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 new 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. Not really associated with eventide, the combined forces will take on Mendelssohn’s sun-drenched Italian Symphony, written in 1833 and, in 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 our 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 compositions. 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 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 this 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 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 formidable 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 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 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 a reading more rapidly completed than his version of 1938). As his 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′, the 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 old 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 life. 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 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 former 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 this 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’sa 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). This 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’s ticket attracts a fee of $7; that’s the way to encolurage 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 around in this city for over a decade, Excelsis throws its talents around lavishly among the city’s Catholic parishes for 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 when because I can’t track down all the scores. A standard tickets 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 Sympohony 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 his new Flute Concerto with soloist Eliza Shephard, the 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.
