Month: September 2026

Short bursts of whimsy

cliveoconnell

BROKEN WORDS

Susie Hodder-Williams, Chris Caldwell, Harry Rylance

Move Records MCD 677

Australian composer Frank Millward spruiks his wares on this Move Records CD but we hear only three of them. Title work Broken Words, like its companion pieces, is a duo – in this instance, for flute (Susie Hodder-Wilson) and piano (Harry Rylance); in fact, the composer calls his score a sonata. It’s a product of 2023 and has three movements: Broken Words, and (conjunctionitis), Pronouncing the Noun Baroque. Next we have _Ruptions which asks for saxophone (Chris Caldwell) and piano (Rylance). Here, the three movements for this 2024 creation are even more cryptic: E, Ab, Inter (it helps if you insert a silent ‘ruption’ after each title). To end, #6 Bag of Tells, written for flute and baritone saxophone, was also produced in 2024.

That seems plain enough, but it isn’t. Broken Words has Hodder-Wilson play three instruments, one per movement in the order concert flute, alto flute, piccolo. The final track/work, in which six small poems precede each of the movements (read by Hodder-Wilson), was originally written for flute and bassoon. As for _Ruptions, Caldwell also alternates in his instruments: baritone saxophone, then bass clarinet, finally alto saxophone. This work was originally written for bassoon and piano. The whole CD exercise lasts for a touch over 44 minutes, the works decreasing in length as the disc proceeds – 18′ 20″, 14′ 43″, 11′ 02″.

It’s probably telling nothing to anybody who knows Millward’s work but he appears to have a preoccupation with verbal communication as it relates to music. That’s hard to take in as a simple matter of performance mechanics where you can more obviously treat words by setting them. Not in this CD’s case where the composer attempts something difficult and completely subjective; he writes in the accompanying leaflet about music speaking to the subconscious and, because each of us has one, the message received is always different.

In his flute sonata, Millward proposes that its outer movements show the executants coming to grips with ‘fragmentation’ – which they do, as the first of them reaches a clear resolution of instrumental commentary that operates in a kind of benign disjunction for part of the players’ journey. That sort of dislocation, two voices speaking at odds, doesn’t come through as a constant, though; more often, the flute and piano conduct a dialogue evenly with few moments of brazen contradiction, if you like. But not much. In the third Baroque movement, the interleaving and welding of lines shows up more closely in what I think is meant to be whimsy across pages reminiscent of Pulcinella; if Baroque, very late.

What conflict there is in this section appears to be harmonic, although there’s not much of that going on. As for the middle conjunctional movement, this strikes me as admirably inter-dependent, the pages’ casing a solid construct with alto flute and piano intercutting as finely as in the Poulenc sonata, and with just as much linear sympathy. Far from any sign of rupture, this lengthy meandering impresses for its coherence, even if it smacks of 1940s Paris before the revolutionaries came into their own.

When it comes to the one-time bassoon sonata, you have to wait some time before we reach the first movement’s E_ruption, which comes in the last bars and dissipates quickly into some smouldering piano lava. The movement is elliptical, both baritone sax and piano crossing each other’s pathways with determination, but then, as in the preceding flute sonata, forming a sort of coherence of utterance that makes the momentary mild explosion more striking than you’d expect. For reasons I can’t quite explain, it seemed to me that the players were displaying some tenativeness in these pages, as though waiting to be surprised by what the other was up to and so poised, in a politely reserved fashion, for what came next.

My fault, probably, but I was expecting something a bit more disjunct in Ab_ruptions, a suggestion of violence as one part separated from another (possibly) larger mass. What we hear is a sprightly (eventually) duet for bass clarinet and piano with a carefully planned inter-connectedness, one line making allowances and space for the other, the whole following a regular path set up in the piano’s left-hand during the opening 6/4 bars of regular quavers, like a mutating imitation of a cantus firmus. In its outward presentation, the movement is stolid, steadfastly refusing to break away, or up, into lesser or greater shards.

Easiest of all is Inter_ruptions which begins (and mainly continues) as a modestly energetic tarantella, couched in D Major at the start and subscribing to a 12/8 time signature which seems to vary only slightly as the movement progresses, leavened by a few rhythmically stroppy breaks and a tendency to opt for a 3/4 cross-pulse. Living up to its title, the dance enjoys a few deviations, none of them too extreme to impede the underpinning forward thrust or long enough to unsettle the listener with unfamiliar matter. I might have been more enthusiastic about these pages if the players had pushed themselves more heftily into the score, although, to be fair to them, the material is sparse in nature, not encouraging of flamboyant e_xplosions.

What Millward means by ‘tells’ is a problem, although I think he’s referring to those quirky grimaces or gestures that gamblers make that reveal the nature of the cards they are holding. Going a long way further than this, Millward is considering society’s ability to read and interpret all modes of communication, not just giveaway tics, to the point where we have to cope with material like the ‘fake news’ that the current American Buffoon-in-Charge spouts while accusing others of creating it.

As prefaces to the music of #6 Bag of Tells, we hear short poems – two each of 3, 4 and 5 lines – called Barefoot, Seven, Roamer, Try ‘n’ Tell ’em, I Said, You Said, and Told. None of them is memorable or offers more than simple observations or suggests anything but an ordinary set of scenarios. The music holds more interest although you’d be pressed to find relationships betweeen poem and flute/sax duo. In the first, the reed makes a constant ‘tongue on reed’ sound in its constant quaver bass, which the flute eventually mimics.

The next lives up to its name by starting in 7/8 time, although by the end this has swollen to 9/8. The instruments start out at odds in motif- and phrase-lengths but reach a concordance near the end. By now, you have become used to the two-part invention suggestions as well as Millward’s quirky harmonic vocabulary which operates on a mild level of dissonance that can just as easily slide into a sudden pair of Major 6ths. Roamer has the flute indulging in a few glissando slides, and the motivic imitation appears to be more tightly wound. This piece reaches a strange conclusion with both players weaving around a fixed pitch, achieving parity and moving out of consonance in a sort of haze, suggestive of the title’s proposed dearth of direction.

Try ‘n’ Tell ’em is a canon at the 4th, started by the flute and moving regularly for most of its length until near the end when the regular sequential motion becomes fractured and the two lines end up in a splenetic contest of sorts: a feisty ending to a piece that Millward calls a gigue. Despite its final suggestions of inconclusiveness, I Said, You Said is one of the more amiable of the ‘tells’, subtitled by the composer as a Graceful Courante and operating for much of its length on ‘white’ notes. Still, the piece has suggestions of discord, giving substance to the preliminary poem’s statement: ‘You said what I said/But not the same’.

Told, with the extra heading of Bird like chirping (which the flute finds easier to realize than the baritone sax), is another friendly duet operating on a near-G Major basis, hopping and pirouetting to a satisfyingly formal denouement. But, as with most of these pieces, I can’t see a correlation between the spoken word and the played sounds. This slight score winds up a moderately intriguing disc that strikes me as holding music packed with inferences but lacking solidity – or perhaps I mean stolidity. And that finding betrays this ‘listener’s interpretation’ – the fundamental, age-old problem with which Millward faces us.

Diary October 2026

cliveoconnell

DUSKLIT

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday October 1 at 7:30 pm

A definite gloaming reference appears in this program via a freshly-written work by New Zealand/Australian composer-academic Miriama Young ; DuskLit Meditations, commissioned by the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra. Furthering the composer’s standing as head of composition at the University of Melbourne’s Conservatorium of Music, students from that body will also be sitting/standing alongside regular MCO members as a sort of support group for their creative queen. In a score not really associated with eventide, the combined forces will take on Mendelssohn’s sun-drenched Italian Symphony, written in 1833 and, throughout its first movement, giving us a most benevolent and endearing musical picture of the country as it might have been when the composer first saw it in 1830 – not the wretched Bicycle Thieves reality it has become over the last century. In the evening’s centre stands Andrea Lam, beloved of the ABC’s television programmers, who will be soloist in Mozart’s 1785 Piano Concerto No. 21 in C which holds a central andante of melting emotional depth, on a par with the quiter moments in the last act of the following year’s The Marriage of Figaro. A potential relationship to dusk, then, if overshadowed by its surrounds which are well outside any suggestions of so tief im Abendrot country. Tickets range from $75 to $150 per adult, concession/senior come in at $15 or $20 less, full-time student and child are $30 across the hall, and the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50 continues to blight your financial landscape if you book online or by phone.

This program will be repeated on Sunday October 4 at 2:30 pm.

SIOBHAN STAGG + QUATUOR AGATE + JONATHAN WARE

Melboiurne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday October 6 at 7:30 pm

Here’s an essay in filling out your acquaintance with Genesis – the book, not the band – from a female perspective. Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg allies herself with the Quatuor Agate from France – violins Adrien Jurkovic and Juliette Beauchamp (recently taking over from Thomas Descamps who has moved into conducting, poor sod), viola Raphael Pagnon, cello Simon Iachemet – as well as American pianist Jonathan Ware. Each half of their program opens with a Hildegard reponsory and antiphon – O vis aeternitatis and O quam mirabilis est – both dealing with the wonder of the creation of man (in the first, woman gets a sort of guernsey). The night’s first half continues with Faure’s ten-part song cycle La Chanson d’Eve, written in 1906-10 and offering an oscillation between the first woman’s perceptions and meditations on nature. Then Ukrainian composer Anna Korsun‘s Last Flight of 2023, commissioned by the Agates, followed by our own Anne Cawrse‘s 2020 Advice to a Girl for mezzo+string quartet (or it could be the piano trio version), with Chausson’s 1899 Chanson perpetuelle (actually about 6′ 30″ to 7′ in length) for all participants ending the first half of the evening. After the antiphon, we hear some Australiana in settings of Judith Wright: John Rodgers‘ Failure of communication from 2015, Andrew Ford‘s brief After the Visitors of 2014, and David Hirschfelder‘s 2015 To a Child – all for soprano and string quartet. Then a detour to Sri Lankan/Canadian musician Dinuk Wijeratne for his The Disappearance of Lisa Gherardini of 2022 concerning a heist of the Mona Lisa and which provided a fruitful prize for the Agates at a Banff competition in 2022. Another rarity arrives in Sibelius’ Luonnotar of 1913 in the composer’s own arrangement for soprano and piano; bringing the program’s message home fully, it concerns the creation of the earth by a Finnish goddess. Finishing us off is Medtner, beginning with his Op. 1bis The Angel, the vocal version of a piano piece; followed by the first of his 1924 Op. 46 Seven Songs, Praeludium, to a Goethe text. Tickets fall between $79 and $139, concessions $20 cheaper for middle-of-the-road seats, Under 40s paying a flat $49 for the same middling seats. Everyone who orders online or by phone pays the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of anywhere from $4 to $8.50. The Hall’s upper level is not being used and the stalls are possibly half full at the moment (September 19), so I’d be tempted to turn up on the night with cash.

MARSHALL MCGUIRE EMERGING COMPOSER COMMISSIONS

Melbourne Recital Centre/University of Melbourne

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday October 7 at 2:30 pm

Named in honour of the recently departed (from the job) director of programming at the Melbourne Recital Centre, these commissions celebrate new Australian compositions; in this case, we hear from Nicole Brady and Arie Madden Welti, both University of Melbourne graduates and both yet to decide on what to call their new scores. We’ll be hearing from the two-person ensemble Bronzewing, comprising Katie Yap‘s viola and voice, and Donald Nicholson on harpsichord and electronics. Charlie Sdraulig is the program’s host. I’d suggest that these two new works will be substantial as the program is scheduled to last for 90 minutes (with or without interval isn’t clear). It’s not possible to recommend this event because the content is clouded in mystery, made no clearer by the Bronzewing group’s claim to play everything from Hildegard to Jarre, and with no indication as to where on that spectrum we find Yap and Nicholson tonight, let alone Brady and Welti. On the positive/negative side, tickets are $10 only but you have to find almost half as much again for the Recital Centre’s $4 transaction fee if you order online or by phone. It’s a very specialized event, so I’d be tempted to risk turning up on the afternoon wih lots of 10 cent coins.

ISATA KANNEH-MASON

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday October 9 at 7:30 pm

This scion of the clan, Isata Kanneh-Mason, is a complete unknown to me – unlike her cellist brother Sheku who distinguished himself by playing a solo at the surprise-on-every-corner wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. His older sister Isata is a pianist and is featuring three well-known masterworks from the repertoire in her recital. She begins and ends with Beethoven: the Moonlight Sonata No. 14 of 1801, then the Waldstein Sonata No. 21 of three years later. Not sure why she has decided to give us these well-worn works, unless she has found a new interpretative vein. In between she is presenting Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit triptych, written in 1908 and a very difficult score for any pianist, in particular its rapid-fire Scarbo conclusion. As well, Kanneh-Mason will perform two works by Bulgarian-British composer Dobrinka Tabakova: a short Nocturne from 2008 which is sextuplet doodling with few melodic traces, and the more substantial three-part Halo of 1999 – an exercise in piano harmonics. Tickets range from $79 to $139, with concessions for middling tickets coming in at $20 cheaper, while Under 40s get these middle-level seats for a flat $49. But really, nothing’s flat with the Recital Centre, which charges a transaction fee of anywhere from $4 to $8.50 if you book online or by phone. The upper level of the Murdoch Hall isn’t being used on this occasion, and the stalls are at the moment close to half-empty. Once again, I’d be tempted to front the box office on the night.

CHRISTIAN LI PLAYS BRAHMS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Saturday October 10 at 7:30 pm

Soloist in this program is Australian violinist Christian Li – all of 18 years old and taking on the formidable Brahms concerto of 1878. This work is a major element of the repertoire and we’ve heard some brilliant performances, both live and recorded. Is Li going to open our eyes/ears with a new view of this score that many of us know all too well? Give him the benefit of the doubt: he may show us something new or unexplored through his interpretation. He’s appearing under the heading of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Young Artist in Association, which strikes me as being a powerful sponsorship. On either side of this, Tianyi Lu, the organization’s ex-assistant conductor, conducts Elfrida Andree’s Andante Quasi Recitativo of 1877, and a suite from Tchaikovsky’s 1876 ballet Swan Lake. About the Swedish composer, I know nothing, to quote Manuel, but her Andante is brief – for strings only, with divisi cello from the start (nobody else); 57 bars long and playing for less than five minutes; in E Major and a focused exploration of its opening violin motif; the material striking its creator as good enough to be used several times in different compositions. As for the Tchaikovsky collation, the suite published after his death could have been determined by him, or perhaps not. It usually comprises six excerpts, although there’s one floating around which takes in nine chunks of the score. Standard tickets move from $75 to $127, concessions are a whole $5 cheaper, Under 18s pay $20 – and everybody faces the MSO’s supercharge of $8 if ordering online or by phone. From the MSO website, you can see that there are very few seats available, apart from 70 or so in the unliveable balcony, so you probably have to give in to this body’s voracious appetite for money.

PEKKA KUUSISTO: LEGENDS & LUMINARIES

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday October 10 at 7:30 pm

Finnish violinist and composer Pekka Kuusisto returns to the Australian Chamber Orchestra as guest director and soloist, opening his account with Mozart’s The Magic Flute; well, bits of it as arranged by the visitor. I’m imagining a sort of harmoniemusik for strings with a big dab of Papageno/Papagena. Then Kuusisto plays the solo in American writer Nico Muhly‘s Shrink: Concerto for violin and strings, a co-commission by the ACO and recorded by the violinist in 2021 with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, although it enjoyed its world premiere in 2019 in this hall when the ACO Collective accompanied Kuusisto. All of this is rather odd as the work is listed in the composer’s catalgue as being composed in 2021. Anyway, we rush on to another American with Ellen Reid‘s West Coast Sky Eternal, a fifteen minute score from 2023 that begins and ends in the clouds after a hectic trip downwards. Then we conclude with another arrangement, this time an anonymous one, of Mendelssohn’s 1845 String Quintet No. 2 in B flat, originally written for the usual format of two violins, two violas and cello and here taking in the reinforcement of a double bass or two. So it’s a zig-zag of a program that begins and ends in orthodoxy and moves to the recent/present in its middle, which is just how Kuusisto likes it, they say. The Hall divides into five sections for the ACO, tickets starting at $49 and climaxing at $166; full-time students can get into the lower three ranges for $30 while Under 35s pay a fitting $35 for the same limited areas. Booking by phone or online costs $7 for top-price seats which is close to unavoidable in a smallish space like this one. And, of course, it’s unfair, even if the fee goes down for cheaper seats.

This program will be repeated on Sunday October 11 in Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne at 2:30 pm, and again on Monday October 12 in the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm.

SCHUMANN AND FAURE PIANO QUARTETS

Melbourne Recital Centre and Kristian Chong

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Monday October 12 at 7 pm

We hear two pieces only in this hour-long recital from Kristian Chong and three of his Melbourne Symphony Orchestra friends – assistant concertmaster Tair Khisambeev, principal viola Christopher Moore, and assistant principal cello Elina Faskhi. So far, so familiar. And so is what they’re all presenting. First up comes Faure No. 1 in C minor of 1879, which I’ve found is more popular on chamber music programs than the more involving second essay in the form by this composer but the earlier work shows an impressive lyrical sweep, an amplitude that shines through in the finest Romantic chamber works. Complementing this score, we hear Schumann in E flat, the 1842 companion piece to the composer’s more immediately appealing Piano Quintet, yet this four-movement gem seems more concise, less packed with busy work than its partner, also in E flat. I know it’s another ad hoc congregation of musicians banded together for this event, but they all have impressive qualifications and Chong is the most amiable of catalytic musical agents. A standard ticket costs $55, a concession $45, a student $20. For the top price, if you book online or by phone, you pay a transaction fee of $7 which strikes me as unduly inflated, especially as concession and student tickets attract the same charge. How can this be? I know the Salon has limited places but why penalise students by imposing such a ridiculously high impost?

PAUL LEWIS: MOZART+

Muisca Viva Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday October 13 at 7 pm

The eminent British pianist, perennially circling around specific composers, has centred on Mozart this year. Paul Lewis will be playing two of the composer’s piano sonatas: No 10 in C from 1783 and No. 14 in C minor written in the following year – one of only two in the catalogue not in a major key. They’re an interesting choice, celebrating the composer’s versatility: in the first, all delight and elegance; the second, a Beethoven precursor with a florid central E flat Major adagio . Between these two investigations, Lewis plays some French music. The more familiar is Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse of 1904 which tests every pianist’s ability to weld material into a coherent unit and which I’ve never heard better achieved than in Gieseking’s reading recorded in 1954 (or been stunned by a reading more rapidly completed than his version of 1938). As the evening’s complete unknown, Lewis is giving us extracts from Poulenc’s 15 Improvisations pour le piano written between 1932 and 1959. Don’t know why he’s not playing the lot: they all add up to about 23 minutes. Add that to the Debussy’s 6′, Mozart No. 10 averaging 19′ and No 14 coming in at about 20′ and you have a total of 68 minutes playing time. Even with a 20-minute interval, that comes in at about 90 minutes but the recital is scheduled to last 2 hours and 40 minutes; perhaps Lewis is going to do a lot of talking. The ticketing is a riot: Musica Viva divides the Murdoch Hall into four, prices starting at $65 and apexing at $163, concessions applying to the top three brackets and cutting off $18, $15 and $12 respectively, while Under 40s pay $49 and Under 18s $20. There are very few seats left (25 stalls, 10 circle), so you have to face up to the Recital Centre’s offensive transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50 for online and phone booking.

MOZART SALIERI & PLEYEL

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday October 15 at 7 pm

Paul Dyer and his Australian Brandenburg Orchestra have found some older scores to precede the major work on this program: Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 in E flat, written in 1788 and less frequently heard than its companion symphonies, Nos. 40 and 41. But it is a brilliantly enticing work, packed with surprises from adagio introduction to chattering final allegro. For their first creaking novelty, the orchestra gives the Australian premiere of Salieri’s Sinfonia to the opera Cublai, gran kan de’Tartari, which the composer wrote in 1788. Because of its satirical content relating to monarchies, the work was censored out of performance potential, so never heard in Salieri’s lifetime. And Mozart thought he had it tough two years earlier with Figaro. It’s a short experience because the sinfonia lasts less than four minutes. But we next enjoy a world premiere in Pleyel’s Concerto for violone in E flat which musicologists are almost prepared to date as being written in 1779, the work long misattributed to contrabass virtuoso Johannes Mathias Sperger. Tonight we hear the ABO’s own double bass Robert Nairn as soloist and wish him well as he takes us on this completely novel journey, through Pleyel’s Allegro, Adagio and Rondo with the soloist tuned to a scordatura D for that little bit of extra Viennese spice. Ticket details are a nightmare: the ABO divides Murdoch Hall into six levels of aural excellence with $45 the lowest and $167 the premium. Concessions come in at $61 off for the top rank and $31 remission for the fourth layer – no concessions for the bottom two strata. Seniors get much less discount, students are charged $20 for the five lesser sets of seats, while Under 40s pay $36 for places in the second level. Everybody has to negotiate the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of anything between $4 and $8.50 which, as always, is too much for the miniscule service provided for booking by phone or online.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 17 at 5 pm and on Sunday October 18 at 5 pm.

HOPE & BRAVERY: SHOSTAKOVICH & TOMASI

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday October 15 at 7:30 pm

You won’t find a stranger mix than this two-work program. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra plays under American Jonathon Heyward, presently conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra after having packed a wealth of musical experience into his 34 years. The night’s soloist is American saxophonist Steven Banks who is about the same age as Heyward and will be fronting Tomasi’s two-movement Concerto for Alto Saxophone of 1949. A score with underlying jazz suggestions, it’s notable for its first movement irregular rhythms with a penchant for 5/4, and an accompanied cadenza. Then interval and back for the Shostakovich Symphony No. 7, Leningrad, which the composer wrote most of in that besieged city during 1941. The composition has gone through several evaluations – as patriotic sincerity, Soviet propaganda, secretly anti-Stalin, overtly anti-Hitler, a low point in the composer’s output, one of his most universally inspiring achievements. Spare yourself all the angst. The score’s long progress to its powerful conclusion is an engrossing experience, even without the various contexts and programs that have been attached to it. Standard tickets cost between $75 and $139, concession holders enjoying a liberal $5 reduction in cost, Under 18s getting in for $20, with everyone paying the MSO’s transaction fee of $8 per order online or by phone. As usual, the booking website states that there are only 100 seats left in all three levels of Hamer Hall; those numbers turn up too often to be credible and I don’t think there’s a ravenous appetite for Tomasi or Shostakovich.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 17 at 2 pm.

SARAH GRUNSTEIN: BACH’S GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

Jacqui Bonner Marketing & Management

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Salon

Wednesday October 21 at 7 pm

An Australian-born pianist, Sarah Grunstein is making her assault on Bach’s marathon keyboard work tonight. I’ve not come across this performer before, probably because she spends a good deal of time in America, possibly because she is linked more to Sydney where she studied first with my last piano teacher, Nancy Salas. Because this recital is scheduled to last for 90 minutes, it is pretty clear that she will be playing all the repeats, each half of each variation heard twice. That’s something you can’t be sure of these days; in fact, the last three or four readings of the Goldbergs that I’ve heard proved to be half-arsed affairs with either no repeats or indulgence in a select few. So, to have an artist go the extra 45 minutes to give us a compleat picture is worth celebrating. Of course, Grunstein follows a long line of keyboard experts who have recorded these variations, canons and quodlibet but her background both here and in the USA is reassuring. Tickets are simplicity: standard $80, concession $40; no allowance for children – in fact, the Recital Centre blurb recommends that anyone in 15 should stay away. Couldn’t agree more. As for the notoriously changeable transaction fee for booking online or by phone, it’s $7 for both prices; great to see bare-faced avarice in action.

SIR STEPHEN HOUGH IN RECITAL

Classical Music Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday October 28 at 7:30 pm

Pianist Stephen Hough was made a Knight Bachelor in 2022 and, looking at this night’s title, would seem to be proud of the honour; sort of endearing in these times of (the former) Prince Andrew’s disgrace, the uncertainty surrounding an unprotected Sussex household, and the nasty revelations by a one-time brother-in-law about King Charles’s treatment of and attitude towards his first wife. Rising above this tawdry set of scenarios, Hough jumps all over the repertoire in his proffered program. He begins with Drei Klavierstucke by Schubert from 1828 which I have never come across in live performance; remarkable, considering their position in the composer’s output as written just before the last three piano sonatas. Another neglected piece comes in the final Intermezzo, that in E flat minor, from Brahms’ 6 Klavierstucke of 1893. Then a vault to Schoenberg’s 1911 Six Little Piano Pieces for which the title couldn’t be more appropriate. Come back a little – from the 1790s to the 1820s – for the Op. 110 Bagatelles by Beethoven, specifically the brief No. 10 in A Major; followed by the composer’s Waldstein Sonata No. 21 of 1804 where we settle in for something substantial after a bevy of brevities. Keeping up with the standard repertoire, Hough continues (after interval, you’d hope) with Schumann’s Carnaval from 1835 which moves from the declamatory to the pompous with everything in between. To end, the pianist presents his own arrangement of three excerpts from the Sherman brothers’ music for the 1964 film Mary Poppins which he produced for a 2022 Lang Lang CD. At this event, the Murdoch Hall is split into three price levels: standard seats are $90, $110, $140. After that come four other price ranges, depending on how much you’re willing/able to pay; don’t know if your candidacy is means-tested. In the end, you have to pay the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50, which rather saps at Classical Music Australia’s aim at accommodating the penury of us all in these straitened times.

MOSTLY MOZART – PIANO CONCERTO NO. 21

Melbourne Recital Centre & the Australian National Academy of Music

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday October 29 at 11 am

This concert lasts an hour only. We begin with an Australian piece: Nigel Westlake‘s 1984 Omphalo Centric Lecture quartet for marimbas, with punctuation from log drums with three pitches, a splash cymbal and a shaker. The piece seems rather cheerful in character when you consider the cosmic view of existence proposed by Paul Klee who painted the canvas from which this music takes its impetus. Having dealt with the Australian National Academy of Music‘s percussion section, conductor Philip Arkinstall takes another orchestral group or two through Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments, written in 1920 as a memorial for Debussy. The original calls for three flutes, alto flute, two oboes, cor anglais, three clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, and tuba; a later version omits the alto flute. It lasts less than ten minutes, like Westlake’s score. Then comes the main work which will be the inevitable total Mozart: his Piano Concerto No. 21 in C with Stefan Cassomenos as soloist and, if I read the publicity material correctly, he will also direct from the keyboard – which will probably be the case with Andrea Lam who plays this same concerto with the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra on October 1 (see above). The work asks for flute, pairs of oboes, bassoons, horns and trumpets, with timpani and the usual string band. And I’d definitely be expecting some original touches from this gifted, adventurous pianist. Standard tickets cost $59, concession a whopping reduction to $52, students and Under 40s both enjoying another startling decrease in cost to $49. You also, if ordering online or by phone, have to produce the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50, imposed for inexplicable reasons when you consider the work involved.

VOYAGER

Australian String Quartet

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday October 29 at 7 pm

For its latest excursion, the Australian String Quartet – violins Dale Barltrop and Francesca Hiew, viola Chris Cartlidge, cello Michael Dahlenburg – is presenting two formidable works from its format’s repertoire. The last time I heard the ensemble was in Brisbane at the Library attached to the Queensland Art Gallery where they played Bartok, but I can’t recall if it was the same as they’re essaying here: No 4 of 1928 in five movements and circumscribed by a massive arch form. After interval come more big guns with Beethoven’s String Quartet in B flat Op. 130, with the original/now-alternative Grosse Fuge finale to follow – or I hope so as it’s listed separately on the program. That makes up quite a task, getting through the quartet’s six movements, including that profound central cavatina, then fronting up for the jagged 16 minutes-plus fugue. Prior to their Bartok, the Australians are performing Irish violist-composer Garth Knox‘s Satellites, written in 2015 for the Kronos Quartet. This score falls into three movements: Geostationary, Spectral Sunrise, and Dimensions. Its language is an amalgam of perfectly assimilable motifs and string-specific effects, as in the first pages which involve a regular pizzicato ‘bass’ with a mesh of sound-delivery techniques and scraps that abruptly shine out; the Sunrise is strong on harmonics and suspense, while the final movement, like the first, is steady, here in a march-like rhythm, but throws around its mobile semiquavers with a frolicsome abandon that you sometimes come across in a snug, although probably not those moments (including the last) where all players flail at the air with their bows. Tickets go for $95, with $25 off for concession holders; Under 40s pay $40 and students get in for $15. All very reasonable but you have to meet the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of anywhere from $4 to $8.50 if you book online or by phone. At the moment, available stalls seats number about 300; the upstairs level of the Murdoch Hall isn’t being used. But a student ticket attracts a fee of $7; that’s the way to encourage the young – slug them half their ticket price for nothing.

BEYOND BOTANY BAY

Excelsis

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday October 30 at 7:30 pm

A choir that has been operating in this city for over a decade, Excelsis throws its talents around lavishly among the city’s Catholic parishes with the intention of brightening up their Sunday masses. Tonight, under musical director Tom Buchanan, the singers will take us through 14 Australian choral pieces in a program scheduled to last for 2 hours 30 minutes (which includes interval). They start with Paul Stanhope‘s This is our home from 2014, followed by Daniel Brinsmead‘s A Soft Day (written some time before 2015), then John Rotar‘s Tune my heart (also a probable date – 2022). A touch of Anzac Day nostalgia comes next with Eric Bogle‘s 1971 And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda as arranged by Nicholas Buc; Hush: On the Death of a Bush Church by Iain Grandage in 1993, the Benedictus from Dan Walker‘s 2014 Mass of Deliverance, and Joseph Twist‘s demanding Lux aeterna from 2011 all add up to a semi-liturgical triptych. Four works by Paul Jarman appear next: Warri and Yatungka of 2002, his 2019 Magna Est Veritas, Pemulwuy from 2006, and the premiere of The Heroes of Gundagai which I believe will be conducted by the composer. Sally Whitwell‘s Byron setting of She walks in beauty (probably a 2007 product), Across the Dark composed by Ben van Tienen (no date available: what is it with these choral composers?) to Michael Leunig’s words, and Ruth McCall‘s 2007 take on Banjo Paterson’s Waltzing Matilda lines bring this impressively catholic program to a close. But will it last for 150 minutes? Somewhere along the night’s progress, Wiradjuri guest soprano Shauntai Abdul-Rahman appears; don’t know where, don’t know when because I can’t track down all the scores. A standard ticket costs $40; the lavish reduction for concession holders is $5; and you have to cope with the Recital Centre’s transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50 if you book online or by phone. I’ve just checked on concession tickets and the fee is $7. The upper level(s) are not being used and the stalls are at the moment half-empty; I’d be tempted to turn up on the night with the smallest denominations you can get.

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS IN CONCERT

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday October 30 at 7:30 pm

I’ve seen this 1990 Tim Burton fantasy once but not in a cinema theatre, so I can’t speak to its effect on a viewer as part of the main. But I do remember feeling manipulated, and not in a welcome tonsorial way. Is Danny Elfman‘s score worth resuscitating? It doesn’t strike me as being exceptionally creative or striking and the more glutinous moments involving a choir tread a well-worn sentimental path. Still, there are three Tom Jones songs interpolated in the film and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra strings will get a good work-out. But you have to wonder if there’s a substantial audience for this tale, which at least comes to a satisfyingly unhappy end. Nicholas Buc conducts. Tickets range between $83 and &127; both concession holders and children pay $5 less, but everybody will pay the transaction fee of $8 per order if booking online or by phone. Which seems to me to be asking for a lot of money for going to the pictures. At the moment, seats are available on all three levels of Hamer Hall, less in the Circle than in the stalls or balcony. And I note that there are not the usual three, if not four, airings available. Still, there are doubtless fans out there who revel in the sight of Johnny Depp with his eyes wide open.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 31 at 7:30 pm.

NIGHT MUSIC

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday October 31 at 7:30 pm,

After some out-of-town performances in Sale and Cowes, this program arrives at the Recital Centre for its final iteration. Across half the night, our Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under concertmaster Natalie Chee will be playing music by Joe Chindamo, this year’s composer in residence with the MSO. Their program begins with his Fantasie auf Nachtmusik which is a re-imagination/re-evaluation of Mozart’s ever-popular serenade for strings of 1787. Composed in 2019 to a commission by the Perth Symphony Orchestra, this vision uses the original with glee, interleaving it with Chindamo’s abrasive flights of fancy. This will be followed by the jazz master’s new Flute Concerto with soloist Eliza Shephard, ABC Young Performer of the Year in 2022. I can’t find any information about Chindamo’s new score except that the MSO commissioned this concerto and it will have to be a substantial piece lasting about half an hour to help flesh out an event scheduled to last 100 minutes, including a 20-minute interval. The evening’s final offering is Mozart’s Linz Symphony No. 36 of 1783, brightened texturally by the presence of a pair of carefully employed trumpets and blessing the listener with vital delight in every one of its four movements. Standard tickets cost between $57 and $105, the concession cost coming in at a staggering $5 cheaper. Under 18s can get a seat for $20 but they, like everybody, will have to pay the MSO’s inordinately high transaction fee of $8 if ordering online or by phone. The event is selling well with only 76 places left in the Circle and the usual noncommittal ‘100+’ in the stalls.

Short-breathed miscellany

cliveoconnell

EXQUISITE HARMONIES

The Marais Project

Move Records MCD 676

Here is a remarkably chaste outing from Sydney’s period music ensemble, The Marais Project. We hear four performers – gamba and Marais founder Jennifer Eriksson, singer and violin Susie Bishop, gallichon Tommie Andersson, harpsichord Anthony Abouhamad. Gallichon, I hear you cry? It’s a bass lute, I’m told, popular in the 18th century for its continuo potential. As for what we hear, the group begin with an Abel sonata for gamba, of which instrument this pupil of Bach was a master; a Telemann fantasia for harpsichord and another fantasia ‘after Telemann’ from our harpsichordist-turned-composer; more Telemann in a gamba sonata; a Grande French Suite compiled by Eriksson which makes up nine tracks of content from Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, Louis de Caix d’Hervelois, Couperin, Marain Marais and Forqueray. Finally, Andersson has arranged The Acceptance by Biripi-Gamillaroi writer Troy Russell.

Comprising some 19 tracks, this CD is not a long one – about 53′ 30″, which averages out to about 2′ 50″ a section. The most substantial tracks – the Couperin piece for solo harpsichord, a gamba chaconne by Forqueray, the transparent Telmann keyboard fantasia and Abouhamad’s homage to that composer – settle just long enough to make their marks. But some of the other pieces make their points – what there are of them – in a startlingly short time. Not that you can put your trust in length – see Mahler v. Webern.

For most of this CD’s length, you can hear Abouhamad and Eriksson at work. Bishop appears only, I believe, on the last track which is dedicated to Russell’s much-arranged piece The Acceptance that involves all four performers, Bishop singing the composer’s poem as well as providing an occasional upper line. I believe we hear Andersson’s gallichon here only, although I’d like to be able to question some of the gamba/harpsichord duos where the bass line is very resonant and you could expect a touch of lute doubling; but no – it’s gamba+harpsichord only in the Baroque material.

The disc opens with the Abel Sonata in C Major Op. 9 No. 2. I’ve got a score open in front of me – the second printing for the composer from 1771 – and can’t find any similarities between what I’m hearing and the print. For one thing, this old Bremner edition of Opus 9 comprises six trio sonatas, of which No. 2 is in C Major but has only two movements as opposed to the three (Vivace, Adagio, Minuetto) on this recording. Not that it matters overmuch as the outline offered by gamba and harpsichord is clarity itself as Abel pays homage to his own instrument and its passing. Eriksson’s timbral quality is plain to the point of blandness, without a hint of vibrato and not much dynamic differentiation; all the interpretation’s colour comes from Abouhamad and his (comparatively) striking keyboard part.

No repeats are offered in this sonata which might be just as well as the content is simple enough to be imbibed on one hearing. You could say the same about the harpsichordist’s account of a Telemann fantasia, No. 5 in F Major from the 1732-3 set of three dozen. The march-like two-line tramping of the 42-bar-long Vivace is interrupted by 11 bars of D minor Largo before we enjoy a complete Vivace repeat. Nothing taxing here either, although Abouhamad spices up his repeat with some rapid-fire ornaments.

Eriksson returns for more Telemann: the A minor Sonata TWV 41:a6 which appeared in the Essercizii musici collection of 1739-40. The repeats in the opening Largo are observed, the gamba administering her own little variants the second time(s) around. In the following Allegro, the composer lives up to his reputation for modulatory predictability in moments like that between bars 39 and 43 which sound uninspired despite the sprightly instrumental interplay. In fact, the few moments of interest arrive in the appearance of triplets in both instruments, even if some of those from the harpsichord’s left hand (as in bar 21) are muffled.

The C Major Soave enjoys some eloquent phrase-shaping from Eriksson across its 30 bars of clean-limbed melody. Back to home-key for another stomping Allegro finale which maintains its pulse, although the build-up to the first-half’s highpoint – a gamba A in bar 20 – sounded more like effort than triumph. While the performers repeated this movement’s first half, they left the second part at one run-through, possibly out of consideration for the segments’ relative lengths. This is not a gripping work but you can find more substance than you expect the longer you look.

Abouhamad’s Fantasia after Telemann (Allegro-Affetuoso-Allegro) takes up where the preceding sonata leaves off: also in A minor and revivifying patterns that we’ve come across in the preceding five tracks. The work has an insistence about it, a sense of purposeful direction that isn’t travelling very far, which chimes in with what I’ve played and heard of the composer’s keyboard works. Abouhamad has a penchant in the outer Allegro movements (they’re the same, I think) for coming to an abrupt halt, giving us a break from his seamless chattering motion. As well, he introduces a few moments where the modulations are slightly off-kilter; not obstreperously so, but just enough to pique your interest in a landscape of the predictable. For all that, the work is an improvisation: on-the-spot music-making and a testament to the performer-composer’s powers of invention.

Then comes the composite suite, beginning with Sainte-Colombe’s Les pleurs, written sometime in the later 17th century. It’s heard here in a gamba/harpsichord version which tends to make things easier for the string player; in fact, I think the piece might have been better served as a solo gamba offering, bringing us somehow closer to the original for two viols. Anyway, the work meanders fitfully through its 17 bars of sturdy melancholy before yielding place to Louis de Caix d’Hervelois’ three-movement Suite in G minor/Major.

This comes from the composer’s 1708 Premier livre of Pieces de viole which he supplied with a continuo part. Rather than a series of suites, the book looks like a varied collection of ‘character’ pieces and dances with the odd Prelude thrown in for punctuation. Eriksson and Abouhamad start with L’Agreable, which is in G minor and, if intended to depict a person, gives us a rather ponderous one, inclined to gruffness at cadences. Then comes the following piece in the volume, La Fanatique, which is a kind of rondo with a recurring G minor melody coming up between segments that move to a mild derangement in 35 bars of bustling semiquavers before the main theme’s final resurgence; a kind of psychotic build-up although obviously sanity triumphs after the crisis . . . sort of like everyone’s hopes about the fate of One Nation.

Caix d’Hervelois’ last offering comes two items futher along in the volume: an Allemande in G Major, the musicians repeating both halves and Eriksson weaving in plenty of notes inegales, as she did for L’Agreable, which practice adds to the janty bounce of this optimistic 18-bar dance and emphasized the determined aggressiveness of the gamba contrasted with the scintillating brilliance of the keyboard.

A substantial harpsichord work appears in Couperin’s Les Silvains, No. 8 in the composer’s 1713 first volume of Pieces de clavecin. Mind you, it’s a rondeau and a lot of repetition obtains across its 68 bars. Both hands play in the bass clef throughout, possibly to emphasize the composer’s (or Versailles’) view of the forests and their inhabitants as existing on a lower plane than that social level showing itself off in the galerie des Glaces. Abouhamad manages to maintain the piece’s flow while observing all the ornamentation (and it’s thick) that appears in my edition (Pierre Gouin’s) of the piece. At the same time, he outlines the work with a keen eye for its breathing spaces, infusing it with a welcome expansiveness of insight.

Marais’ G Major Suite from his 1725 Cinquieme livre of Pieces de viole consists of 19 pieces; we are offered three of them. Saillie du jardin refers to a projection of some kind – natural or architectural – in a garden; you have to have a more vivid imagination than mine to trace any mental contours illustrating this botanical feature. Sadly, it’s given short shrift as the players don’t repeat its second half, and some of Eriksson’s top notes in double-stops haven’t travelled well. Le Troilleur is another rondeau; the word’s definition escapes me – some call it ‘the milker’, in which case the worker is taking his time or he has some very patient cows to deal with; others refer to a cafe witticism, which seems unlikely, given the slow-moving pace of instrumental dialogue. In any case, Erisson and Abouhamad indulge in the first repeat and eschew all the others.

To end this Marais jaunt, we hear a piece from near the suite’s end: Le petit badinage. This shows some liveliness in Eriksson’s mode of delivery compensating for her instrument’s problems with light musical raillery through a welcome variation in dynamic shaping. Finally, the pair work through Forqueray’s La Buisson of 1747, which you can take to refer to a person (unknown) because of its gender. Eriksson scrambles through some rapid high gruppetti in one of the later variations and does the inegale delivery at some points. But this is a no-nonsense reading of a work that throws the gamba’s potential for virtuosity into high relief.

Russell’s quiet lyric, The Acceptance of 2025, stays in a modal E minor for its limited length and, as far as I can tell, its original organization for soprano, violin and gamba has simply gained Andersson’s quaver-plucking gallichon as an undercurrent. Bishop plays a few bars’ duet with Eriksson at the start, then sings the work’s two verses, and the song ends without postlude. I’m sure it’s a sincere gesture although it’s hard to find any relevance between this work and the Baroque/Classical content preceding it; an odd note with which to end an odd if otherwise historically focused mixed bag of a CD.

Power to spare

cliveoconnell

BUSH, BORSCHT & BONN

Selby & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday September 2, 2026

(L to R) Susie Park, Kathryn Selby, Julian Smiles

Compared to what is coming up in the Selby & Friends‘ final two recitals in coming months, this recent program presented patrons with some unexpected corners of the relevant repertoire. In association with violinist Susie Park and cellist Julian Smiles, pianist Kathryn Selby worked through Australian Ross Edwards‘ Piano Trio of 1998 which we should probably label as ‘No. 1’, because another essay in the form has recently appeared; then Arensky’s F minor Piano Trio No. 2 written in 1905 which many of us would be experiencing for the first time live, as opposed to the far more popular earlier (1894) trio in D minor; the evening’s exercise winding up with Beethoven’s Op. 38 E flat Major score of 1805 which is an arrangement by the composer of his own very successful Septet from five years earlier.

Yet again, Selby made a happy choice of colleagues. Both Park and Smiles have appeared in previous S&F events and their performing styles merge persuasively with the pianist’s direct speaking mode of address. Indeed, the cellist has worked with Selby on the Edwards work a few times – in September 2015 and again in May 2021. Written as a test piece for the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition of 1999, this trio is remarkably fair to its participants from the outset, beginning the initial Allegretto with a piano-only exposition before the strings enter for an extended duet, teasing out the near-modal material that the composer uses.

Obviously, this piece represents the ‘Bush’ of the night’s title and Edwards achieves an atmosphere that we can take in as speaking to the repetitiousness of the outback’s landscape, the movement’s progress beginning with an ambiguous grounding, possibly in E minor, while the melodic material circles without settling. It’s an effective musical picture of this continent’s inner reaches – not all of them, but typical of some in its rolling repetitions. Throughout these pages, the composer finds an expressive layer that fuses melancholy with movement, in its way as suggestive of place as Sculthorpe’s Small Town of 1953, particularly its later stages.

Mind you, Edwards has written of his intention across this movement of mirroring the aspect of light dancing on the Arafura Sea, so what do I know? Listening to it, you can hear this muted sparkle in the piano writing, not so much in the intertwining lines for violin and cello. The following Nocturne strikes me as continuing the ambience erected in its predecessor, but the passing pages bring a more searching investigation of material. Somewhere along the road, Edwards hits on a theme/motive that brings irresistibly to (this) mind an echo of the first movement to Dvorak’s Cello Concerto.

Then, in the final Allegro assai, we encounter the composer in full maninyas, the dance shape that has become one of Edwards’ main compositional identifiers and more familiar to many of us through his 1988 violin concerto: one of the most joyful and persuasive Australian works that I know. Selby enjoyed producing much of the high-tessitura energy but Park and Smiles worked with impressive intensity to generate a pair of ardent voices, although the combined dynamic often came across as over-assertive. Still, the energy and sense of accumulating rhapsody were rewarding to hear along the path to home in this finely-crafted, honest creation.

Following the score with an old recording of the Borodin Trio at work, I was impressed by the venerable ensemble’s use of rubato as they worked through the Arensky composition. Selby, Park and Smiles also employed this breathing technique, if not as lavishly as their predecessors in the field, and it showed its value when handling the first movement’s lengthy chain of near-modulations and its melodic focus. In fact, the initial Allegro enjoyed generous treatment, a vivid and sweeping mode of attack evident from the heady opening bars. What struck me most from this initial salvo was Park’s steely determination of output – a hard-hitting demonstration of clean line-shaping.

Next, Arensky’s Romanza glowed becomingly as the writer eventually gave the piano at bar 6 a solo statement of the principal D flat Major melody, echoed by a piercingly fine restatement from Park twelve bars further on. Here, as you’d expect, the push-me-pull-you rubato interpolations came into further play, if nowhere near as lavishly administered as in the Borodins’ handling. While the labour is shared for the Scherzo, Selby took on the dominant role in its outer more-or-less C Major segments, the strings assuming more prominence in the quite substantial A flat trio, here articulated with plenty of driving sympathy.

For his finale, Arensky opted for a theme-and-variations (six of them) format. Which is fine, if unexceptional, as well as taking an unprepossessing and four-square 16-bar melody for its base of operations. Selby outlined this theme with calm certainty before her partners entered for the following variants which shared the workload fairly enough. What took me somewhat aback was the composer’s practice of stopping the elaborations when treating the theme’s last four bars and playing them pretty ‘straight’ in his first four treatments. Against that sudden reversion, the series proved an entertaining mixture, climaxing in a powerful Schumann-style F Major statement beginning the last of them, eventually reverting to the first movement’s motto theme at a Meno mosso move into F minor and a gradual diminution in dynamic and bright textures unil the last, lingering cadence that concludes Arensky’s active canvas in something like placid consolation.

And so, after interval, to the Beethoven Trio (written in Vienna, not Bonn) which gives the option of using either clarinet or violin. I think the wind instrument might have been more satisfying to hear, and the few recorded versions of this arrangement I could find all used the woodwind as an upper voice. However, the composite on offer here showed an agreable fluency of movement across the work’s six movements and the concordance of ensemble was hard to fault. Still, you’d expect such an outcome at this stage of the tour, our second Melbourne performance being the fifth in a series of seven.

We were able to enjoy a repetition of the opening Allegro‘s exposition; not always an enlightening experience when dealing with Classical sonata form but most rewarding here, thanks to the undiminished brio of the performers. There’s no denying the fact that you missed the colours and weight found in the original scoring – clarinet, horn, bassoon, viola and double bass – even if the detection game of hearing how Beethoven re-allocated his lines gave the experience a sort of tame fascination. But you missed a diversity of timbres most in the second movement Adagio, beginning with the clarinet’s first enunciation, and later the response-and-answer passages between wind and strings across bars 31 and 37, not to forget the horn solo starting in bar 68.

Something similar happened in the trio of the following minuet where the horn has those chortling arpeggio interpolations at bars 30 and 42. All power to Smiles’ arm but there’s nowhere near as much interest when the cello takes on the substitution. Likewise, when we came to the following Andante con variazione, the first variation is a delightfully balanced string trio in the original, while the piano has all the running in this revised version and the results are bland. Add to that, the keyboard is rather overworked in Variations 2, 4 and 5, to the point where Selby dropped a few notes on pages that admittedly are rather finicky in detail.

Once again, Smiles substituted for the bounding horn in the fifth movement Scherzo with respectable but sonorously unsatisfying results. Then he was robbed of the opening melody in the Trio, God knows why, Beethoven delaying the cello taking over the line until bar 96. Nevertheless, the players negotiated this segment with the same bounce and vivacity that they’d invested in the Tempo di minuetto. Park again infused the concluding Alla marcia with plenty of upper-level sprightliness and a melting suavity with Smiles for the sudden chorale interruption at bar 116.

Selby had the last word, thanks to the chain of triplets that occupy the keyboard at the finale’s conclusion, bringing this construct to a rousingly definite final chain of E flat Major chords and arpeggios. In the end, Beethoven’s trio transcription passed through us with loads of panache and spirit, even if the effect seemed to be heavily pronounced in its outer movements. A pleasant experiment, sure enough, but one that you wouldn’t want to repeat in a hurry, unless you were involved in a performance – which, of course, was the point of abridging the original’s instrumentation.

Selby told us that next year’s series will involve only one performance at the Melbourne Recital Centre each time her ensemble hits this city, and that will be the 2 pm sitting. Such an operational constriction is an inevitability in these years of increasing frugality, if a disappointment to those who liked having the option of a morning or evening attendance. I think most of us will happily vie for seats if it means that Selby & Friends continue to visit. As a final observation, while this performance was far from playing to a full house, I’d be interested in seeing the numbers for the body’s next Melbourne visit(s) on November 2 with a masterwork-rich all-Brahms program.