Month: November 2025

Topsy-turvydom in action

cliveoconnell

Epic Diva

Selby & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday November 26, 2025

(L to R) Kathryn Selby, Elizabeth Layton, Isabella Bignasca, Julian Smiles

This farewell to arms from the Selby & Friends organization for 2025 used a slightly larger format than usual. The program comprised three piano quartets and Kathryn Selby assembled a trio of guests who worked comfortably together with very few signs of discrepant attack across two major works and a home-grown bagatelle. Selby’s violinist was Elizabeth Layton from Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium, violist Isabella Bignasca on a home visit before returning to a New York fellowship at Carnegie Hall, and cellist Julian Smiles refreshing himself in this milieu after a lifetime with the Goldner String Quartet.

Fair stood the wind for a well-ordered recital, beginning with the occasion’s title work from Sydney academic Matthew Hindson, moving to a translucent Faure, and ending with Brahms’ most substantial chamber work. For reasons that weren’t explained, the order of events was reversed but I’m not sure exactly who gained from this change; I, for one, was feeling well worked over by interval after hearing a solid reading of the Brahms Piano Quartet No. 2 in A Major of 1861. Still, we stuck with it for Faure’s 1887 Piano Quartet No 2 which partly mirrored the German master’s vehemence, and finally came down to earth for the Australian work – originally the finale to Hindson’s Piano Trio from 2007 which was commissioned by the Macquarie Trio (then boasting Selby as its pianist), subsequently transformed in 2012 to this quartet format on a re-commission from the University of Queensland.

Selby set the Brahms score in motion with that willowy oscillation between four-part chord triplets and quavers that initiates the Allegro with deceptive calm, repeated in bar 9 by the three strings. But it took no time at all before the pianist exploded into fortissimo dynamic at bar 27, maintaining a dominance up to the paragraph’s end at bar 37 – and we were well into into the composer’s substantial 120-bar exposition which, as far as I could tell, was not repeated.

It’s not that the movement is convoluted but the material is treated at length with a remarkable differentiation in texture. At times, it sounds like one of the piano concertos, as at the change of key signature to nothing when the piano sets up a bass opposition to unison strings and the effect is of a relentless pounding from everybody. Then, we reach a return to placidity at bar 209 with a slightly thinner texture an octave below where we began, which has a kind of supple inevitability about it that never fails to delight. Still, it was obvious that Selby controlled the movement’s level of address, the strings working hard to make their points across the central pages of contrapuntal interplay.

The pianist is also gifted with the opening sentences to the work’s Poco adagio: superbly shaped lines that the strings eventually get to enjoy at bar 24, from which point we heard some lyrically ideal work from Layton in particular. This was equalled later in a moving duet with Smiles, playing the initial theme two octaves apart from bar 86 on. But the movement’s strength for me lies in its fusion of lines, particularly the powerful F minor outburst at bar 109 with the three strings striving in octaves over the piano’s arpeggios. And then we reach the inevitable resolution back to E Major and the three string lines curving around each other on the path home through Layton’s penetrating trills and E Major scales across the last stages.

For a change, the opening to the scherzo from the strings in octave unison did not come over as weedy/reedy which is an approach you hear on several recordings; just a confident piano to allow Selby a subtle response-repeat at bar 8. Still, you couldn’t avoid the imbalance in dynamics starting with the piano’s bass octaves at bar 80, leading up to an explosive attack at bars 88-9.

The balance improved in the fierce opening to the Trio, in part due to the composer’s giving the string lines some clear air in their alternations with the piano, statement/re-statement continuing pretty much through this segment’s first half. Further, you would be hard to please if you didn’t appreciate the subtle transparency of the forces’ interplay across the soft decrescendo in similar motion of bars 266-276; then, the final stages of this trio where the piano operates by enswathing her colleagues in a decorative reinforcement as the texture changes in stratum from bar 315 to bar 326 through a passage of quiet regret before we return to the scherzo.

It’s an unusually full complex to experience; the analysts point out the employment of sonata form in both parts, scherzo and trio, but it strikes me that Brahms offers us a remarkable fusion of material – not literally, but each segment having enough in common to provide an intellectual and emotional consistency, at odds with the prevailing practice of contrasting the two divisions. This is best illustrated by the lead-in from trio to scherzo where the dividing crack is perceptible but close to seamless; not a passage of high-flying craft but an undemonstrative example of the composer’s power to engage through simple means.

To be honest, the final Allegro often presents itself as a hard-fought kind of celebration to my ears. In this interpretation, it opened with plenty of panache, these players keeping a restrained eye on the accented second beat of fulcrum bars, both at the opening statement and in the communal extension from bars 73 to 78. But then comes that sudden turn into long note values after the rest at bar 142 and the energy drains out of the movement’s forward thrust.

Of course, it resumes its opening drive and episodes of relief and action oscillate for the remainder of the allegro, coming to a concluding lengthy animato: 52 bars of it, although it seems longer, and punchy in dynamic output, not least when the piano operates at ottava alta. It’s a relief to come to the end of this bounding activity which seemed to me to drain the performers, even if they maintained their energetic output to the final bars. You wouldn’t call it a hard-won victory – that would demean the performers’ skill and linear definition – yet the impression I had was of a solid accomplishment rather than a high-spirited completion of the task in hand.

A less insistent voice emerged with the Faure quartet, although the excellent sweep of the composer’s first ten-bar subject with the strings soaring in octaves over the restless piano arpeggio patterns remains in the memory some days after this eloquent interpretation, as does the sound of Bignasca’s mellow voice surging in solo with the second theme, and the eventual interweaving of lines – easily perceptible in this work where the composer gives much of the running (in this opening Allegro, at least) to the string lines.

Selby got her revenge, of course, in the following Allegro molto which is a study in digital evenness for much of its length, a sort of right-hand moto perpetuo complicated by its tied quavers across the bar-line and awkward syncopations when the right-hand moves into octaves. The pianist generated a suitable restlessness, even through the pseudo-Trio interlude where the 6/8 pulse cuts to a sort of fast waltz. Bignasca again came to the fore at the recapitulation-of-sorts, having a turn at the piano’s main theme in an A minor version before she partnered Layton in a vital canonic treatment of it at Letter F in the Hamelle score.

The violist led the way into Faure’s E flat Major Adagio with a firm hand on the opening melody before Layton joined in with a gentle reinforcement and the movement flowered into a fluid nocturne with the composer at his most relaxed with regard to modulations. Later, the finale approach mirrored the veiled power of the work’s opening, Smiles and Bignasca urging through the rise and fall of the G minor melody, before violin and viola took up the theme at an octave’s distance.

Selby observed the prevailing discipline but hit the road with vehemence for her first forte at Letter B, then later at Letter J. These pages always carry the listener along with their rhythmic insistence and the composer’s rapid-fire invitation au voyage, reaching an apogee when the key signature changes to G Major. The players didn’t go overboard in the Piu mosso final page, allowing Layton plenty of room to negotiate the concluding rhetoric.

Not much to say about the Hindson piece. The strings outlined the motif/tune in unison octaves with Selby providing some anchoring chords and semi-florid scale cadenzas across two bars. And then we were off with a boppy piano underpinning that might have come from Michael Kieran Harvey in his teenage years. Bignasca looked happy, swaying along to the syncopations of a bygone era, yet the only player who was tested was Selby whose contribution was essential and unremitting, as far as I could tell. If you like, Epic Diva served the office of showing us how far we’d come over the centuries of Western musical development – a flashy sorbet to wind up another recital from this organization almost full to the brim with solid substance.

No place for the prescriptive

cliveoconnell

COCTEAU’S CIRCLE

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Sunday November 16, 2025

Le Gateau Chocolat

A good deal of what follows might be incorrect. As with many concert-giving organizations these days, the Australian Chamber Orchestra has taken to plunging audiences into darkness from the start, so that a conscientious note-taker might be obliged to come along equipped with a pencil light and act as a constant distraction to anybody in his/her/their neighbourhood. Or you could rely on your memory, as I have done; a difficult task with a program of this nature. I remember Paull Fiddian, one-time manager of the Victorian/Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, telling me that his instructions were to lower the lighting at the start of concerts to 70% of capacity; he would probably have seconded my usual reaction at these current enforced plunges into momentary blindness which echo Florestan’s first words at the start of Act Two.

Anyway, the ACO and some wind guests and a percussionist meandered onstage, led by pianist Stefan Cassomenos who began doodling and set others off to play what I think was Elena Kats-Chenin‘s first background offering for this program; in all, she composed six pieces commissioned for the players – this initial Intermission Music and five Interludes: Les annees folles, L’opera, Le sacre, Les fantomes, and Etonnez-moi. Mood-setting constructs, these were forgettable immediately after they played out and, even if the Sydney composer was no part of the circle that enswathed Cocteau, these samples of musique d’ameublement would have found favour with the poet’s friend, Satie.

In any case, the program proper began with artistic director Richard Tognetti leading his forces in an Ouverture (abridged) by Auric and we were in the world of Les Six, that variously talented group of composers fostered by Cocteau and who frequented Le Boeuf sur le toit cabaret along with most other Paris-dwelling artistic innovators of the 1920s. I’m not sure which overture it was; possibly that one written for his own ballet of 1921, Les Maries de la tour Eiffel (a work I’ve never heard any parts of before last Sunday). Listening to the complete work some days after this performance, I’m not at all sure if this concert-opener was this piece at all The proffered shortened version of whatever extract it was proved amiable and sparky but evanescent.

We enjoyed the first part of a running commentary from Le Gateau Chocolat (George Ikediashi), the concert’s Maitre d’: a big-framed drag performer whose costumes appealed to me more than his words or singing. Still, he set up a scene of Paris in the post-World War One years where creativity with frissons was the expected diet at this cabaret. For some reason, I got the impression that he was presenting himself as Jean Cocteau, occasioning one of the more tensile suspensions of disbelief I’ve enjoyed for many a year. And I believe that he suggested we were to imagine being in the fabled cabaret itself.

In fact, we heard works by five of Les Six whose musical-social lives centred (for a time) on this cabaret. In order, they were: the afore-mentioned Auric overture; a funeral march which was Honegger’s contribution to the amalgam that was Les Maries de la tour Eiffel (Auric asked his fellow group members to write movements as he himself was pressed for time) and re-scored for the available instruments in this ensemble; the first movement of Germaine Tailleferre’s String Quartet finished in 1919 (Modere – thank you, Debussy); Poulenc’s 1940 cabaret waltz-song Les chemins de l’amour, performed with loads of period elan by soprano Chloe Lankshear; Milhaud’s ballet of 1919-20 which gave us all an eventual programmatic context.

None of Les Six got a second showing. Instead, the program was extended to include people who would not or could not have been part of Cocteau’s milieu. For instance, we were offered two Gershwin songs by Le Gateau Chocolat: the jazz standard Oh, Lady Be Good! from 1924, taken at a pace I can only call funereal but which gave the singer plenty of scope to roll out his sonorous bass register; and I Loves You, Porgy from the 1935 opera which is, in its original form, a duet and in a lesser shape should be sung by a woman. By the time this piece hit Paris, Le Boeuf sur la toit was moving to its fourth address and the fun times were well and truly over. We know the American met Ravel, who was a Boeuf habitue, but did he meet Cocteau?

Speaking of Ravel, the ACO performed the final Vif et agite from his String Quartet which dates from 1903 and here given in what I believe was Tognetti’s own arrangement of 2012. The composer definitely knew Cocteau although I don’t believe that they worked together. And what would the purveyor of up-to-date modernity find to relish in this post-Debussyan chamber work? I’d suggest: not much. A flashy showpiece from Act III of Henri Christine’s Phi-Phi operetta of 1918 brought Lankshear into play through Bien chapeautee, in which Greek sculptor Phidias’ wife extolls female fashion as a means of exerting her sex’s superiority. It’s an attractive piece of boulevadierism and the soprano produced a brisk negotiation of a complex text. The piece took a place alongside Poulenc’s chanson as a remembrance of things past, not a bond vers l’avenir in the manner of Cocteau.

Another more contradictory element emerged in the second movement of Debussy’s String Quartet, written way back in 1893 and representing all that Cocteau and his band of self-conscious revolutionaries loathed. Place for this in the cabaret? Non, jamais, even though its was a fine reference point for the concert’s program section called Les fantomes as the composer loomed over so much that followed his death in 1918 when the young moderns started biting and sniping at everything from the near past.

Why was Lili Boulanger’s Pie Jesu included here? She wasn’t connected to Cocteau and this piece, the last she completed before her death in 1918, sits at odds with most of the politely feral products of Les Six. For all that, Lankshear sang its remote vocal line without gilding any emotional lily and coping with an accompaniment that lacked the original’s harp and organ. Perhaps a touch more relevance came with the second movement, Assez vif et bien rhythme, to Francaix’s 1932 Concertino for piano and orchestra, this composer having some connection to the later Ravel as well as being a Poulenc admirer. The piano part gave Cassomenos scope to exercise his clarity of articulation in a a score fragment that exemplified the digital precocity of French inter-Wars chamber music at its most clear-cut.

As for an out-and-out ring-in, what was Janis Ian‘s Stars doing here, apart from giving Le Gateau Chocolat an excuse to sing it? The song was a 1974 hit for the American singer-songwriter but I’m sure Cocteau would have disliked its sentimentality in both text and music; if it was intended to make some connection with the brittle, almost neurasthenic aesthetic that underpins Cocteau’s world, it’s an impossible sell when juxtaposed with the real thing.

One composer who did enjoy a double exposure was Stravinsky, who knew Cocteau too well, having collaborated with him on Oedipus Rex – that unsettling opera-cantata from 1927. On this program, we heard the perky Ragtime from L’histoire du soldat, another 1918 product, here illuminated by Tognetti’s negotiation of the sprightly, difficult violin part and treated with something close to the original’s orchestration. Later came two movements, Danse and Cantique, the outer ones from Trois pieces pour quatuor a cordes of 1918. Once again, you could question whether these would have made much impression on the cabaret patrons; perhaps the first with its insistent melody and rugged second violin counterweight would have been happily received, but definitely the slow-moving Orthodox-hymn suggestions of the second one would have turned off the not-too-heavy thinkers.

To end, the singers collaborated, although Lankshear took the honours, in a version of Piaf’s 1949 Hymne a l’amour: the song that Celine Dion sang from the Eiffel Tower at the opening to the Paris Olympics in 2024. So we ended with a definite congruence: Piaf and Cocteau were friends, dying within a day of each other in October 1963. This made for an unexpectedly moving finale, largely due to Lankshear’s excellent realization of Piaf’s timbre, complete with that inimitable vibrato.

Yes, I know: it doesn’t do to be over-puristic about presentations like these where the event’s title is an indication – an all-round inclusion – not a prescription. In fact, the whole exercise proceeded in the best cabaret fashion by juxtaposing number after number, here punctuated by a master of ceremonies who upped the entertainment aspect with his lavish dresses and camp delivery, although an early attempt at badinage by an audience member fell flat. At its best, the concert brought about some fine singing from Lankshear and excellent ensemble work, not least in the focal Le Boeuf sur le toit ballet by Milhaud which we heard near the performance’s end and during which everybody involved seemed to enjoy some solo or group exposure between the rondo-like recurrences of the infectious central tune that embodies those Slightly Roaring Gallic Twenties more than pretty much anything else we heard.

This time, no oddness

cliveoconnell

MOZART + MARSEILLAISE

Australian National Academy of Music

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday November 12, 2025

Paavali Jumpaanen

Just finishing his fifth year in charge of the Australian National Academy of Music as that body’s artistic director, pianist Paavali Jumpaanen appeared as soloist in front of his organization’s orchestra last Wednesday morning in an exemplary reading of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in C Major K. 503. I’m not an enthusiast of his Beethoven interpretations; admittedly, it’s been several years since I heard him toying with some of them in this very hall. But you would be scratching at a finely-polished surface to find any holes in his work here.

He played/conducted from a grand positioned vertically into the young ensemble; necessarily when a musician does this, the instrument’s lid has to come off (unless you’re super-secure in your accompaniment). So a reasonable amount of Jumpaanen’s output went straight up to the Murdoch Hall’s ceiling. But you had to make allowances for the uneven balance in any case. The ANAM orchestra had eight violins in this configuration, three each of violas and cellos, and a pair of double basses. Ranged across the back wall were the requisite wind for this work: flute, plus pairs of oboes, bassoons, trumpets and horns, with a discreet timpanist for light punctuation.

The problem came with the over-bright wind dynamic bounding out into our faces. This isn’t to decry the upper strings who spoke with as much firmness and congruity as I’ve heard from ANAM orchestras in the past. They had no problems with Jumpaanen whose attack mode was necessarily muted but, outside the central F Major Andante, the woodwind quintet in particular dominated the combined texture at key moments like bar 54 in the first Allegro, and in antiphonal passages as between bars 84 and 87. Yes, the brass contributed to this ascendancy, the clear trumpets in particular, so that when the whole phalanx was in operation, the violin quartet pairs came close to inaudible.

To add to the problem, this is one of the last concertos and Mozart’s orchestral fabric picks out individual voicers among the woodwind with even more concentration than in earlier works, like the fine F Major K. 459 of 1784, two years prior to this C Major masterwork. In the orchestral ritornelli of the first movement, this quintet follows independent paths, even if the oboes and bassoons are harmonically paired for much of the time. As well, you had some splendid passages of interaction with the soloist in the first movement e.g. bars 195 to 214, then 256 to 282: pointed pleasures that enjoyed transparent delivery from all concerned.

Further, this C Major concerto has an ideal balance as its outer movements are comparable in space allowed for soloistic display and thematic variation/development. With regard to the former, Jumpaanen displayed a mastery of the composer’s hard-hat filigree and calm progress between themes which impress as more concentrated rather than thrown around with abandon, as in the earlier essays by the composer in this form. Indeed, I recall commenting on this lavish abundance of melodic material from the younger Mozart in his early and middle Viennese concertos to Kenneth Hince, who opined that I had much to learn about those works, viz. Nos. 11 to 21 and the composer’s novel treatment of the piano in both of those first movement segments that used to be called exposition and development; these terms seem insufficient, however, when dealing with this C Major score.

For all that, Jumpaanen exercised an unusual discretion that stayed just the right side of finnickiness in the work’s first two sections, then embraced the Allegretto with an effective deliberation, finding a welcome fluency in the piano’s opening from bar 32 with its initial chain of mordents, an abrupt rush of demi-semiquavers, immediately followed by a burst of triplets that at least don’t come out of nowhere but reflect the orchestra’s conclusion to its opening tutti; in all, an exuberant misdirection of attention that keeps you listening hard.

The pianist proceeded to exercise telling control through the triplets that become the instrument’s stock in trade before actually settling down to revisit the opening theme at bar 113. As usual, appealing moments kept lurching out, as at the fluent solo beginning at bar 234 that brings in the first oboe and then flute before a luminous duo-quartet-trio of woodwind takes over the running at bar 187 for several pages of simple, clear-cut dissertation. From here on, apart from a 7-bar break, the pianist is on the go and I liked the way Jumpaanen made himself available to the texture in page after page of supporting passage-work, then broke through with no insistence when the piano moved into solo mode.

A thoroughly engaging reading, then, and quite unlike his eccentric expositions of some decades ago. The only complaint I have is Jumpaanen’s introduction of La Marseillaise in the final moments of his first movement cadenza – I suppose in some effort to justify the pairing of this event’s title. Some commentators have noted a resemblance between Rouget de Lisle’s rousing anthem of 1792 and one of the secondary theme in this concerto’s first movement. The comparison lasts little more than a bar but optimists believe there is some connection between the two composers. Well, the Frenchman definitely wrote the words but the music could date back some years to the violinist Viotti. More importantly, what chance did a French military engineer living in Strasbourg have of hearing an Austrian piano concerto written six years earlier? A small one, you’d think.

To establish some musical context, this concert opened with duo-pianists Timothy Young (ANAM’s resident piano guru) and Po Goh performing a version of the anthem arranged by Young in the best Mozart/Beethoven tradition. As a result, we were treated to a rather restrained interpretation of one of the world’s most rousing national songs, but I suppose Young was setting up a context rather than entering into Berlioz-type histrionics and triumphalism; his atmospherics related more to the salon than storming the Bastille.

As a prelude to the concerto, four ANAM musicians played two of the four-hand Mozart sonatas. Francis Atkins and Sarah Chick worked at the K. 381 in D Major, written in 1772 and the first of the authentic and complete works by the composer in this format. This is digitally easy to negotiate but somehow the players struggled with its mechanics: Atkins with some misfiring soprano notes and Chick handling several muddy Alberti-bass passages, due I think to an over-use of the sustaining pedal. Admittedly, I was comparing this performance with one available online given by Lucas and Arthur Jussen; the Dutch duo are, to put it mildly, very impressive and their Mozart reading flawless.

Still, if you’re attending ANAM, your standard must be close to the near-professional. Unfortunately, the following pair of Liam Furey and Timothy O’Malley sounded uncomfortably paired for the B flat Major K. 358 of two years later, their ensemble occasionally unhappy in its ornamentation as well as erratic in the strict synchronicity that this music requires. As with Atkins and Chick, this duo repeated the first half of each movement (I think!), everybody cutting their work-load by a quarter. But the cleanest accomplished part of the four came from O’Malley, despite the lack of prominence in his Secondo for the Adagio and that infectious Molto presto that concludes this happy brevity.

Diary December 2025

cliveoconnell

RARE SUGAR

Omega Ensemble

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday December 2 at 7 pm

For the last Melbourne appearance for the year from this mobile group, we’re to hear three works over a 90-minute stretch with no interruptions. To begin, members of the Omega Ensemble present Bartok’s Contrasts of 1938: a trio for violin, clarinet and piano in three movements and based on Romanian and Hungarian folk tunes. Well, you can infer them from melodic shapes and rhythms but you can’t expect anything accessible to hit you over the head because the piece is not simple in any sense and its transformation of material is sophisticated. In the middle comes a new score from Ella Macens, Through the Mist; I can’t find any details about its requirements but suspect they won’t be lavish, given the pretty consistently modest scoring of her previous chamber works. To end, we hear the recital’s title work by Nigel Westlake. Written in 2007, this was a commission celebrating a University of New South Wales academic whose research field was rare sugars chemistry. It calls for clarinet, piano and string quintet. Who’s playing? David Rowden‘s clarinet will grace the Bartok, as will violin Veronique Serret and pianist Vatche Jambazian. Emma McGrath violin two, Neil Thompson viola, Paul Stender cello and Harry Young double bass join in with this Bartok group for Westlake’s score . Top price tickets are $119; then the Murdoch Hall’s three main sections cost $89, $69, and $49 with concessions $10 less in each area. If you’re under 30, you pay $39 for any one of the three divisions. You have to cope with the MRC’s moveable Transaction Fee of between $4 and $8.50 if you book online or by phone – so don’t; show up and buy at the door, then listen to the gnashing of the accountants’ teeth as you slip through their grasping talons.

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

Opera Australi

Regent Theatre

Tuesday December 2 at 7:30 pm

This sounds awfully like the production of Gluck’s opera that I saw at the end of 2019 in Brisbane from Opera Queensland, which also involved the Circa ensemble directed by that body’s artistic director, Yaron Lifschitz. The acrobats made a mobile setting for the main singers, Eurydice and Amor were sung by the same soprano, and Orpheus was given to us in countertenor mode. Even the promotional shots bring back memories of that version from six years ago. Of course, it may have been re-imagined for last year’s Sydney Festival that the Opera Australia bumf is keen to single out as the production’s sole genesis – but I doubt it. The company has Iestyn Davies in the male lead role and he’s an English artist well worth attention; his version of Purcell’s An Evening Hymn (which you can hear on YouTube) is the best I’ve come across from a countertenor. He’s partnered by Australian Samantha Clarke in the Eurydice/Amor double; some of the advertising claims that she’s making her debut in these roles which means she couldn’t have been part of last year’s blockbuster success in Sydney. Dane Lam conducts, as he did in Brisbane. Of course, it’s all done in one fell swoop; 80 minutes, the publicity tells us. Still, it’s an artistically unfamiliar step up from the two main components of this ‘season’ – The Barber of Seville and Carmen. The worst seats tonight cost $79 adult, $71 pensioner and student, $39 child; the best cost $295 adult, $265 pensioner and student and child. On top, you can add a well-overblown ‘order fee’ of $9.80 to that, no matter where you sit.

This performance will be repeated on Wednesday December 3 at 7:30 pm, Thursday December 4 at 7:30 pm and Friday December 5 at 7:30 pm.

NOEL! NOEL!

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday December 5 at 5 pm

Expect anything and everything. These seasonal celebrations from Paul Dyer and his Australian Brandenburg Orchestra are notable for mixing the best of Christmas music with the tackiest, carrying audiences along in the general festive frenzy. It has a touch of the Carols by Candlelight about it, although nowhere near the spectacular vulgarity of the Myer Bowl celebrations. The artists on stage always include the Australian Brandenburg Choir, as well as the instrumentalists, so you can be assured of a firm choral backing for the audience-involving numbers like O come, all ye faithful or Hark! the herald angels sing. This year’s guests are a real-life couple: mezzo Maria Eugenia Nieva and guitarist Andrew Blanch who have taken to touring for duo recitals here and in the United States. No idea what they’ll contribute to this event; perhaps some Christmas music from the singer’s native Argentina, possibly the original scoring for Silent Night. Dyer and Co. proclaim that their aim is to have a party rather than recreate the atmosphere of the Nine Lessons and Carols: to which oddly similar end, the concert lasts 80 minutes without an interval. Tickets range from $20 to $196 with variations too numerous to detail, but the good thing is that there is no additional booking fee to be added on to your basic price.

The program, whatever it is, will be repeated at 7 pm.

DR. SEUSS’ HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS LIVE IN CONCERT

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday December 5 at 7:30 pm

You can rail all you like at the sentimentality, including a feel-good finale, but this Ron Howard film of 2000 has lasted in popular affection longer than many of us would have expected. You won’t find much original in the story which has a vague similarity to Dickens’ A Christmas Carol but lacks that masterpiece’s narrative layers and sparkling characterizations. But, for those who need reassurance, the film has all the necessary ingredients of an American cautionary tale with a brace of central personalities that stay well within the bounds of Central Casting. Can’t say I’m familiar with James Horner’s score but he produced an impressive catalogue of soundtracks for Hollywood in his lifetime, cut short tragically in his 61st year. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will perform his work for this film with its habitual zeal under Cybec Assistant Conductor Leonard Weiss who is a new face to me in a role I’ve associated for years with Nicholas Buc and Benjamin Northey. Standard tickets range between $49 and $134; concession card holders and children get in for $5 less – and they say the spirit of Scrooge has disappeared in our modern age. You also have to add on a $7 transaction fee if you order online – and you have to, if you want to be assured of a seat at events like these which all too often sell out.

This program will be repeated on Saturday December 6 at 1 pm and at 7:30 pm.

BAROQUE CHRISTMAS 2025

Australian Chamber Choir

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Middle Park

Saturday December 6 at 3 pm

After a few out-of-town tryouts in Terang and Macedon, the Australian Chamber Choir brings its Christmas music to near-Melbourne Central. Unlike the Brandenburgers and the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic, artistic director Douglas Lawrence is quite specific about what his singers will be presenting at this large and airy church. He and Elizabeth Anderson will control (separately, I guess) the choir in a mixed double for In dulci jubilo with the outer verses by Bach (pre-1750, which is not helpful)) and the inner two from Johann Walther (pre-1570, which is just as useless), before Gabrieli’s Hodie Christus natus est (1615) for 8 lines. Three Saxon motets follow: Eccard’s Resonet in laudibus (1597), and Praetorius’ Es ist ein ros entsprungen plus Singt und klingt (both 1609). Most of this would be known to Baroque fans but then come two Australian premieres in Raffaella Aleotti’s Facta est cum angelo of 1594, and Mikolaj Zielencki’s 1611 motet, Reges Tharsis. Break forward a couple of centuries for some Southern Star, that nine-section collaboration from 2004 between Michael Leunig and Christopher Willcock which asks for SATB choir and harp, here provided by Katia Mestrovic. Lawrence and his forces wind up with some of their signature dishes: Bach’s demanding Jesu meine freude motet (1735?), and a Hammerschmidt jubilation in the four-line Alleluja! Freuet euch, ihr Christen alle (1649/50?) with Machet die Tore weit (1670) as a six-part sorbet. The only seats left are non-premium, starting at $21.50 for students, $46.50 for pensioners, and $71.50 for adults/seniors, to which add on a piddling $1.50 ‘processing’ fee.

HANDEL’S MESSIAH

Royal Melbourne Philharmonic

Melbourne Town Hall

Sunday December 7 at 5 pm

Nice to see that these old traditions are being maintained right across the country, even if it’s a dubious one in this case. Messiah has been associated with Christmas for many years now, mainly because of the opening which deals with the Bethlehem scenes in luminous detail. But Handel’s oratorio premiered in Dublin around Easter 1742. Mind you, it didn’t matter to the composer when his work was performed as long as it got into a concert hall, got heard, and he got paid. As usual, you can presume that people will still stand for the Hallelujah! Chorus even though it’s unlikely that George II ever heard the work, let alone decided to stretch his legs at that particular point. Yet the work rarely fails to move the listener because of its chain of matchless arias and choruses, and the wonderfully satisfying sense of satisfaction at its final Amen chorus. Conducting the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra will be the RMP’s long-time director Andrew Wailes (currently enjoying a 30-year association with the body). His soloists are soprano Sara Macliver, mezzo Fiona Campbell, tenor Kyle Stegall, and bass David Greco. On harpsichord and chamber organ will be Stefan Cassomenos, while another chamber organ and the Town Hall’s monster will be played by Andrew Bainbridge. At time of writing, only balcony seats are left ranging from $65 to $95. You have two distinct extra charges for this concert: a ‘ticket’ fee of 50 cents and a ‘processing’ fee of $2.38; well, it could be (and usually is) worse.

ON CHRISTMAS MORN

Australian Boys Choral Institute

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday December 13 at 5 pm

The Australian Boys Choral Institute seems to be a corporate name under which the Australian Boys Choir falls. For this event, we’re to hear the ABC, The Vocal Consort, with participation from some training groups of the Institute and the Kelly Gang who are senior members of the ABC. As for conductors, we have the body’s director, Nicholas Dinopoulos, and long-time staff member Naomi Heyden. Eventually, we come to the details of what is being sung and the ABC does not differ from most of its peers in keeping this information to itself; the exercise is ‘an unmissable traditional festive gala event’, so the door is partly open, especially with that cover-all adjective ‘traditional’ – in other words, no surprises. The recital’s title suggests the full English, complete with holly, ivy, snow and mid-winter; I may be wrong and it could be all-Australian and celebrate oysters, barbecues, Crown Lager and wattle-tree bowers. Tickets cost from $35 for B Reserve student to $60 for A Reserve adult tickets, with $10 of for concession card holders. As far as I can see, there’s a flat $7 transaction fee if you’re booking online or by phone but this will doubtless disappear when the Recital Centre goes completely AI.

HANDEL’S MESSIAH

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Saturday December 13 at 7 pm

The second reading of Handel’s great oratorio in a week; nothing signals my return to Melbourne more than this doubling-up. Tonight, the work will be performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under Swedish choral expert Sofi Jeannin who has been chief conductor of the BBC Singers since 2018 and has an impressively wide repertoire. Her soloists will be soprano Samantha Clarke (fresh from her Eurydice/Amor double for Opera Australia), mezzo Ashlyn Tymms, tenor Andrew Goodwin, and baritone Morgan Pearse – all of whom are either resident or have Australian connections. I’ve not heard the MSO Chorus for well over seven years but am assuming a solid continuity of output, thanks to the continued presence over that time of chorus director Warren Trevelyan-Jones. As far as I can see, the MSO administration is being unusually lean on performance details but it’s doubtful that this reading will go the full period hog with Baroque bows, valveless trumpets and twenty-or-so choristers. I’d expect that the interval will come after the His yoke is easy chorus concluding Part 1 and that Part 3 will suffer its usual truncation with the alto recitative, the alto/tenor duet and the soprano’s If God be for us aria all left by the wayside. Standard tickets range from $81 to $139, concessions are $5 cheaper and you’ve got a $7 transaction fee added to test your Christmas spirit.

This program will be repeated on Sunday December 14 at 5 pm.

CAROLS IN THE CATHEDRAL 2025

Royal Melbourne Philharmonic

St. Paul’s Cathedral

Friday December 19 at 8:30 pm

Once again, the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Choir has the last say for the year with this agglomerated program. Of course, the RMP singers will provide the performance’s backbone under their long-time director Andrew Wailes. But spare ribs will emerge, like the National Boys Choir of Australia, the Box Hill Chorale and the University of Melbourne Choral Society. As for instrumental forces, we will hear soloists from the RMP Orchestra, the RMP’s Brass and Percussion Consort, and the City of Melbourne Highland Pipe Band. Soprano Helena Dix leads the vocal soloists – well she’s the only one, really, while he have duo pianists in Stefan Cassomenos and William Schmidt. Andrew Bainbridge discourses from the cathedral organ and actor/author Roland Rocchicchioli will probably declaim from the pulpit. The terms ‘magnificent’, ‘spectacular’ and ‘glorious’ are tossed around the promotional material for this celebration, even if it sounds very much like the same end-of-year concerts that the RMP was presenting a decade ago. As for the program itself, there’ll be carols along the lines of Once in royal David’s city and Hark! the herald angels sing, alongside contemporary works by the American master Morton Lauridsen, Norway’s own Kim Andre Arnesen (some of The Christmas Alleluias of 2015?) and Ola Gjeilo, British-born Donald Fraser and another American in Dan Forrest. As you can see, the whole exercise is ecumenical in every sense. Ticket prices range from $35 (back and side aisles) to $99 (central pews); all seats are unallocated. And the RMP asks for a 50 cent ‘ticket’ fee and a $2.38 ‘processing’ fee; slim pickings that make you wonder about everybody else.

This program will be repeated on Saturday December 20 at 2 pm and at 7 pm.