Author: cliveoconnell

Exemplary partnership in fluent performances

cliveoconnell

TRUE ROMANTICS

Philip Arkinstall and Kristian Chong

Move Records MCD 668

Well, you can’t argue with this CD’s descriptor. Clara Schumann and Brahms were solidly Romantic, their early lives focused around the lady’s husband, who was one of the great 19th century creators of that school alongside Chopin, Mendelssohn and Berlioz. In these latter days, Amazonian efforts have gone into foregrounding female composers, from Hildegard through Barbara Strozzi to Amy Beach and a multitude of contemporary Australians ( especially on ABC Classic radio). Schumann has enjoyed a revival of interest for decades longer than most of these writers, yet her appearance on programs must still be called – in all charity – uncommon.

The performers of one work by Schumann and two sonatas by Brahms on this disc for Move Records are Philip Arkinstall, associate principal clarinet with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for the last 16 years, and Kristian Chong who is an associate lecturer in piano at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music to anchor his active life as a performer.

On this CD, these performers give us Schumann’s Three Romances of 1853, originally written for violin and piano, here enjoying a transcription by Roger Young, Arkinstall’s colleague in the MSO where he has been a violinist for 26 years. The Brahms Clarinet Sonata in F minor and his Clarinet Sonata in E flat comprise the composer’s Op. 120 and date from 1894; these are the last chamber compositions he produced before his death and they make a magniloquent pair of gifts to an until-then almost non-existent repertoire, apart from a small quiver-full of concertos.

Clara Schumann’s Romances recall her husband’s compositional aesthetic in pretty much every aspect, apparent from the first Andante molto with its ambiguity of rhythm that doesn’t become quite clear until about bar 11, not to mention its floating harmonic underpinning, an adventurous chromaticism seen in the central segment from bar 24 to bar 32, and a steadiness of emotional output that you find in the male writer at his most impressive (the lieder, the chamber works with piano).

Moving to the second romance, complete with a German direction (Mit zartem Vortrage) that might have come from the composer’s nationalistic husband, we find a more orthodox harmonic complex, its ternary form running G minor, G Major, G minor with a quietly assertive main melody that recalls some of the more sparsely textured Songs Without Words. Arkinstall observes an appropriate dynamic restraint throughout this miniature’s length while Chong shows once again a discretion that falls short of self-effacement, always contributing to the partnership as you can hear in the musicians’ sensible and sensitive account of the final twelve bars, the clarinettist even giving us the violin’s final quadruple stop.

Again with the third romance, Robert Schumann’s linguistic choice enjoys pride of place with the direction Leidenschaftlich schnell, the musicians’ collaboration as ardent as you could want, given the benign, self-assured content in another ternary shape with the composer happy to maintain her B flat Major territory in the outer segments. From the start, Arkinstall’s main lyric is supported by fluid triplets from Chong that change only for regular semiquavers in the initial 21 bars where the main material recurs. The pianist once more exercises an assertive discretion throughout, both players investing the work with a tidal ebb and flow in dynamics while the metre stays constant, Arkinstall making gentle work of the three-note pizzicato chords between bars 50 and 57.

After these novelties come two familiarities in the Brahms sonatas. The No. 1 in F minor is more familiar to most of us than its partner in E flat Major; why this is, I have no idea except that performers might find the first more satisfying to play or present, or it might be that audiences are more receptive to its flamboyant style of address. Whatever the reason, Arkinstall and Chong open it up to a remarkably clean airing, right from the opening Allegro appassionato which gives us an object lesson in nuanced shading from the clarinettist and an admirable, mud-free outline of the keyboard part where every bass note registers and Chong’s surges into action ring out clearly, especially when the going gets piano concerto-mode tough (as at the end of the development, bars 116 to 132).

Profitably for us all, the interpretation is invested with dynamic tension, but the piano conclusion starting at bar 225 gives an excellent instance of shared responsiveness where the instruments dovetail with care to make the composer’s last reminiscence of his opening phrase somehow inevitable and poignant. Which makes a fine transition to the restrained and compact Andante that takes us on a simple ternary journey with a slightly surprising chain of modulations before re-settling onto its A flat Major homestead. No surprises here from either performer as they handle this brief segment with a deft mobile lassitude.

Coming out of the A flat Major warmth of the slow movement, we strike it lucky again in the ‘scherzo‘ movement (well, A flat with lots of E flat Major getting in the way). This is an appealing landler that varies its rhythmic predictability in the trio where the piano has an almost continuously syncopated right hand melody line (apart from 12 bars in the second part). You can find some moments of quiet humour like the clarinet’s laconic quiet interpolations when the piano has the main tune in bars 9 to 16, and the woodwind’s suggestions of yodelling in bars 35 to 38. To their distinct credit, these performers find and maintain the movement’s inner bounce and bucolic grace.

Finally, we enter the realms of the Academic Festival Overture with Chong’s expounding of the central theme to this F Major rondo with that combination of strength and lightness that typifies this reading. Despite its arresting opening, the theme moves into staccato chattering in its second and third quarters, but the distinction of this performance is the pleasure you experience on each recurrence. Not to forget the St. Anthony Chorale reminiscences when we move into buoyant crotchet triplets at bar 42 and later at bar 142. Once again, these musicians show a combined delicacy of insight into the score’s energetic bravura and its simple, happy brio.

I suppose what counts against the E flat Sonata from the beginning is the sentimental nature of the opening friendly Allegro‘s first subject. Further, Brahms is not slow in presenting us with several splendid melodies – or fragments of them – while ringing some vivid dynamic changes, like the sudden burst of language from the Piano Concerto No. 2 across bars 15 to 18; this continues in sporadic eruptions like bar 39, bars 60 to 64, and later in the recapitulation. But then, the clarinet writing is so mellifluous and persuasive in its wide arcs that the wonder is these players combine with such great empathy to give us a masterful composite, graced with yet another bout of splendid warmth in the concluding twelve Tranquillo bars.

It’s about now that you appreciate the compression at work in these two works; much of the first and all of the second operate without repeats so that you are in a constant state of discovering fresh country. Even second hearings of what seems like the same matter can be deceptive by means of altered accompaniment or original transpositions and modulations. This may go some way to explaining the sense that this sonata’s second movement is brief although it follows the classic scherzo pattern. Further, Brahms breaks into his four-bar phrase patterns with some arresting interruptions.

The piano writing here suggests parts of the rhapsodies, but the intertwining of both sound sources is admirably supple, both in the ‘dying fall’ passages like bars 48 to 64 and the two noble shared chorales of the central Sostenuto trio. I’ve heard other readings where the atmosphere is darker and angst-driven, but I think Arkinstall and Chong have the right of it with their cool outlining of the controlled agitation that underpins these pages.

And then you come to the last movement which starts Andante on a set of variations that stands with the best of the composer’s more emotionally untrammelled, benign creations. Starting with an ordinary skipping tune, a lyric with a lilt, Brahms brings about a set of cadences that culminate in a satisfying plagal in bar 14. From the opening statement, we move into off-the-beat commentary from the piano, triplets alternating between the players, a demi-semiquaver duel, a variant in which the piano is continuously syncopated while the clarinet outlines a version of the theme sotto voce for the most part, then an E flat minor elegant furiant before an inconclusive Piu tranquillo, the quick allegro returning for a final burst of high spirits with some chortle-rich piano writing from bar 134 almost to the end with cross-rhythms galore against a cooperative if comparatively strait-laced clarinet.

All this comes off very well indeed without any signs of faltering in attack or pace. But that could be said about the whole disc; throughout the three scores, Arkinstall and Chong demonstrate how a chamber music partnership should function, with every phrase mirrored or duplicated, with the dynamic ebb and flow organized carefully with each other, and with every slight rallentando – no, even the big ones – carefully graduated so that entries are pointedly precise. It all speaks for the high worth of this exemplary, polished disc.

Sydney visitors’ laudable initiative

cliveoconnell

RARE SUGAR

Omega Ensemble

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday December 2, 2025

David Rowden

Saying goodbye to its small Melbourne audience for this year. the Omega Ensemble gave its hope-to-see-you-later recital in the Recital Centre’s larger space; something of a population error as we could all have fitted pretty comfortably into the Primrose Potter Salon downstairs. True, the dynamics could have been overpowering to the point of painful in the smaller space but that’s more a case of having to cut cloth to suit width as opposed to throwing cash into an undertaking that might show promise but has a long way to go before attracting an audience along the lines of the thousand who can fill .the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall.

Much of the performance attention fell on the Omegas’ artistic director, David Rowden, who played in two of the three works presented by the Sydney-based group. He took the clarinet part in Bartok’s Contrasts of 1938, that unusual trio asking for the usual components of a violin (Veronique Serret) and a piano (Vatche Jambazian), alongside the cello-replacing woodwind line. All players took a sedate approach to the opening Verbunkos: a restrained Moderato indeed with the pulse closer to crotchet=94 than to 100. As well, both Serret and Jambazian proved aggressive after the politenesses were out of the way, so that the forte outbreak at bar 23 proved striking.

Still, to his credit, Jambazian refrained from overpowering his colleagues in the sequence of glissandi that emerge between bars 45 and 54. This movement ends with a taxing clarinet cadenza that Rowden handled with clarity and found a restraint of delivery in what amounts to an exuberant series of irregular arpeggios and scales.

In the following Piheno, we came across several instances when the performers’ congruence was off; not by much, but just enough to disturb the fluency of an otherwise eloquent reading. This wasn’t evident in the outer hymn-like segments but came up in the movement’s changes of pace, like the second Movendo and the overlapping of the Tranquillo bars. Nonetheless, I was impressed by the sustained tension across a set of pages that can be marred by preciousness on one hand and over-exertion in bar 25’s Piu mosso and the crisis at bars 33 to 34 for clarinet and violin in duet.

Bartok’s requirement in the concluding Sebes for a change of clarinets and violins cane be messy and Serret needed more than the allowed nearly-five bars to make the switch but the composer set up a repetition of bar 34 until the player is ready to kick off again. When Rowden came to change his instrument at bar 132 (B flat for A, they tell me), the movement just stopped before Jambazian initiated the ‘Bulgarian’ Piu mosso. Admittedly, there’s a caesura in the score but it seemed to last a fair while, all the more noticeable in this rapid movement.

Serret’s version of the violin cadenza proved to be heavy-handed, even those sections with left-hand pizzicato; the entry of everyone back into the fray at bar 214 also gave us another instance of the musicians – clarinet and violin, I suspect – not coming in quite together. To my mind, the exhibition here by Jambazian was remarkable in its variation of attack and responsiveness to the multiple demands that pianist Bartok made on his keyboard performer. Yes, for most of its length, the Sebes is in 2/4, apart from that central 13/8 interlude, but the participating pianist is stretched by alternately setting the running semiquaver pattern and punctuating the other lines in a vital, invigorating series of sustained flurries. I’m afraid that much of my attention centred on Jambazian and his dextrous handling of this rapid-fire exhibition of virtuosity.

Ella Macens wrote her Through the Mist this year for the Omega organization and we were hearing its third performance on this occasion. Serret and Jambazian were involved, as were second violin Emma McGrath, viola Neil Thompson, cello Paul Stender, and double bass Harry Young. This new product struck me as operating, for the most part, in a single tonality – all the white notes – with a modulation coming up in what I think might have been the third movement: Piu mosso, con moto. But the composer’s suggestive atmospherics made this a bland soundscape, compared to which Debussy’s Brouillards is a sonorous typhoon.

At the beginning, the string quintet generated long sustained notes, alleviated by Jambazian’s piano with some cadenza-like interleaving. This continued for a fair while, taking us into the world of some of Macens’ Scandinavian seniors and peers where placidity and repetition become the chief factors in a composer’s creative panoply. We were lulled into this comfortable ambience, so much so that I had no idea when the movement’s changed from Slow, Spacious, Grand to L’istesso tempo although the pianist’s role did become more prominent, and a folk-like tune emerged in the top strings with cello and pizzicato bass eventually joining in the muted merriment.

As for the move to a quicker pace for the third section, that also failed to have any impact on these ears. Then again, I was looking for old-fashioned markers, indicators of sudden alterations as in a suite or symphony whereas I think Macens was concerned with a continuous journey – a slow-moving progress for which the mist provides an all-embracing shield. That’s fine, except that it was hard to find any suggestion of what we are being protected against. If you were expecting more than a pretty monochromatic universe, you would have been disappointed.

This composer occupies an unusual position by straddling the seemingly static sound worlds of the post-Tavener mystics (which is doing them a temporal disservice, I know) and the simpler output of popular music where not much happens but nothing grates or gives offence. Through the Mist could be used to illustrate/support a quiet documentary yet its lack of thrust, of drive puts it in a category of its own. I kept on thinking of Debussy – not just Brouillards, but also Nuages where the return of those low wood-wind chords serves as an anchor, while Macen’s chords are ends in themselves.

Rowden returned for the night’s title work, referring to a concertino by Nigel Westlake for clarinet, piano and a string quartet of the same format that Macens employed, fortuitously enough. This piece in one movement is almost 20 years old and has been adopted by several local artists since 2007; I’ve heard it played by Lloyd Van’t Hoff and way back from Catherine McCorkill so, although it might not be a regular presence on your annual concert scene, it does enjoy more occasional resuscitation than most other contemporary Australian scores. Written as a 90th birthday present for a UNSW chemistry professor who at one stage specialized in rare sugars, the work served as yet another instance of the composer’s skill at engaging us, even if any attempt to find musical correlations with the molecular breakdown of sugar in any form was doomed before it began.

Right from the start, we entered a world of various and variable textures, the ensemble’s output rich and mobile. This was particularly obvious in the clarinet writing, but then you’d expect that from Westlake who was (is?) a notable performer on that instrument and who enmeshed his soloist in the accompanying forces, with some radiant flourishes for the strings en masse. Further, the pleasures kept coming, like a deft duet between Rowden and Verett, and a page or two of fine pointillism between the high strings and piano.

Moving from his initial Scherzo into a central Tranquillo, Westlake contrived a finely-spun duet from Rowden and Jambazian that brought to mind parts of Westlake’s film music (not so much the heavy Romanticism but a trademark simple lucidity) and inevitably brought to mind Messiaen’s slow Louanges with the clarinet replacing the original cello and violin. A general address from all brought us to the short cadenza for clarinet, then the concluding scherzo with a plethora of cross-rhythms and syncopation as well as more suggestions, this time of Copland and his Rodeo jauntiness.

It’s a significant gift, bringing Australian music to the fore, and the Omega administration and players are very welcome for their endeavours in that regard. Of course, it’s a fraught exercise, given the current economic hardships that many of us are undergoing: where is your audience coming from in these piping times of genteel poverty? Like many of our Melbourne-and-environs organizations, the ensemble will probably have to cut corners. But their contribution to the country’s music-making is exceptionally able and worthwhile; I, for one, hope to see them here – and flourishing – in 2026.

Topsy-turvydom in action

cliveoconnell

Epic Diva

Selby & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday November 26, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No place for the prescriptive

cliveoconnell

COCTEAU’S CIRCLE

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Sunday November 16, 2025

Le Gateau Chocolat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This time, no oddness

cliveoconnell

MOZART + MARSEILLAISE

Australian National Academy of Music

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday November 12, 2025

Paavali Jumpaanen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diary December 2025

cliveoconnell

RARE SUGAR

Omega Ensemble

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday December 2 at 7 pm

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

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

Opera Australi

Regent Theatre

Tuesday December 2 at 7:30 pm

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

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

NOEL! NOEL!

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday December 5 at 5 pm

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

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

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

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday December 5 at 7:30 pm

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

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

BAROQUE CHRISTMAS 2025

Australian Chamber Choir

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Middle Park

Saturday December 6 at 3 pm

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

HANDEL’S MESSIAH

Royal Melbourne Philharmonic

Melbourne Town Hall

Sunday December 7 at 5 pm

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

ON CHRISTMAS MORN

Australian Boys Choral Institute

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday December 13 at 5 pm

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

HANDEL’S MESSIAH

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Saturday December 13 at 7 pm

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

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

CAROLS IN THE CATHEDRAL 2025

Royal Melbourne Philharmonic

St. Paul’s Cathedral

Friday December 19 at 8:30 pm

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

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

Finely balanced Italian-Spanish sojourn

cliveoconnell

SCARLATTI KEYBOARD SONATAS – INGENUITY AND DELIGHT

James Brawn in Recital Volume 3

MSR Classics MS 1829

Following the nine discs in his survey of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, British-born musician James Brawn is keeping himself occupied with a new entry for his ‘In Recital’ series on the MSR Classics label. The first in the set, recorded in 2012, featured some Bach, Liszt, Rachmaninov and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition the main work. Three years later came the second in the series, a double album with a fuller scope through Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Grieg, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, and Gershwin.

This year, the third of the series has appeared and the focus is pretty concentrated on Domenico Scarlatti. Brawn takes us through 21 of the 555 in the (so far?) accepted canon, two of them revenants from his 2015 marathon: K. 159 in C Major (La Caccia) and K. 380 in E Major (Le Cortege). Many of us would have made our first acquaintance with this composer through the 25 Sonate per clavicembalo edited by Alessandro Longo in a Ricordi publication that I came across in the late 1950s. Brawn plays nine of the sonatas in that volume, including the two referred to above from his ‘In Recital Volume 2’ double-album.

Tagged on at the end, he presents a small-scale sonata by Domenico’s father Alessandro – the shortest track on the disc at 1’33” – and a more substantial sonata in G minor by Pater Scarlatti’s friend, Johann Adolph Hasse. A bit of a problem is the uncertain provenance of the Alessandro Scarlatti D minor Sonata, labelled Arioso. The piece is two lines in its substance, as are many of Domenico’s works: a simple tune above a walking bass. Brawn repeats the first half but not the second, although not much is gained by hearing any of this bagatelle twice.

The Hasse work is often listed as an attribution to the composer, possibly because the composer’s other sonatas are generally not stand-alone movements like this Largo. Still, it has a more mobile bass line than the elder Scarlatti’s piece and actually gravitates towards a wealth of right-hand thirds. Brawn plays repeats of both halves and gives us a gentle, measured account of a pre-Domenico piece that a reasonably competent pianist could probably negotiate successfully at sight.

As for the CD’s major consideration, Brawn opens with No. 1 in the Kirkpatrick numbering system, a D minor here subtitled Toccata. Well, it moves briskly and you come across some of those passages where both hands touch the same note in quick succession (bars 7, 8,11, 15,17, 26 and 27) but it’s more a toccata in the sense of rapidity of manipulation – and Brawn is excellently even-handed throughout – rather than the usual Baroque idea of a series of quick flurries and contrasting sections.

Another D minor follows, K. 9 and it’s one from the Longo 25 Sonate collection, here named Pastorale, which must refer to the musette moments at the end of both halves. This is a transparent view of the work with Brawn treating it as a bit of an amble but adding a sudden pianistic interest to the second half by semi-arpeggiating the left-hand chords across bars 27 to 32 and allowing himself room to breathe after some semiquaver runs; not that any of these raise the interpretation’s placid temperature.

We’re still in the minor (B) with K. 27, which is a fine exercise in hand-over technique, where the left hand plays top note in a chord. This is reliably achieved by Brawn who efficiently skewers these isolated notes, at the same time giving some crotchet weight to notes beginning semiquaver chains of four in passages following the main gauche uppermost bars. The style is outwardly calm, with an undercurrent of mobile gravity.

Once again, we revert to D minor for K. 32, yclept Aria. This one-page sonata has a first half of 8 bars, a second section of 16 and it barely modulates: all the Cs in it but four (in a passing flirtation with F Major) are sharpened. The work proceeds with gravity, a slow minuet, but imbued with grace and without melodrama. Sticking with the same tonality, Brawn next presents K. 34, Larghetto. This is a more progressive minuet, with a first half of twelve bars which modulates to A minor, the conclusion to both halves notable for a flattened supertonic which, in this harmonic context, is a slight shock to the predicting system.

At Track 6, we hit A Major, K.96, subtitled La Caccia and another Longo album favourite. As even small-scale Scarlatti enthusiasts know, this sonata has a variety of tests: repeated notes expressly marked Mutandi i deti, 18 instances of rapid left-hand over, double octave passages in both hands, a splash of Tremolo di sopra, and some pauses that offer no respite. I felt a slight dip in bars 26, 28, 30 and 32 where Brawn appears to offer a small hesitation before the demi-semiquaver duplets in each bar; it’s as if he’s determined to observe the letter of the law and give the upward flourishes extra space to resonate. Also, he sustains the tenor A through bars 103 to 108 the first time round but doesn’t bother in the repeat, following the pattern written at the same place in the second half where the Ds are struck at the beginning of each bar. The work is buoyant enough, if dynamically restrained.

Would you believe, we return to D minor for K. 141? It sports the title Toccata with some relevance because it’s in part a study in rapidly repeated right-hand notes that features in the Longo collection although there’s no indication in my edition that you have to change your fingers while repeating those groups of six notes (Longo prescribes an alteration of 3-2-1, which I suspect Brawn follows). It also features some of those brusque left-hand chords which involve both 4th and 5th above the bass note, a strident rasgueado suggestion that Puyana delivered with incredible punch. And this piece is also distinguished by its requirement for both hands to cross in both halves. This pianist appears to miss nothing, even if the repeated notes sometimes seem on the verge of disappearing.

The A minor K. 149 is new to me and a delight for its inventiveness as Scarlatti leaves his first idea alone in the second half and deals with a figure that presents as an adjunct in the first segment. The references back to prior material demonstrate the felicity and flexibility of the composer’s thought but the sonata radiates that extraordinary combination of power and elegance that distinguished the best of these pieces.

Another favourite from Longo’s album is the K. 159, which also has here the sobriquet La Caccia and is a much easier piece to handle than K. 96 in D Major. Brawn follows some performers in omitting one of bars 14, 15 and 16 in the sonata’s first part, then one of bars 53, 54 or 55 later on, although I can’t find an edition where this liberty is edited in. He also imitates those who repeat the first half’s top note tonic triad elements that are written in all editions I can find, doing the same across bars 18 to 20 in the second half at bars 57 to 59 which I can’t find anywhere even if it is an obvious act of balance. For all that, this is an engaging negotiation of one of the composer’s most attractive keyboard canters.

Speaking of Puyana, one of the sonatas that he transformed into a percussive nightmare for the rest of us is the A minor K. 175 with its plethora of dissonant left hand chords. Brawn splays these at the opening, once again suggesting a flamenco guitar attack but his reading is controlled and light in dynamic; this lets you relish the offered contrast between determined arpeggio material at the start and an unexpectedly gentle bounce at the rapid left-hand cross that comes out of nowhere at bar 85 to provide some contrasting bouts of light-hearted euphony.

The following A Major K. 208 is labelled Cantabile (in my edition, Adagio e cantabile) and is another unknown, moving from slow crotchets, through syncopation, to semiquaver runs in its first sentence, all over a steadily insistent crotchet bass in 4/4 time. It does have a singing quality although on paper the upper line looks jerky; another welcome discovery. A further A Major, K 209, is partnered with this gentle lyric; a complete opposite in atmosphere as it’s a chattering non-stop (initially) linear dialogue, mainly in two voices but succumbing to the necessity for chords to embroider a pretty breathless impetus. Here is some delicious playing, especially in the last 17 bars of each half where the rattling along settles into a pleasurable comfort zone while staying in one uninterrupted major tonality.

I found the Sonata in E minor K. 291 mechanical, in spite of Brawn’s vigorous interpretation which dealt with some ordinary material by bathing it in dynamic contrasts. An insistence on its opening pattern of four quavers followed by six crotchets, allied to a predictable modulation sequence reminded me of Browning’s mocking, ‘Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!’ where the note-spinning leads nowhere in the end. You might say something similar about the next, K. 322 in A Major except that the primary subject melds into further material with particular ease in a work that is essentially a simple two-line construct (and the lower a functional grave procession of subsidiary minims), graced with a stretch of nine uplifting final bars in each half that seem to come through on its own recognizances. Brawn handles this work with a muted determination that still finds the benignity across those codas to each section.

Bouree is how this pianist typifies K. 377 in B minor and it does have lashings of that driving bass mobility you can find in some of Bach’s works using that form. Once again, this is a two-line (almost completely) sonata but blessed with a bass line having a mind of its own with the occasionally-exercised ability to take over the running. The pace is steady, not inclined to give way to any inept dancers and an ideal sample of Brawn’s clarity of articulation, thanks to the absence of any deadening sustaining pedal.

Having reached K. 380 in E Major, we come across one of Scarlatti’s most famous sonatas and a favourite of every aspiring pianist. Brawn gives it an aggressive edge at the start, the ornaments in bars 2, 4, 6 and 8 a tad more martellato than usual. In fact, many another player comes to this work as to a fairly slow minuet, milking those horns of Elfland that begin in bars 19 to 21 for as many Romantic atmospherics as possible. This musician gives a suggestion of echoes but never faintly blowing, and he ploughs through the ‘working’ bars 50-56 at full steam without pulling any punches – an approach he in fact proposes in the first statement of the piece. It’s called Le Cortege on this CD: taken literally, it’d have to be being performed at one of your no-nonsense military funerals.

A fair few of us would know K. 430 in D Major from Tommasini’s ballet of 1917 for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes: seven Scarlatti sonatas arranged under the title of The Good-Humoured Ladies. It sounds less of a flurry on the piano, in keeping with the direction on my score: Non presto ma a tempo di ballo. This reading is active enough but measured, in line with the frequent moments of rhythmic and harmonic insistence (bars 19-26, 30-38, 72-80, 84-92) and an inbuilt, frequent ‘kick’ as in the right hand’s first three notes.

Brawn goes a touch more affective for the Sonata in F minor K. 466 which has an actively participating left hand. The construct has traces of a two-part invention format, although the right hand introduces new triplet matter that is not handed to the bass until the opening of the sonata’s second part. But this musician sees the opportunity for added sensitivity and inserts small pauses before hitting the first note/chord of several bars. So it becomes a small-scale, soulful vignette with its own brand of melancholy and a reminder that this composer wasn’t ever just a dry figure, playing Toccatas, stately at the harpsichord.

Le Cortege is again the name appended to K 491 in D Major; it’s now plain that this cortege is probably referring to a stately progress in court from one room to another; rather like the movement of Prince Andrew from Royal Lodge to his new two-up/two-down residence in Luton. This also is a well-known work, notable for its triple call to arms in the opening bar and two abrupt changes of key – in the first half from a dominant-suggesting A Major to a momentary C Major setting; in the second, after the same A Major halt, an abrupt switch to F Major. Of particular note are Brawn’s parallel semiquaver thirds at the end to each half of the work – admirably even and crisp underneath the legato.

Second-last in this celebration of the great keyboard master-composer is the Pastorale in C Major, K. 513, which appears in the much-afore-mentioned 25 Sonate edited by Longo.. Brawn plays through the opening saraband deftly enough, negotiating handily the change in speed that comes with the bass G octave drones, and we enter an aristocrat’s view of the bucolics at their dance. He doesn’t repeat this set of pages but launches into the concluding 3/8 Presto with enthusiasm and does repeat that section with only a slight ponderousness across bars 47 to 49 for inexplicable reasons.

Finishing in style, Brawn plays the quicksilver E Major K. 531 which is another element in the Longo collection. He calls it Tarantella. Well, it is and it isn’t; the metre’s right but the material is too well-bred to set the piazza (or plaza) on a roar. It is given an admirable lightness, noticeable particularly in a well-positioned dynamic level for the left hand which has a significant role on the first page in sustaining the vaulting nature of this sonata’s arpeggio-rich main theme. The headlong progress is halted by several fermate but the communication of Scarlatti’s well-being and felicity sends us off, after this final expert demonstration, more than content with Brawn’s informed expertise.

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.