Month: May 2026

Full-blooded and vital

cliveoconnell

THE LIVING TRADITION

Selby & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday May 28, 2026

(L to R) Alexandra Osborne, Kathryn Selby, Clancy Newman

It’s an odd exercise, determining which part of this Selby & Friends program refers to a ‘living’ tradition. It could be referring to Elena Kats-Chernin‘s little tribute in her 2009 Variation on Schubert Trauerwalzer, which eventually spells out the tune she’s dealing with clearly just before the piece’s end. As far as I can judge, the rest of the afternoon’s material exemplified the tradition as it stands – more or less alive: Beethoven, Fanny Mendelssohn and Schubert himself in the shape of his Piano Trio No. 1 in B flat of 1827, written for the most part in the year before he died and which has become a favourite element in the programs of every ensemble peopled in this format.

Partnering pianist Kathryn Selby in this enterprise were violinist Alexandra Osborne, adapting to the delights of a chamber musical interlude as a relief from her customary position as associate concertmaster with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; and cellist Clancy Newman who seems to visit this country from his American home every year – a kind of permanent Friend. This particular combination made for a comfortable fit as all three musicians shared a common approach which the charitable might call resolute and the less kindly would characterise as aggressive.

These musicians opened with Beethoven’s Piano Trio in G Major, the 10 Variations on Ich bin der Schneider Kakadu which seems to have been conceived in (roughly) 1803, published twenty-one years later, probably revised in the intervening years – which might explain how we end up with the hybrid in front of us. Commentators point to the uneven nature of the variations, although it’s hard to see what this means apart from giving everyone a set of guernseys in one form or another – solo, accompanied solos, duets, and a fugue to almost-end which jolts us into the final phase of the composer’s life when this form was making its mark in a good many scores.

In this reading, the slow introduction came over as startlingly loud in the Studio’s environment, the fp and sf markings in my old Breitkopf and Hartel score striking enough to present sonorous threats. Which, of course, made the appearance of Wenzel Muller’s naive melody all the more striking. Matters continued in this forward-thrusting manner, notably in Variation IV where overlapping entries tended to make the upcoming sforzandi rather predictable. Still, the G minor Variation IX dominated by Selby’s keyboard proved a satisfyingly gentle, pseudo-serious interlude before the finale with its interposed double-fugue.

Kats-Chernin’s small piece is based on the D. 365 No. 2 from the 36 Original Dances and she manages to keep the tune well disguised for much of its length, resisting the temptation to reveal the source melody until near the end of its five minutes’ length, along the lines of Britten’s guitar Nocturnal of 1963. For Kats-Chernin, the harmonic language seems more difficult than usual, although I think that may be due to lots of piano accretions that give the work an unexcpected aural complexity. Unfortunately, the piece passed by very quickly and settling in to a consideration of the performance proved impossible, except for the impeccable assurance of all concerned.

Fanny Mendelssohn’s D minor Piano Trio of 1846-7 has interest for me mainly because of its author’s relationship to her brother; put beside his two inspired essays in the form, the four-square nature of its melodic and contrapuntal lay-out means that its performers have to work hard to give it gravity. Thoroughly acceptable in its emotional vigour, this score relied heavily on its interpreters to give it anything like the engrossing vitality of Felix’s striking predecessors in the form.

As with her brother’s trios, the piano enjoys a good deal of the composer’s attention in this work and Selby relished her dominance in the outer Allegro segments, in particular the cadenza-like introduction to the finale, rich in rolling arpeggios and small rhetorical flourishes. But Osborne seized her opportunities, particularly in the main-melody assumption at bar 9 of the Andante espressivo; an eloquent duet in sixths with Newman. She also produced two soulful duet passages with Selby at the opening and close of the two-page Lied that the composer substituted for a scherzo.

Later, in the final movement’s main pages, both strings offered worthy counter-weights to Selby’s busy triplet-and-semiquaver heavy part, taking to their exposures with both hands and working to sustain the same dynamic level as the tireless keyboard. At the end, you felt satisfied that you had experienced a worthy piece but also wondering how it would come across with players less involved in finding a level of drama that on this occasion enriched an agreable if none-too-exceptional construct.

And so, post-interval, to the Schubert in B flat. This opens with an immensely appealing swagger and our players entered into its benign world with plenty of heft. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard Selby perform this score since her early touring days (starting in 1993 with the Macquarie Trio), but she has an unfailing mastery of its lengthy paragraphs and those heart-swelling surges of melody that ring out from every page of a score that, despite its length, seems to last just long enough.

I missed the exposition’s repeat in the opening movement; a shame as those 111 bars can stand up to a re-hearing, unlike many another Classic/Romantic score where a return-to-taws means a five-minute (if you’re lucky) disconnect. Still, the musicians took their time over these mellifluous pages, introducing some decelerandi and heightening of pauses that took advantage of the large stretch of canvas that constitutes this movement. Further to this, you rarely experience the elation that Selby & Co. brought to the final 31 bars: that brilliantly contrived move from rumination to an A flat triple-forte triumph, then back to a muffled contentment.

Later on, nothing shows the composer’s unparalleled responsiveness than the violin/cello duet from bar 13 of the Andante where the ‘melting moments’ sixths that Fanny Mendelssohn generated occur only in passing as the lines intersect and weave around each other. Here, both Osborne and Newman worked in a well-controlled partnership that persisted across pages dependent on the string voices for much of their expressiveness. And no: I’m not forgetting Selby’s firmly accomplished flourishes through the movement’s central strophes, between bars 49 and 79.

In this reading, the performers gave a lean and mobile account of the Scherzo, the staccato passages delivered with control rather than punched into existence. As well, Osborne and Newman generated a fluent account of the gloriously lyrical Trio where Schubert supplies a wealth of passing thirds and sixths, enough to satisfy the euphony-seeking among us.

And then the Finale that rounds off this masterpiece with consecutive episodes of brilliant creativity, none more touching than the move to 3/2 and D flat at bar 250 which sums up Schubert’s genius at shaping simplicity into supple and resourceful invention; revisiting this slightly at bar 370 for about 14 bars; then prefacing his Presto last page with a shift to G flat at bar 583: a moment of extraordinary beauty carried off here with the gentlest of approaches. It all made for an interpretation of this work that mirrored its pages’ innate humanity and faced us once again with an astonishing self-assurance from a composer fast approaching his deathbed.

Solid, spare confidence

cliveoconnell

SCHUBERT’S FANTASY & OCTET

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Sunday May 24 2026

For this segment of the organization’s national tour, the Australian Chamber Orchestra hit with vigour the second term in its title, utilizing only eight players in a program that featured two works only: Schubert’s late Fantasy of 1827 for violin and piano, and the Octet of 1824. Thanks to artistic director and lead violin for this recital, Richrd Tognetti, the Fantasy was transcribed for the same number of musicians as takes part in the longer work, which meant a good deal of work for the ensemble’s clarinet, David Griffiths, on a break from the University of Melbourne’s Conservatorium. But then, you wouldn’t want to give all that right hand filigree work to another violin (in this case, Helena Rathbone), thereby setting up a continuous timbral duality with yourself.

The arranger had two other wind players to temper his usual corps. Carla Blackwood, also from the Melbourne Conservatorium, produced a reliable (and that’s saying a lot) line that remained in equilibrium with her colleagues for the most part. A bass line to complement long-time ACO underpinning member Maxime Bibeau and cellist Johannes Rostamo (on holiday from the Stockholm Philharmonic) came from the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s principal bassoon, Todd Gibson-Cornish. Fleshing out the string quintet was the ACO’s head viola, Stephanie Farrands.

That’s an impressive body of musicians and this afternoon’s work made for a very satisfying experience. As you’d expect, the Fantasy arrangement taxed the players on occasion, Blackwood having to handle an awkward set of semiquavers early on, but finding compensation in a rich texture-filling partnership with Gibson-Cornish. Tognetti shared the load evenly when the group arrived at the Sei mir gegrusst variations, the accompaniment/piano part unsurprising in its new task allocation but rich in colour-variety, thanks to the three wind visitors.

For all that, the Fantasy in this format centred on Tognetti who met his line’s challenges with assurance. During the initial Andante, he gave himself room to breathe with several rubato-like lingerings. But the ensemble followed these small breathing-points with informed ease; as you’d expect, in this seventh performance in a run of twelve. Not too surprisingly, Tognetti maintained a restraiint of address, not breaking out of a pretty placid dynamic range until the C Major Allegro march, the work’s antepenultimate segment that somehow brings to mind a carefreee branch of the old Davidsbundler.

In this muted approach, he was well-matched by Griffiths who sailed perilously close to inaudibility at certain stages where he worked in mirroring or doubling the violin solo’s material. To his credit, the clarinettist’s piano/pianissimo passages made a vital element in the sound-world of this interpretation. Still, I missed the robust definition that comes with the original, the two instruments complementary and focused on the composer’s display of melodic richness.

As you might have expected, the Octet‘s opening brought us into a musical landscape more fluent and easier to imbibe. Also, the players sounded driven and involved across the first movement Allegro with a taut and clever weighting in play. Blackwood managed cleanly those exposed two-octave horn leaps seven and seventeen bars after Letter C in my old Breitkopf & Hartel score. As well, it was a welcome pleasure to hear solos from both bassoon and viola ringing with some prominence rather than submerged in the secondary matter from higher voices. As far as I can remember, the players didn’t repeat this movement’s exposition; yes, it makes the work longer by some minutes but I think it repays the effort, even in a big canvas score like this one.

A finely poised passage came with the clarinet/violin duet thirteen bars after the start of the following Adagio. Later, Rostamo generated a firm hauptstimme at Letter E, giving the main melody a suddenly more forward-sounding projection in a movement that passed without much drama, best typified by Griffiths’ dangerously soft coda top line fourteen bars from the comforting conclusion.

Then, a welcome dose of buoyancy in the fourth bar of the Allegro vivace which bounded past with infectious vim and dynamic contrasts in the usual strophe/antistrophe pattern. I’ve not heard this style before (I think) but the non-vibrato viol approach to the first phrases in the Trio from Tognetti made for a fine differentiation between the outer and middle segments of this movement.

The following seven variations on the composer’s Freunde von Salamanka tune are a rather predictable set and, for me, wear out their welcome pretty soon. That’s even more the case when all the repeats are observed, which I think they were in this performance, although the horn’s Variation III seemed to me to be underweight. But the one immediately following, which highlit Rostamo, enjoyed full length and made for one of the finer displays of full-bodied production in these pages.

The remaining two segments gave us more deftly measured playing, notably a well-concerted sotto voce ending to the coda after the horn’s introductory solo, and a gripping version of the final movement’s Andante molto thanks to everybody’s curt delivery of those initial semiquavers before fulcrum chords in these sixteen-and-three-quarter bars. I’d have preferred a more vital outlining of those virtuosic triplet bursts of bonhomie from Griffiths and Tognetti which can exhilarate the listener even more than the emsemble in full flight does across the several deliveries of a bounding main tune that somehow always strikes me as imbalanced – possibly because of the trill-rich nature of its first half being set alongside the simpler insistence of the second eight-bar sequence.

Both elerments in this program gave us a fine exposure to Schubert’s splendid melodic richness and, in the Octet, a rare experience of hearing live one of his major chamber music constructs outside the string quartet/quintet format. What proved most impressive to me was the unfaltering mode of attack and model interweaving of textures from a body that, apart from the strings, was gathered ad hoc – for these specific works only: a fortuitous collection of highly competent, responsive talents.

Secure output from an occasional trio

cliveoconnell

BEETHOVEN’S GHOST

Musica Viva Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday May 12, 2026

Aura Go

Much was made in this program’s pre-publicity about the provenance of the sobriquet for Beethoven’s 1809 Piano Trio in D Op. 70 No. 1. Czerny found suggestions of Hamlet’s father in the middle Largo; other commentators make a fuss about the word ‘Macbett’ found in some Beethoven sketches near this movement. Whatever the case, we’re stuck with Czerny’s nickname which might have some relevance to the bleak Elsinore battlements, certainly more than the blasted desert place populated by those three prescient grey ladies.

Our participating trio – violin Kristian Winther, cello Timo-Veikko Valve, pianist Aura Go – laid the mystery to rest early (as much as they could) by programming the Ghost Trio first. It was a highly sympathetic interpretation, packed with restrained vim in its outer movements, even if the players elected not to repeat the first Allegro‘s second ‘half’ – bars 74 to 249; understandable, as it’s a hefty slab to play again, especially if you think the message has been passed along readily enough. Still, it was a pleasure while it lasted, mainly for Winther’s care with the violin line’s phrasing and Go’s abstinence from taking over the joint.

For the haunted movement, these performers opted for a faster tempo than other ensembles, e.g. the Beaux Arts from the early 2000s. Yet this definition gave the piano figurations a more impressive contour, the downward scales more of an evanescence than the usual slow trickle. As well, both strings made telling work of the sotto voce suggestions by either not using vibrato or by employing it sparingly; at least, at the start and end.

As expected, the ensemble gave us the Presto‘s exposition repeat and carried off those sudden pauses/caesurae and their consequent launches back into action with excellent collegiality. Indeed, that assured trust seemed to me the central hallmark of this interpretation; not that remarkable, coming from players who have known each other for many years, but reassuring in a trio put together for this tour, although I suppose you’d expect their work to be polished in this fifth performance out of six.

Next we were given the premiere (for this part of the country) of University of Melbourne writer Melody Eotvos‘ fresh score Regnare, her Piano Trio No. 3. This was commissioned in part by Musica Viva Australia, the presenters of this recital. As a kicking-off point, this one-movement work takes its impetus from the mountain ash which has a kind of natural command because it’s the world’s tallest flowering plant. How you communicate the tree’s supreme individuality in this regard is impossible to determine. We have a good deal of low piano growling, a kind of subterranean root-spread, while the strings seem to carry on an aphoristic dialogue which reaches its apogee in an unaccompanied duet of striking effectiveness.

But Regnare is chameleonic in its language which makes aggressive use of the piano’s capacity for multiple dissonances while also taking on a European folk-song flavour in its later pages, some passages reminiscent of Bartok’s sophisticated integration of his discoveries in that field. Still, you’re on a hiding to nothing when you set up terms of reference that are intended to take the listener back to the vision of a static entity like foliage, no matter how majestic.

Mind you, Eotvos did herself few favours with a a speech of sorts before we heard the work. I was in the front five rows of the Hall and caught about half of what she was saying. Apart from nervously laughing at a few jokes that she produced for her own amusement and our puzzlement, the information she provided added very little to the program notes with nothing forthcoming about compositional details or structure, the score’s progress or its intended effect. This only reinforced my opinion about speaking at musical events: you have to be able to speak, and you have to have something pertinent to say. Otherwise, you just add to, even complicate the mystery – not helpful when your listeners face a piece couched in advanced musical language.

After interval, we struck a French vein. First came Lili Boulanger’s D’un soir triste, the short-lived composer’s last score which exists in three formats: piano trio, piano and cello duet, and orchestral. This is sombre music that isn’t just sad but climaxes in a powerful, tragic outburst before sinking back to a resigned recollection at the end. If anything was notable in its bleak passage, it came in Go’s dynamic control across the long chain of right-hand 9th chords with which the piano sustains the initial and concluding melodic action, such as it is.

As for Winther and Valve, their most impressive moments came in doubled passages, like the passionate threnody from bar 66 to bar 73; and later, another outpouring that began almost menacingly at bar 170, then broadened to a full-throated plaint from bar 178 to bar 183. But, for all that the work was written by a dying woman, the emotional environment offers more starkness than you’d expect from a contemporary of Debussy and Ravel; this was a writer who demonstrated an impressive rigour of intent right up to the last E minor murmurs.

Concluding the recital, the ensemble played the Ravel Piano Trio of 1914: a welcome regular on many programs using this instrumental format and well-known to those of us who frequent Melbourne’s chamber music competitions. I doubt if I can offer anything by way of novel commentary on this reading which unfolded cleanly enough, although you had to query some dynamic imbalances in the even-numbered movements where Go was – like every pianist essaying this work – hard-pressed.

For example, in the Pantoum, the piano contribution starting at Number 16 in my old Durand score sounded laboured, even those black-note glissandi, and the admittedly disjunct main theme statement at Number 19 jerked into position rather than slotting in as a clever-clever variant. Then, for the Passacaille, Go set a steady pace rather than a funereal one for the Tres large direction and the Winther/Valve combination followed her sweeping rise to the Number 6 climax of this sarabande with vital dynamic weight. Valve sounded under some articulation stress about four bars before Number 7, but his later exposure at Number 9 as the ground bass sinks slowly earthward impressed for its (muted) resonance and gravity.

I first heard this work from the Ormond Trio – violin John Glickman, cello John Kennedy, piano Nancy Weir – in one of those Melbourne University Monday lunchtime recitals in Wilson Hall back in 1962/3 and the only memory I have is of the astonishing weight of Weir’s chords in the Final that begin a bar before Number 12 and which ride over everything in the last seven bars of the score. Every so often, you come across a pianist who yields no ground here, letting the two strings haul away as best they can, heard only in the spaces between every powerful six-, seven- or eight-member clutch of keyboard notes.

Go, to my mind, let her partners enjoy too much of the foreground here so that each element of their arabesques, semiquaver repeated notes and trills was audible to a remarkably clear degree. As usual, the work’s conclusion was greeted with warm acclaim from this audience but, for my part, the massive tension that erupts in these last pages failed to materialise, possibly because Go was over-considerate of her colleagues. If the group ever re-forms for another reading of this great work, I hope she takes to the middle of the highway across this movement and stays there.

Diary June 2026

cliveoconnell

FIRST VOICES SHOWCASE

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Iwaki Auditorium, Southbank

Wednesday June 3 at 6:30 pm

Not what I was expecting. The voices aren’t those of writers who are having their first pieces played but members of the First Nations who have been around for a while, like Aaron Wyatt who is a Noongar man from Western Australia and a pretty old hand at conducting in Perth. Which is just what he’s doing this evening: taking the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra through three scores, one of them his own. This will be The Things Which Are Most Important Don’t Always Scream the Loudest, written in 2023 for the opening of a performing arts centre in Subiaco named after Bob Hawke, from whom the title comes – perhaps. It’s a fanfare that lasts three minutes, could begin in D minor, and appears to pack in an awful lot of indigenous references. Wyatt also conducts Nyrrimar Ngamatyata/To Lose Yourself at Sea by James Howard, a Jaadwa composer who possibly composed this work last year; it was certainly premiered by the MSO in that year, if ABC Radio National is to be believed. As well, we hear a fresh MSO piece: Mutations by Nicholas Astill, a Gamilaraay writer and researcher who is here presenting his first orchestral commission from the people playing it. So he is an actual first voice in both senses, I suppose. Tickets are a flat $15, but the MSO also charges almost half that in its $7 transaction fee, which is fiscally insane in these trying times.

WHERE SONG BEGAN

Bowerbird Collective

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday June 6 at 7:30 pm

The principle behind this recital from the Bowerbird Collective is that song began with birds. Well, I suppose it’s one way of looking at it – I would have preferred ascribing its origin to angels but that’s being uncharacteristically optimistic. In any case, the ensemble is an odd one. In the Recital Centre publicity for this event, the co-founders of the group – violinist Simone Slattery, cello Anthony Albrecht – are listed as separate guests; on the Bowerbird website, you can find a solid list of artists that have indulged in collaborations with the fundamental duo. Not tonight. Slattery and Albrecht themselves will present a nine-part unescorted program from all over the shop. We kick off with Arvo Part: his 1977 Fratres for violin alone. That will be fun as the only arrangement I know of this work in solo form is for piano. Brisbane-based Sarah Hopkins‘ Reclaiming the Spirit comes from 1993 and exists in many arrangements, but you’d have to guess the violin/cello one will emerge here. Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending from 1917 somehow will enjoy a release in what you’d have to anticipate will be a skeletal shape. Chris Williams wrote birds, songs, seas in 2017 specifically for these two musicians, extracting it from a larger work to do with convicts. A welcome dose of Maninyas comes with Ross Edwards‘ 1990 Ecstatic Dance No. 2, once again in a violin/cello format. Hurtle back temporally to Schmelzer’s Cucu Sonata in A minor of 1664, then nudge forward 50+ years into some Bach: the well-known opening to his Cello Suite No. 1 which comes (probably) from somewhere between 1717 and 1723. Anthochaera carunculata by David John Lang was written for Slattery – and this program – in 2017 and celebrates the red wattlebird. To end, a traditional (really?) indigenous hymn, Ngarra Burra Ferra, which has become a part of the Yorta Yorta contemporary culture because they wrote its lyrics. Tickets range from $69 to $89; Under 30s pay $30; everybody stumps up the MRC fee of between $4 and $8.50 per online order – the best argument I can think of for cash at the box office on the night.

DANIEL HOPE IN RECITAL

Classical Music Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday June 9 at 7:30 pm

The highly enterprising South African-born violinist Daniel Hope is back after a twelve-year gap, collaborating with pianist Marie Sophie Hauzel in a strange program that has one solid work as its conclusion after some odd predecessors, a few of them more easily seen as encore scraps. The duo begin with Enescu’s triplet-rich Impromptu concertant in G flat Major (that’s a key you don’t see much of) from 1903, then move to Faure’s Andante in B flat of 1897. Both pleasant show-pieces, both fine salon music. I’ve encountered the Sonatine of 1893 by Dvorak in a transcription for flute and piano and its four movements stretch to about 20 minutes’ uncomplicated playing time; it was written for the composer’s children and shows it. Then come two Mendelssohn bagatelles in transcription: the eloquent On Wings of Song from 1834, which you sometimes hear in its original vocal format; and Witches’ Song, one of the Op. 8 set of twelve lieder written between 1824 and 1827. Hope balances his Dvorak with Elgar’s Violin Sonata: a three-movement construct lasting about 25 minutes, generated in the grim year of 1918 and recorded by Hope 25 years ago. Your normal tickets range between $95 and $140. Then there’s a selection of others; a Pay What You Can (a bit extra topping up the top price), a reduced price (down $20), a lower-priced ($30/$35 under the regular), and a $30 for the $95 regular seats if you’re struggling. No matter: everybody will have to cope with the Recital Centre’s $4-to-$8.50 transaction fee for online/phone orders – Congregavit nos in unum . . .

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS IN CONCERT

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Wednesday June 10 at 7:30 pm

As we all know, this is the second in J.K. Rowling’s celebrated series of tales about the boy wizard, and in it she documents the next bout in his ongoing struggles against Voldemort, this time in the persona of an old Hogwarts boy, Tom Riddle. Apart from enjoyable jaunts like the flying car, the mandrake transformations, and the encounters with Moaning Myrtle, the film is enlivened by the presence of Kenneth Branagh, playing the magnificently egotistical Gilderoy Lockhart: a Dark Arts teacher for the ages with absolutely no talent for much except self-aggrandisement. And there’s lots of seat-edge mayhem in Harry’s final confrontation with the basilisk as he saves his future wife from death, with suitably gripping musical support from John Williams‘ score, in which construction he was assisted by William Ross, following the centuries-old precedent of Renaissance painters and sculptors. And they say you can’t teach a new dog old tricks. This project is selling very well for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, which will be directed by Filipino veteran of these events, Gerard Salonga. Admission costs you between $86 and $161; concession card holders and children are treated with equal contempt by being given a $5 discount. Everybody has to meet the MSO’s $7 transaction fee for each online or phone order – passable if there are ten of you, totally unreasonable for a single-ticket booking.

This program will be repeated on Thursday June 11 and Friday June 12 at 7:30 pm, and on Saturday June 13 at 1 pm.

DORIC STRING QUARTET & LLOYD VAN’T HOFF

Musica Viva Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday June 16 at 7 pm

Since they were last here, the Doric String Quartet members have changed. No: that’s not quite right. Two of them are new: Maia Cabeza is now first violin, and Emma Wernig is the current viola. Ying Xue continues as second violin and foundation member John Myerscough has been cellist since the group began in 1998. Will that make a difference to the ensemble’s ‘sound’? Of course it will, particularly as we have no grounds of comparison: as far as I can see, the ensemble hasn’t issued any CDs since this personnel realignment. They’re banging the nationalist drum with Britten’s Three Divertimenti of 1936, a ten-minute work the group recorded in 2019. Furthering the patriotic cause, we hear Thomas Ades‘ Alchymia of 2023 which will bring Lloyd Van’t Hoff into the mix for this four-movement sequence of transformations; the Australian musician will be playing a basset clarinet because nothing says alchemy like that instrument. It’s back to your old-time repertoire for the night’s second half with Beethoven’s Razumovsky No. 1 in F: the composer’s self-launch into a new and challenging style of writing in this form, after which nothing was ever the same for both audiences and performers. Normal tickets cost between $65 and $163; concession holders and students pay $18, $15 and $12 less in the three top seating divisions; Under 40s cough up $49, Under 18s $20. As with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, there is a transaction fee charged of a flat $7 which you might avoid by turning up on the night, although the space is currently (May 9) pretty full.

ITALIAN SERENATAS

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday June 18 at 7 pm

The publicity for this Australian Brandenburg Orchestra event is heavy on hype, light on detail, but we make what we can of what’s on offer. The program moves across the Italian Baroque, focused on four cities: Venice, Florence, Naples and Rome. Leading us on this pilgrimage will be a baritone expert in this period, Renato Dolcini, and the Brandenburgers’ director-from-the-harpsichord, Paul Dyer. We joyfully encounter several significant names: Vivaldi (that covers Venice), Corelli (so Rome is accounted for, but did he write any vocal music that has survived?), Brescianello (a Mass, an opera, two cantatas but he stayed pretty much all of his professional life in Stuttgart), Falconieri (Naples-Parma-Rome-Naples producing quite a few vocal works), Giulio Caccini and his daughter Francesca (both active, if not dominant, writers for voice in Florence). The bumf’s adjectives fly in superlative directions – ‘bold, stylish, unforgettable’, ‘vibrant’, ‘lavish’, ‘opulent’, ‘expressive’ – but you have to regain your feet with the realization that the concert is un-staged: what you get is pure singing and playing – of a high calibre, to be sure, but not as colourful as it sounds . . . unless you’re a Baroque aficionado, in which case, rapture awaits. Seat prices differ between performances but tonight’s are cheaper, starting at $45 and swooping to $167, with some substantial reductions for concession holders, less handsome for seniors, $20 anywhere except the top stratum for students, $36 for Under 40s with the same proviso. You still pay between $4 and $8.50 if booking online or by phone; currently, about a quarter of the hall is available.

This program will be repeated on Saturday June 20 at 5 pm and on Sunday June 21 at 5 pm.

ABC CLASSIC 100 IN CONCERT

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday June 19 at 7:30 pm

Has the ABC’s annual quiz stopped already? The one where you’re asked to nominate what you think is the greatest piece of music (this year, ‘of All Time’)? It would seem so because the cast of participants is set out on the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra‘s website. Strange, as the cut-off date for entries is actually on May 28. Still, going with the flow, we note that Benjamin Northey will be conducting and no doubt relishing his other function as creative director, which probably means he gets to talk. As well, the ABC proposes one of the presenters/hosts of its The Piano series: Andrea Lam. Billed for her participation as a ‘vocal’, Koa, Kuku Yalanji and Wakka Wakka soprano Nina Korbe is doomed to perform operatic highlights. Another face from The Piano, pianist CJ Jones visits from across Bass Strait to perform who knows what. MSO concertmaster Natalie Chee and associate principal cello Rachael Tobin will enjoy solo exposure, and the MSO Chorus will participate, probably in such deathless numbers as I Still Call Australia Home and Up There, Cazaly. I’ve not been to one of these events (this is the fourth) but I’ve seen a televised version and it struck me that an awful lot of chatting went on – for a concert. Anyway, the organizers are presenting the program twice, which means there’s an audience for it. Tickets are still available, but not many. Standard seats cost between $59 and $109; concession holders pay a munificent $5 less. Everybody has to meet the $7 transaction fee if you book online/by phone. Sorry but, if they’re going to broadcast the concert live, why drag yourself out on a Melbourne winter’s night for a program packed with pieces that you might not like and which you will be hearing in (generally, based on my one experience) truncated form, anyway?

This program will be repeated on Saturday June 20 at 2 pm.

JAMES EHNES WITH ORION WEISS

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday June 19 at 7:30 pm

I’ve always had a lot of time for James Ehnes, the personable Canadian violinist: for his prodigious repertoire, for his fluidity of production, for the restraint and depth he brings to his interpretations. Is he alone in these respects? No, but he is also ever-reliable; it’s impossible to think of one occasion when his playing sounded sub-par, and par for him is a level that few can sustain. Anyway, here he is in recital with Orion Weiss, a well-travelled American pianist who has collaborated with Ehnes in past years. Tonight, the pair collaborate in three major sonatas: the benevolent Brahms No. 1 in G from 1878-9, Debussy’s short and sprightly exercise from 1917 which was his last major composition, and the Grieg No. 3 in C minor which was finished in 1887 and is his most popular work in this form. All are three movements long, which is not that remarkable as only Brahms wrote a four-movement violin sonata. To introduce themselves, Ehnes and Weiss play Korngold’s Suite from his 1919 music for Much Ado about Nothing: four movements of brilliant scene-setting that prove to be touching and amusing by turns – which alternating reactions strike me as typical of the play itself. Tickets cost between $79 and $139 full price; concessions for middling seats can be bought for $20 less; Under 40s pay $49 for the same mid-price places. Everybody pays the $4-to-$8.50 transaction fee imposed by the Recital Centre if they book online or by phone. At the moment (May 10), the hall is half-empty and I don’t think the gallery is in use on this occasion.

SPOTLIGHT

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday June 25 at 7:30 pm

You have two forces in the spotlight during this program from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under German conductor Anja Bihlmaier who, judging from her website, isn’t that engrossed by her Australian tour that takes in four nights in Sydney, three nights here, and two in Perth. The focus in this night’s second half is on the ensemble which essays Bartok’s 1943 Concerto for Orchestra, one of the composer’s more popular scores and a showcase for its performers, especially in the second movement’s instrumental duets. Also something of a fabulous fabric, Bihlmaier opens this brief program with Strauss’s Rosenkavalier Suite of 1945; well, sort of Strauss’s but more probably put together by conductor Artur Rodzinski who directed the first performance. All the opera’s hits are there, including the ‘Mit mir’ waltz. As for an individual spotlight, that will shine on the MSO’s principal oboe Johannes Grosso who will give us the solo line in Mozart’s Concerto in C Major of 1777, a work that many of us know as a flute concerto that the composer transcribed in a vain attempt to flesh out a commission. For all that, it’s a sterling work for oboe and one of the two that defines/confines the instrument’s repertoire in that form. Seats cost between $51 and $139; concession holders get in for a game-changing $5 cheaper; children are admitted for $20; everyone pays the $7 fee if booking online or by phone. At the moment (May 10), plenty of good and poor seats are available, especially in the stalls.

This program will be repeated in Costa Hall, Geelong on Friday June 26 ay 7:30 pm and back in Hamer Hall on Saturday June 27 at 2 pm.

THE CORONATION OF POPPEA

Victorian Opera

Palais Theatre, St. Kilda

Tuesday June 30 at 7:30 pm

It’s been a number of years since I last saw this Monteverdi opera. I can vaguely recall a production carried out in South Melbourne decades ago that obfuscated more than enlightened, thanks to its directorial oddity. Then came an Opera Australia production in 1993 that brought out the Italian composer’s inner punk. Now comes a new production from Victorian Opera that has several daunting prospects dangling. The original score of 1643 has been revised by Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin, to a stage where there are infusions of jazz to brighten up an otherwise pedestrian night at the Baroque. Further, the time has changed from the 62 CE court of Nero to a mafioso club of the 1980s; surprising they’ve left the environment in the same country, but then, the singers will be working in Italian. The bright minds behind this re-incarnation are conductor Chad Kelly who has ‘realised’ the performing edition in use; the text and vocal lines have been adapted by Alan Hicks; Sam Strong directs; sets and costumes come about through Anna Cordingley. Good luck to them all. And even more kind wishes for the cast headed by Samuel Dundas (Nero), Meechot Mareero (Poppea), Jeremy Kleeman (Ottone), Margaret Trubiano (Ottavia), and David Greco (Seneca). As well, there’ll be three others, you assume, to impersonate the god/goddesses who clutter Busenello’s libretto. In its original form, this is a lengthy opera and definitely gains from aggressive staging; this production lasts two hours, which includes an interval. If you’re happy with all of this, tickets will cost you between $39 and $175 – one of the more sensational spreads I’ve come across anywhere (except opera). You also have a ‘handling fee’ of ‘from $7.80’ which to my ears sounds menacing; more so than usual.

This production will be repeated on Thursday July 2 at 7:30 pm and on Saturday July 4 at 7:30 pm.