Category: Chamber Music

BUSH, BORSCHT & BONN

Selby & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday September 2, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ENSEMBLE Q PLAY BARTOK AND BRAHMS

Ensemble Q

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday August 22, 2026

Daniel de Borah

During the five-and-a-half years I spent on the Gold Coast, I never managed to hear Ensemble Q, the brainchild of Paul and Trish Dean and a fixture of Brisbane’s musical world over the nine years since the body’s generation. Their forays to Melbourne are a new venture, I think, and clearly welcomed by a swath of younger musicians who might know clarinettist Paul from his years as director of the Australian National Academy of Music (2010-2015). Or they might be observing the performances of Adam Chalabi, currently ANAM’s Head of Violin. Of course, that’s assuming that these young patrons have connections to ANAM or the country’s various musical institutions of learning.

Most of us know Daniel de Borah as a Melbourne-born pianist who is currently teaching at the Brisbane Conservatorium in Griffith University, where I heard him give a faculty recital some years ago. Cellist Trish Dean is another Griffith faculty member and has appeared frequently all over the country, if not that often in Melbourne. And the last member of the quintet that represented Ensemble Q on Saturday night was violist Benjamin Roskams who recently participated in the later days of the recent Australian Festival of Chamber Music held in northern Queensland.

This brief (75 minutes, without interval) recital opened with Paul Dean, Chalabi and de Borah powering through Bartok’s Contrasts of 1938. The opening Verbunkos began jauntily enough but soon developed into a strident outpouring for clarinet, which instrument took over much of the running. At certain moments, I wondered if the players had taken account of the Salon’s very lively acoustic, and the work reached some dynamic levels that bordered on the painful, Chalabi’s line after his opening pizzicati was often drowned out and gained some pre-eminence only at the Meno mosso of bar 30. De Borah was at some pains to make himself heard but came to the fore at the glissandi-rich passage between bars 45 and 54.

Chalabi held more prominence in the middle Piheno, even though the trio’s output again proved very lively in these close quarters. But both he and Dean gave an equally passionate account of the movement’s climax (senza piano) across bars 33 and 34. De Borah took control in the final Sebes with his octave semiquaver pattern work, although you’re hard put to find any thematic interest in the keyboard part during the first pages. Still, he and Chalabi made fine work of the relieving Piu mosso at bar 132 where the violin articulates that melting B/E Major folk-tune in a peacefully mobile time signature of (3+2+3)(2+3)/8.

After this elongated oasis, the stop/start rush to the end brought us back to the striving urgency that ran as an undercurrent across this reading. It’s one view of the composer’s odd score even if it left you on edge for a good deal of the work’s duration, waiting for the next explosion to disrupt Bartok’s even temper shown through a discerning balance of resources and material that you can hear from trios with a less virtuosic, moderately aggressive style of attack.

A small piece of Australiana followed with Margaret Sutherland’s slight Nocturne of 1944 for violin and piano. Thirty-one bars of 12/8 semi-sweetness, this also enjoyed an energetic airing, especially in the substantial middle section where Chalabi urged out his line with a determination that was mirrored by de Borah’s weighty negotiation of the composer’s shifting harmonic backdrop. Mind you, from what I’ve seen of the score, Sutherland left no dynamic directions, so a version hinting at machismo has just as much validity as any other, I guess.

The Ensemble concluded their night’s exhibition with Brahms: the Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor of 1875. It’s another work that you don’t hear often, the format more popularly represented by the composer’s first G minor essay in the form. But this score shows a remarkable control of structure expressed in the most glowing and ardent language, extraordinarily rich even for this high Romantic composer. After the opening suggestions, the group abruptly hurled us into the ferment at bar 31 with that decisive unison downward scale from all three strings before de Borah entered with the start of a concerto-style peroration.

From here on, the interpretation proved both persuasive and cogent, the participants engaged fully in this first Allegro‘s argument. From all quarters, the playing showed a dedication and involvement that you rarely come across expressed with such ardour, the chains of polyphony unwinding with a sense of presence that involved the listener completely. For once, an ad hoc group of players showed us what superlative music-making can come about when those involved are confident in each other and their shared artistry.

Even the slightly off-kilter scherzo came across with an easy style of delivery in its jocund passages, and a delicious contrast in the answering strophe beginning at bar 23 where Brahms plays ducks and drakes with G Major and G minor: just a deft flight of fancy to disrupt the bounding 6/8 metre but remarkably uplifting in effect. Still, the main thrust of the movement is brisk galumphing, concluding with a rousing almost-unison 19 bars of power from the strings above the piano’s urging 6/8 chords, the whole arriving home with irresistible emphasis.

To be followed by the Andante and a finely shaped opening solo from Trish Dean – 16 bars of impressively shaped cello lyricism surging above de Borah’s supple accompaniment almost entirely confined to the bass clef. And then, a melting duet with Chalabi; only ten bars but packed with intense tenderness, only to be capped by Roskams’ arrival for the string trio that carries the movement forward after one of those interludes (bars 25 to 34) that display the composer’s expressive depths, similar to what you hear in the carol setting for Brahms’ Geistliches Wiegenlied of Op. 91.

Finally, we heard an Allegro commodo equal in propulsion to the first movement, de Borah making no errors as far as I could tell in a stormy series of pages that bore witness to the composer’s emotional turmoil throughout this quartet’s long gestation. At the same time, you had to be impressed by details like the striding, rivetingly clear octave melody for Chalabi and Roskams from bar 54 to bar 67; the string trio’s invasion of Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio No. 2 territory with the chorale at bar 75; de Borah’s ebb and flow in development while the strings sustained notes, e.g. bars 103 to 150; and the communal descent to darkness from the ben sostenuto of bar 340.

It all contributed to the final impression of a splendidly contoured reading of a great work and a further cause for regret that I didn’t get to any Ensemble Q performances up north. If you live in Melbourne, I’d suggest that any future recitals from this body deserve your attention, especially if they’ve scheduled Brahms; it will be a long time before any of us hears chamber music of this quality – besides the Selby & Friends events – and a performance with this combination of experience and spirited attack.

NICOLAS ALTSTAEDT & THOMAS DUNFORD

Musica Viva Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday August 11, 2026

Nicolas Altstaedt & Thomas Dunford

With a few exceptions, this proved to be an unusually focused program, centring on two of Bach’s cello suites and extracts from the considerable output of Marais with a soupcon of his competitor Forqueray. Nicolas Altstaedt and Thomas Dunford worked very well in their cogent cello-theorbo duet combination at throughout this entertainment where the emphasis fell on the cello imitating Marais’ viol, while Dunford made a splendid showing as artist-in-support while seizing his chances for flamboyance with a will. The only odd moments came with a rendition of Part‘s pointedly aimless Spiegel im Spiegel invention of 1978 which, thanks to Dunford’s ability to provide link passages, and the content of both pieces, merged seamlessly into the slow movement of Duparc’s 1867 A minor Cello Sonata: proof once again that King Solomon (possibly) was right when he noted that there was nothing new under the sun.

But that’s not quite right, is it? I’ve found three different headings for the central pages of Duparc’s score. In this night’s program notes it’s listed as a Lento; a PDF score online has it headed as a Largo; on an Instagram page from Altstaedt, he plays the piece with Dunford under the headings of both Lento and Lamento. Steven Isserlis performs it on a Proustian disc as Lamento. Whatever the truth of the matter, Part and Duparc made a fine pairing but I can’t believe that they added up to the combined duration of eighteen minutes, as set out in the night’s schedule.

The six Marais pieces included two scores that have become familiar to us, thanks to programs by native and visiting lutenists. Wrapping up the evening’s first half was Les Folies d’Espagne which, in its original shape, featured the famous La Folia tune and 31 variations, from the 1701 Pieces de Viole Livre II. Here, Dunford gave exemplary service as support for Altstaedt’s wildly disparate modes of attack and dynamic, the whole carried out with exemplary verve and empathy from both executants. Contrary to expectations (and schooled by many another set of Folias-plus on harpsichord, organ, strings, etc.), this reading proved invigorating, perhaps due to the executants’ essays at souping-up the original with rasping attack-strokes, accelerandi and plenty of what passes for fortissimo on these two instruments.

Another well-known Marais product is Les Voix humaines, also from the 1701 collection and a gem of soft utterance and melodic grace. In particular, the duo made a moving experience of this brevity’s ending, their output reduced to near-whispers at the cadence. In spite of the overwhelming mastery of the Bach works, I thought the entertainment reached its high-point in this ornate but deeply expressive page-worth of music-making.

Without doubt, we all enjoyed the opening gambit of placing Marais’ La Reveuse (from Book IV of 1717) alongside Forqueray’s La Leclair: a juxtaposition of both composers in contrasting moods – well, in their prevailing moods, most of the time, it would seem. It introduced Altstaedt’s variation in timbre and dynamic inside both pieces as well as showing Dunford’s talent at glittering cascades of chords and contributions of contrapuntal interplay, particularly in the vivid flamboyance of those suggestions of the great violinist in full flight.

The original scheme was to insert Feste champetre, also from Marais’ Book IV, at the halfway point of Dunford’s transcription of the Bach Cello Suite No. 1 in G major (just as an odd point of order, was this transposed down a fifth? It sounded that way to me but, not having perfect pitch, the perception came about (probably) through a fault in my hearing). I can’t imagine what brain fade led to that idea as the piece’s studied bucolicism would sit uncomfortably between Bach’s courante and sarabande in most respects. Fortunately some kind of sense prevailed and we heard the Marais after the uninterrupted suite, in alliance with Les Folies d’Espagne where it sat quite happily.

In their final Marais bracket at night’s end, following Les Voix humaines Altstaedt and Dunford added the Grand Ballet from Book III of 1711 and Book IV’s Le Tourbillon. The first of these turned into a tremolo-rich exercise from Altstaedt but Dunford’s part proved more interesting for its sparkling support of a more deliberate cello line. Altstaedt enjoyed his own display in the final imitation of a whirlwind that brought the program to a feisty conclusion. But what I carried away from this last Marais bracket was the responsiveness of both musicians to each other’s output – their dynamic give and take, and their communal flurries into and out of faster speeds.

All honour to Marais and (to a lesser extent) Forqueray, Duparc and Part but the twin pillars of the Bach suites dominated the program’s two halves. We have precedents galore for Bach transcriptions; not exactly limited to but definitely associated in my lifetime with Segovia who mined the violin sonatas and partitas for his own instrument. He certainly arranged the arpeggio-rich Prelude and two other dances from the Suite in G Major, and Dunford has carried the task forward by setting the other movements. Despite the mastery involved, a basic problem still obtains: a lute can handle chords exceptionally well, but it can’t legato, to coin a verb. So the suite takes on a completely different sound character.

If you can swallow that, and everybody in the Murdoch Hall seemed to be onside, then Dunford’s exhibition was brilliant: packed with nuance, loyal to the original, clean in shape and articulation. My only real question lies with the idea of differentiation. It was clear when the Prelude ended and the Allemande began but the mode of attack failed to register; ditto with the Menuets and Gigue. For sure, Dunford is able to generate energetic initial strokes but he seemed to keep most of these for his Marais. As when we saw Segiovia here at the Town Hall back in the 1960s, you could admire the technical craft at work as long as you repressed your memories of the original.

Altstaedt opened the program’s second half with the Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor which proved to be a remarkable reading. Rather than confront us with the bull-cello approach so familiar from other players, he gave us the Prelude without digging into his instrument’s bass C notes that come up so often in the first nine bars. The Allemande proved a model of piano grace, with a startling flexibility given to the tempo, while the following Courante made a splendid contrast in its aggressive outline of the chromatic slithering between bars 13 and 16.

Individuality was the highlight of Altstaedt’s Sarabande reading, including a very soft repeat of the first eight bars. But this search for quiet outlines and statements could be noted in much of the suite’s latter half, in particular an extraordinary muffled account of Gavotte II‘s triplet orgy. The process reached a telling point when the Gavottes merged into the Gigue and we moved into a subfusc landscape where contours almost disappeared in the player’s restlessly soft dynamic and we were (well, I was) transfixed by the music’s eventual disappearance on that final bottom C – a moment of rarely achieved magic.

Another element that disposed this near-sold out house to benevolence towards these musicians was their obvious friendship and affection for each other. It’s something you come across rarely: to see players embracing each other without awkwardness or affectation, but simply happy in their work, confident in each other, and committed to enriching their listeners with some information and many memorable displays of expertise and interpretative insight. They perform tomorrow night in Newcastle, on Monday in Brisbane and conclude their tour in Adelaide on Tuesday; it’s doubtful that you’ll see a more rewarding pair of musicians at work for a long time.

FROM ROMANCE TO RECKONING

Selby & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday July 22, 2026

(L to R) Natalie Chee, Kathryn Selby, Richard Narroway

No trouble getting the Romance in this program from Selby & Friends. As well as the magniloquent Mendelssohn Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor of 1845, we were treated to Schumann’s 1851 Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor, and the same composer’s Drei Romanzen written in 1849: all solidly Romantic period material and coming from a tight six-year span in the middle of that rich artistic movement. As for the Friends, this time around we heard violinist Natalie Chee who is concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and Richard Narroway who has taken up the role of head of cello at the University of Melbourne’s Conservatorium.

It has to be noted straight way that the partnership between these two string players and pianist Kathryn Selby was close to ideal. All are musicians working at a high professional standard, as you’d expect, and they make excellent partners for their style of interpretation, especially through their full-frontal dynamic certainty and a highly satisfying care in phrasing – shaping lines with a synchronicity that startles and delights for its apparent ease and decisiveness.

Right from the start of the sonata, Chee projected a strong line which matched Selby’s insistence on delivering every note audibly, even in those grumbling accompanying figures that start the initial Mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck movement. The performers repeated the 64 bars long exposition to give us a double-dose of forthrightness, and the development maintained their focus on intense delivery of this sonata segment that works tirelessly at its main theme.

The middle F Major Allegretto strikes me as more scherzo than slow movement; well, so it would to anyone who isn’t interested in finding that these pages offer a fusion – they don’t and the prevailing atmosphere is that of light-hearted pleasure with two momentary more recessive moments. Chee took over the running for most of this segment, making the several recurrences of that opening three-bar motif a cleverly-shaped experience each time.

With the Lebhaft that winds up this score, it was remarkable to observe the deft dovetailing (generally) of Selby’s entries with Chee after the violinist had set up the semiquaver patterns that dominate these pages. The pianist only misfired on one bass note and twice (that I heard) in her right-hand flurries but the sense of nervous energy that came across was a welcome change to the hectic pounding I’ve heard in the past (admittedly from student players). I don’t think any interpreter can do much to dry out the muddiness that comes when the piano moves into triplets just before the key-change to E Major in this movement’s central pages, yet Selby managed to surrender a dynamic front position to what is a pretty low-lying line from Chee.

For Narroway’s duet contribution, the cellist (I assume) picked the Op. 94 Three Romances which were originally written for oboe and piano and which you very rarely hear in that format; I think Nick Deutsch might have given them to us during his years (2016-2020) as artistic director of the Australian National Academy of Music. The composer certainly allowed the violin to be considered as an alternative solo voice; I’m not sure about the cello, as the three pieces change markedly in colour and emotional suggestions when the lower-voiced instrument is employed.

For example, the opening Nicht schnell impressed as more shadowy and sombre than when you hear it from a violin, particularly while the piece was developing (sort of) to a highpoint, then gradually wound itself back down into the dark. As another consequence, Selby’s part moved out of the background to work on equal terms with the cello’s output; not just in dynamic strength, which it would surrender when partnered with an oboe, but more in its stratum of operations, the focal line now sitting in the centre of the keyboard’s complex.

The cello enjoyed more exposure in the next piece, Einfach, innig, probably because it is given a more four-square melody to work with while the keyboard may be active but appears to be working in a more constricted framework because it only occasionally doubles the string line. Selby moved further forward into focus across the central Etwas lebhafter F sharp minor interlude during which she played a continuous counterweight with her triplets. Later, both executants made the most of their final surge of energy between bars 72 and 74 where Schumann enjoys a simple chromatic side-step or two before a partial restatement and a touching fade to A Major placidity.

The last romance, another Nicht schnell, proved to be a gem of narrative and melody-shaping, during which I could find no faults in the frequent octave doublings, and the approach and recovery from the several fermate that dot the action. It was simply one of those happy moments of duo performance where the quiet lyricism of the work grabs your attention and nothing distracts you from its progress; not an essay in concentrated effort but a display of dedication from two artists fused in the completion of a happy task, if not one with mighty challenges.

We ended the night with the formidable Mendelssohn trio about which I can say little except to point to the power of this interpretation which realized the score’s potential in many ways. Although we came to enjoy the composer’s first essay in this form after its sort of re-discovery in the 1970s and 1980s, most of us would have made our acquaintace with this C minor work during those chamber music competitions that occupied this city’s attention in the pre-COVID years, during which time it became a favourite among piano trio competitors.

With these three musicians, the score enjoyed a treatment that proved bracing, aggressive and loaded with drama. All probably unconsciously put an emphasis on the fuoco term in the first movement’s performance directive, Selby fulfilling a role that she has taken on many times over the years with this work. Mendelssohn gives the piano first dibs with a sequence of attention-grabbing common chord rumbles and places most interest to the keyboard part through its sheer activity while the strings enjoy the soaring power of the opening melody (Letter A in some post-1874 editions I’ve come across).

Once again, as in the preceding duo works, the players kept steady hands during this movement’s rushes into action, and then pitched their approach to the second subject and its re-appearances with exemplary care for each other. The pianist was able to arpeggiate with firm abandon, secure in the knowledge that both her colleagues were capable of etching their lines in the fermenting fabric.

But Mendelssohn makes a gift to the keyboard at the opening to the Andante by leaving it to outline the first subject alone in the initial eleven bars before violin and cello treat it with melting sixths and thirds. After which, it’s a glorious ambling journey to the dynamic (and harmonic) climax 12 bars from the placid conclusion: the whole process a moving experience in this interpretation.

As for the rapid Scherzo, I relished the deliberate contrast between the fairy-light semiquaver-rich opening and the heft of the new theme that emerges at the change to G Major with Selby giving her peers plenty of space to drive the composer’s donward-scale tune, yet canny enough to prepare us aurally for the return to Titania-and-Oberon-Land with those left-hand semiquaver clicks eleven bars before the change back to G minor.

Still, it’s a rare trio that can’t make a success of the finale to this work with its bounding first theme, the assurance found in the sweep of its E flat Major consequent that never quite resolves, and the initial quiet statement in the piano of the Vor deinen Thron chorale with the strings at first quietly capering around it. Here, the performers hit the same vein of elevated rhetoric that they mined in the work’s opening with a consistent breadth of timbre and a fluent movement between restraint and force that would have brought this audience to its feet if it hadn’t been, in the main, somewhat elderly.

As for the Reckoning proposed in this recital’s title, I believe that came in the evening’s opening miscellany: the Fire Dances of 2020 written by eight Australian women composers. This collection offers different views of the 2019/20 bushfires that hit the nation so severely, the composers moving from the initial smoke to the ashes that danced around for weeks after the furnace was doused. All were brief, half of them under two minutes, the longest slightly over two-and-a-half minutes.

Nat Bartsch‘s Haze for Days gives us a piano part of upward-sweeping arpeggios, the strings generating rather tonal melodies over the top in a mildly suggestive musical picture. Olivia Bettina Davies‘ Haze (a trio version of an earlier guitar piece from 2015) came over as a more visceral exercise, her violin and cello lines mainly sustained, then some slow glissandi to suggest the undergrowth’s rustling in anticipation. In Crowning Dance, Natalie Williams imagines the fire reaching treetops and leaping across them, set out in a contrapuntally complex burst of activity something like a close-order invention. The cello outlines a mobile semiquaver ostinato in Maria Grenfell‘s Wall of Flames, the piano indulges in some high-pitched pointillism, the violin produces eerie sound effects, and the effect that this piece eventually achieves is percussive and frenetic.

The cello outlines an ostinato at the start of Hilary Kleinig‘s Fire Storm, above which piano and violin generate vehement noise slashes, some of them improvised; while this is slightly suggestive of a fierce weltering violence, it sounds odd because of its basis in a solid minor tonality – C? In the suite’s longest segment, Elena Kats-Chernin documents In the Embers’ Path with all three instruments partaking in a chugging motion of some heft. For most of the piece’s length, the pulse remains four-square in rhythm, everybody coming together for a safe-as-houses finale.

Cycads After Fire by Cathy Applegate refers to plant regrowth after the fire has passed; optimistic in flavour, this is more of a piece de salon than anything else in the collection, set in a definite tonal backdrop with lush lyrics for all. Finally, Isabella Gerometta‘s Will-O-Wisps (I think the composer is referring to the ‘will-o’-the-wisp’ or ‘will-o’-wisp’ phenomenon, classically oriented as ignes fatui) uses the violin in alt with the cello in small scraps of sound, the piano being the progenitor of some lightly-delivered activity.

As a suite, Fire Dances has its moments although the variety of voices works against any sense of uniformity of approach – or of reaction, to be honest. Some of the pieces appeal for their ability to illustrate their titles; others have success in suggesting striking emotional responses to those often horrific, often tragic days. But the oscillation between different styles of composition makes the work something of a grab-bag – interesting in parts rather than for its totality.

KEYS TO LIFE

Jayson Gillham & Iyad Sughayer

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Sunday July 19, 2026

Jayson Gillham & Ihad Sughayer

Not too surprisingly, this duo-piano recital by Australian-born Jayson Gillham and Palestinian-Jordanian Ihad Sughayer was close to packed out. Whether that was due to a horde of music-lovers dissatisfied with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s policy on addresses from the stage, or the occasion inspired an alternative crowd of Palestine supporters to come out in support of an artist with links to that country and another who has been penalised for speaking for the hundred-plus Palestinian journalists killed during the first ten months of the war in Gaza, I don’t know. Perhaps Gillham has an unexpectedly large number of Melbourne fans and they showed up simply because their man was in town.

Whatever its origins, this audience was wildly appreciative of everything and anything. A battery of mobile phones were held up across the theatre before the players sat down. Mind you, no prohibitions regarding snaps were mentioned in the leaflet/program and nothing beats having your own vision reinforced for posterity. In several (no, be honest: most) cases, people clapped between movements and went into Federation Square mode at the end, giving a standing ovation after what was a respectable exercise of talent but hardly on a level of flawless delivery as displayed by the Jussen brothers, who will play in this hall next month, or the Labeque sisters (who, though benchmark duo-pianists, admittedly haven’t been back here for thirteen years).

Gillham and Sughayer (who, as far as I can find, have prepared part of this program by playing once, in April, at the Scotland Conservatoire) are indulging in a kind of capital city tour. After Melbourne, they go to Brisbane, where they’re booked in to the Concert Hall at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. Then it’s on to Elder Hall at the University of Adelaide, finishing up at the Angel Place Recital Hall in Sydney. As at this moment (July 20), you’ll have no problem getting a seat at any of these venues.

So what are these musicians offering? They begin with Debussy’s Petite Suite of 1889, four movements with qualities that still beguile, like the opening En bateau with its benign first melody, or the clattering Maillotins-reminiscent Ballet. On this night, the pianists utilised the sustaining pedal liberally; well, that’s their privilege as no edition I’ve come across tells you what to do in that regard. Still, the Menuet and Ballet were given with brisk definitions of Moderato and Allegro giusto respectively, to the point where the performers’ congruence suffered in a score where that relationship is not severely tested.

The Petite Suite is written for piano four hands, with Sughayer playing Prima. Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos of 1781 followed, with Gillham taking that role. As usual, the missed notes and timing discrepancies stood out, although both players recovered from the latter pretty quickly. The opening Allegro‘s exposition was repeated and the movement worked towards its resolution competently enough, apart from a short mess just before the re-statement of the second subject in the recapitulation – somewhere in the bars-126-to-135 ferment.

As for the central Andante with its almost breathtaking main melody (except for bars 5 and 6), I believe the pianists repeated its exposition as well, which proved to be a true pleasure, if not as much as their sense of grace in the concluding segment of mirroring that follows bar 106. I would have enjoyed the final Allegro much more if the performers made more of its lightness of touch, as the approach every so often appeared to be bulldozing through the heftier moments when both pianos are engaged in simultaneous semiquaver flurries.

Ravel himself arranged his own 1905 Introduction and Allegro for two pianos and these interpreters made excellent work of the piece’s free-wheeling exhibitionism, Gillham playing the origiunal’s initial flourishes for harp with loads of verve, giving us some fetching glissandi along the score’s path. But you missed the original instrument’s texture, not least when it moves into harmonics at the Tres lent bars in the central cadenza. While it made for an interesting aural experience, I’m afraid the exercise struck me as the sort of thing you subsitute when you can’t assemble the requisite instruments for the piece in its ‘right’ state.

Sughayer is a Khachaturian expert, having recorded the Armenian composer’s complete piano works; that probably includes the early Piano Concerto of 1936 which enjoyed high popularity when I was a student but which I’ve heard in the concert hall only once in the last sixty years. The program began its second half with the Three Pieces for Two Pianos, written in 1945 and sparkling with interest every so often. In the Ostinato, Gillham provided a solid bass line and the upper-level development from Sughayer showed slight traces of Prokofiev.

But the central Romance proved the most intriguing of the triptych, mainly for its freedom of invention and utterance which brought to mind Khachaturian’s lyrical felicity when giving vent to his unapologetic Romantic streak. The Fantastic Waltz sounded like hard work for both musicians who, in the end, had to flog the piece’s central theme to a frenetic pulp.

If the night had a pivot for the politically motivated supporters present, it arrived with Houtaf Khoury‘s Isolated for piano four hands, enjoying its premiere. The Lebanese writer still lives in his homeland, I believe, and he spent almost a decade studying in pre-War (the current one) Kyiv. So he’s been on-site if not actually involved in the two great conflicts of these days. This work, according to a prefatory note read by Gillham, speaks of the composer’s present situation and does so in an attractive language of what I can only call polytonal impressionism.

Khoury avoids tragic overtones but the prevailing atmosphere sounds melancholy, if not depressed. What works in the composer’s favour is his ability to keep a narrative mobile, refreshing itself on a bare-bones opening to come to territory that is more optimistic, as Khoury intended, with an extended passage near the conslusion that recalled the sound of bells ringing – not in jubilation but as reminders of a life-affirming state of existence, beyond the grim position that confronts all in Lebanon today.

What followed Khoury’s piece was, however, the best music on the program. No, it wasn’t the most aspirational or the most inspired, but it was a score brilliantly contrived for two pianos: Arensky’s 1888 Suite No. 1. This comprised a(nother) Romance, a Valse and a Polonaise; all were examples of cross-fertilization and complementarity (as our American cousins say) at its best. The opening piece held melodic content of a fairly ordinary quality but its expression proved both accomnplished and elegant, When it came to the Valse, what impressed was the sophistication of Arensky’s fioriture from both executants, and what I recall of the Polonaise was the infectiousness of the composer’s rhythmic manipulation which – as with every later composer in this form – suggested Chopin, but in this instance without copying him.

At the end of the program came Chabrier’s Espana in yet another two-piano version, arranged like Ravel’s work by the composer and published in 1884. This fell rather flat for me, although the audience was wildly enthusiastic. But it seemed pretty bare-bones, without the vivid orchestral tapestry that the composer created, incapable of offering the timbral variety (embodied in the sparkle of tambourine, cymbals and triangle) that animates what is a rather repetitive jota. For all tbat, the performers brought an unflagging energy to this all-too-well-known masterpiece.

An encore – Ravel’s Le jardin feerique that concludes his Mother Goose Suite of 1910 – finished the night in stately style, the slow move from pianissimo to fortissimo as well controlled as I’ve heard in live performance: gravity without ponderousness. It made for an elevated conclusion to this amiable recital, elongated beyond its scheduled length by the artists’ insistence on speaking to us before every piece presented. Sill, as Gillham has shown in recent years, he is a big-hearted artist, one who is secure in his convictions and in his expert pianism. He’s also lucky to have Sughayer as his colleague – an artist with an equivalent commitment and virtuosity.

INNER LANDSCAPES

Omega Ensemble

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Monday July 13, 2026

Paul Stanhope

Pursuing its latest two-state tour, the Omega Ensemble from Sydney presented a hefty program on Monday evening, all in one swoop without interval. Luckily for everyone, the music we heard (apart from the opening piece) proved to be involving and generally animated, with two concertos in succession after an arrangement by Mahler for strings of Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14, Death and the Maiden. As for personnel, the Ensemble gathered together eleven strings – six violins (including two guests), two each of violas and cellos, one (guest) double-bass – alongside the body’s soloist regulars, clarinet David Rowden and piano Vatche Jambazian.

As for that beginner, the Omegas performed Soliloquy by American John Corigliano, arranged in 1995 to commemorate his father who was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for over 20 years. To this filial end, the composer has apparently recycled the central movement from his 1977 Clarinet Concerto for smaller forces: the clarinet, of course, and string quartet, which in this instance featured (I’m guessing) violins Emma McGrath and Asmira Woodward-Page, viola Neil Thompson, and cello Paul Stender.

Soliloquy is a successful elegy, intertwining and contrasting the clarinet and first violin line in an emotional landscape that is restrained and yet quietly eloquent. Corigliano’s content is spare and focused, my main memory being of upward-moving arpeggio figures for nearly all participants which brought to mind the opening row statement in Berg’s Violin Concerto. As well, the composer reaches a carefully judged conclusion, the melodic threads fading to silence from both McGrath and Rowden: a final fade to black.

The full complement of strings assembled for the Schubert/Mahler monument. I think that most of us would have experienced an orchestral reading of this work from the Australian Chamber Orchestra which has taken Richard Tognetti’s arrangement on tour here and overseas. Inevitably, the Omega players lacked the mobility and striking accuracy of the ACO in full flight but it was difficult to find faults in Monday night’s reading, apart from some momentary lapses from the top violin line which, to be fair, is put under most stress during this score.

In their attack, this ad hoc body displayed fine definition right from the initial D minor gestures. As well, the players had been carefully prepared for the arranger’s dynamic differentiations and endlessly mobile ebb and flow of phrasing across the opening Allegro. The 140-bars of exposition weren’t repeated but, in a large-frame work like this, with its concentrated material, I don’t suppose we missed it.

Schubert’s treatment of his own song in the second movement set of variations swerves from bleak to dulcet to aggressive in a moving emotional canvas that is packed with great moments. Here, we heard some solo lines as the body wasn’t large enough to follow Mahler’s reduction of some first violin sections to three desks. And the use of mutes made for some fine alterations in texture, especially from the lower lines. My only complaint came with a bar or two of scruffy intonation from the first violins when the lied re-emerges at the movement’s end.

With the third movement, the players enjoyed the heft of the quasi-boisterous Allegro molto with its signature syncopations, all of them making a solid and uniform attack on its outer bars, before the move into sentiment with the D Major Trio. In spite of an appealing curvaceousness in the first violins here, I admired more the warm-timbred duet of violas and cellos betweeen bars 84 and 100, and the second violins’ chance to shine at bar 140, which kind of demonstrated that group of three’s higher success rate at playing piano (a prominent pianissimo, actually) than their ‘first’ colleagues.

With the Presto conclusion to this quartet, you were faced with the expected pell-mell rush right through whole pages; none of that ACO habit of shaping the phrases with mini-hesitations and pseudo-pauses which also gives you variety in attack and heightens your expectations. This was a (generally) straight-through run of high energy with a firm support from violas, cellos and the single double-bass Adrian Whitehall, although what struck me on several occasions was the pentrating power of violas Thompson and Andrew Jezek coupled with our cellists Stender and Mee Na Lojewski in exposed bars like 238 to 241, exposed briefly in mid-tumult.

Capping their performance, these string players welded into a taut composite for the 46 (47) bars of Prestissimo that conclude the work with a resolute vehemence that remains in the memory long after the music has stopped, What you might have missed out on in subtleties of inflection and searing uniformity of articulation from an ACO reading, you were compensated by the directness of address and emotional commitment from this Omega group, playing with six muscians less than Tognetti’s champions.

Before we reached the next piece, a noticeable number of older listeners left the Murdoch Hall, apparently not interested in the later program elements. Well, they missed some fine music-making through their small-minded abstention. American composer Jessie Montgomery‘s Rounds amounts to a one-movement piano concerto, Jambazian doing the honours with the 11-strong complement of available strings. The work opened with a full-bodied chain of short blows as prelude to the main theme of this rondo. Jambazian also outlined his part with a percussive zeal that I hadn’t encountered in other readings.

Indeed, the pianist found a violent layer in this score that served to act as both spur and complement to the strings, the forward motion eventually settling into an appealing nocturne for the piano while his accompaniment eventually comprised the repetition of a fixed strand. Montgomery also introduced a sound-making device that I think required her strings to play/scrape above the bridge; still unsettling when you first hear it but effective in breaking up the semi-sweetness of this work’s central pages.

Finally, we heard a new Australian work in Paul Stanhope‘s Paludarium Dreams for clarinet, piano and strings – in other words, everybody who’d participated so far this night. The composer was present and joined Omega artistic director Rowden for one of those brief pre-performance explications that was probably of assistance to those who hadn’t read the program notes or who didn’t know anything about Stanhope’s life and work.

The concerto begins with a movement called In Flight – bird sounds using those glissandi and short sound wisps that pop up in Sculthorpe’s music. As a soundscape, it made remarkably persuasive listening for us, even if specific bird calls would have escaped those of us who are ornithologically challenged. Mind you, there is no attempt to directly write out specific cries; no Oiseaux exotiques excursions into exact duplication. The landscape of noises changes into more broad strophes as Stanhope moves through his sanctuary while his vocabulary is comfortable without venturing too far from something approaching traditional tonality.

After a jubilant outburst of musical pantheism, the birds return and we strike on a Nocturne, prefaced by frog croaks and more of those above-the-bridge scrapes from the strings. The atmosphere is not placid and takes on the nature of a scherzo occasionally; Stanhope’s idea of a night-piece is more in line with Bartok than with Chopin. Rowden produced some impressive amphibious noises although what struck me most throughout this movement was the prominence of Jambazian’s part, both forceful and recessive by turns.

The third movement, The Carollers, begins with a clarinet cadenza of substance, a fine show-piece for Rowden’s control of register and rapidity of attack. When the ensemble enters, we are in a more urban environment and the work’s metrical motion has moved into something more jagged, less free-flowing or rhapsodic as had been the case towards the end of the previous segment. I know we enjoyed Stanhope’s employment of nature sounds, but here the work moved into being driven by effects rather than growing a world out of them; a hectic series of yelps and high notes presented the city (Sydney) to this listener as more disordered and discordant than it actually is (or is it, these days?). Rowden enjoyed another cadenza-of-sorts near the score’s conclusion, where those Parramatta River birds are heard once more.

Stanhope’s new work is a solid contribution to the small catalogue of Australian clarinet concertos, even if the piano element is often just as present a force in the score’s lay-out. Further, it provided a generous self-revelatory conclusion to this evening which focused intently on the psychological make-up of its contributor-composers: from Corigliano’s tribute to the voice of his father, to Schubert’s intense and stark confrontation with his own mortality, to the concision Montgomery shows in finding eloquence through a fusion of poetry and music, ending in Stanhope’s outlining of his physical world and how he posits himself in it.

A rewarding event, then, and another instance of the Omegas’ catholicity of output. Certainly, the enterprise deserves a larger audience than it currently attracts, let alone one that stays the course for its full program. We all hope for better times and, in this admittedly parlous state, would welcome more patrons to visit future events mounted by these gifted visitors from the not-so-deep North.

THE LIVING TRADITION

Selby & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday May 28, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BEETHOVEN’S GHOST

Musica Viva Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday May 12, 2026

Aura Go

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.