Author: cliveoconnell

Coming down to earth

cliveoconnell

CELEBRATING 500 YEARS OF PALESTRINA

Ensemble Gombert

Our Lady of Victories Basilica, Camberwell

Saturday October 25, 2025

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Non sum qualis eram bonae, as the poet said. None of us is, I suppose, but it was a bit of a surprise to find that the Ensemble Gombert is not how I remembered it from about six or seven years ago when I last heard the group live. Yes, there were moments in this Palestrina celebration that brought back recollections of he group’s finest outings, usually in the warmer surrounds (certainly better lit) of the Xavier College Chapel rather than the pre-Vatican II semi-gloom of this Camberwell monument to times long past.

Even without the benefit of a program, it was obvious that the group had changed in personnel. The long-lasting top soprano duo of Deborah Summerbell and Carol Veldhoven has disappeared, and was I mistaken in thinking that only Fiona Seers from those golden years was still singing with this company’s sopranos on Saturday afternoon? I recognized none of the altos but that could be a momentary sight defect due to the prevailing penumbra. Sadly, that group suffered an irreparable loss in the premature death of Belinda Wong during 2021. Among the tenors, I couldn’t see Peter Campbell or Tim van Nooten; only Vaughan McAlley remains of the old guard and he left his position in the ranks to conduct this performance (most of it), as the Gomberts’ founder and artistic guru John O’Donnell was indisposed. I couldn’t see Andrew Fysh in the basses, but then the male lines were reduced to six singers: an economy that was clearly felt in several parts of the program.

To commemorate this great church composer, the Ensemble sang four of his motets and one of the larger-scale masses, Benedicta es, which has two alto and two bass lines, as well as your soprano and tenor blocks. But the afternoon began with the Tu es Petrus motet which also calls for six lines: two sopranos, alto, two tenors and a bass in my edition, although others specify one tenor and two bass parts. I’m not sure how the ‘male’ lines were accomplished with so few singers to go round, or whether some altos took on the second tenor/first bass, although it should have been obvious from bar 8 when the low voices respond to the opening strophe from the sopranos and altos.

It made a brave opening, the reading as full-bodied and steady as any Papacy-endorsing post-Reformation enthusiast could want, the added bonus that we heard the motet’s second part Quodcunque ligaveris, which is so often left out on recordings, even by choirs that have big reputations. Still, this is familiar ground for the Gomberts who made a good deal out of this sample of Catholic affirmative action from 1572.

Next came Ad te levavi. part of a collection published in 1593 and calling for two tenor lines. At this stage, it seemed a good idea to try and work out how many voices had been allocated to the various vocal strata; I believe that the Ensemble for this performance comprised sic sopranos, six altos, three tenors and three basses. With tenor McAlley conducting, this meant either a weakening of volume in one of the tenor lines, or the group possessed a versatile bass-baritone. Or the group simply coped as best as possible.

Things were back to manageable for Senex puerum: five voices, two of them sopranos. I believe that we heard the secunda pars, the verse starting Hodie beata virgo; again, something that is lacking from the few recordings I’ve traced of this particular motet. Then, on to the familiar with Assumpta est Maria where McAlley moved back to the tenors for this motet which asks for two sets of them, as well as two soprano lines. Again, I believe the group sang the second verse, beginning Quae est ista although any vehemence at the phrase terribilis ut castrorum escaped me. The new conductor, whose first name was Luke (maybe not: McAlley has a lot to learn about projection while speaking to an audience, one of the tricks being not turning your head sideways at critical points in addresses), continued with the stolid pace set by the main podium protagonist, so that the metre sounded over-emphatic as Palestrina’s lines were regimented, far from fluent.

And so to the substantial mass. This followed the afternoon’s performance pattern of rather strong downbeats at the expense of fluid inter-meshing and a thin tenor output – I don’t know why as both basses sounded muddy in the opening Kyrie and the upper male line enjoyed unexpected exposure. But the following Gloria produced some fine ‘Gombert’ passages, mainly from the three female lines at points like Domine Deus Rex and an unexpectedly buoyant Quoniam.

Even so, it struck me once more how little attention is given to plosive consonantal sounds by this group which can produce some enthralling polyphonic meshes but which relies on its listeners to be familiar with texts or, more usually, follow them in the organization’s programs, which were also graced with an account of the music to be performed from O’Donnell. Still, I suppose most of the Gomberts’ adherents would be familiar with the words to the Ordinary of the Mass, especially those of us worshippers who suffered it in silence for many years.

Like the Gloria, this Credo interpretation was devoid of drama, with not much to differentiate the Et incarnatus, Crucifixus, and Et in Spiritum divisions, apart from a small lessening of contrapuntal interlay in the second of these where Palestrina’s texture drops its bass lines. For all that, the afternoon’s most impressive work came with the long notes of the composer’s Et vitam, followed by the elevating five-note rising scale aspiration and response from all five parts across a jubilant Amen.

In the Sanctus/Bendictus double, I enjoyed the Pleni sunt interlude for the score’s three middle voices; this proved to be clear (as you’d expect) but also emotionally positive, albeit in a restrained mode. Fortunately, the Hosanna and its repeat came over with excellent mobility to the point where you could ignore the customary chugging action of the ensemble’s style of attack.

Not much remains in this memory of the hard-worked first Agnus Dei. The second did not proceed as usual to the dona nobis pacem strophes but was sung in plainchant by the men before reverting back to Palestrina for the third run with his optimistic final 20 ‘bars’ that steady the triple metre to the prevailing quadruple in a final passage of high consolation.

Only at the end did you appreciate what a sustained bout of singing had been presented by the Gombert voices whose pitch had barely wavered throughout this mass. Certainly, the Ensemble gave us a worthwhile homage to Palestrina in this (possibly) 500th anniversary of his birth, even if I missed the piercing certainty of its former soprano and bass singers. On this occasion, we heard some splendid moments of choral splendour, if not as many as the choir used to produce in its pre-COVID outings.

A company in fine fettle

cliveoconnell

Katya Kabanova

Victorian Opera

Palais Theatre, St. Kilda

Thursday October 16

Desiree Frahn

Janacek’s opera is fundamentally a nasty piece of social realism that, if you don’t indulge in a bit of suspended disbelief, borders on the ludicrous, even allowing for cultural differences. The central figure is a remarkably simple-minded semi-mystic who gradually goes off the rails. Her husband Tichon has no spine and gives in to his mother at every turn. This woman, Kabanicha, acts in a manner that is irrational, temperamentally fitful and spiteful in turn, but she has the last word. Katya’s lover Boris is enslaved to his uncle Dikoj by an unbelievable clause in a will that will eventually grant him his legacy and he quits Katya for Siberia with lots of resignation but no compunction about her mental state.

The only wholesome characters are Katya’s foster-sister Varvara and her lover, the schoolteacher Kudrjas; both of them decamp to Moscow on an impulse just before the opera’s crisis but have been content with themselves throughout the work’s duration, the plot covering roughly a fortnight. Indeed, despite giving Kudrjas the opera’s opening lines and having Varvara provide a happy foil to Katya, Janacek gets rid of them with singular rapidity, using just a few lines in Act 3, so he can get back to the main plot and involve us in his suicidal catastrophe.

First and foremost, this was a vital, engrossing production from Victorian Opera which operated on a difficult-to-sustain presentation grid but carried all before it, thanks to the calm hand of director Heather Fairbairn who calculated a clear path through the work with only a few mis-steps. It would be hard to fault the excellence of the central septet of characters – Desiree Frahn (Katya), Antoinette Halloran (Kabanicha), Andrew Goodwin (Boris), Michael Petruccelli (Tichon), Adrian Tamburini (Dikoj), Emily Edmonds (Varvara), and Douglas Kelly (Kudrjas).

Just as impressive in its fluent consistency was the Australian National Academy of Music Orchestra which gave an idiomatically satisfying account of Janacek’s elastic score, finding in it a wealth of melodic infectiousness that had evaded my experiences of the work on disc and video. This was my one and only experience of the opera live and I doubt that it will be staged in Melbourne again in my lifetime. But it stands as a significant milestone in the company’s long catalogue of exercises, mainly because of its highly professional standard of accomplishment.

Much of the work’s impact came from the four main singers who gave us well-rounded personalities with all their imperfections intact. Just as much credit must be give to conductor Alexander Briger whose control of the orchestral fabric and coordination with his singers was exemplary, particularly when you consider the score’s often aphoristic nature, if punctuated by startling bursts of splendour. Yes, the ANAM musicians are on the cusp of professional lives and have developed their skills to a high level, yet the breadth of timbral control from the Palais pit and the quick responsiveness from all quarters impressed across the opera’s length, notable as the work was performed without interval.

One of the more deliberately obtrusive elements of the production was the presence of a roving camera which followed the characters through their stresses and projected their faces onto the set’s backdrop. What might have become a distraction of irritating proportions turned into an intense by-product of the onstage drama, giving us a rare chance to observe the characters’ powers of expression. This device proved most striking in the various stages of Katya’s stream of confessions and depressions, the tender naivete of this particular Boris, and an extraordinary portrayal of Kabanicha who became a glamorous, seductive figure rather than the tight-lipped hypocrite that you’d anticipate and expect.

Still, the production’s overall arch was dominated by Frahn’s heroine, a remarkably vivid outline of the young woman’s rapid fall to desperation, to despair, to guilty love, finally to self-destruction. This singer made a vivid experience of the long Act 1 scene II aria beginning with the birds metaphor Povidam, proc lide neletaji to the ecstatic conclusion to her dream a jdu – za nim! Later, her will-she-won’t-she duet with Goodwin culminated in a powerful cry of Zivote muj, mirrored by the tenor but with less anguish: a haunting passage in pages that speak of enthralment and the tragedy to come.

The night’s crowning moments came in the final scene where Katya is distracted and falling into an emotional gulf. This solid near-solo starting with Ne! Nikdo tu neni!, winding through the woman’s bouts of self-recrimination and imagination, her final words with Boris and the soul-destroying awareness at her death of peace and beauty – Tak ticho, tak krasne! – came across with telling pathos and an emotional depth, the like of which you rarely experience in a near-contemporary opera (1921).

Goodwin sang a finely-shaped Boris, semi-distressed at his own fecklessness in the face of his uncle’s bullying (the least effective interchange in his role) but an ardent lover in Act 2 and the model of soulful regret in his last appearance. This is a voice that graces every character it takes on with solid technique and resonant power, particularly at full stretch. Petruccelli made a fine Tichon, able to push back with vigour but turning into a weak reed when faced with his mother’s demands and his wife’s anxious pleas.

This Kabanicha wasn’t the ill-favoiured shrew that you find in most productions, as Halloran is far too glamorous to become the usual ill-tempered trial. As she should, Halloran dominated the awful conclusion to Act 1 where Tichon instructs his wife in subservience to her mother-in-law. But her attitude towards Katya was closer to toying with the defenceless rather than torturing with spite. As well, there was a hint of a fully-returned Oedipal fixation as she adjusted her son’s neckwear prior to his Kazan trip; well, it seemed that way to me, thanks to the camera’s proximity to both singers.

Tamburini made as much as he could of Dikoj’s two main appearances. The uncle is unpleasant to an extreme, particularly in his first appearance with Boris in tow when he lambasts the young man with a sort of personal vigour. If my memory is correct, he knocked Boris to the ground in this scene, which isn’t in the libretto but helped to underline the man’s viciousness. Later, in his confession of misplaced charity to Kabanicha, we came to one of the production’s odd spots when the woman beat him with his own walking stick across the backside – which suggested a weird kind of prostitute-client relationship between the two. I know Ostrovsky’s play that Janacek used as his source was meant to hold a mirror up to bourgeois hypocrisy but this seemed to be more of a ludicrous action than a didactic one.

Edmonds and Kelly enjoy the score’s happiest music, both in Act 1 and in the garden scene of Act 2; both gave us full-voiced, open-hearted depictions of two young people both beyond redemption and well past it. Michaela Cadwgan enjoyed her opening dialogue with Kelly, her Glascha less of a sourpuss than expected. Kuligin gets to work only at the start of Act 3 in discussing the storm with Kudrjas and then bringing Katya’s body in at the opera’s end; Bailey Montgomerie gave us a solid, imposing baritone voice capable of cutting through the mesh with his final line.

Responsible for both set and costume design, Savanna Wegman opted for a look that might have been favoured in provincial Russia-by-the-Volga in the 1860s, at least in terms of the costumes with plenty of earth colours, apart from a svelte dress for Kabanicha. Apart from this last, the characters looked muted and/or bleached; no objections from this quarter as such dressing seemed to fit the work well. As for the set, this was a pair of scaffolding constructs filled in with crossed wire, ragged cloth draped from the upper reaches, the whole collapsing to ground level for those final scenes by the river. Oddly enough, this precarious-looking arrangement made an exemplary ambience for the work’s proceedings, conveying a flimsiness or messy transparency which served as a mirror of both the social apparatus in play and the heroine’s deterioration.

While you eventually had no problem with the roving camerapersons hovering around the dramatis personae, the occasional (two of them?) appearance of young girls/wraiths dressed in white who moved slowly on to and off the stage did jar; I assume they were manifestations of previous or future Katyas but their emergence was meant to serve as a silent chorus to the young woman’s situation. Also, a filmed sequence of a young girl rushing along a riverside during the 99 bars of prelude to the swelling Act 1 opened us to a world of activity and a scene that the actual staging could hardly live up to.

These niggles aside, this night’s experience made for engrossing opera. Yes, it was a novelty for many of us, I suspect, and it enjoyed a freshness of interpretation that comes with a young and enthusiastic corps in both pit and on stage working hard to get things right, especially the singers whose enunciation of the Czech text presented as remarkably fluent and able. If I don’t see another Katya Kabanova, I have this production couched comfortably in the memory as a lodestone and as a fine instance of how formidable local productions can be.

Diary November 2025

cliveoconnell

THE MUSIC OF JOE HISAISHI

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday November 6 at 7:30 pm

Further blurring the distinction between music worth listening to and music that is over-esteemed for its utilitarian value comes this concert, the first of several renditions of the same content. Joe Hisaishi has become a well-known composing commodity for his contributions to cartoon films from Studio Ghibli, the famous Japanese animation centre. Productions such as My Neighbour Totoro (1988), Spirited Away (2001) and Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) are spoken of by aficionados with the kind of reverence that was once given to Jacques Tati or the pre-1944 works of the Disney studio. Still, there’s no accounting for lack of taste and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra‘s powers obviously think they’re onto a winner with this visit to the fecund composer’s output, even if the event comes with a caveat: Hisaishi himself will not be attending (whoever said he would?). I assume you won’t be getting visual stimulation even though a gaggle of films are mentioned in the publicity; as well, there will be some ‘straight’ concert-hall compositions. Guest pianist is Aura Go, the whole musical excursion under the direction of Nicholas Buc, and a pair of podcasters – Andrew Pogson and Dan Golding – will be bringing insights under an educationally promising title: Art of the Score. As a mark of this exercise’s popularity, the organisers have inserted a whole new hearing to the originally scheduled three. It’s good money-making, too: full adult prices range from $98 to $170, concession holders and children pay $5 less, and the always-with-us AI forces will get their pound of sashimi with the Hall’s regulation $7 transaction fee.

This program will be repeated on Friday November 7 at 7:30 pm, and on Saturday November 8 at 1 pm and 7:30 pm

INCANTATION

Affinity Quartet

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday November 7 at 2 pm

Celebrating its tenth anniversary, the Affinity Quartet has retained the services of two founding members in cello Mee Na Lojewski and second violin Nicholas Waters. The ensemble’s first violin, Shane Chen, has enjoyed a peripatetic career, joining the Affinities last year; violist Josef Hanna is probably familiar from appearances in the ranks of the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and, at one stage, enjoying a membership stint in the Flinders Quartet. All of which is to point out the newly-minted nature of this group, even if most of them have known each other for some time. This afternoon, the musicians present an hour-long recital beginning with Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C minor from 1783, then 1788, which lasts between six and seven minutes and is always impressive for its unexpected rigour. Then, in line with the ensemble’s bent for the contemporary, we hear French-British soprano/composer Heloise Werner’s Incantation in 4 parts of 2023, about which I know nothing except that it’s a few minutes longer than Mozart’s adagio/fugue double. Finally, the ensemble offers Debussy in G Minor, written in 1893 and part of an early compositional chain that has ensured the composer’s popularity with audiences and musicians, for whom this work has more attractions than most others of its time. A standard ticket is $55, a concession is $45, and you then have to cope with the sliding scale transaction fee in operation at the MRC of anywhere between $4 and $8.50, the final sum possibly dependent on your independently-assessed moral worth.

This program will be repeated at 6 pm.

THE VOICE OF THE VIOLA: FIONA SARGEANT

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday November 8 at 7:30 pm

After an out-of-town tryout in Nunawading, this program hits the city with some of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra‘s forces, headed by Fiona Sargeant who has been a core viola member of the body for many years. This evening, she heads Hindemith’s viola concerto Der Schwanendreher, written in 1935 and central to the instrument’s 20th century repertoire (or any century’s, really; can you think of anything earlier, other than Walton and Berlioz?). It calls for a woodwind septet, a brass quintet, timpani, harp, a cello group of four and three basses, so that Sargeant has a clear acoustically-exposed run across its slightly-less-than-half-an-hour length. Sticking with Germany, the violist then leads some more reduced forces in the Brahms Serenade No 2 of 1859 which asks for the usual woodwind octet plus a piccolo who has to stick around for the finale only, a pair of horns, and a string force without violins but more numerous than the prescribed number in Hindemith’s work. This is benign, optimistic music – a forward-looking delight throughout. In which regard it makes an ideal match with the swan-turner work. Standard tickets cost between $57 and $105, concession rates are the usual whopping $5 cheaper, and the MSO imposes its flat $7 booking fee on every order for your delight and pleasure.

COCTEAU’S CIRCLE

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday November 15 at 7:30 pm

He got around, did Jean Cocteau, making his presence felt in many corners of France’s artistic world from World War I to his death in 1963. Apart from his collaboration with Stravinsky for Oedipus rex in 1927, the poet’s other contribution to 20th century music came early with his 1917 scenario for Satie’s Parade ballet. For the rest, he was friendly with some members of Les Six and tonight’s program features music by three of them: Tailleferre, Poulenc and Milhaud. As well, Richard Tognetti and his Australian Chamber Orchestra will play some Debussy, and works by Lili and Nadia Boulanger. All mates together, you’d think, sinking the hard stuff at Le boeuf sur le toit. Yes, I’m sure some of them did but it’s hard to reconcile Debussy with Cocteau, especially given the dismissive criticism that followed the great composer’s death. Still, we’ll have the ACO working through these as-yet unidentified works, including some Satie, with guests soprano Chloe Lankshear and Le Gateau Chocolat (George Ikediashi) as maitre d’. The event is directed by Yaron Lifschitz from Brisbane’s Circa company, so we can but hope for general acrobatics being part of the fun. Tickets enjoy the usual extraordinary range in cost – from $30 to $192, depending on your age (student=$30, adult in a top seat=$192), or simply your financial standing. And then there’s the surrealist transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50, also dependent on how much you’re prepared to fork out for your ticket. Welcome to Melbourne’s arts world, comrade.

This program will be repeated on Sunday November 16 in Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne at 2:30 pm, and again at the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall in the Melbourne Recital Centre on Monday November 17 at 7:30 pm.

CARMEN

Opera Australia

Regent Theatre

Saturday November 15 at 7:30 pm

You can’t accuse our national Sydney company of over-exerting itself for the Melbourne ‘season’. We’re going to get that famous old two-hander in Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice, complete with Circa ensemble distractions, the which production I saw in Brisbane about five years ago from the state company. We’re currently enduring The Barber of Seville in Elijah Moshinsky’s 30-year-old production. Now it’s time for nine presentations of Bizet’s great masterpiece which grips your musical attention from first bar to last. Danielle de Niese and Sian Sharp alternate in the title role, as do Abraham Breton and Diego Torre as Don Jose, and Phillip Rhodes and Luke Gabbedy sharing Escamillo. Micaela is the sole responsibility of Jennifer Black, Richard Anderson portrays Zuniga, the Remendado/Dancairo pairing is presented by Virgilio Marino and Alexander Hargreaves respectively, Nathan Lay gives us Morales, while the Frasquita and Mercedes duo will be sung by Jane Ede and Angela Hogan. Your conductor is Clelia Cafiero, director Anne-Louise Sarks, set and costume design Marg Horwell, choreographer Shannon Burns – an all-female off-stage panel of responsibility. I hear from colleagues that the world of Merimee’s Spain has been updated from its 19th century origins; well, we’ve had Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones film since 1954 so nothing should surprise. Tickets range from $71 to $295 and move through six levels of desirability. You pay $9.80 as an ‘order fee’, which is well beyond any such charge I’ve come across in this country; but then, the company would be using a highly developed form of digital accounting – that myriad number of foreign guests have to be paid for somehow, don’t they?

This performance will be repeated on Monday November 17 at 7:30 pm, Tuesday November 18 at 7:30 pm, Wednesday November 19 at 7:30 pm. Thursday November 20 at 7:30 pm, Friday November 21 at 7:30 pm, Saturday November 22 at 12:30 pm, Monday November 24 at 7:30 pm and Tuesday November 25 at 7:30 pm

PIOTR ANDERSZEWSKI

Musica Viva Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday November 18 at 7 pm

This notoriously self-critical pianist is concluding the year’s national cycle for Musica Viva Australia with as eclectic a program as you can imagine, outside the challenging confrontations provided by those artists with a dedication to the living contemporary. Piotr Anderszewski hits the regular repertoire, although not with well-worn material. For instance, he begins with selections from the last four compendia for piano by Brahms: the seven Fantasies Op. 116, the Three Intermezzi Op. 117, the Six Pieces Op. 118, and the Four Pieces Op 119, all of them published in 1892 and 1893. Our exponent is playing twelve of them – a little over half the number available. If his preceding appearances in Europe and Shanghai are any indication, these will take up the evening’s first half. Then he picks out some more blocks from Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier Book 2 of 1742; in Shanghai, he’s playing two – the E Major and the G sharp minor, both of which appear on his recording of 2021 where he performs half of the 24. Then comes the Beethoven Sonata in A flat Op. 110 of 1821 which, despite its many meanderings, only lasts about 20 minutes. This is an Anderszewski favourite as he’s recorded it three times – 1996, 2004, and 2008; as far as I can see, no other sonata by this composer appears in his discography. Standard tickets cost $65, $92, $125, or $153; students and concession holders pay $56, $80, $110, or $135; Under 40s can get in for $49, but not in the top rank seats; and, if you’re in a group of 10 plus, you pay between $2 and $3 more than students and concessionaires. You’ll have to dig a little bit extra for the $4 to $8.50 transaction fee which is the Recital Centre’s idea of a progressive tax.

RYMAN HEALTHCARE SPRING GALA: JOYCE DIDONATO

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday November 20 at 7:30 pm

Judging from her discography, American soprano Joyce DiDonato has recorded lots of Berlioz: Les Troyens, Benvenuto Cellini, La Damnation de Faust, Romeo et Juliette. She has also sung the female lead in Beatrice et Benedict. Further, she has offered Les nuits d’ete at various points in her substantial career. So you’d anticipate a highly informed interpretation tonight of the six-part song cycle from 1841 that follows the requisite Romantic love journey from a lilting Villanelle to the mature rhapsody of L’ile inconnue. As is the norm these days, DiDonato will sing the complete work; you rarely get obedience to the composer’s direction that the labours be shared, the problem yet again exacerbated by flying in the face of an absence of the soprano voice in Berlioz’s stipulations. Still, it’s a bright light in an otherwise populist night, proceedings opening under Jaime Martin conducting his Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Rossini’s William Tell Overture of 1829 – the composer’s last operatic gasp. And if that piece’s final galop isn’t enough for you, there’s a double Respighi in store: the 1917 effervescent Fountains of Rome will be succeeded by the Pines of Rome that concludes with your best Mussolini-celebrating Fascist march of 1924, complete with flugelhorns, saxhorns and organ (a difficult commodity to source in Hamer Hall). Your standard tickets range from $81 to $138, concession card holders paying $5 less, never forgetting the $7 transaction fee that continues to beggar belief for what you get: nothing but a carried-over expense from the ticket-sellers.

his program will be repeated on Saturday November 22 at 7:30 pm

NIGHTINGALE

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday November 20 at 7:30 pm

For this program, the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra takes on a guest director in harpsichordist Donald Nicholson who asks his players to jump all over the repertoire, the soloist (apart from himself) an often overlooked member of any ensemble. Naturally enough, there’s some dashes of old music by way of Purcell’s Fantasia upon one note (written about 1680) which has the tenor viol playing Middle C throughout while everybody else – the other four lines – enjoy themselves. Nicholson proposes himself as soloist for the Bach Harpsichord Concerto in D minor BWV 1052, which modern scholars opine was originally an organ concerto from about 1723-4. Whatever its gestation, it remains the most familiar of the composer’s keyboard concertos. Giving the program its title is Barbara Strozzi’s L’usignolo, which is probably the composer’s four-voice madrigal, Quel misero usignolo, her Op. 1 No. 5 published in 1644. Corelli brings things to a close with the Concerto Grosso No 4 in D, one of the more popular components from the mighty Op. 6 collection of about 1680/90. As for the odd concerto, that features the MCO’s double bass Emma Sullivan who takes the solo string line in Henry Eccles’ Sonata in G minor, originally published in 1720 as part of a miscellany of violin works, themselves of dubious provenance as Eccles simply took other composers’ works for his own use. As well, the orchestra plays two Australian works: first, Colin Brumby’s 51-year-old The Phoenix and the Turtle for harpsichord and strings, taking no flight at all from Shakespeare’s poem; then a new work by Melody Eotvos which also involves Nicholson’s instrument and the MCO strings. Normal ticket prices run $72, $98, $124, and $144; seniors and concession holders pay $52, $78, $109, and $129; Under 40s pay $40 for the lower two of the four price divisions; students and children get in for $30; groups of 10+ are up for a variable rate between full and concession. And there’s the sliding scale transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50 if you pre-order, or you can chance it and show up at the box office before the performance.

This program will be repeated on Sunday November 23 at 2:30 pm.

EPIC DIVA

Selby & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Cntre

Wednesday November 26 at 2 pm

Finishing the year in expansive form, the Selby and Friends enterprise this time around involves four musicians, as opposed to the usual piano trio structure. Pianist and director Kathryn Selby hosts violinist Elizabeth Layton, cellist Julian Smiles, and a fresh face in violist Isabella Bignasca. All combine for a set of three piano quartets, the first offering giving the program its title. This work is by Matthew Hindson, is 13 years old, and springs from 1970s disco; no surprise, given the composer’s penchant for fossicking in popular culture. This is followed by Faure No. 2 in G minor of 1886 which shares one feature with the Australian composer’s piece in that it opens with the strings playing in unison. Actually, there are more unison passages in the first movement but the general trend is towards a rich blend of timbres in warm harmonic language that pivots around its home-key effortlessly. And don’t get me started on the piano-led scherzo. Finally, the musicians take on the mighty Brahms No. 2 in A of 1861, the longest of the composer’s chamber works and a formal triumph; for once, the exposition repeat is a model of melodic fluency, bringing to your attention vital points that you might have missed the first time around. And the work entire is a rebuttal of those who find the composer gloom-laden. Adult tickets cost $81, seniors $79, concession holders and students pay $63 – and you have the MRC’s individual $4-to-$8.50 booking fee to contend with if you book online.

This program will be repeated at 7 pm.

NEW WORLDS: JAIME CONDUCTS CHEETHAM FRAILLON AND DVORAK

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday November 27 at 7:30 pm

Even with the kindest of considerations, that title’s pairing is strikingly uneven. I know that the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has a good deal of time for Deborah Cheetham Fraillon, who was its composer in residence for 2020 and then took on a five-year stint as the orchestra’s First Natives Creative Chair. Tonight, we hear the premiere of a new work commissioned by the orchestra: Treaty. I think most of us can guess the nature of this composition, and possibly its intent, given the composer’s catalogue. Another indicator is that it features didgeridoo player William Barton. Don’t think Westphalia; forget Versailles; this concordat relates to Victorian citizens over the coming weeks, but also to all of us in this country and our pitifully Trump-indebted response to the Voice referendum. But then, in an extraordinary imbalancing act, Jaime Martin takes his musicians into optimistic territory with the night’s other offering: Dvorak’s 1893 Symphony No. 9 From the New World. Well, that particular world was inured to fighting political corruption by the time the composer put in his few years there, but the music of his work is uplifting and very familiar to all of us. Standard tickets range from $51 to $139; concession holders pay $5 less; anyone under 18 gets in for $20. Everybody pays the inevitable transaction fee of $7 when ordering – a little extra that gnaws away at your sense of justice even while you’re coughing it up.

This program will be repeated in Costa Hall, Geelong on Friday November 28 at 7:30 pm and back in Hamer Hall on Saturday November 29 at 2 pm.

Ad hoc expanded ensemble scores

cliveoconnell

BEETHOVEN’S SEPTET

Ensemble Liaison & Friends

Hanson Dyer Hall, Ian Potter Southbank Centre

Monday September 22, 2025

Ensemble Liaison (L to R) David Griffiths, Svetlana Bogosavljevic, Timothy Young

Naturally enough, the Ensemble Liaison relied on quite a few friends to mount its attack on Beethoven’s most celebrated work – well, very much so in the composer’s lifetime, and lasting quite a few years after that. For one thing, the Ensemble personnel was cut by a third for this work; see you later, pianist Timothy Young. The remaining members – clarinet David Griffiths and cello Svetlana Bogosavljevic – were assisted by some well-known professionals – horn Carla Blackwood, violin Dale Barltrop, bassoon Lyndon Watts – and a pair of ‘students’ quickly pursuing solid careers in Australian National Academy of Music participant Hanna Wallace on viola, and double bass Rowan Swarbrick who is finishing his Master’s degree at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music in whose freshly fabricated halls this recital was held.

Not that Young was totally neglected. Indeed, the night’s program was dominated throughout its first rather brief half by Young as both composer and soloist. The evening opened with his relatively new work, Distant Waters of 2024, written for the Liaison forces and based on a simple four-note motif; not really a melody, as outlined by Griffiths pre-performance address. You could distinguish this mini-theme as it was subjected to a kind of free variation treatment that proved charmingly melodious in its amplifications, even if some of these sounded like contrapuntal exercises at their openings.

Young here deals in a harmonic language that might be described as post-Romantic as it was firmly rooted in traditional garb with some mildly adventurous modulation but nothing irregular in its rhythmic structure and an instrumental complex that favoured doubling of lines; not that there’s anything wrong with that – the greats did it, although having the cello and piano play the same bass line isn’t something you hear much of in contemporary compositions. But that’s just it: Young is writing in a style that harks back to less fraught times, devoid of striving dissonance and appealing in its optimism.

However, not much remains in the memory about the performance’s progress apart from its quiescence. Further, Distant Waters was close to submerged by what followed: Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit suite of 1908, a fine vehicle for Young’s powerful virtuosity. His account of the first movement, Ondine, offered a subtlety eschewed by many another interpreter who expend a thunderous energy at the fortissimo climax of bar 66, which usually strikes me as out of proportion with the aqueous humour of the poetic narrative and a sudden tsunami in the middle of a rash of oblique colours.

As well, you could relish Young’s quiet insistence on the pervading melodic line cutting through the lavishly applied froth, culminating in the single-line address across bars 84 to 87 where (I’m guessing) the human says to the nymph: No dice, sweetie. Then the final page eclat of bitonal arpeggiating burst into play with maximum effectiveness as the last four bars mirrored the piece’s opening frissons in a demonstration of interpretative subtlety.

I can’t be the only listener who focuses attention on the B flat/A sharp mid-works pedal that Ravel sustains throughout Le gibet, so that the chordal web that is meant to distract from it takes second place to working out how the composer welds the two strata together. Certainly, you get involved in the drear and gloom illustrating Bertrand’s speculative poem that only settles into reality in nits final paragraph. Much as the monotone obsessed, my attention eventually turned to Young’s extraordinary hand-span which negotiated many chords flat-on, particularly some that most of us have to arpeggiate, like the 9th constructs at the piece’s opening and the falling figure that comes about in bars 20, 23, 40 and 43.

But, if you know this score, you’re really waiting for the impossible in Scarbo which Young accomplished with enough atmospheric touches to satisfy this listener, mining the movement for its acerbities, overt and muffled. You can’t say it was all plain sailing but each note seemed to be there as well as meeting the composer’s demands for rapid articulation, as in repeated demi-semiquavers that start at bar 2 and recur at bat 396. and in a set of full shoulder powerhouse explosions that finally burst out at bar 366, and again at bar 563 to the immense satisfaction of all concerned; it’s been a long time coming and the intimations nerve-wracking.

Young’s realization of the restless gnome’s activity lacked the vicious sparkle of other interpreters, possibly because he didn’t go in for a dry staccato attack. Yet his sense of the central character’s restlessness, sudden leaps into the foreground and retreats to the shadows, were finely realised across the breadth of this improbably long canvas.

After a brief break, we gathered for the Beethoven Septet of 1800 which is still a real pleasure to experience live, not least for the immediacy of its simple gaiety and open-heartedness. Each of the six movements is a delight to hear, even given my indifference to slow introductions and this work has two at either end. Barltrop and Griffiths established themselves as masters of the performance’s destiny, the former more overtly because of the ornate violin line in bars 3, 5, and 12-15 of the initial Adagio to Movement 1. But the ensemble work that followed in the Allegro was well focused and persuasive in its attack.

In fact, the only flaw that struck me in these pages is that odd hesitation that seems to be interpolated in most readings. It’s a sort of adjustment pause in bar 83 of the exposition where the violin soars up to a high G, then has to leap down to the first E on the D string. Is it that hard a jump that everybody has to wait for the adjustment? It might be harder when the figure returns at bar 218 and the jump is from a top C to the first A on the G string, but the imposed hiatus makes for an obstruction in the movement’s easy flow.

Moving on, the cantabile was finely achieved in the solos for Griffiths and Barltrop that outline the main melody to the Adagio, with some welcome exposure for Watts in a pendant phrase at bar 21: the first bassoon solo so far, I believe, complemented by a slightly longer one for Blackwood beginning at bar 68. Here was playing with a gentle bloom to its character of placid calm, the clarinet and violin in gentle call and response across the final section starting at bar 80’s recapitulation.

No complaints about the bouncy minuet, recycled from the Piano Sonata No. 20 in G Major. This is a point of delivery for the string quartet, mainly the violin but also Bogosavljevic who enjoys sudden exposure in bar 20’s main tune restatement. Beethoven’s equally happy Trio is memorable for the horn E flat arpeggios that punctuate the main melody; Blackwood articulated nearly all of these, only encountering a problem at the top of the mark in her repetition of this segment’s second half at bar 42.

A mildly propulsive attack on the following Tema found Barltrop and Wallace in excellent partnership which continued through the first variation, Bogosavljevic making a resonant contribution through her syncopations in bars 31 and 47. The violinist gave unassertive accounts of the rapid figure-work in Variation 2 and Griffiths and Watts combined to telling effect in the clarinet/bassoon top-and-tail to Variation 3. Blackwood came to the fore again – momentarily – in introducing and ending the B flat minor Variation 4 with unforced penetration.

And the coda came over with simple eloquence as the composer restructures/segments his theme in simple terms setting the clarinet/bassoon duo in antiphonal format against Barltrop/Wallace across the calando final bars. Again, the ensemble relished those deft solo and duet passages inn the Scherzo, especially Bogosavljevic’s long stretch of comfortable outlining in the Trio, until Barltrop entered to double her path at bar 113 for the final thematic restatement.

I can’t think of a happier moment in this work than the violin/cello duet that outlines the prime melodic matter for the Presto finish. This is Beethoven combining enthusiasm and pleasure in one hit of almost eight bars before others enter, and its impetus is infectious, setting a pattern/scene for the most jocund of finales. Once again, we encounter that hiatus as the violin negotiates a leap from a high B flat to the instrument’s lowest F sharp at bars 54-5, and again at bars 177-8 from a slightly lower E flat to B natural below the stave. But what do you expect? By now, it’s common practice, like Trump decrying climate change or the perniciousness of wind farms – well, not as stupid, but just as inevitable.

But the moment that catches my breath every time is the sudden chorale for the three wind that comes out of nowhere at bar 316: both a transformation and an illumination of the vital action that has sustained the movement so far and which leads gently into the violin’s cadenza that Barltrop outlined so precisely and deliberately (the same thing?) that the insertion didn’t jar. Then the rush home with the violinist having the last word with three exposed bars of E flat arpeggios before a climactic E flat in alt.

While the performance might have lacked the gloss of some European recorded readings, you would have enjoyed the brisk immediacy of this one from the Ensemble and friends. At times, the balance was over-favourable to the wind trio, but the string group has so much more meat in its parts, especially the two upper lines that natter endlessly across the score. As well, these players demonstrated an individuality in their work, particularly Griffiths (as you’d expect), Wallace and Bogosavljevic, all of whom displayed an energy and eloquence that supported the emotional involvement of the whole ensemble with an appreciative audience in this acoustically lively space.

Diary October 2025

cliveoconnell

BRUCKNER AND STRAUSS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday October 2 at 7:30 pm

A celebration here for two late Romantic masters of verbosity. In its endeavours, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will be directed by Vasily Petrenko, currently conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and a youngish veteran who will bring fresh eyes (you’d hope) to some of the three works programmed. He starts with The Flying Dutchman Overture by Wagner, a hero for the two composers named in the title of tonight’s program. This 1841 work manages to bundle up all its leitmotifs in a wild and windy stretch of scene-setting. Then Victorian-born soprano Alexandra Flood will emerge to sing a selection of Strauss lieder including Zueignung (1885), Cacilie (1894), Befreit (1898), Freundliche Vision (1900), Winterweihe (1900), and Waldseligkeit (1900-1). Possibly there will be others, but these six set a worthy bar because all were orchestrated by Strauss himself. I’m finding Befreit and Waldseligkeit particularly appealing because they both call for a harmonium. Outweighing all these is Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 of 1883 which presents myriad opportunities for rabid enthusiasts to question which of the several available editions will be used, and why. A harmonic feast throughout, the two outer movements are splendid examples of this composer in full rhetorical flow. Tickets move from $20 for anyone under 18, through to between $51 and $139 full price, with concession tickets a measly $5 less, plus – for everyone – the inexorable $7 transaction fee added on because processing your credit card is so time-consuming.

This program will be repeated on Friday October 3 at 7:30 pm in Costa Hall, Geelong, and again in Hamer Hall on Saturday October 4 at 7:30 pm.

GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS

Luminescence Chamber Singers

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday October 3 at 7 pm

You’ll find six singers constitute the Luminescence Chamber Singers from Canberra: sopranos Josephine Brereton and Rachel Mink, mezzo AJ America (the group’s founder), tenor Dan Walker, baritone Lucien Fischer, and bass-baritone Alasdair Stretch. The sextet will be directed by Roland Peelman, long-time director of The Song Company from Sydney. In providing a musical counterpart to Bosch’s great painting, the singers have gone for the very old and the very new, opening with a Hildegard of Bingen double-header comprising the antiphons Cum processit factura and its companion Cum erubuerint (both about 1180-90). At various stages we hear the three Agnus Dei settings (four parts, three parts, then six parts) from Josquin’s Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae of 1603-4, Orlando de Lassus’s chanson Dessus le marche d’Arras (published in 1584), Verdelot’s motet Veni in ortum meum which at least has the distinction of mentioning a garden, and Luzzaschi’s Dante setting of Quivi sospiri, written in 1576. Set against that, you have some early Cage in the 1940 Living Room Music: Story, the madrigal Poi che voi from Gavin Bryars‘ Second Book of Madrigals which may have been written in 2010, the world premiere of Australian composer Nicole Murphy‘s Escape, three of Netherlands writer Frank Nuyts‘ XXX Songs – Anime, Dodl , Eine Kleine Nachtmusik – written in 2007 for Peelman and The Song Company, another premiere in Ode to an apple from Sydney writer Archie Tulk, then (speaking of that fruit) American singer/songwriter Fiona Apple‘s Hot Knife from the 2012 album The Idler Wheel . . . , Norwegian self-effacer AURORA‘s Earthly Delights (Hieronymus! You’re back in town) track from her 2024 album What Happened to the Heart? (arranged by our ensemble’s tenor Walker), and American humorist Bo Burnham‘s Welcome to the Internet from the double album Inside (The Songs) from 2020-21 (arranged by Peelman). A diffuse program, of a piece with the painting it all somehow celebrates. This arecital takes 70 minutes to get through; there’s no interval. But entry is $30 for a student, $35 for those under 35, and $60 ($55 concession) for the rest of us. And don’t forget the MRC’s curious added fee of between $4 and $8.50 if you book online or by phone – the now-traditional fiscal penalty for being au fait with modern-day banking.

TRANSCRIBED SONATAS

Kristian Chong & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday October 4 at 7 pm

To speak of ‘friends’ is stretching it, in the context of this recital. The accomplished Melbourne pianist Kristian Chong is tonight in association with one pal only: the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s principal cello, Timo-Veikko Valve. The pair are presenting a 75-minute recital that comprises two works, neither of which originally involved the cello, although one is nowadays completely associated with that instrument rather than with its original voice. We’re talking about Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata of 1824, featuring a hybrid cello and guitar creation that didn’t last long on the playing field and which gave rise to this amiable work: the only reminder of an early 19th century fad. Still, it’s the single sample we have of a cello/piano duet from Schubert, even if it’s a spurious one. Before this, Chong and Valve play Beethoven’s Op. 17 Sonata for Horn and Piano of 1800, which we recently heard in another transcription at a Musica Viva event from Nicole Baud and Erin Helyard on basset horn and fortepiano respectively. It makes for a mildly enjoyable quarter-hour experience without rattling your receptive rafters with any shocks or even little surprises. As the Arpeggione work comes in at about 25 minutes, you have to wonder how the rest of the promised time-span will be filled. Students can get in for $20, concession card holders for $42, standard-size patrons pay $53 – and everyone has to stump up a fee between $4 and $8.50 if you book online or by phone because it’s more time-consuming booking in advance than rolling up to the MRC box-office – I guess?

TRIO ISIMSIZ

Musica Viva Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday October 7 at 7 pm

When the Trio Isimsiz got round to picking a name, the members opted for a Turkish word that means ‘nameless’. A fine example of artistic anonymity, I expect: don’t bother associating us with any irrelevant connotations because we are simply servitors of the muse – or something like that. The musicians – violinist Pablo Hernan Benedi, cellist Edvard Pogossian, pianist Erdem Misirlioglu – met while studying at the Guildhall in 2009, and here they are, prepared to soothe Music Viva patrons with a full-bodied program of three four-movement works. We begin with Brahms Op. 101 in C minor, written in 1886 and the last of his set of three masterworks in the form. Then comes Valencia-born composer/conductor Francisco Coll‘s Piano Trio, commissioned for the Isimsizes in 2020 and a regular feature in their repertoire ever since. Finally, a chamber music glory in Schubert’s B flat Trio No. 1 of 1827, a score that is fused into the consciousness of many musicians, especially those myriad ensembles (and their grateful audiences) that have grappled locally with its framework across many years of the Melbourne International and the Asia Pacific Chamber Music Competitions. So, it’s a rich program and admission costs anywhere from $20 to $153, depending on your age and financial situation, the latter put under further strain by a grasping $7 transaction fee when booking by phone or online.

WATER MUSIC

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday October 9 at 7 pm

Something like the Luminescence Chamber Choir’s program on Friday October 3, this presentation from the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra features the old and the new, even if that new traces its way back to the oldest of old. For the moderately ancient music, Paul Dyer and his ensemble will perform all three of Handel’s Water Music Suites. Most of us are very familiar with the first of these collections which lasts about half an hour, while the remaining two average about 10 minutes each and, for quite a few, this will be the first time we’ll have heard the complete 1717 compilation. Before this, the ABO will give the premiere of a collaboration between Aboriginal singer Rrawun Maymuru and Sydney writer Nick Wales. This currently goes by the over-indicative title Water but promises novelty, given Wales’ reputation for electronic composition while Maymuru brings us the ancient by singing in the Yolngu Mata language. Both musicians have previously worked together for the Sydney Dance Company, so the relationship between them isn’t a passing one. The occasion’s other feature is that it calls for a lighting designer – Trent Suidgeest who has worked consistently with the Brandenburgers since the COVID interruption. As usual, the ABO ticket price schedule offers a lesson in variety, costs varying slightly according to whichever performance you choose. Maximum is $196, minimum is $30 but there is a whole world of differentiations and not just if you’re claiming a concession or a seniors reduction (I wouldn’t worry about the second because it’s not much and is available for only one of the performances). On top of whatever you select, you’ll be hit with the MRC’s weird transaction fee range of anywhere between $4 and $8.50 if you order by phone or online – a sort of perverse anti-lottery.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October11 at 7 pm and on Sunday October 12 at 5 pm.

JOURNEYS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus

Iwaki Auditorium, Southbank

Saturday October 11 at 7:30 pm

Another one of those run-through 75-minute programs, this outing from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus doesn’t actually offer much variety of travel. The central panel in this four-part excursion is Victoria’s Missa pro Victoria, published in 1600 and taking its impetus from a Janequin chanson celebrating the French triumph at the battle of Marignan in 1515. This presents a vivid Renaissance texture, the choral forces in nine parts with an unusual (to me) telescoping in the Agnus Dei. Further into the night, we hear the composer’s motet O quam gloriosum est regnum of 1572; just as jubilant as the Mass but less imposing as it’s written for four parts only. Under director Warren Trevelyan-Jones, the singers also give an airing to two modern-day products. The first is Joseph Twist‘s Versus est in luctum, the first of the Australian-born composer’s Three Motets after Victoria published in 2011 and an effective work for voices with a decided turn towards grating 2nds. Finally, the singers revisit English writer Gabriel Jackson‘s To the Field of Stars, also from 2011, written for choir, percussion and cello and co-commissioned by the MSO Chorus. It adds to the concentrated Spanish flavour of the occasion by being a series of commentaries on the pilgrimage road to Compostella, written to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Victoria’s death. It’s the program’s major offering, substantial in having 8 movements that take nearly 40 minutes to negotiate. As you can see, the journey is a highly concentrated one. Entry is simple: $20 for those under 18, $55 for a standard ticket, with a risible reduction of $5 for a concession holder. Of course, you face a transaction fee of $7 as a necessary hurdle to impede financially your interest in these singers and their offerings.

LUX AETERNA

Melbourne Ensemble

Iwaki Auditorium, Southbank

Sunday October 12 at 5 pm

This Melbourne Ensemble has grown out of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, surprisingly enough, its core participants sufficient to perform Beethoven’s Septet: clarinet Philip Arkinstall, horn Saul Lewis, bassoon Jack Schiller, violin Freya Franzen, viola Christopher Moore, cello Elina Fashki, double bass Stephen Newton. For this recital, the numbers have been increased by one: violin Anna Skalova. All are current MSO players and will present a wild mix of a program this evening. To begin, Lewis plays the Epilogue from Britten’s 1943 Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings: a solo with the horn permitted to use only the instrument’s natural harmonics; o recherche little Benjamin. Next, Newton enjoys a solo in Gubaidulina’s Espressivo-Sotto voce: the third from her Eight Etudes for Solo Double-bass of 2009, spring-boarding from a work for cello. Keeping momentarily to the Russian side of life, Newton and Fashki perform Schnittke’s Hymnus II of 1974 which holds an engrossing final page. Into the home stretch and we encounter Osvaldo Golijov‘s Tenebrae of 2000 in its second version for string quartet which juxtaposes the ethereal with the brutal. To end, the ensemble presents the premiere of a new Gerard Brophy score: ISTANBUL, The Magic of Daily Life, written for these very players in their septet format – in 2020; a long time between drinks, as we say. It’s in five movements, taksim (reservoir), namaz (prayer), pepemelik (possibly stuttering), petrus (Saint Peter), geveze (chattering); doubtless, it will all become clear in the hammam. Tickets are $55, concessions still laughable at $50, and you pay a $7 transaction fee for booking online or by phone – Australian artistic entrepreneurship at its finest.

BENJAMIN GROSVENOR

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday October 14 at 7:30 pm

Here’s a young British talent who is a ‘genius’, according to the Spectator (what crazies write this sort of puffery?). We’ve had a few of such pianists over the past ten years, coming and going, adding to the weight of human experience, then sinking into the ruck, eclipsed by fresher faces. Well, let’s not abandon hope: Benjamin Grosvenor may be as good as the commentator opines. He’s certainly treading a familiar route on his march towards the pianistic pantheon. Tonight, he opens his fieldwork with the Chopin B flat minor Sonata No. 2, finished in 1839 and containing the famous Funeral March that the composer himself rejected for its association with death – something of a pity as it was played at his own funeral. Grosvenor then turns to Gaspard de la nuit, Ravel’s 1908 three-movement suite which tests severely everyone who delves into its pages. To end, the young (33) pianist presents Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, that 1874 compendium of varied and vivid colours that stands as a trial of endurance for the interpreter and a continuous chain of delights for an audience. Grosvenor is certainly not shying away from challenges, particularly as these three works have passed through the hands of many giants from the world of which he is part. Tickets begin at $67, then $87, up to $102, and $115 for ‘Premium’, while there are two concession grades of $67 and $87, neither of them applying to the top class. Also, if you’re booking online or by phone, you can anticipate a transaction fee of somewhere between $4 and $8.50, adding another financial standing level to the exercise. At this time of writing, the Murdoch Hall is about a third full.

IMPRESSIONS OF PARIS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday October 23 at 7:30 pm

Sort through this program, and you’ll come across a bit of non-French music. To begin, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under Venezuelan-born conductor Rodolfo Barraez premieres a new Australian work, currently listed on the MSO website as ‘New work’, which is being contributed by James Henry, the current Cybec First Nations Composer in Residence with the MSO. It remains to be seen (and heard) how this writer will transport us to Paris, or even if he intends to do so. At the evening’s centre is an unarguably French work in Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the left hand of 1930 which was the most successful product of the many commissions generated by that curmudgeonly artist, Paul Wittgenstein. Tonight’s soloist, British pianist Nicholas McCarthy, was born without his right hand – different to Wittgenstein who lost his in World War One. But the work is a riveting experience to hear, particularly for its final pages. After interval, Barraez conducts Franck’s Symphony in D minor, one of the mainstays of the orchestral repertoire and a lasting monument to the poor judgement of music critics. Fortunately, it has become inextricably linked with France’s musical history, even if the composer was born in Belgium. Anyone under 18 can get in for $20; standard tickets range between $75 and $139, while concession holders pay $5 less (Ubi caritas . . . ); everyone pays the $7 transaction fee if they book online or by phone, for (I keep asking) what?

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 25 at 2 pm

AUSTRALIA FAIR?

Flinders Quartet

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday October 29 at 7 pm

It’s always heartwarming to see a formerly staid organization like the Flinders Quartet kicking over the traces and making a political statement. Or is that not what’s happening here? The current members – violins Elizabeth Sellars and Wilma Smith, viola Helen Ireland, cello Zoe Knighton – make a bold opening move with a string quartet by Deborah Cheetham-Fraillon: Bungaree, written in 2020 and premiered online by the Flinders during the COVID years. Honouring the Aboriginal who went right round Australia with Matthew Flinders in 1802-3, the work is in three movements: November 24 (the date of Bungaree’s death), Kaaroo (the first of his wives), and Navigating the Truth, about which you’d have to ask the composer. Continuing this national introspection comes Australia Fair? Volume I: ‘The Australian Dream’ by Bryony Marks which first appeared at the Port Fairy Spring Festival of 2022 and which ran in tandem with a film showcasing the safe, monocultural life of this country in the first half of the 20th century, the era that culminated in the Big Sleep of the Menzies era. Then it’s back to the mainstream for Dvorak No. 14 in A flat Major, the composer’s last in the form and meant to be celebrating his life in America, although he finished it after returning to Bohemia in 1895 and it always strikes me as a protracted sigh of relief. There’s no home like your own home, even if it’s not perfect. Tickets are $42 for students and concession card holders, $53 for the rest of us, plus the enthralling exercise of negotiating a transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50 if you order online or by phone.

A CELEBRATION OF SIBELIUS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Melbourne Town Hall

Thursday October 30 at 7:30 pm

This year is the 160th anniversary of the great Finnish composer’s birth, so why not? It’s all well-known material, until we get to the last work, the hearing of which live is almost worth the price of admission. Benjamin Northey conducts the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Finlandia, that rousing 1900 call to arms against the Tsarist bear. Then we can delight in the 1904 Violin Concerto which ABC Classic Radio seems to have on a loop. Tonight, the soloist is Edward Walton who is under 20 and so just the right age to take on this flamboyant, emotionally rich display piece. Another popular work follows in the Valse triste of 1903, part of a stage music contribution to a play by the composer’s brother-in-law. Then we finish with the Symphony No. 3 in C which I believe I’ve heard only once in the concert hall, as opposed to multiple auditions of No. 1, No. 2 and No. 5. This work, written across 1904-7, has a more brusque voice than you find in the first two symphonies, and not just because the score has only three movements. The texture is more clear, less self-indulgent; even the last chord comes as a bit of a shock. So the whole event is a concentrated sample of Sibelius, all works falling inside a seven-year span. If you’re under 18, a ticket costs $20; standard price falls between $35 and $105, with concessions coming in at a not-worth-mentioning $5 cheaper. Never forget the transaction fee of $7 if you order online or by phone – the price of doing business and an inevitable evil.

This program will be repeated in Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University on Friday October 31 at 7:30 pm.

Some action, more placidity

cliveoconnell

A MUSICAL AWAKENING

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Sunday October 7, 2025

Timo-Veikko Valve

Perhaps the organization was more than a bit optimistic to hope for any awakening in this afternoon’s music, especially in the physical sense. After the first ten minutes or so, I was verging on the somnolent, mainly because the opening work, Illuminations, was played in near darkness with a backdrop of soothing electronically-generated bush noises, and the basic music, one of Hildegard of Bingen’s Marian acclamations (Ave generosa from about 1158), might tempt towards ecstasy in the right surrounds but not in the well-amplified environment of a tenebrous Hamer Hall.

Something of the same could be said about the Australian Chamber Orchestra‘s conclusion to their program: an arrangement for string orchestra of the 1825 middle Molto adagio to Beethoven’s Op. 132, his Heiliger Dankgesang for relief from illness where the composer stretches his material to weave a focused movement that has aspirations to take us away from the diurnal grind. I believe this finale came as something of a relief to ACO patrons, not least for the ardour with which a truncated ACO pronounced it. Mind you, its provenance as an arrangement remains obscure; Beethoven made no indications of moving it into the extended forces format.

But it was an uneasy concert experience for this listener, chiefly due to a sudden change in the programming order. At some stage leading up to this performance, Peteris Vask’s Musica serena disappeared, to be replaced by Jaakko Kuusisto’s Wiima – a sort of nature piece from 2011 (in this string orchestra shape) describing a winter wind. Somehow, the replacement meant that the core of our diet had to be moved around, with several problems arising for many of us faced with a set of contemporary pieces and trying to piece together what came where. Not to mention the hurried issuing of this information from a noticeably inexpressive voice murmuring over the hall’s speaker system.

Certainly, the opening Hildegard piece came first, the sound world centred on Genevieve Lacey‘s recorder outlining the chant while the supporting strings made great play with drones and open 5ths in Erkki Veltheim‘s re-imagining of the piece for modern ears. We couldn’t actually see Lacey, who stood in front of the string forces (3-3-2-2-1) and, while they were partially lit-up by desk-lights, she wasn’t. Anyway, the piece progressed serenely enough, Lacey left the stage and some lights came up (a practical illumination) to show us Simon Martyn-Ellis holding his theorbo and taking centre-stage for a solo which I assume was carrying on from Lacey’s meditations on the Virgin. It ought to be sufficient to say that the general tenor of the music remained roughly the same.

But it’s possible that Martyn-Ellis was doing an elaboration on something else. Somewhere along the line we heard Max Richter‘s On the Nature of Daylight from 2004 which struck me – as so much of this writer’s work does – as being based on predictable chords and melodic waverings that occupy a kind of Stasisland. Nothing happens. You can follow the progressions without thinking about it and that’s probably what happened because I’ve got absolutely no recall of the ACO musicians wafting through this miasma of old-fashioned harmonic progressions.

All of a sudden, we were woken from our meditations by the clean sounds of Kuusisto’s soundscape which, at last, showed a mind searching for unusual textures and sound-production techniques. Here was a score for our times, speaking a language at once contemporary and harking back to past tone-painters yet not descending to the level of mimicry. The ACO musicians gave us a vivid account of this bracing music, welcome for its bustling activity and allowance for individuality.

Lacey returned to give the world premiere of American composer David Lang‘s flute and echo, a clever concerto in which the recorder sets up series of solo melodic lines which are imitated by a solo violin (Helena Rathbone, leading the ACO), the content spreading to the orchestral body. This inter-leaving device gradually loses its rigidity and the opposition of woodwind and strings gains in contrast as Lang’s work moves to its conclusion. My only problem with this attractively lucid work was the amplification level which was high, and not just of Lacey.

Australian writer Melody Eotvos contributed Meraki to the musicians’ offerings; like the Lang work and Veltheim’s arrangements, commissioned by the ACO. Eotvos’s piece, taking its name from a Greek word, was written five years ago and presented these players with no obvious problems as it too harks back to a simpler time where the aim of communicating involvement or creativity results in a pleasing aural environment where any harmonic shocks (there are no rhythmic ones) register in the work’s centre with some pages of chugging discordant chords before everything is righted at the end and we come to a placid quietus.

Lacey and Martyn-Ellis (now sporting a baroque guitar alongside his theorbo)returned for Veltheim’s second construction: Imaginary Cities: A Baroque Fantasy which, like Illuminations, featured a soundtrack of noises, in this instance somewhat watery ones as the cities in question seemed to be transmuted into one: Venice. After some preliminary faffing around, we were suddenly hit by Monteverdi’s Domine ad adjuvandum from the 1610 Vespers (later the opening toccata to the composer’s 1637 opera L’Orfeo and here carried off without the Vespers‘ choir, of course, and lacking the brass), played straight. This is startlingly direct music, revelling in its monochromatic harmonic outbursts and a sudden delight to experience.

Lacey gave us two Vivaldi extracts: the first Allegro of the Recorder Concerto RV444 and, completing Veltheim’s entertainment, the finale to the popular RV 443, both of them coming from 1728-9. To my well-roused ears, these were played as written and the focus naturally fell on Lacey who invested both with her customary precision and clever differentiation of attack across repeated passages – and God knows you can find a lot of those in Vivaldi concertos.

In between, the supporting tape gave us a ney flute solo, a Sephardic song that melded with Strozzi’s Che si puo fare aria of 1664, and some faint tarantella dances, along with the rippling water and many other atmospheric noises that have not stuck in this memory. So the exercise catered for both courtier and commoner, just as Venice does today depending on the amount of cash you’re prepared to spend in that slowly-sinking marvel.

And then, the Beethoven quartet movement which had the benefit of bringing this musical journey to a sonorously satisfying ending with an impressive strength in the full-bodied chords that punctuate the score, e.g. 21 bars from the end. Nevertheless, the emergence of these noble sounds as a kind of aesthetic summation of the awakening process struck me as taking an easy way out. Some of us might be suspicious that the composer is too overt in his transcendental signals and this adagio needs its original surrounds to give it a suitable framework, a world that treats with the everyday alongside this singular ascent out of it.

Timo-Veikko Valve, the ACO principal cello, curated this event but made an unobtrusive figure onstage. At the end, his selection impressed for its catholicity, even if the opening veered into a highly restrained area of musical experience. I was tempted by my shortcomings in following the chain of offerings to hear the program again on the next night but was constrained by domestic troubles. However. one of the more successful features of this Sunday afternoon experience was the absence of serious coughers; apart from some rumbles during the Beethoven, the occasion was pleasantly free of laryngeal interference. Long may it continue.

Diary September 2025

cliveoconnell

MOSTLY MOZART – EINE KLEINE NACHTMUSIK

Australian National Academy of Music

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday September 3 at 11 am

As the old saying has it, what goes around, goes around. On August 10, we heard the Australian Chamber Orchestra plumbing our depths with the Barshai arrangement of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 of 1960, added to the composer’s catalogue as Chamber Symphony Op. 110a. This morning, the Australian National Academy of Music strings give it another airing but the Russian score doesn’t have the final word, as it did at the ACO event. That honour goes to Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik of 1786, one of the most popular pieces by the composer and familiar to everyone from the priest ministering to Salieri at the opening of the film Amadeus to patrons of the Omega Ensemble’s appearance here on August 16 where we heard the opening Allegro alone. Adam Chalabi, the current Head of Violin at ANAM, will take his charges through these two works. He might also conduct the ANAM brass in two Mozart arrangements: the Kyrie and Lacrimosa of the Requiem, the composition of which 1791 torso dominated the concluding scenes to Forman’s aforementioned film of 1984. This is a run-through event lasting 75 minutes and tickets are a flat $59 or $52 concession, with the added wriggle of that transaction fee that lands anywhere between $4 and $8,50 if you phone up for tickets or go online.

A MUSICAL AWAKENING

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday September 6 at 7:30 pm

Director for this event is the Australian Chamber Orchestra‘s principal cellist, Timo-Veikko Valve. He will have a lot to deal with as the program moves across medieval chant and into contemporary American and Australian constructs. Guest Genevieve Lacey rouses us with one of Erkki Veltheim‘s Illuminations, which seem to be versions of some Hildegard efflorescences; in this case, Ave generosa. I note that last year, Lacey played a different Illumination by Veltheim in Hobart – O ignis spiritus – so he must be conducting an ongoing collaboration with everyone’s favourite mystical abbess. Back to earth for something from the unaccountably popular Max Richter in On the Nature of Daylight which comes from a 2004 album and has been used remorselessly in many contemporary films, none of which I’ve seen. Then we have a five-year-old commission by the ACO from Australian writer Melody Eotvos called Meraki: a Greek word meaning putting yourself into your work; well, what could be more lovely? That’s the local modern component while David Lang‘s newly written flute and echo represents the United States and here enjoys its world premiere. Back to Europe for the rest, beginning with Peteris Vask‘s Musica serena: a 2015 homage on his 70th birthday to the composer’s friend, conductor Juha Kangas. We’re back to Veltheim for what I suppose is another version of older music supplied by Monteverdi, Vivaldi and Ms Strozzi, the whole called Imaginary Cities; all right, but you’d have to suspect that they’ll be redolent of the composers’ homeland. And our last awakening features an arrangement by Valve of the Molto adagio in Beethoven’s Op. 132 String Quartet of 1825, as a sort of balance to the German nun’s controlled ecstasy. At the MRC for this event, you pay between $30 and $141, depending on your age (of course) and your financial resources; you also pay a fee between $4 and $8.50 per order to the Centre’s cent-counting gurus.

This program will be repeated in Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne on Sunday September 7 at 2:30 pm and back in the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre on Monday September 8 at 7:30 pm.

SPRING BLOSSOM, AUTUMN HARVEST

Australian New Goldberg Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Sunday September 14 at 6:30 pm

New to me, the Australian New Goldberg Orchestra has been in existence since 2013. Its chief function seems to be linking European and Chinese musical traditions, offering a swinging diet comprising both cultures – as is the case with this program, the latest in a series with the above title. Conductor Thaddeus Huang begins this event with Reba Dance by Fang Kejie, a 71-year-old Chinese composer who won fame with this 1999 composition that has Tibetan roots and is therefore a questionable artefact. Huang ends the program with the Hai Xi Suite by Ming Wang who could be one of several composers with that name. In the middle comes a great favourite: Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante K. 364 of 1779. In this instance, the soloists will be Zoe Black violin and Caroline Henbest viola; we’re all looking forward to a stylish C minor central Andante. As well, representing more of the West, Glenn Riddle is soloist in Poulenc’s Piano Concerto of 1949, a work that has rarely been heard here but holds a combination of sophisticated naivete and amiable heartiness (at least in its first movement) that distinguishes it from plenty of contemporaneous boiler-rattlers. Your full-price tickets range from $59 to $109; concession prices are $9 cheaper; students go $40, $60, and $90. Oh, and if you phone or order online, you won’t forget the moveable feast transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50, will you? It all helps . . . somebody.

SONGS WITHOUT WORDS

Selby & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Monday September 15 at 2 pm

You’d be expecting some Mendelssohn in a Selby & Friends program with this title and you’d not be wrong, But things are seldom what they seem and so it is here: these songs without words were produced by Australian composer Anne Cawrse in 2020. Three of them in all, their titles are Ornamental, Lied and Swansong; no surprise to anyone that they fall into the mould of tributes to both Fanny and Felix through their diatonic framework and the felicitous sweetness of interplay between violin, cello and piano. Following this none-too-exacting remembrance comes the Chopin Piano Trio in G minor, written in 1828 or 1829 and a surprising piece of bright juvenilia that makes you wonder why the composer didn’t try the form later in his life, even if you have to agree with those pundits who find the violin line unadventurous. Kathryn Selby and her associates for this event – violin Alexandra Osborne, associate concertmaster in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and cello Catherine Hewgill, principal cello with the same body – finish off their time with us through the big Schubert Piano Trio in E flat of 1827: a massive masterwork gifted with one of music’s most unforgettable slow movements. Tickets move between $63 and $81, with the unavoidable transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50 if you have the cheek to book online or by phone.

This program will be repeated at 7 pm.

CLARA-JUMI KANG + LATITUDE 37

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Monday September 15 at 7:30 pm

Let me not to the marriage etc. but what is going on with this exercise? In the first half, the period instrument group Latitude 37 which we have come to know and love is presenting a brace of works: Erlebach’s Sonata sesta in F of 1694, and Buxtehude’s Trio Sonata in A minor from about 1670. Now I’m assuming the ensemble’s personnel hasn’t changed: violin Julia Fredersdorff, viola da gamba Laura Vaughan, harpsichord Donald Nicholson. If so, welcome to all the pleasures, short-lived as they may be. Anyway, in Part 2 of this recital, violinist Clara-Jumi Kang will play three solo violin works of disparate flavours, beginning with Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Sonata No 3 of 1979, the last of the unfortunate composer’s three. Piling on the fireworks will be the Ysaye Sonata No 3, called Ballade and written in 1923; for many of us, it’s the only one of the composer’s six that we can call familiar. To end, Kang presents the big Bach Partita in D minor, which ends with the taxing Chaconne and, I suppose, gets us back to the Baroque sound with which this event began. The South Korean-German violinist is making her Melbourne Recital Centre debut and good luck with that, but what is the point of the Latitude people preceding her? An act of sponsorship? Or friendship? Anyway, tickets move from $67 to $115; concession applicants get a cut of $15 or $20, depending on where you sit; and everybody phoning in or booking online pays the transaction fee of anything between $4 and $8.50. Don’t ask me why: I would have thought that the same amount of work went into handling the credit card arrangements for a cheap seat as for a pricey one.

STEPHEN MCINTYRE PLAYS SCHUMANN

Melbourne Recital Centre

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday September 18 at 7 pm

Most of we old-timer music critics in Melbourne (not many left, you’ll be glad to hear) have a special affection for pianist Stephen McIntyre, and not only because he won the National Critics Award back in the days (1970s and 1980s) when you felt privileged to belong to that happy band of authorities which included Kenneth Hince, John Sinclair, Felix Werder, Peter Mladenov and a bevy of interstate also-rans. McIntyre won the award for performing the complete solo piano works of Ravel in (I think) the Warden’s Lodge of Trinity College. Tonight he presents two Schumann works, one being the three-movement Fantasie in C by the 26-year-old composer; written in 1836 and very demanding, even for its dedicatee – Liszt. But McIntyre opens with a rarity in the complete Bunte Blatter: 14 pieces written across the span 1834 to 1849 and assembled for publication in 1850. I know only the first (and easiest, apparently) from an AMEB exam back in the 1950s but, to counter my ignorance, the collection has been recorded by the well-known – Clara Haskil, Sviatoslav Richter, Vladimir Ashkenazy – and the (to me) totally unknown (a lot more). Both works last a bit over a half hour each and the pianist will play straight through. Full price tickets are $50; concessions are $40. And you have to take a punt on your booking fee being somewhere between $4 and $8.50 if you phone for tickets or try to get them online – and that’s what I call artificial intelligence.

MOZART’S GREAT MASS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday September 18 at 7:30 pm

As with many programs these days, this one leaves me at a loss as it does a historical reverse job with three completely different works. To begin our travels, Australian conductor Nicholas Carter, currently on a career vault from Bern to Stuttgart, takes the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra through an episode from Richard Strauss’s opera Intermezzo: the second of the interludes, Dreaming by the Fireside, where the female lead remembers her idyllic partnership with her husband (the composer gilding the lily in this autobiographical story-line, his real-life wife being a conceited pain-in-the-arse). This 1923 piece of broad late Romantic comfort-food is followed by the gravity of Brahms’ Song of Destiny which, despite a good many years spent listening to choral music, I’ve never heard live. Here, of course, the MSO is joined by the MSO Chorus for this uncomplicated and masterful 1871 tapestry, a treat especially for the tenors. You’d assume that, at this point, there’ll be an interval after about 25 minutes of playing and singing. Then we move back almost a century (and into the hall) to hear the Great Mass of 1782-3 which is imposing even in its unfinished state (it’s missing a good deal of the interesting parts of the Credo – everything after the homo factus est – and there’s no Agnus Dei). But you have a really substantial Gloria to enjoy and a mass that ends with jubilation is something of an improvement on the usual pleadings for a restful death. Soloists are sopranos Siobhan Stagg and Samantha Clarke, tenor Matteo Desole, and bass David Greco. Your standard ticket costs between $81 and $139; concessions are $5 cheaper (oh, the charity); children (anyone under 18) enjoy the occasion for $20; and you face a $7 transaction fee for your pains – patronage at a cost.

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

CARMINA BURANA

Melbourne Bach Cho

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday September 19 at 8 pm

Carl Orff’s popular cantata (meant to be staged but it never is) from 1935/6 somehow brings out the best in choirs, so you’d have to believe that it will be a walk in the park for the Melbourne Bach Choir, given the scores that its members have grappled with over the last 20 years. It’s a gift to interpreters, even the hard-pressed soloists who have to come out of the blocks prepared for some very risky work, like the soprano’s Dulcissime solo and the tenor’s falsetto-rich Olim lacus colueram. You’d have to assume that the conductor will be the Choir’s artistic director Rick Prakhoff, although he’s not mentioned in the Recital Centre website’s dramatis personae. The soloists will be soprano Jane Magao, tenor Robert Macfarlane, and bass Christopher Hillier. Patrons won’t hear the original instrumental forces – no woodwind, no brass, no strings, no celesta; just the two pianos, timpani and percussion (lots of the last, I’m hoping). It sounds like the arrangement brought about by Wilhelm Killmayer in 1956, which was approved by Orff. The Australian Children’s Choir will be on hand to help Magao through Amor volat undique and twitter through Tempus est iocundum. Yes, the score is at the other end of German musical history from the Bach Passions that I’ve heard Prakhoff and his forces tackle so successfully, but here’s a body that doesn’t rest on its laurels. Tickets range from $33 for a student right up the back of the balcony to $99 for your premium adult seat in the stalls; concessions sit on a sliding scale, depending on the regular price. As always, you face a a doing-business fee of between $4 and $8.50 if you’re flush enough to phone in or go online to make your purchase.

ENSEMBLE LIAISON & FRIENDS – BEETHOVEN’S SEPTET

Ensemble Liaison

Hanson Dyer Hall, Ian Potter Southbank Centre

Monday September 22 at 7 pm

As you can see, the Ensemble Liaison will host several guests to flesh out the personnel needed for Beethoven’s highly popular (in his lifetime and well after) Septet in E flat, completed in 1800. As well as the group’s regular members – cello Svetlana Bogosavljevic, clarinet David Griffiths, piano Timothy Young – we’ll be hearing violin Dale Barltrop from the Australian String Quartet, horn Carla Blackwood from the University of Melbourne and the Australian National Academy of Music, ditto bassoon Lyndon Watts. We are left with an unnamed viola and double bass (no part for Young in this long delight) but they could be ‘Students from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music’ as the Melbourne Recital Centre’s publicity bumf specifies non-specifically. If Young sits out the septet, we hear him in a double role during the first two program components. First, he’s the composer of Distant Waters, a trio for the Liaison members premiered last year at a Musica Viva recital in Hobart. It’s Young’s Opus 2 and is apparently a series of variations in E minor. Straight after, he becomes solo pianist for Ravel’s triptych pf 1908, Gaspard de la nuit, which is one of the more demanding works for piano, from the irregular ripples at Ondine‘s opening to the menacing jocularity of Scarbo disappearing into the furniture. Ticketing for this night is simple: standard tickets cost $53; concessions are $42, and you also will have to find somewhere between $4 and $8.50 for the Centre’s odd booking fee range.

AN EVENING ON BROADWAY

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Wednesday September 24 at 7:30 pm

Lending their combined talents to this exercise, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by Western Australian-born Jessica Gethin who has recently become connected to Orchestra Victoria. Her two soloists are Amy Manford and Josh Piterman, the latter being the first Australian to sing the lead roles of The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables in London. Mamford also hales from the west and has had success in London as well as partnering with Piterman in Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s 1986 musical treatment of Leroux’s novel for the Sydney Opera House production of 2022. Naturally, this work and the Claude-Michel Schonberg 1980 reduction of Hugo’s epic canvas feature prominently in the list of musicals to be mined for this celebration of New York’s theatre district. We also hear Bernstein’s West Side Story of 1957 which occupies a class of composition some levels above this night’s other music. As well, there’s Evita, written in 1976 and an early feather in the Lloyd Webber tricorne. Not to mention the same composer’s Cats of 1981 which does for T. S. Eliot what Florence Foster Jenkins did for Mozart. But that’s not all: there is the promising ‘and more’ added on to the list of specific shows that are to be selected from. Enjoy the orchestra. Standard tickets range from $80 to $135; concession tickets are $5 cheaper (that’s your MSO social conscience at work). The transaction fee is $7 which is par for the course these days; not that such regularity makes the imposition any more justifiable.

This program will be repeated on Thursday September 25 at 7:30 pm, and on Friday September 26 at 1 pm and at 7:30 pm.

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Amiable but neither unexpected nor extraordinary

cliveoconnell

ELEVATOR MUSIC

Omega Ensemble

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday August 15, 2025

Michael Collins

A Sydney-based group, the Omega Ensemble presents as a moveable feast of artists. For this segment of its national tour, the group comprised string players, alongside some crypto-strings/percussion in piano (Vatche Jambazian) and harp (Paul Nicolaou), with artistic director David Rowden contributing his clarinet to one work. As the Omegas’ guest, Michael Collins brought his clarinet to the stage for the brief evening’s two major works, demonstrating his expertise and interpretative flair with deceptive ease and making something substantial out of an odd scrappy program.

To begin, the Omega strings gave themselves a throat-clearer with the first movement to Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik of 1787. Well, it also gave us a chance to get used to the body’s weighting of 4-4-3-2-2 which, from my seat, gave the bass line of this quartet an unexpected prominence. Not that you could complain about such a teaser which made for a congenial tuning-in exercise. As usual, the group overdid the dynamic contrasts well beyond anything the composer would have entertained, but they’re not alone in that. They repeated the exposition, which never fails to be a pleasing 55 bars to re-experience.

American writer Anna Clyne‘s Stride for string orchestra followed. Its three movements employ the melodic and sometimes the harmonic path of Beethoven’s Pathetique Piano Sonata No. 8, albeit with plenty of filler. Apparently, the composer found a similarity between the bass octaves at the first movement’s switch to Allegro di moto e con brio and the stride technique utilised by ragtime pianists; can’t really see it myself, but the shoe obviously fits for Clyne. Mind you, that all becomes irrelevant when she moves on to the second and third movements, the last being most direct of the three in utilizing Beethoven.

This is not the sort of music to stop you in your tracks through its level of inventiveness or novelty of timbres; it’s just akin to hearing the sonata referenced in a mushy web, a kind of filtered Beethoven at an unsettling remove from the original because of the transcription to strings. But it misfired for me because even Clyne’s changes of harmony accompanying the original melodies were ordinary. I suspect that the work’s success in performance relies on the style of attack adopted, which might have been more interesting in the hands of its original commissioners – the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which premiered it in 2020. Added to this, the bass component across the final rondo again overwhelmed whatever was happening upstairs.

We then came to the new double concerto by Australian composer Graeme Koehne called Dances on the Edge of Time, which title emanates from a Tagore poem and which to me promised something along the lines of Messiaenesque mysticism or perhaps a touch of Bengali complexity. But no: Koehne has produced a simple set of three dances – rigaudon, chaconne, gigue – which contain no terrors for players or audience, written in a happy diatonic style that is instantly accessible and free from any pretensions to depth or gravity.

Adding to this piece’s popular backdrop, Koehne heads each movement with a quote from the collected wisdom of either Randall G. Leighton (the American business analyst?), Mark Twain or Satchell Paige (a renowned baseball player). For the opening rigaudon, the instruction or life-message was ‘Work like you don’t need the money’, exemplified by a retrograde-sounding piece in four-square rhythm that called to mind Grainger and Holst in what sounded to be G Major, the two front-of-band clarinets indulging in some jaunty interplay and mimesis.

‘Love like you’ve never been hurt’ was the preliminary advice for Koehne’s chaconne in which I became aware of the harp’s timbre for the first time. For these pages, I thought that the prevailing tonality was D Major; or may be not as I’m finding it increasingly hard to claim having absolute pitch any more and trying to pick out tonality from finger positions is a mug’s game at best. Whatever the case, we enjoyed a few eliding slides into other keys while the cantus firmus moved from treble to bass across the movement’s stretch with a clean fluidity, even if the players didn’t seem to find much excitement needed to be summoned up while conveying these placid A-River-Runs-Through-It pages. Again, I sensed no strain in the output of Collins or Rowden while presenting this lush and predictable slow movement.

With the gigue, we were in unsteady territory at first with a clarinet duet that eventually settled into the expected 6/8 pulse. Here again the music occupied an ‘open’ key – C Major? – that moved into harmonically unchallenging episodes before the catchy main tune slowed down for a more drawn-out statement of its elements: a gentle and soulful interlude with the strings given the main burden while the clarinets sublimated themselves in attention-grabbing burbles. Back to the fast jig tempo and we reached a happily contentment-inducing cadence, all illustrating that timeless adage, ‘Dance like nobody’s watching.’

The composer is not concerned in this work with confronting anything that’s driven the art forward or into detours and culs de sac over the last century. His vocabulary throughout the new double concerto rarely moves beyond that employed by the English pastoralists. Further, he keeps his soloists well in hand with very little room for virtuosic flourishes, content to give them aural prominence among their support colleagues. To my mind, the work is congenial enough but not in the least bit ground-breaking. The program notes for this concert speak of Koehne pursuing a ‘neoclassical kind of aesthetic’ – but there’s no need for the neo qualifier.

As far as I could tell, the rather sparse audience (250? 300?) reacted favourably to this exercise, and I suppose that its reception can be viewed as a success, even if a few of us were nonplussed by the work’s innate conservatism, given the Omegas’ motto: Embrace the unexpected. Celebrate the extraordinary. Not with this work, commissioned by the ensemble itself.

To end, Collins took the lead for Copland’s Clarinet Concerto of 1947-9. As far as I can see, he has produced only one recording of this famous work – a Swedish Chamber Orchestra collaboration released in 2013 – as opposed to the three versions he has produced of Finzi’s less well-travelled concerto. You could find much to relish in the opening slow movement, in particular Collins’ ability to give us a crescendo–decrescendo set of sequences that remained sensible, not straining the barriers of taste and sense. This atmospheric consequent of Appalachian Spring‘s placid stretches maintains its eloquence, even if it does suggest a Meditation on the Prairie ambience.

At last, we came to some hectic playing in Copland’s cadenza where the composer anticipates the coming action. In spite of the sudden heating-up, Collins gave us a sensible and ordered account of this 70-plus bar extravaganza that tests any interpreter’s agility and self-control. Not a squawk or a misdirect to be heard here as the soloist joined up with his Omega colleagues for the jazz- and Latin-inflected finale. Here you felt the lack of violins once again, even from further back in the Murdoch Hall, because of a lack of aggression as the syncopations piled up and some rhythmic anxiety appeared in the rear echelons.

As the freneticism continued, it struck me that Jambazian might have been well advised to have his piano-lid down or off; this instrument’s colour proved very prominent in the movement’s centre. Still, Collins dominated the terrain, not least when Copland exercised his heavy jazz tongue, as at bar 297 with the bass semi-pizzicato slaps while the clarinet saunters across the room. I wasn’t happy about the penultimate bar’s glissando up to the final unison C for everybody but you’d expect that the players will have coordinated that to better effect for tonight’s Sydney and Thursday’s Newcastle performances of this program.

Looking over the Omega appearances past and future for this year, it’s very clear that the body is a solid supporter of new music; its list of previous commissions is the most impressive and all-inclusive I’ve seen in this country from any serious chamber music enterprise. Most of us interested in new developments might have our expectations better fulfilled in the body’s final Melbourne appearance this year which features Bartok’s 1938 Contrasts (like the Copland concerto, another commission by Benny Goodman and still more challenging than anything we heard on this Elevator Music program), Nigel Westlake’s Rare Sugar clarinet concertino of 2007, and a new work from Sydney-based writer Ell;a Macens.

After the fun, a sobering reality

cliveoconnell

GERSHWIN & SHOPSTAKOVICH

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Sunday August 10, 2025

Alexander Gavrylyuk

In some ways, this afternoon’s event impressed for the breadth of its span in emotional content. Richard Tognetti and his Australian Chamber Orchestra performed three works that exposed their talent for breathing fresh life into a near-classic and giving two newer scores every opportunity to stake their claims for inclusion here. It might have had a lot to do with the age and predispositions of this particular audience but it struck me that the opening gambit in this concert made less of a case for itself than its companion while the program’s final work exercised its usual impact of uplifting despair.

For starters, we heard Zipingu by Canadian writer Claude Vivier, written for thirteen strings; I counted fifteen in the ACO ranks but you can’t have modernity (awkwardly, the piece is 45 years old) without flexibility. Sadly, I’ve not seen the score of Zipingu – a word used in Marco Polo’s time to refer to Japan – but its chief characteristics indicate that colour is the main objective. Vivier intended a kind of pan-Asian atmosphere, in which he achieved no little success with, as far as I could see, nobody attempting a vibrato throughout although tremolando proved king as a sound source.

For all its supporting polemic, Zipangu worked on this listener as a sort of musical diuretic as it lacked most of the connectors that your average Western concert-goer expects, or clings to. The composer’s canvas is full of incident but nothing stays with you and the absence of investment in the individual note – simply sounding it without much intellectual impulse, as if applying white to a white canvas – made this fifteen minutes or so quite challenging. I’m assuming that Vivier was seeing his Japan flat-on, without embellishment and the invitation was for us to absorb an abstract sequence of disparate shades.

As for the following Moments of Memory (VI) by Valentin Silvestrov, a Ukrainian composer who fled from Kiev to Germany when the Russians began the latest phase of their invasion, the ACO performed this world premiere (the organization had a hand in commissioning it) with assured ease. Still, little remains in this particular memory about a set of seven movements that melded into each other. It presented as a type of cafe music, a series of waltzes that might have been reminiscences of life in Ukrainian cities before disaster and drones made the composer’s homeland unliveable. Not that Silvestrov struck a tragic level and confronted us with suffering; his memory proved melancholy but warm, especially as vibrato had rarely made such a welcome comeback.

At the program’s end, Tognetti led his forces through Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony in C minor, the 1964 arrangement by Rudolf Barshai of the composer’s String Quartet No. 8 which was written four years earlier. This was splendid work, the performance notable for its final two slow movements that gradually sink to that individual gloom that the composer made his own: the Largo that ends the composition one of the bleakest resolutions in Western music. Of course, this work would have been at the performers’ fingertips as they released a new CD of it in February this year, although the recording sessions date from 2021.

Yet again, the ACO demonstrated its depth of expertise and accomplishment by a vitally emphatic account of the Allegro molto second movement, clear-speaking in its crisp chord slashes and the power underpinning group statements of its single-line melodies. Likewise, the players managed to bring out the chameleonic nature of the middle Allegretto which seems innocent, almost simple-minded, but teeters on the brink of despair as its overt insouciance alternates with bitter vehemence, concord and discord masterfully balanced until the aggressive attacca opening of the finale.

From there it’s all downhill through the second Largo which, in this orchestral version, bears witness to Shostakovich’s inner torture. You can say what you like about the composer’s naivete in Russia’s political sphere and, if you like, share in the derision heaped on him by other Western composers who lived under no restrictions. But, when it comes to baring the soul’s dark places, nobody equals this composer who shows you a world of dour resignation which is, in the end, an affirmation of stern nobility.

Which made it all the more understandable that Tognetti interpolated a brief pause in these final pages when audience coughing proved intrusive. This was nothing you could blame on the unthinking young because the blight of expectorations and catarrh clearances were clearly produced by some of the elderly patrons in Hamer Hall who have forgotten (if they ever knew) the lessons of COVID and the benefits of masking your breathing difficulties. The ACO leader was too kind in waiting for these self-absorbed geriatrics, especially while in the process of constricting a profoundly moving experience; I’m just surprised (and grateful) that he didn’t walk off, taking his earnest colleagues with him.

Mind you, this work worked in several ways alongside displaying the ensemble’s gift for outlining an emotionally concentrated score like this one. It offered a sharp contrast with Silvestrov’s regretful farewell to things past; along with the personal trauma experienced by the Russian master, you cannot forget that part of the quartet’s impetus came from the composer’s visit to Dresden and the sight of that city still recovering from the fire-bombing of mid-February, 1945. The work commemorates a cataclysm while the Ukrainian writer seems to be memorializing a never-to-be-regained vision of his native land..

As well, the Chamber Symphony moved us into a different sphere, following as it did a dazzling performance by Alexander Gavrylyuk of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue of 1924, a brilliant compilation of jazz-inflected piano solos linked, after that unforgettable opening clarinet solo, by big-band tutti passages. My standard for this work is the Bernstein recorded performance of 1959 with the Columbia Symphony which still raises the spirit for its breadth of vision and force of character. Gavrylyuk came close to this level with a muddle-free approach to the orchestra-supported solos, the piano ever clear throughout, and with an awareness of the exhibitionism, the bravura that an interpreter has to contribute to succeed across the score’s span.

Given the ACO’s personnel constraints, an arrangement was made for strings, trumpet (David Elton) and piano by Bernard Rofe, the organization’s artistic planning manager. That opening sort-of-glissando run was given to the trumpet which played a sterling role in making up for the missing woodwind and brass ranks from Grofe’s orchestration, and the ACO strings welcomed the chance to soar through the big E Major tune at No 28 in the old two-piano edition. But, despite everyone’s best intentions, the band/orchestral backing fell short in terms of timbre and bite, especially in that jubilant final cakewalk.

Before interval, Gavrylyuk and Elton fronted the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1, all forces producing a reading of immaculate clarity, even in the final frantic galop. The pianist and trumpeter made a fine fist of their first real collaboration at No 8 in the Muzyka edition; controlled but headlong in its forward thrust and almost mellifluous when the tonality hits E flat Major. Gavryluk showed no hesitation (if the occasional touch of rubato) when handling the brilliant passagework of this first movement, particularly brilliant in the top-of-the-keyboard register, picking out the melodic line with pointillistic precision.

Elton gave a lucid account of the second movement’s trumpet solo beginning at Number 34. It’s a startling moment in this Lento, the instrument muted (who isn’t?) and spinning out its commentary in well-etched exposure above the strings’ murmuring 3/4 – more a pavane than a waltz – accompaniment. I suppose the Moderato that follows acts as a circuit-breaker after the subdued nature of the slow movement’s E minor fade-to-black. Its two-part invention opening devolves into another plaint for the strings, which serves as another red herring before the piano launches into the concluding Allegro con brio where exhilaration reaches its apex in this work.

Yes, there are moments when you think that the composer’s thumb-to-the-nose humour seems like overkill, as at that famous splat-chord in the middle of an Italianate trumpet solo nine bars after Number 63, or the rich supply of ‘wrong’ notes in the rage-over-a-lost-penny cadenza for piano that precedes the final Presto at Number 72,not to mention that extraordinary deviation to a mittel-European folk-stomping piano solo at Number 76. But the persistence with a military-inspired cadence right up to the final bar still presents as a sparkling piece of musical cheek, here briskly carried off by soloists and their quicksilver support.

I got the impression that the ACO members admired Gavrylyuk and his impressive commitment to the task, whether striking sparks in the 1933 piano-and-trumpet opus or weltering through America’s exemplary fusion of jazz and serious music. For some time, he has impressed me as a musician with very broad shoulders, capable of taking on many challenges and forging a triumph out of each one. You’d have to hope that his next appearance with this ever-ambitious ensemble will not be too far off.

Sweet and simple

cliveoconnell

TOGETHER APART

Brent Keogh

Move Records MCD 643

I suppose that the most significant point of interest on this CD is the presence of the composer playing oud. Brent Keogh has been a student of Joseph Tawadros, who brought that Middle Eastern lute to our attention through his collaboration with the Grigoryan brothers and his several excursions alongside the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Keogh appears in all but the first four tracks of this recording, working in various ensembles with his guests. Still, it’s slim pickings as the disc comes in at a tad over 40 minutes’ playing time. Which makes this a sequence of eleven short pieces – four of them less than 3 minutes long, another four less than 4 minutes in length, one less than five minutes with one a little over that length, the longest piece lasting for 6’20”.

A further disconcerting factor is the minor research needed in trying to date the works performed. No information comes on the disc leaflet, and there’s nothing showing on the composer’s Australian Music Centre entry. When visiting Keogh’s own website, we learn that two major works here, the Hagia Sophia Suite (Emily Granger harp and Andrew Blanch guitar) and the Turimetta Suite (Katie Anderson flute, Elden Loomes cello, Maharshi Raval tabla, Keogh oud) were written in 2021. So was a brief piece for oud, viola (Elizabeth Woolnough) and tabla called Stormfront. I can’t find a composition date for The Red Candle oud solo; Rosie’s Dance for oud, cello, flute and tabla was co-written with Anderson some time before July 20, 2019 (you can see it performed on a YouTube video, although with a double bass substituting for cello). Alunir, the final track for oud and cello dates from 2020 (also found as a YouTube video but with Keogh playing oud and guitar!).

Much of this disc’s content consists of melodies that are simple and folk-inflected; you’re not hearing anything that is challenging here. Keogh sets his bar level pretty clearly in the opening Prelude to his suite on the great church-turned-mosque-turned-museum-turned mosque again. This section is for Granger’s harp alone and begins with a short motif that is minimally expanded before we hit a melody that could be Turkish, or anything. It also undergoes restatement and sits in a fixed tonality, a minor scale rather than a mode which is reinforced by the repetition of a bass note/anchor. One moment of harmonic deviation: that’s all. The atmosphere is firm, slow-stepping, ruminative rather than meditative.

The composer seems focused on giving us a hieratic setting, this musical vorspiel being in the nature of a call to prayer, I suppose. Blanch joins Granger for the following three movements, the first of which is a fast dance in which guitar and harp play a rather intricate melody line in unison to excellent effect. This is repeated in the movement’s last third/quarter while the central panel is taken over by an amplification/treatment of the harp’s opening motif. Does it bring the building to mind? Sort of, in an elegiac way and giving a good deal more picturesque an image than I remember finding in the interior some eight years ago.

In the next phase of this suite, the movement is slower, more measured and less rhythmically irregular. The guitar opens and the harp intrudes by reinforcing individual notes, but then enters fully into the partnership. You can find three melodies that are repeated with slight ornamentation and some differing antistrophes. As with the first movement, the bass note stays constant throughout (it’s the same across the three of them, I think). Unlike its predecessors, the third piece begins with a promising angularity in both instruments, but soon reverts to the minor scale/mode language that has prevailed so far. Keogh refers to major key sections radiating some relief in this not-too-sombre atmosphere: I counted one-and-a-half such breaks, and they didn’t stick around for long. The linear interplay is momentarily interesting but these pages struck me as meandering, somewhat laboured in the antiphonal moments, happier when the initial experimentation was done with.

In his three-movement opus celebrating Turimetta Beach, the composer offers musical reminiscences of three birds that he and his family encountered on their outings during the COVID epidemic’s early years. In the CD leaflet, these are identified as hawk, eagle and heron; on the Move Records website relating to this disc, they are kite, eagle and heron. As one who doesn’t know a hawk from a kite, but is determined to finish off a career spent in distinguishing a hawk from a handsaw, I found the first movement of this suite as simple as any bird. Keogh uses the flute for an initial phrase over a cello drone, even allowing the wind instrument a ‘bent’ note or six in its lyrical outpourings; the oud provides a simple Alberti bass imitation. We come to a halt and what Keogh calls the ‘alap’ is finished. He pairs flute and oud in unison on a catchy melody, eventually giving Loomes’ cello a go at it before suddenly moving everyone on to a more striking rhythmically varied thought and following that to the end of this amiable, breezy lyric refreshed by Raval’s gentle tabla patters

Keogh proposes that the second lot of matter in this movement suggests a chase; maybe, but it’s an orderly, single-minded pursuit that projects more of play than purpose. He uses a static melodic and harmonic vocabulary in which the modulations are as obvious as those in any popular music of these days. Things change when we deal with the eagle. Here, the rhythmic delineation is far more sharp as Keogh sets up a pattern of alternating time-signatures that would do his former master Tawadros proud. He allies the oud and cello in unison combination and puts the flute up as a respondent. The whole atmosphere has sort of moved from Turkey (and Australia) to India with some sustained sitar-like explosions of action in the cello, not made any less suggestive by the tabla support which promises Shankar or Ali Akbar Khan without delivering anything of those masters’ complexity.

The motion is rapid, almost headlong but the output stays disciplined, even through the last pages’ shifts in pairings. Once again, this suggestion of dynamism in flight gives the performers room for individual deftness, although the whole thing is too well-mannered to give us life in the wild, let alone on a Northern Sydney unpatrolled beach. When we get to the heron, we’re in minuet land with Anderson’s flute in control of the melody line and the oud remaining in a supporting role throughout. I found here that even the rather strait-laced creative energy in operation so far had become even less interesting as the instruments followed predictable patterns in nearly every compositional parameter.

Keogh’s disc leads into four isolated pieces via Stormfront which offers an initial theme in disjunct bars of 7/8 and 4/4 with oud and viola in unison while Raval offers slight cross-rhythms that really amount to doubling. The action is fast and repetitive, Keogh’s opening bars coming back again and again, but I find insufficient bite in the complex to give you a sense of approaching weather disruptions, although the composer might have hit on a way to outline musically what passes for a barometric drop in Sydney – not much ado about very little.

Four muffled chords begin The Red Candle, which moves to a melody that is restated several times with some interruptions from the opening chords, the whole conducted over a recurring pedal note which is either present or – in the best linguistic fashion – ‘understood’. The rhythmic pattern stays the same although the melodic direction alters about half-way through the piece, but we soon return to the opening chords (intervals, rather) and the initial melody. Finally, the melody and ostinato disappear and we’re left with another double restatement of the fulcrum chords. I’m not sure that this oud solo lives up to the composer’s intentions of the piece being symbolic of partly-revealed mysteries and a consolation that surpasses the pains of our existence. It’s simply a gently flowing cantilena which, for much of its length, maintains a single melodic strain set to a minor scale.

There’s a Gaelic side-trip in Rosie’s Dance: a mild jig in alternating 6/8 and 3/4 time – three of the former, one of the latter – which presents in ternary form, as do quite a few of Keogh’s products so far. Flute and oud play the melody line together for most of the time, the cello providing a gentle pulse-reinforcement while the tabla also stays with the prevailing rhythm for most of the short piece’s duration. Nobody gets up to any adventurousness, but that’s not this composer’s path. We are quietly entertained by a slight frippery, and that’s about all.

If any of these works is puzzling, it’s the last track. ‘Alunir means to land on the moon,’ writes Keogh who contextualises his work by a lengthy Einstein quote about humanity faced with the cosmos: we know something, but it’s nothing compared to the vastness of our incomprehension. Fair enough: we can all subscribe to that statement of affairs. Still, this piece speaks in a rather Earthy voice as it stays, for the most part, in a mode (Lydian, writes the composer) with a regular pulse, most noticeable when the oud and cello double each other. Some interludes emerge but the score ends with elaborations on and disjunctions of the modal melody, suggesting not so much the moon as cafe entertainment anywhere from Ankara to Alexandria.

Keogh is content to couch his thoughts in familiar guises, without any modernist trappings. He’s indebted to the Arabic world for the more exotic aspects of his output on this CD; you can also hear strains of this country’s folk music shining through. On the present showing, he seems content to occupy an unstressed emotional world, each work shaped with care and (for the most part) avoiding awkwardness. This is a placid voice, a gentle music that on this CD proffers an undemanding sequence of short-lived bonbons.