Scottish Atlantic coast. This was excellent illustrative music, the bleak atmosphere set early by a harmonics-laden solo from principal ACO cello Timo-Veikko Valve. This set up the prevailing action of a short motive or pattern moving quickly into a diminuendo: a clever depiction of emptiness and desolation. As participants had a degree of freedom within their groupings, the results came over as freshly textured, even if the loud-to-soft pattern began to pall, especially at the half-way pause-point where the score appeared to take up almost where it began.

Nevertheless, as a representation of emptiness in a landscape, of humanity leaving not a wrack behind, this work showed a surprising individuality if, like Miller’s concerto, it moved nowhere but was content to revolve around a series of repeated gestures; well, what did you expect of a work that specifies rounds in its title? Further, being one of only two works on the program specifically written for strings, Fennessy’s score distinguished itself with its fluctuating timbral display, specifically the filigree work for upper strings. Also, to be much applauded, it didn’t quite wear out its welcome.

With the three selections from Bothy Culture – Ud the Doudouk, Aye?, Shputnik In Glenshiel – we encountered another facet of Scottish modern musical practice where the old forms meet up with the contemporary-of-a-sort in rock, or rock inflections. To be honest, this type of fusion (the third Australian premiere on the program) leaves me cold and I found little of interest, apart from double bass Maxim Bibeau moving to a bass guitar for most of its duration, and cellist Julian Thompson, who appeared to be providing an extra player from the scheduled three in Hirta Rounds (although positioned between second violins and violas) also taking up a bouzouki (could that be right?) in the rear ranks alongside Bibeau.

To be fair, I don’t know the original Bennett album, but this exposure to Crabb’s arrangement didn’t inspire me to research it overmuch. Like several pieces earlier in the program, the main practice seemed to be to take a tune and then give it variants. I also suspect that the order was changed for the last two pieces and we heard the Shputnik In Glenshiel reel before the program concluded with Aye? that was notable for Shibe’s spoken monosyllables as well as his playing. Or perhaps by this stage I was hallucinating and the night’s many elements were merging into one long Caledonian mental miasma.

Despite the acclaim that greeted Bennett’s compilation on its release, I’m not convinced that it does more than confirm a generic sound through the three ‘grooves’ that served to differentiate these final pieces. For all that, you could admire Shibe’s assured performance, particularly in the clear-speaking pieces early in the night. And you have to credit Tognetti and his players for their handling of this material and their imperturbability when faced with its unadventurous, atmospherically repetitive nature.

Diary December 2024

cliveoconnell

ADRIAN STROOPER – A WINDOW INTO SONG

Opera Queensland

Opera Queensland Studio, 140 Grey St. South Bank

Friday December 6 at 7 pm

As its last gasp for the year, our state company presents Australian tenor Adrian Strooper accompanied by Alex Raineri in a program that currently (early November) is completely unknown/unspecified. But it will include operatic arias (not surprising, considering the singer’s substantial European career and residencies, including a decade at Berlin’s Komische Oper) and lieder – which does come as a surprise as that art form doesn’t feature significantly in Strooper’s biography. But it’s always a pleasure to hear any local artist of this vocal type, although good tenors are not as rare as they used to be, say, 30 years ago. Adults can get in for $65, with a lousy concession rate of $59 (which also applies to students); as far as I can see, there’s no booking fee. Still, I can’t find any indication as to the recital’s length.

This program will be repeated on Saturday December 7 at 2 pm

BACH’S CHRISTMAS ORATORIO

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Saturday December 7 at 7:30 pm

All is not as it seems here. The QSO and Brisbane Chamber Choir won’t be presenting all of the Bach collation but only four of the usual six cantatas that make up this magnificent seasonal celebration. I must confess to being spoiled with regard to the Christmas Oratorio, having heard the Australian Chamber Orchestra perform it (twice, I think) with a very lively band and a chorus made up of soloists who turned the chorales into musical bliss. Tonight, we get to hear Part 1, Jauchzet, frohlocket!, which is festive Christmas music streets above all the rest; Part 2, with that miraculous double of Und es waren Hirten with the soul-stirring Brich an, o schones Morgenlicht chorale to follow; then a rush to Part 5 and the bouncy joy of its opening Ehre sei dir, Gott, gesungen chorus; and Part 6 to finish in a blaze of affirming D Major at both ends, the final revisiting of the O Haupt voll Blut chorale reworked into a musical image of Christ’s life and work encapsulated with consummate art. Conductor Benjamin Bayl is in charge and, with his big reputation in period performance, we’re likely to get the oboes d’amore that feature across these four cantatas, as well as the oboes da caccia that feature in Part 2’s opening sinfonia as a four-part ensemble and stay that way across this cantata up to the final pastoralization of the Von Himmel hoch tune. Also, we can but hope for a trio of brisk Baroque trumpets. Bayl’s soloists are soprano Sara Macliver, mezzo Stephanie Dillon, tenor/Evangelist Paul McMahon, and baritone Shaun Brown. The only tickets left are sight-restricted in the Con theatre’s gallery and their full cost is $119 with concessions available for the elderly, students and children. Wonder of wonders, there’s no booking fee because (I assume) this event is being held in Griffith University.

BRISBANE SINGS MESSIAH

The Queensland Choir

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday December 8 at 3 pm

Here comes your annual dose of Handel being presented at the wrong time of year, but who cares? For reasons beyond rationality, Messiah is trotted out in this country’s state capitals as a matter of course around December. For this one, TQC director Kevin Power again leads his own choir, the Sinfonia of St. Andrew’s and a quartet of soloists – soprano Leanne Kenneally, mezzo Shikara Ringdahl, tenor Sebastian Maclaine, baritone Leon Warnock – in the memorable oratorio. Well, I’ve got it pretty much by heart after too many years of exposure, staying awake through many performances only by following the score – especially for the choruses where you can delight in the non-existent alto line or the disappearing tenors. To make this performance even more involving, members of the public have been encouraged to join the Choir, presumably having given prior evidence of ability as well as having attended rehearsals. It’s very democratic and might even bring some useful performance experience to a young generation. Or perhaps not. Stalls tickets range between $15 and $60; sitting further away in the balcony costs you between $20 and $70. There’s a $1.25 fee added on, which is not as irritating as the much larger charges required by other organizations but still makes you wonder what you’re being squeezed for. The performance is scheduled to last for 2 hours 45 minutes which, with an interval, is about right for the usual Part the Third-truncated readings.

CHRISTMAS AROUND THE WORLD

Brisbane Chorale

Christ Church, St. Lucia

Sunday December 8 at 5 pm

It will last only an hour but that’s enough (apparently) to perform a universally applicable Christmas celebration. The Chorale will work under its music director Emily Cox with Christopher Wrench, inevitable and indefatigable in support on the Christ Church digital organ. Their program is going to be multicultural, which is itself a promise of joy in this increasingly blinkered world now blighted even further by the prospect of another four years of Trumpian moral mayhem. We’ll have a welcome infusion of multicultural community carols, which will be a source of aesthetic balm after the usual cultural domination in enterprises like these. overwhelmed year after year by Anglican content. Further, we are assured that refreshments will be provided; presumably at extra cost. Patrons are also asked to bring a gift, pre-wrapped, to the event with intended gender and age group attached. As for the ticket prices, these range from full adult of $35 to $30 for Seniors and Concession Card Holders to $15 for students. Even with a limited knowledge of Brisbane’s geography, I know that St. Lucia is outside the central city area but it does have the advantage of being the University of Queensland’s suburb and it’s only 8 kilometres from the CBD.

PARALLEL PLAY

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St..

Friday December 13 at 1 pm

As anticipated, the final events in this calendar come from Alex Raineri‘s chamber music festival that illuminates the closing months to each serious music year in Brisbane. This final slew of seven recitals begins with a duo recital by flautist Lina Andonovska and pianist Raineri. They open with Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata in Andonovska’s own arrangement; what she’s done with the quadruple and triple stop chords will be revelatory, I’m sure. But this work takes up half the recital’s allotted hour length, so the remaining four works must be rather brief. First comes the Australian premiere of American composer Sarah Kirkland Snider‘s 2019 duo that gives this recital its title. Then a world premiere in an as-yet unnamed new work by Judith Ring; could it be her All You Can Do Is Hang On For Dear Life which is the solitary flute/piano duet in her catalogue and dates from this year? After the Dublin composer’s offering, we hear a new work, still unnamed, and another Australian premiere from Mark Mellet (or is it Mellett?) who could be another Irish writer but he’s difficult to source, as they say. Unlike the last name on this program – Paul Dean – whose 2015 Falling Ever Deeper enjoys a resuscitation after Raineri’s previous 2021 performances with Johnathan Henderson. Tickets remain at $25 with the usual $1.99 surcharge for computer science classes (for whom?) and, out of nowhere, a GST add-on of 20 cents; you pay $27.19. And that’s progress.

This program will be repeated on Saturday December 14 at 6 pm.

THE DIARY OF ONE WHO DISAPPEARED

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Friday December 13 at 6:30 pm

A real rarity, Janacek’s 1920 song-cycle is a big ask for its tenor, a doddle for the alto and easy pickings for the three female voices that pop up (off-stage?) for two songs in the middle of operations. The only performance I can vaguely recall is one featuring Tyrone Landau during one of the Musica Viva festivals held at the Domaine Chandon winery many years ago. This time, the tenor is Brenton Spiteri whom I have probably heard in Melbourne but whose talents have not remained in the memory. His alto beloved will be sung by soprano Katherine McIndoe and the three females come from the ranks of that distinguished ensemble, The Australian Voices, which puts them in patriotic company with Spiteri, while McIndoe comes from New Zealand. Their piano accompaniment is undertaken by Alex Raineri, the impossibly hard-working festival artistic director. On either side of the Janacek are two settings of Um Mitternacht: the first that of 1901 by Mahler from his Ruckert-Lieder, which could be sung by either McIndoe or Spiteri; the second by Britten from 1959 and a setting of Goethe’s poem. This will go to Spiteri, I should think, although I remain ambivalent about what sort of voice it requires – a tenor, perhaps a baritone; certainly, a male. But it brings the event to a sombre ending, which is just right, given the program’s other content. Tickets can be bought for $25, with an added impost of $1.99 going towards books for schools, and a 20 cents GST, which I haven’t noticed in previous festival recital charges from Humanitix.

This program will be repeated on Saturday December 14 at 2 pm.

ORPHEUS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Friday December 13 at 9 pm

Alex Raineri is taking on the great Greek myth as pianist and composer, performing his own new temples in your hearing – a world premiere – as well as three pieces by female composers to give us the Euridice viewpoint, I expect. His other collaborator is visual artist Eljo Agenbach who will provide materiel to satisfy the eyes. Samantha Wolf‘s Life on Earth was first performed by Raineri in 2022 at a Brisbane Music Festival recital (also named Orpheus) and apparently revised for this re-presentation. Another revenant will be Jane Sheldon‘s Ascent: soft, uncertain and without impatience. Besides these reconstructions, patrons will be treated to Natalie Nicolas‘ Descent which is offered without revision but also featured in that 2022 first appearance of Orpheus. Festival aficionados will be pleased to reacquaint themselves with this event featuring four Australian writers which proposes a contemporary take on the tale of all-too-human love that ends in disaster, ignoring with ridicule the deus ex machina intervention by Gluck’s Amor, and forgetting the poet’s eventual dismemberment by those maddened precursors of rock’s female devotees, who also can whip themselves into hallucinatory states with a little help from their friends. Admission costs $25, the usual $1.99 impost to be spent on books for schools; not forgetting the 20 cent GST which somehow applies to the non-booking fee rather than the ticket itself.

This program will be repeated on Sunday December 15 at 10 am.

ARAGONITE

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 14 at 10 am

Aragonite is a mineral that forms in fresh or salt water environments. Melbourne-based musician Thea Rossen‘s new work, here enjoying its world premiere, utilises ceramics, corals and metal instruments to construct its aural world, one that is intended to suggest deep oceans. Or it might be intended to focus our attention on the properties of the night’s honoured mineral, although that might be a rather dry (please) exercise and not a La mer for our times. Rossen herself will play percussion, as will Rebecca Lloyd-Jones. Possibly the festival’s omni-present Alex Raineri will assist on piano. Three woodwind artists could also participate – flute Lina Andonovska, flute Tim Munro, bass clarinet Drew Gilchrist. But, as I can’t find out any specifications regarding Aragonite, the whole compositional complex might just feature the percussionists, particularly since Rossen is an expert in this field. the others could just be hanging around for American composer Terry Riley‘s In C, a historically important 1964 essay in aleatoric minimalism for an unspecified number of participants and lasting anywhere from 15 minutes to over an hour. Tickets still only cost $25, with the $1.99 fee going towards books for schools, while the 20 cents GST will end up God knows where.

This program will be repeated on Sunday December 15 at 6 pm.

WAYS BY WAYS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 14 at 1 pm

Here is a new trio ensemble – flute Tim Munro, percussion Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, piano Alex Raineri – and it’s called Ways By Ways, but let’s not get started on the possible modifications of that name. Setting their bar on a personal level, the musicians begin with a collaborative new work called (wait for it) Ways By Ways which I suppose will outline the ensemble’s performing/aesthetic/polemical agenda. Chilean-born composer resident in Perth (last I heard) Pedro Alvarez will at last hear the world premiere of his Fosforesciamo from 2012; the four-section piece (we know it’s glowing in the dark??) that investigates block chords and their assemblage is written for harpsichord solo. Then we experience Irish composer/academic Ann Cleare‘s 2010 unable to create an offscreen world for piccolo and percussion, which I’ve only heard in its electronic manifestation; the experience didn’t make much of a positive impression because of its suggestion of industrial burps. I can’t tell whether or not Jodie Rottle was born here or in America, but she spent a decade on the new music scene in Brisbane before settling down in Melbourne this year. She is represented by blueprint in shades of green (where did this e e cummings fad come from?) of 2022, an obsessive 7-minute gem which is written for flute, alto flute (I think) and assorted percussion (Lloyd-Jones played in the first performance). Finally, we hear Irish composer Jennifer Walshe‘s Thelma Mansfield from 2008, written for Ways By Ways’ actual combination and which takes its name from an Irish TV presenter who became a painter in a worthwhile career change. Tickets are $25, with the $1.99 extra fee going towards computer science classes. And don’t forget the 20 cent GST – keeping the whole country economically stable.

This program will be repeated on Sunday December 15 at 4 pm.

HOLD YOUR OWN

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 650 Queen St.

Saturday December 14 at 4 pm

You don’t come across solo cello recitals that often, unless somebody wants to work through several or all of the Bach suites. Gemma Kneale is treading a new path here by playing eight works, all of them by women composers, three of them undergoing their Australian premieres. More to the point, I’ve heard none of these scores and am only vaguely aware of the output of one of the writers; a sad state, of course, and all too typical of my antique generation and a damnable witness to a lifetime of undeveloped exposure. Kneale begins with the afternoon’s oldest music in Anna Clyne‘s Fits + Starts of 2003 for amplified cello and tape; this is, as far as I can see, the British-born composer’s first composition. Jump forward twelve years to Gemma Peacocke‘s Amygdala which explores feelings of anxiety; a malfunctioning part of the brain, then, depicted by this New Zealand composer who is based, like Clyne, in the USA. We move to Missy Mazzoli, who is a native-born American and issued her A Thousand Tongues in four different versions; we’re hearing the one for cello and electronics written (like all the other three interpretative choices) in 2011. Molly Joyce, another American (born in the let-us-down state of Pennsylvania) studied with Mazzoli and wrote It has not taken long three years ago; it is also written for cello and pre-recorded electronics. Melbourne-based Australian composer Zinia Chan wrote In Transition in 2018. It concerns an individual’s journey through space towards the unknown – which applies to most of us, I suppose, except for the space bit. The work involves cello and tape but also a flute (piccolo); I suppose someone will step in to lend a helping hand. Next is Australian Kate Neal‘s A Game from A Book of Hours, written last year and originally a composition for a quartet (flute, cello, piano/harpsichord, percussion) and screendance; doubtless this extract will be reduced in scale here. We’re back to the once-great republic for Brooklyn-born Nathalie Joachim‘s Dam Mwen Yo of 2017 which brings us back to cello+tape territory, even if the recorded content strikes me as uninspired. Finally, it’s full steam ahead into Scottish writer Anna Meredith‘s brief Honeyed Words, written in 2016 and bringing to an end a solid sequence of cello-and-electronics compositions. Entry costs $25, with the usual $1.99 compulsory contribution dedicated to books for schools, and add on that irrational 20 cents for GST.

This program will be repeated on Sunday December 15 at 12 pm.

IN PLATONIA

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 14 at 8 pm

Bringing this year’s festival to a crashing New Complexity conclusion, director-pianist Alex Raineri partners with clarinet/bass clarinet Drew Gilchrist in three contemporary works, the first by Melbourne (or is it Ballarat?)-based writer Chris Dench which gives this event its title. My limited research has led me to believe that platonia is a type of tree, rather than a physical space dedicated to the Greek philosopher. But that turns out to be useless information/fantasy. Dench has, in fact, based his 12 capsules on insights by British physicist Julian Barbour concerning the immense number of instants that make up our existential and temporal planes and which he calls Platonia. This piece was written to suit Gilchrist (bass clarinet here) and Raineri who have featured (and will continue to perform) Dench’s compositions. Michael Finnissy‘s one-movement Clarinet Sonata of 2007 is here given its Australian premiere by Gilchrist and Raineri, the latter having much to do with the British composer’s use-in-reversal of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 110 across his 20-minutes-or-so construct. Finally, the duo takes on Welsh composer Richard Barrett‘s Flechtwerk, written between 2002 and 2006. This is impossibly difficult music to synchronise for the clarinet in A and the piano, thanks to its subdivisions of tempo and virtuosic leaps across the instruments’ compasses. But the title, as I read it, means an interlacing and you can’t deny the relevance while you’re listening to it . . . or trying to take in its brushes with comprehensibility. Admission costs $25 base price, with an additional $1.99 for Humanitix’s charitable endeavours in providing literacy skills (for whom, we’re not told) and a 20-cent dollop that’s meant to cover GST – somehow.

This program will be repeated on Sunday December 15 at 2 pm.