Category: The Diary

JEAN-YVES THIBAUDET

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday March 3 at 7:30 pm

A popular visitor, the French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet has appeared here as soloist and fronting concertos. Apart from his craft, he brings to the stage a peacock’s couture. Does it make a difference that parts of him glitter? Not really; if you’re offended by such quiet flamboyance, you can always look at the Murdoch Hall ceiling or ponder the ushers perched on the side walls. Tonight he is playing all the Debussy Preludes (written between 1909 and 1912) and his expertise is unquestionable; after all, he has recorded the two volumes twice – in 1996 and notably in 2023 with a cover design by Vivienne Westwood. You’d have to anticipate that Thibaudet is going to take his time over the 24 pieces, as the Recital Centre publicity refers to a length of one hour 50 minutes. Even if that includes a 20-minute interval, we’ll have a leisurely view of these atmospheric studies. But that seems to be his way; where younger players take about 75 or 77 minutes in their readings of both livres, this pianist’s earlier recording brings them in at 82 1/2 minutes. Still, he’s getting faster: his 2023 double LP performances come in at 81 1/2 minutes. Full adult tickets range from $79 to $139; concession holders can get a $20 deduction in the middling-quality seats, while Under 40s can get into the same sections for $49. As usual, you face the Recital Centre’s sliding transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50 – the organization’s peculiar form of book-keeping where no books are involved.

2026 SEASON OPENING GALA

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday March 5 at 7:30 pm

Starting the year proper after those Myer Music Bowl shenanigans, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra settles into staid mode under its chief conductor Jaime Martin. Tonight’s flavour is American, aiming for the popular jugular with the Star Wars: Suite for Orchestra by that Hollywood colossus, John Williams. It was published in 2000 when the composer was in the throes of coping with Lucas’ second trilogy and the melange of themes has become part of our consciousness. The evening’s guest is French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet who plays the solo role in Gershwin’s Concerto in F of 1925, which he recorded in 2010. Despite its creaking structural bones, especially in the final Allegro agitato, this score is appealingly brash and sentimental in turns with some energetic bravura passages for the soloist. To end, Martin directs Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances of 1940, the composer’s only work written completely in America. Always harking back to his past experiences, this three-movement construct is eventually a buoyant joy, showing the same high spirits as you hear in the Paganini Rhapsody. Tickets range from $81 to $139, with concession holders getting in for $5 cheaper. You also have a $7 transaction fee which always strikes me as particularly grasping when you consider the capacity of Hamer Hall. But you have to front up the cash to be sure of a seat as it’s bound to be a popular event.

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

MOZART’S SPRING

Australian Haydn Ensemble

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday March 11 at 7 pm

As far as I can tell, the Australian Haydn Ensemble is a string quartet comprising violins Skye McIntosh and Matthew Greco, viola Karina Schmitz and cello Daniel Yeadon. These members all appear to have their professional lives in Sydney and this recital will be their first collegial Melbourne appearance. Welcome, brothers and sisters, to town. What are you offering? Haydn? Oh, great. We’re to hear the Op. 33, No. 3 of 1781 nicknamed The Bird because of some acciaccaturas in the first violin part of the opening movement’s first bars. Nonetheless, it’s 19 to 20 minutes of sparkling C Major magic. Then Mendelssohn’s early E flat, written when he was a tyro teenager in 1823, two years before the superb Octet; it lasts for about 24/5 minutes. Finally, Mozart K 387 in G, nicknamed Spring although it was written in the Vienna December of 1782. The first of the ‘Haydn’ quartets, the work is a model of the composer’s genius at melodic curvature, and it comes in at a little under 30 minutes. All of which, even allowing for an interval, lies well below the specified two hours’ duration of this event. Perhaps we’ll have lots of talk; oh joy. Your tickets cost $60, $45 concession, or $55 if you’re a Senior which seems generationally odd. Also, you will cope with the Recital Centre’s graduated transaction fee – anywhere between $4 and $8.50 – if you book online. It might be worthwhile just showing up at the box office on the night.

ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday March 12 at 7:30 pm

Don’t know about you but I find the most energising part of Strauss’s long exercise of 1896 in musical philosophizing comes at the start when the orchestral tutti cuts out and you’re left with the full organ C Major chord. How they’ll achieve this effect in the organ-less Hamer Hall will be a delight to watch and hear. Even better will be the machinations to get a decent blast in Costa Hall. Anyway, it’s downhill all the way after that powerful opening as the composer tries to illustrate selections from Nietzsche’s rambling tome. Preceding this exercise, a less-swollen Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under chief conductor Jaime Martin escorts Maria Duenas through Beethoven’s Violin Concerto of 1806. A young Spanish musician, Duenas has recorded the work and may be playing her own cadenzas to the second and third movements. At the night’s start, for an overture we hear a 2020 work by Australian writer Melody Eotvos: her The Deciding Machine of 2020 which serves several purposes. It’s a memorial to the centenary of women’s suffrage, a celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, and holds a titular reference to Ada Lovelace who wrote the first computer algorithm for Babbage’s projected ‘analytical engine’. Your standard tickets range from $51 to $142, with concession holders relishing a $5 discount. Children are charged $20 and you have to pay $7 if you book online or by phone. About this last, I wonder what would happen if you questioned exactly where this fee goes; e.g., which employee is paid for handling your credit card details, especially if you’re a regular client.

This program will be repeated in Costa Hall, Geelong on Friday March 13 at 7:30 pm and again in Hamer Hall on Saturday March 14 at 2 pm.

SHANGHAI SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday March 13 at 7:30 pm

In a welcome display of camaraderie, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is presenting a large group of visitors in the form of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, conducted by music director Long Yu who has held this position for 17 years. Half their one-night stand is Chinese music, while the second part is a warhorse very familiar to Melbourne audiences: Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 of 1907 – a big sprawling series of four canvases packed full of Romantic surges and emotional richness. Before that, we hear some selections from the ten-movement Chinese Kitchen: A Feast of Flavours, written in 2024 to a Shanghai Symphony Orchestra commission from 30-year-old composer Elliot Leung who has enjoyed remarkable success in China and the United States, bridging the Trump/Xi divide with aplomb. As for a soloist, the orchestra hosts pianist Serena Wang, a San Francisco-born 21-year-old talent who fronts the 2009 Er Huang Concerto by Qigang Chen, Messiaen’s last pupil. The title refers to a type of Beijing opera, Chen employing tunes from that art-form in a lavish orchestral palette. To hear these guests, you’ll pay between $81 and $139, concession holders enjoying a munificent $5 reduction; children get in for $20, but everyone faces the $7 transaction fee – a shameful example of grift generated by our dependence on credit cards and online booking.

THE DEVIL’S VIOLIN

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm

Saturday March 14 at 7:30 pm

Back for the third time, violinist Ilya Gringolts takes the Australian Chamber Orchestra through a program that oscillates between the old and the new with an even hand. Clearly, the entertainment’s core is intended to be Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Violin Sonata in G minor which the composer said he wrote in 1713, even if those in the know claim it came from about thirty years later; what a dreamer. Scoring with two concertos is Vivaldi: first, with the RV 237 in D minor, possibly written in 1617 and notable for a sprightly third movement; and the C Major RV 507 for two violins that Gringolts gets to play with ACO principal Satu Vanska in a demonstration of canonic interplay and endless chains of thirds. Fleshing out the Baroque content will be Geminiani’s Concerto Grosso No 12, La Follia, which is an arrangement of a Corelli original and which keeps to the well-known theme throughout. Starting the program is Johann Paul von Westhoff’s Imitation of the Bells from his Sonata No. 3 in D minor, published in 1694 and consisting of 41 bars loaded with solo violin exercises intended to simulate a carillon. Moving to more recent times, Gringolts leads a string orchestra version of Gubaidulina’s brief String Quartet No 2 of 1987 which screams individuality from every bar, so having the ACO players handle it three or four to a line will be more than intriguing. Mieczyslaw Weinberg represents another facet of Soviet composition and we hear his 1942 Aria for string quartet, presumably organized for the ACO forces. As well, Paul Stanhope received an ACO commission for Giving Ground, written in 2020 and based on the La Follia chord progression, so that you have a traditional and a (pretty) contemporary look at this famous sequence. As usual with a hall the size of Hamer, prices range wildly and widely. You can start at $30 for a student and pay top adult for $148. The handling fee is $8.50, which is a tall order for your student struggler; probably why you don’t see many of them at these Sunday afternoon events.

This program will be repeated on Sunday March 15 at 2:30 in Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, and on Monday March 16 in the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall at 7:30 pm.

TOUR DE FORCE #1

Corpus Medicorum & the Royal Melbourne Hospital Foundation

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Sunday March 15 at 5 pm

This bod of medical personnel trying their hands at taxing serious music here takes on two cornerstones of the Russian repertoire under regular conductor Fabian Russell. The Corpus Medicorum showed more than competence the last time I heard them, but that was some decades ago and you might reasonably expect that their achievement level would have risen. In any event, their cause is a noble one: raising funds towards the treatment of lung cancer patients at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. To this end, the organizers have gained the services of Alexander Gavrylyuk to take the main role in Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, written in 1909 and forever linked in Australian minds, for better or worse, with the names of David Helfgott/Geoffrey Rush/Shine. Partnered with this redoubtable work is Prokofiev’s most famous symphony, No 5 in B flat Major of 1944. As a Soviet-era score, this stands at the top of the pile through its inventiveness, integration and striking individuality. And it has been the subject of many recordings by eminent conductors, so you can easily familiarise yourself for comparative purposes with a score that was once as regularly heard as Shostakovich’s No. 5. Tickets for a full adult cost $70, concession holders enjoy a whopping reduction to $40, and students pay $30. But then you have the $4-to-$8.50 fee imposed by the Recital Centre if you book online or by phone. I’d be tempted to show up on the day; at the time of writing (February 28), there are about 450 seats available across the Murdoch Hall.

STRAVINSKY & CHINDAMO

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday March 19 at 7:30 pm

Happy company, then, for our own jazz master Joe Chindamo. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under principal guest conductor Benjamin Northey begins its work tonight with Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante defunte, from the year 1899 when the composer was studying with Faure. This exercise in introspective retrospection lasts a little less than 7 minutes. Stravinsky is represented by his epoch-making The Rite of Spring ballet that shocked the public – well, the Western part of it – at its premiere on March 29, 1913. Mind you, it wasn’t long before the world had a lot more on its mind than the not-quite-emigre Russian composer’s full-scale innovations. This lasts about 35 minutes. Which leaves a lot of space for Chindamo – the MSO’s composer in residence this year – to fill with his commission piece Are there any questions? which will involve the services of mezzo-soprano Jessica Aszodi and the MSO Chorus. I don’t have much information about this new composition, except that it takes its title from Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale novel, and it is a requiem. I’ve seen and heard Chindamo play only a few times over the years, even more rarely as a composer but his handling of large-scale forces will be a significant demonstration of his participation, from about 15 years ago, in serious music enterprises. Full adult tickets fall between $75 and $139, concessions are a ludicrous $5 cheaper, and children’s seats are priced at $20. You will add $7 an order if you try to book online or by phone. The alternative? Just come on the night, cash in hand.

This program will be repeated on Saturday March 21 at 7:30 pm.

THE POETRY OF PIANO DUO

Hoang Pham Productions

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday March 21 at 2:30 pm

Two doctoral graduates from the Manhattan School of Music, Allie Xinyu Wang and Daniel Le are combining their talents to present a 75-minute tour of some significant contributions to the duo piano repertoire. The musicians begin with some scraps from Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite of 1908, which most of us know better in an orchestrated form that came three years later. Then follows one of the repertoire’s masterpieces in Brahms’ Variations on a Theme by Haydn which came out in 1873 in two scores: piano duo and orchestra. Just like the Ravel, we know the orchestral version much better than the smaller-scale piece; a shame, as the latter is a joy to play and less orotund to the ear. Staying with the strength, Wang and Le give us Rachmaninov’s early Suite No. 1 from 1893, the composer being 20 at the time he wrote these four reactions to poems and which he dedicated to Tchaikovsky. We jump forward to Lutoslawski’s 1941 Variations on a Theme by Paganini which treats the Caprice No. 24 with respect (until the end) and an acerbic harmonic vocabulary. Finally, the musicians leap across the Atlantic for part of William Bolcom‘s The Garden of Eden: four ragtime stages in the Fall, originally written for solo piano in 1969, then transmuted for two pianos in 1994 (half of them) and 2006 (the other half). The extract we’re to hear is The Serpent’s Kiss which takes on fantasia qualities throughout its D minor length and is the longest in the set. Standard tickets are $62, concession $50, student $38 – this last, a strange number but nowhere near as odd as the Recital Centre’s universally applied fee of between $4 and $8.50 for labouring intensively over your credit charge use if you book online or phone.

CHOPIN PIANO RECITAL

Hoang Pham Productions

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday March 21 at 6 pm

Acting as both producer and artist, pianist Hoang Pham plays a 75-minute program of various pieces from the extraordinary larder that is Chopin’s contribution to piano music. He begins with the C-sharp minor Fantaisie-Impromptu, that favourite from 1834 that sets three against four (or six against eight) in a satisfying musical mesh. We then move to the Ballade No 1 in G minor of 1835, which is another very popular recitalist’s choice for its coruscating virtuosity and overt drama. The Two Nocturnes Op. 27 give any listener a welcome experience in tonal subtleties, the first in C sharp minor and the second in D flat Major, this latter showing the composer in 1836 already at his refined best with some astonishingly delicate fioriture. Pham then takes on the Ballade No. 4 in F minor, written in 1842 and a remarkably difficult piece to bring off, even for experts in this composer. The Two Waltzes Op. 64 of 1847 follow: another pairing of D flat Major (the so-called Minute Waltz) and that well-known C-sharp minor one used in Les Sylphides. Taking on another form that the composer made his own, the pianist offers us the Three Mazurkas Op. 63 of 1846, of which the last in C sharp minor may ring some bells. To end, Pham breaks over us with the Polonaise No. 6 in A flat: one of the most recognizable works by the composer and a test for every pianist with a battery of difficulties, including that energising Trio with its octave semiquaver bass-line. A standard ticket to this recital costs $68, with concession holders enjoying a measly and fiscally inexplicable reduction to $61.20 while students pay $34. Everyone who books online or by phone will also have to stump up the Centre’s $4-to-$8.50 ‘Transaction Fee’, in which extraction art is meant to make friends of the mammon of iniquity.

ART OF THE SCORE: JAMES HORNER

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday March 27 at 7:30 pm

Yet again, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is hitting the film score theme, although this time the players will not be providing the soundtrack to a full movie. The aim is to celebrate the career of American writer James Horner who died over ten years ago in a plane crash. Across his career, this composer wrote music for a large number of films, some of which even I know: Aliens (1986), Apollo 13 (1995), Braveheart (1995), Jumanji (1995), Titanic (1997), The Perfect Storm (2000), Troy (2004), and Avatar (2009). Nicholas Buc will be conducting suites and individual excerpts from Horner’s oeuvre stretching (according to MSO publicity) definitely to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), The Rocketeer (1991) ‘and many more’, some of which have been mentioned in my list of familiarities. I’m assuming that these extracts won’t be accompanying specific scenes from the various films; if that’s the case, it undermines the whole purpose of the music itself which only lives in the power of its suggestiveness. All credit to Horner but I can’t think of a single theme from any of the films I’ve seen for which he wrote the soundtrack – except that Titanic number. Taking fans through the program, two presenters/hosts will negotiate the narrative path: Andrew Pogson, the MSO’s Special Projects Manager, and Dr. Dan Golding, Professor of Media at Monash University. Obviously, my lack of recall/filmic insight means nothing because there are plenty of people for whom the Horner music must be memorable; the MSO has scheduled three concerts in a row to celebrate his music. Mind you, the balcony in Hamer Hall is unavailable for these concerts; further, at the time of writing (February 28), plenty of seats are available. Standard price comes in anywhere between $93 and $150; concession holders pay a whole $5 less, if they can be bothered; everyone faces the objectionable $7 transaction fee if booking online or by phone. As I say, it’s a month away but nobody seems to be rushing to get in.

This program will be repeated on Saturday March 28 at 7:30 pm and on Sunday March 29 at 2 pm.

SOUVENIRS: BRAHMS AND TCHAIKOVSKY STRING SEXTETS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Iwaki Auditorium, Southgate

Sunday March 29 at 11 am

A day after presenting this program at the Castlemaine Town Hall, musicians from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra come back to town with the rarely-heard Brahms Sextet No.1 of 1860, and the much more well-known Tchaikovsky Souvenir de Florence Sextet, written in 1890 after several years of difficult gestation and followed by an uneasy revision/afterbirth. Even so, the Russian composer’s nervous energy makes his work an illuminating pleasure: an excellent coupling of sophistication and (in the later two movements) simplicity. The Brahms is another matter, soaking in warmth right from the broad opening cello statement to the same instrument’s tenor clef melody of the concluding Rondo‘s initial bars. Coupling these scores was a happy inspiration for someone (Michelle Wood, it would seem from the advertising bumf) in the MSO and these players will have just as large a chance of success as anybody, permanent string sextet combinations being few in number. They are violins Kathryn Taylor and Emily Beauchamp, violas Katharine Brockman and Aidan Filshie, cellos Wood and Anna Pokorny. Part of the organization’s long-lasting Chamber series, tickets cost $55, concession holders still only getting an insulting $5 reduction. And you have to engage with the booking platform to find out that the orchestra will apply its customary $7 transaction fee at this recital; probably unavoidable because these events are highly popular – which makes this example of fiscal greed all the more contemptible.

RACHMANINOFF’S RHAPSODY

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday February 7 ay 7:30 pm

No, it’s not the composer’s Russian Rhapsody of 1891 for two pianos but – as you’ve anticipated – the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, written in 1934 and these days the most popular of his works for piano with orchestra. To foreground the Australian Chamber Orchestra‘s excursion into this spiky score, Dejan Lazic comes back to work with Richard Tognetti and his gifted players. In keeping with recent ACO practice, the orchestra will be reduced, in this case confined to strings and percussion. It’s improbable that any arrangement will make up for the missing 20 wind players; we’ll all just have to adjust our levels of disbelief. Stravinsky, who was remarkably non-catty about his fellow-exile, also appears on the program with his Concerto in D for strings of 1946 from just about when the composer had become a freshly-minted American citizen. Proceedings open with an ACO commission – Horizon – from the committed environmentalist American John Luther Adams. As a counterweight to all this Americana, home-grown and imported, we hear Lithuanian composer Raminta Serksnyte‘s early work for strings from 1998, De Profundis. It’s a searing, aggressive (for the most part) score of great passion and rigour; just the sort of music that attracts this group which is here playing its Australian premiere. Ticket prices range between $30 for a student to $175 for an adult top seat; you have to add on the excessive ‘handling fee’ of between $7 and $8.50, depending on what your delivery mode is.

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

SYMPHONIC CELEBRATION

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Sidney Myer Music Bowl

Tuesday February 10 at 7:30 pm

Some traditions hold fast and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra‘s free concerts at the Myer Bowl still flourish, I see, even if the format has altered since I last sweltered into the venue along with half of Melbourne. Tonight’s conductor will be Leonard Weiss, the organization’s Cybec assistant conductor (although he doesn’t appear as such on the MSO website); he has an impressive list of accomplishments and engagements here, in New Zealand, and across Europe. His main task tonight will be infusing novelty into Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 – still in C minor, as one curmudgeonly British critic once wrote. Eventually completed in 1808, it remains one of the composer’s most striking and accessible compositions and concludes with the mother of all C Major codas. The program’s soloist is the MSO’s principal trumpet, Owen Morris, who premiered Sydney composer Holly Harrison‘s Hellbent back in April 2021: ten minutes of jazz-style inflections for the soloist and written by someone who can actually play the instrument. Pleasing us all with its familiarity comes Grieg’s publication of 1888, the Peer Gynt Suite No. 1: Morning Mood, The Death of Ase, Anitra’s Dance, and In the Hall of the Mountain King. This appeared in one of the MSO’s first programs (way back with Zelman’s Albert Street Conservatorium Orchestra?) and satisfies for its emotional canvas and satisfyingly balanced phrase lengths. To begin, the voice of a Cybec (how that organization gets around) Young Composer in Residence is heard in a specially commissioned Fanfare. This is Andrew Aranowicz who has proficiency in this field, having contributed to the fifty fanfares written on commission for the Sydney Symphony in 2022, his brass decet Pride a jaunty, well-crafted sample of the form. We can only anticipate similar.

AUSTRALIAN YOUTH ORCHESTRA

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Sidney Myer Music Bowl

Wednesday February 11 at 7:30 pm

Rather than putting themselves out, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is giving up one of its Bowl nights to the Australian Youth Orchestra. I haven’t heard this group for many years, long enough for the personnel – both players and administrators – to have changed completely. Anyway, tonight they begin with American writer Anna Clyne‘s This Midnight Hour of 2015: a 12-minute complex that the Australian National Academy of Music performers aired last March at the Melbourne Recital Centre. Next comes Daniel Nelson‘s Steampunk Blizzard, a 2016 fanfare by the American-born Swedish resident whose composition lasts a little over 7 minutes and sets some nifty rhythmic puzzles for young players, mainly to do with dotted quavers. It’s racy and highly atmospheric, especially if you’re into the industry-heavy side of steampunkery, while its progress shows influences of Bernstein and, at one luminous passage, Janacek’s Sinfonietta finale. Then comes Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite from 1945, rearranged so the always-thrifty composer wouldn’t miss out on his American copyright cash. There are three pantomime interludes between the first four dances but, even with this expansion, the score lasts barely half an hour. So, from what I can see, this all adds up to less than an hour’s music, a quick concert – unless there’s going to be a lot of talk. The evening’s conductor is Christian Reif from Germany, currently chief conductor of Sweden’s Gavle Orchestra, his predecessor in that post being Jaime Martin . . . which just goes to show that what goes around, goes around. As usual, this is a free event.

BAROQUE MASTERS

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday February 12 at 7 pm

Opening its Melbourne operations for this year, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra gets back to basics with a fully Baroque program: Handel, Bach, Vivaldi and Pachelbel. As well, the concert’s soloists come from the Brandenburg ranks – all local talent. Nevertheless, much of the content relies on the ensemble’s strings with artistic director Paul Dyer regulating everybody’s input from his centrally-positioned harpsichord. To begin, a Handel concerto grosso from the seminal Op. 6 published in 1739: the first one, in G. Then come the middle two of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos – No. 3 in G for strings and No. 4 also in G which asks for a front group of solo violin and two recorders. As we all know, these were presented to the idiot Margrave in 1721 and five of them disappeared from public notice. I don’t know what’s happening in this version of No. 4: Melissa Farrow is down to play baroque flute, but Adam Masters is listed as performing baroque oboe. Concertmaster Shaun Lee-Chen will probably take on the solo string line which has just as much work to do, if not more, than the two wind players. Then we’ll have a break from G Major and hear the one Pachelbel piece that everyone knows: his Canon in D for strings which you can encounter at many a wedding or funeral in this country. To end, Vivaldi’s 1705 Trio Sonata Op. 1 No. 12 which is a set of 20 variations in D minor on that useful progression, La Folia. It also involves two violins and a continuo part but I sense that its original modesty in personnel demands might take a turn for overkill. The ticketing is an administrative saga. Full adult prices move from $45 to $167; concession card holders inexplicably fall between $54 and $105. If you’re a senior, your range is $77 to $151; a full-time student sits anywhere for $20; an Under 40 only gets into A Reserve at $36. I won’t carry on about the individual price for groups of 10+ but will excite you with the news that prices vary between this and later performances. A constant is the $4-$8.50 fee exercised by the Recital Centre if you book online or by phone; the grifters we have always with us.

This program will be repeated on Saturday February 14 at 5 pm and on Sunday February 15 at 5 pm.

50 YEARS OF ABC CLASSIC

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Sidney Myer Music Bowl

Saturday February 14 at 7:30 pm

In a burst of patriotic fervour, this program from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra celebrating a pivotal national radio station (and the rest) comprises Australian music only; as far as I can tell, all the soloists are well-known locals. Let’s see what sort of crowd this program attracts, although it strikes me that you could play a night of Berwald alongside Hovhaness and the place would be packed. No, it’s not just because it’s free, but that helps. Benjamin Northey conducts works by ten writers covering a wide range. He opens with Nigel Westlake‘s Cudmirrah Fanfare of 1987: a two-minute jubilation. Then we hear selections from Westlake’s Antarctica Suite, extracted in 1991 from music written for a documentary and tonight featuring guitarist Slava Grigoryan; obviously, we won’t get all four movements. An up-to-the-moment effort comes from Ella Macens with the world premiere of her My Heart on Yours about which nothing is known – yet. A nod to the recent elders with Sculthorpe’s nostalgic Small Town for chamber orchestra of 1963, inspired by D.H Lawrence’s antipodean saga, Kangaroo. A vital contrast comes with the last movement of Ross Edwards‘ Maninyas Violin Concerto, written in 1988 – a voice that can’t be mistaken for anyone else’s and tonight featuring as soloist the MSO’s concertmaster Natalie Chee. We wouldn’t be complete without an Elena Kats-Chernin contribution, and here it’s her 2021 Momentum involving lots of woodwind throughout its seven minutes. As we’ve arrived at the statutory female part of the night, we’ll hear from the mainly expatriate writer Peggy-Glanville Hicks through the Promenade first movement from her Etruscan Concerto of 1954 which also calls for chamber orchestra only and will feature pianist Aura Go. A better-known blast from the past arrives in Miriam Hyde and her Andante tranquillo reworked from the Piano Concerto No. 2 of 1935 and which you’d have to assume will also be delivered with Go as soloist. James Henry, the MSO’s Cybec First Nations Composer in Residence, is contributing his Warrin (Wombat Season for the Wurundjeri, lasting from April to July), written in 2022 for string orchestra. To finish, here come the co-composing Tawadros brothers, Joseph and James on oud and req respectively, with a trio of numbers, all from their 2014 album Permission to Evaporate: first Constantinople, then Bluegrass Nikriz, and the title track to finish. It’s exciting music to experience in person and makes an affirmatively multi-cultural end to this night which has almost exclusively spoken a single if unequivocally imported tongue. Entry is free, of course, and the Bowl gates open, as usual, at 5 pm.

BRAHMS WITH JACK AND KRISTIAN

Kristian Chong & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday February 17 at 7 pm

You can’t ask for a recital more direct in its material than this one. Pianist Kristian Chong is collaborating with violinist Jack Liebeck, the British-German musician who is currently artistic director of Townsville’s Australian Festival of Chamber Music. These artists are working through all three of the Brahms violin sonatas: the meltingly fine G Major of 1879, the direct-speaking A Major from 7 years later, and the D minor, strikingly sombre and aggressive, finished after a long gestation in 1888. Thanks to an old friend, violinist Andrew Lee, I gained early knowledge and affection for all these scores and can’t think of a finer way to spend listening time than with this music. Liebeck has already given ample evidence of his abilities in these sonatas, having recorded them to some acclaim with pianist Katya Apekisheva for Sony in 2010. As for Chong, he’s an unfailing expert in chamber music operations, being one of the few pianists I can think of who’s aware of his function and responsibilities throughout intimate, confessional works like these. Tickets are $20 for students, $45 for concession holders, $55 full adults. Never forgetting the sliding scale fee from $4 to $8.50 if you book online or by phone; the trouble is, you have to or you could miss out because of the small holding power of the Centre’s Salon.

STARBURST

Omega Ensemble

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday February 18 at 7 pm

Beginning its Melbourne operations for 2026, the Omega Ensemble travels down the Hume (or its aeronautical of XPT equivalents) to perform a demanding program bookended by contemporary compositions. The evening begins with American violinist-composer Jessie Montgomery‘s 2012 work for string orchestra (at least, you have to assume this is the format we’ll hear) that gives a title to this event. It’s quick: listen hard or it will pass you by. Then David Rowden, the Omegas’ artistic director and founder, plays solo in Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto of 1949 about which British critics have made extravagant claims regarding value and cultural merit. We’ll see. To follow, the Omega resident pianist Vatche Jambazian and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s principal trumpet David Elton go for the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1, with the composer at his enthusiastic best in that happy year of 1933, just before the Soviet apparatchik-generated dung hit the Stalin-generated fan over Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. To conclude, an Australian work enjoys its premiere: Lachlan Skipworth‘s A Turning Sky brings everyone together in a 2025 score for clarinet, trumpet, piano and strings. According to the quality of your chosen seating position, Under 30s prices range from $39 to $114; the rest of us pay between $64 to $139, concession card holders getting their tickets for $10 less. You can circumvent the Recital Centre’s $4 to $8.50 surcharge by not booking online or by phone; just turn up on the night.

GOLDBERG VARIATIONS BY J. S. BACH PERFORMED BY ERIN HELYARD

Pinchgut Opera

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday February 19 at 7:30 pm

Here’s a commendable move by Sydney’s trailblazing opera company: sponsoring a performance of Bach’s brilliantly focused masterwork for keyboard, to be performed by Erin Helyard, our home-grown William Christie. It helps, I suppose, that he is Pinchgut’s artistic director and co-founder, but he became a familiar face here through his role as artist in residence at the Recital Centre in 2022 and his assumption of the same role with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra through 2024. Hence, I assume, the gamble of having him expound the Goldberg Variations in the Murdoch Hall rather than in the more rewardingly intimate (for him and for us) Primrose Potter Salon. Reassuringly, the performance is scheduled to last for about 70 minutes – which means that he’ll be observing all the repeats, or so you’d have to guess. Still, it’s a solid, fulfilling progress to the performer’s climactic repetition of the fulcrum theme and Bach’s organizational skill is still dazzling today, getting on for three centuries since the work’s initial publication in 1741. It’s fortunate if you’re under 35 as you can get a poor-to-not-bad seat for $35. If you’re older, you have to shell out between $55 and $140, with concession holders paying between $3 and $6 less – a demonstration of appalling niggardliness, especially when you have to accommodate the Transaction Fee imposed by the Recital Centre of between $4 and $8.50 if you book online or by phone.

GHOSTS MAKING FORM

ELISION

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday February 20 at 7 pm

This presentation from the contemporary music ensemble ELISION falls into three sections, the first pair being a ‘normal’ division of the entertainment into two halves. Then there’s an extra bit into which you can opt: a postlude billed as a Special Post-Concert Show. As far as I can tell, the whole recital is special: most of the composers are names I’ve never come across, although I can’t say that about the first one. Liza Lim has been a significant presence on this country’s modern music scene for many years and she begins this evening with her 2024 construct for cello (Freya Schack-Arnott) and piano (Alex Waite), written for a pair of Norwegian musicians which gives this program its title; then comes her brief Ming Qi, composed in 2000 for oboe (Niamh Dell) and percussion (Aditya Bhat or Peter Neville). Speaking of Scandinavia, a piece by Iceland-born writer Einar Torfi Einarsson follows: his Zone of proximity: (and the weakly interacting particles) from 2024 uses the forces of recorder (Ryan Williams) and cello (Schack-Arnott), here enjoying its premiere hearing. Victor Arul is currently Ph. D.-ing at Harvard after time in Perth and here; he is presenting new work from 2023 for the quartet of oboe (Dell), clarinet (Carl Rosman), trumpet (Tristram Williams) and piano (Waite). But he leaves us in a quandary: is this new work a ‘new work’ despite its dating from three years ago? Or is it actually called new work? Anyway, the first half of this exercise ends with Serbian-born Milica Djordjevic‘s 2022 Transfixed for bass clarinet (Rosman), trumpet (Williams), percussion (Bhat or Neville, or both), piano (Waite) and double bass (Rohan Dasika). We come back after a break for American musician Aaron Cassidy‘s 2021 E flat clarinet solo (Rosman, who commissioned it) 27. Juni 2009, taking a Gerhard Richter overpainted photograph as its stimulus. German composer Hakan Ulus is represented by a ‘new work’ but it dates from 2025 so he may not yet have decided on a title; in any case, it’s scored for cello (Schack-Arnott), piano (Waite) and percussion (Bhat/Neville). Amor, a vehement duet for flute (Paula Rae) and oboe (Dell), was written by John Rodgers in 1999, well before disastrous ill-health struck; a Queensland-born musician of high versatility, he died near Christmas 2024. To end this half, Cat Hope is represented by Goddess from last year, written for harp (Marshall McGuire), tam-tam (either Bhat or Neville, probably not both), and double bass (Dasika). The extra bit at the end of the concert proper features music by Lim, Mary Bellamy and Julio Estrada; these pieces will probably last about half-an-hour. Full-time students and concession card holders are charged $45, everybody else $55. And you also have to cope with the Recital Centre’s sliding transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50: an inimitable silliness that should preclude anybody from ordering online or by phone.

CHINESE NEW YEAR

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Saturday February 21 at 7:30 pm

These concerts have become a regular part of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra‘s annual presentations and this observation of the Year of the Horse promises a heady mixture of East and West with five works thrown together without concern for relevance or juxtapositioning. Conductor Li Biao is also an expert percussionist which may give him extra insight to cope with Beethoven’s three-quarters-bouncy A Major Symphony No. 7 of 1812. He also leads the orchestral support for Saint-Saens’ flamboyant Cello Concerto No. 1 of 1872, with American 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition winner Zlatomir Fung as soloist. As for the Chinese content, we’re hearing the last of Wang Xilin‘s Yunnan Tone Poems of 1963, the Torch Festival. Then Mindy Meng Wang takes centre stage with her guzheng for the 1959 Butterfly Lover’s Concerto by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao; it was originally conceived as a violin concerto and I don’t know how it will sound on a zither. Anyway, the night ends with a piece by Julian Yu: an orchestral setting of Jasmine, that haunting Chinese folk song used by Puccini in Tudandot to moving effect on its first appearance in Act 1 when the boys start singing La, sui monti dell’Est. Tickets range from $75 to $127, with concession prices $5 cheaper; hooray. You have to stump up a $7 transaction fee if you order your ticket/s; pretty unavoidable as this event is very popular. God rot all money-grubbers.

MARKIYAN MELNYCHENKO AND RHODRI CLARKE

The Weiland Project

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Cntre

Sunday February 22 at 5 pm

The second violin/piano recital inside a week and with a similar bent. Where Jack Liebeck and Kristian Chong are playing all the Brahms violin sonatas on February 17, this evening/gloaming violinist Markiyan Melnychenko and pianist Rhodri Clarke are presenting four sonatas by Douglas Weiland, the British composer who was a foundation member of the Australian String Quartet and who was fortunate enough to find in one of his colleagues there, William Hennessy, an indefatigable promoter of his music. The Violin Sonatas 1, 2 and 3 are concentrated in a particular few years of Weiland’s creative life. The first, Op. 26, was first performed in January 2000, the second, Op. 28, (which is originally listed for violin and harpsichord) in July 2000, and the third, Op. 29, in December 2001. Added to these scores, which come in at a bit over 45 minutes in performance, Weiland, who will be present, has recently written a work for Melnychenko based on Ukrainian themes in support of that nation’s struggles with a Stalinist revenant. Ticket prices are $75 full adult, $65 concession with the usual $4-$8.50 transaction fee added if you buy online or by phone. But then, it’s risky fronting up to the box office on the night because the Salon capacity is small and you tempt non-admission.

BARTON & BRODSKY

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday February 25 at 7:30 pm

With didgeridoo master William Barton as their guest, the Brodsky Quartet members – violins Krysia Ostostowicz and Ian Belton, viola Paul Cassidy, cello Jacqueline Thomas – are treading a fine line between their traditional fare and the most ancient music I know still to be heard. I’m assuming that Barton won’t take part in certain segments of this program: Purcell’s Fantasia on One Note in Three Parts of about 1680 (or is it his Fantasia in Three Parts upon a Ground ca. 1678?) and Fantasia in D minor also from about 1680, Janacek’s Intimate Letters String Quartet No. 2 of 1928, and Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet (finished in 1914 but not published for eight years) although the advertising material suggests that Barton will be participating in this last. You can be fairly sure that he’ll be there for Peter Sculthorpe’s 1990 String Quartet No. 11, Jabiru Dreaming, which has an optional part for his instrument. He’ll also participate in Brisbane composer Robert Davidson‘s Minjerribah (2012?) depicting North Stradbroke Island and performed by Barton and the Brodskys in Auckland during March 2024. I doubt if there’s a role for him in Salina Fisher‘s 2017 Torino for string quartet alone and imitating sounds generated by the versatile Maori putorino instrument. Andrew Ford‘s Eden Ablaze String Quartet No. 7 of 2020 refers to the NSW township menaced by the 2019 bushfires and it was written for Barton and the Brodsky group. I can’t see much room for the digeridoo in the Irish tune She moved through the fair and hope that there’s none to distract from that superb lyric. But Barton himself wrote the final piece on this program: Square Circles Beneath the Red Desert Sand of 2020 which was partly commissioned by the Australian String Quartet. If you’re under 40, you can get a poor or middling seat for $49; full adult prices range from $79 to $139, concession holders paying $79 or $99 for a B Reserve or A Reserve. Everybody has to cope with the online/phone booking fee of between $4 and $8.50, depending on how much you’re prepared to pay for your place. Can’t advise on this one: don’t know how popular Barton and/or the Brodsky Quartet are.

FLEXIBLE SKY

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday February 26 at 7:30 pm

Something of an odd collection here. The Melbourne Chamber Orchestra plays under the customary direction of Sophie Rowell and its guest soloist will be guitarist Slava Grigoryan; all well and good so far. Proceedings begin with a new work by Joe Chindamo; well, there are plenty of those flying around (see ELISION above) and this is a welcome MCO commission. It could involve Grigoryan, or it might confine itself to the core string ensemble. The next does require him: Vivaldi’s Guitar (Lute) Concerto in D of 1731 with its moving central Largo of a mere 17 bars. Then comes a true deviation from the norm in a transcription of Beethoven’s Moonlight Piano Sonata No. 14, published by Polish arranger Jakub Kowalewski in 2014 and transposing all three movements up a semitone; the third movement has a laugh a minute. Reason is restored with Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances in an orchestrated version, though probably not the composer’s own of 1917 which involves pairs of woodwind and horns. At last, we reach the title work, more or less. It was composed by Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel, the original recorded in 2017 by Grigoryan and the Australian String Quartet. This is a Redux version which was, like the Chindamo, commissioned by the MCO and so the original quartet will be swollen somewhat. Finally, as we opened with an Australian work, so we close – with Matthew Hindson‘s Song and Dance, composed in 2006 and giving you exactly what it says – a song (largo) and a dance (allegro), in this instance for string orchestra. I don’t know why but the seating prices for this event are extraordinarily complicated. Full adult prices range from $75 to $150; concession and senior entry is somewhat less – from $55 to $135; full-time students and children pay a flat $30; Under 40s can get a poor or middling spot for $40; and groups of 10+ will front up anything between $60 and $120 each. Also, you know that the Recital Centre has its claws out for your $4-to-$8,50 transaction fee if you book online or by phone.

This program will be repeated on Sunday March 1 at 2:30 pm.

FESTIVAL OPENING CONCERT – GLORIA!

Ballarat Organs & Fine Music Festival

St Patrick’s Cathedral

Friday January 9 at 7 pm

It’s all different up the Western Freeway since I’ve been away in the north. This festival has undergone a name change as well as a revamp in administration with long-time artistic directors Sergio di Pieri and Judith Houston gone, replaced by gamba exponent Laura Vaughan. As well, the time-line has been compressed so that it now runs for half of its previous length. And the geography has closed in so that events are limited to the city of Ballarat, with two day-time events in both Clunes and Creswick – nothing to the south. And the number of concerts/recitals has shrunk to 12, with the Festival al fresco Breakfast continuing as an extra-numerary. As usual, we have a celebratory opening event which this year involves the Consort of Melbourne, Consortium of viols, Unholy Rackett, with Donald Nicholson playing harpsichord and Nicholas Pollock on theorbo; Steven Hodgson, the Consort’s director, seems to be in charge of this amalgamation. No specifics are available but the names of Schutz, Hassler and Praetorius are being bandied around, with the promise of multi-choral polyphony. The concert lasts for 70 minutes, promising an early night for everybody – a welcome relief for this largely local audience. Students pay $10, concession holders $35, adults $45; if you want the post-concert supper, it’s $10 extra. The booking fee ranges for 75 cents to $1.88 – so why is this impost so cheap in the country and so monstrously expensive in Melbourne?

THE SINGING PIPES – MUSIC OF HANDEL, BACH, HAYDN & BEYOND

Ballarat Organs and Fine Music Festival

St. John’s Anglican Church, Creswick,

Saturday January 10 at 11 am

This recital is being given on the church’s Fincham and Hobday instrument by Rhys Boak, resident music genius in St. Michael’s Uniting Church, Collins Street. The organ was relocated from the Wesleyan (Uniting?) Church, Barkly St., Ballarat in 2016 and has a solid range of stops for its two manuals and pedal board. Boak is committed to five definite works in his hour-long program: the Overture to Handel’s Occasional Oratorio of 1745-6 without the original trumpets and drums; Bach’s towering Prelude and Fugue in A minor BWV 543 from the Weimar years 1708-13; Haydn’s Eight Pieces for Musical Clocks from anywhere between 1772 and 1793; Mozart’s Minuet in D – possibly K. 355/576b from possibly 1789/90; and contemporary Hungarian Zsolt Gardonyi‘s 1995 jazz-inflected Mozart Changes based on the final movement to K. 576. As well, pieces by J. K. F. Fischer, John Stanley, and Theodore Dubois are promised which fleshes out some odd corners very neatly. Tickets follow the opening concert’s lead – $10, $35, or $45, depending on your age and/or career stage.

BAAZ AVAZ – ON THE SILK ROAD

Ballarat Organs and Fine Music Festival

Creswick Town Hall

Saturday January 10 at 2 pm

So it’s off to Persia and a recital involving music, dance and story-telling during which, somewhere along the hour-long expedition, we’ll doubtless meet up with the cry of the falcon mentioned in the event’s title. Four participants present this amalgam: Vahideh Eisaei contributing vocal work as well as playing the qanun or large zither; Dong Ma on erhu or Chinese two-stringed fiddle which may have links to the (more topical for this recital) rehab; Elnaz Sheshgelani covering the stories and the dance components; and Yang Ying on pipa or Chinese lute which came to that country along the Silk Road. This is one of those occasions where you enter a world unfamiliar to most of us; my experience of Persian music has been confined to an Adelaide Festival recital many years ago from an ensemble playing court music – or so it was claimed. That’s the sort of cultural ignorance that a presentation like this seeks to remedy; it’s not all Omar Khayyam and Hafez or the AliQapu restaurant here in Kew. If you’re a student, you can get in for $10 plus a piffling booking fee of 75 cents; concession card holders ($35) and adults ($45) have to go on waiting lists because their allocations are sold out.

VERSAILLES IN LOVE

Ballarat Organs and Fine Music Festival

St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Bakery Hill

Saturday January 10 at 6 pm

Quite a lot of promises made for this non-specific 60-minute program which features a quintet of musicians, some of whom I know. Soprano Myriam Arbouz, baroque violinists David Rabinovici and Tim Willis, baroque triple harpist Hannah Lane, and theorboist Nicholas Pollock presumably combine and re-congregate in small groups to take us through works by Lully, his father-in-law Michel Lambert, and his student Marin Marais. Two specific forms are designated: the air de cour and chamber music – which is telling us nothing, except that the songs preclude the three composers named who all wrote airs of a different colour. As for the other, these musicians have a wealth of rich, magnificently mannered material from which to select; a pity they haven’t let us into their confidence about what we’d be paying for. Speaking of which, prices follow the usual pattern: $10 for students, $35 for concession holders, $45 for adults with a maximum booking fee of $1.63 and a minimum of 75 cents – almost seems pointless to charge it.

TELEMANN PARIS QUARTETS

Ballarat Organs and Fine Music Festival

Ballarat Performing Arts Centre, Soldiers Hill

Sunday January 11 at 2 pm

These works are being presented by the Coomoora Ensemble, apparently headed by baroque violin Lizzy Welsh (she writes on Instagram about ‘my delightful Coomoora Ensemble’, which strikes me as a pretty obvious statement of ownership. She’s accompanied on her sojourn into Telemann by Alison Catanach on baroque flute, Edwina Cordingley on baroque cello, and Ann Murphy playing harpsichord, as is her wont. It’s not clear if the ensemble can get through all twelve of the Paris quartets – six Quadri published in 1730, and six Nouveaux quatuors printed in 1738. In fact, I doubt if they could, given their recital’s 60 minutes time-span. I suspect that they’re attempting the latter, given that they refer to works composed during Telemann’s visit to the French capital in 1737-8. But then, all of them were written before he hit Paris, so they may be attempting a mixture. Whatever the case, this hour (possibly longer) will cost you $10 a student, $35 a concession holder (but not Seniors’ Cards, apparently), and $45 full adult, with a negligible booking fee ranging from $1.63 to 75 cents.

O FILII ET FILIAE – ORGAN SPLENDOUR OF THE (MOSTLY) FRENCH BAROQUE

Ballarat Organs and Fine Music Festival

St Paul’s Anglican Church, Bakery Hill

Sunday January 11 at 6 pm

Another solo organ recital to balance Rhys Boak’s one on Saturday January 10 in Creswick, this mixed collation lasting an hour is being presented by Donald Nicholson, showing us another side to his musical abilities after he has played harpsichord for the festival’s opening concert. Yet again, details are scant although he is sitting securely in a French gallery by performing works by Couperin, Louis Marchand, Jean-Francois Dandrieu and Nicolas de Grigny. For the first of these, I can find only two organ works, both mass settings; Marchand offers more, some of them formidable elements of the French repertoire; Dandrieu I know only through his Noels but he did write an Easter offertory, published in 1739, based on the plainchant that gives this event its title; de Grigny is celebrated for his only publication – a Premier livre d’orgue from 1699 which has a preponderance of church music in it. Just to offer a change of diet, Nicholson will also play some pieces by Buxtehude to offer a ‘dash of fiery North German contrast’ – just what those French formalists need. Ticket prices follow the usual $10, $35, $45 pattern (student, concession, adult) with a small booking fee too minute to outline, too inconsiderable to make any difference to anybody.

FOUNDATION OF FANTASIE

Ballarat Organs and Fine Music Festival

St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Clunes

Monday January 12 at 11 am

For this excursion to the book-driven town of Clunes, lutenist Rosemary Hodgson and organist Jack Stacey are attempting to draw some parallels between Renaissance architecture and the period’s music. Terrific, and good luck with that. Their 60-minute presentation centres on the works of Alonso Ferrabosco the younger who performed for Elizabeth I and Hodgson is playing all seven of the composer’s extant fantasias, leavening this core with side-steps to vocal intabulations, passamezzi and pavans. An intriguing venture, although the fantasias look to me as being more suited to a chest of viols than a lute, mainly because of some sustained notes that a soloist (apart from an organist) can’t manage. You’re invited to find similarities between the cleanness of form and structural balance of a building from this time in the clarity and formal integrity of the Elizabethan viol composer’s works. As I read things, Stacey is to provide a solo on the church’s organ at the start of the recital but I can’t find anything by Ferrabosco for that instrument; in this case, a Hamlin & Son rarity that sits in remarkably close relationship to the church’s acoustic properties, as I remember from over a decade ago – since which time (2018) the instrument has been restored extensively. The usual entry costs apply: $10 a student, $35 for concession holders, $45 an adult, all with small booking fees that probably won’t put patrons off.

REEDS & RESONANCE – MUSIC FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE BASSOON

Ballarat Organs and Fine Music Festival

Clunes Town Hall

Monday January 12 at 2 pm

This hour-long entertainment brings back some of the opening concert’s contributors: Nicholas Pollock resumes his theorbo and adds a Baroque guitar, while the Unholy Rackett group is identified as Simon Rickard, Brock Imison and Jackie Newcomb, all manipulating curtals and their namesake instrument. Also involved is triple harpist Hannah Lane, returning after her Love in Versailles participation on January 10 and the festival’s director Laura Vaughan consorting with her gamba. And this is one program where you know exactly what is being presented: a Sonata for four trombones from the Op. 22 collection of 1655 by Biagio Marini; two pieces from the Canzone, fantasie e correnti of 1638 by Bartolome de Selva y Salaverde in the soprano and bass song Vestiva hi colli passaegiatto and a canzon for two tenors (trombones?); a set of variations on La Folia by Antonio Martin y Coll from Volume V of his 1706 Flores de musica; Giovanni Bertoli’s 1645 Sonata settima that one would assume was for the bassoon, which was his instrument; Kapsberger’s Tenore del Kapsberger from the 1604 Volume 1 of his Intavolatura di chitarone, plus the Bergamasca and Canario from the Intavolatura Volume 4 of 1640; from Il primo libro de balli of 1578, Giorgio Mainiero’s La lavandera/Caro ortolano, probably for a rackett; the 1609 setting of Es ist ein’ Ros’ entsprungen by Praetorius; two anonymous songs in Vos senora, a maltratada and the Portuguese Renaissance lyric/laugh Nao tragais borzeguis pretos, both played on curtals by the Racketts; Machado’s Dos estrellas le siguen which I have come across as a four-part chorale-type invention from the Cancionero de la Sablonara of 1624/5; finally, Daniel Speer’s first (only?) two Sonatas for two violas published in 1697 and hisSonata for three bassoons (C Major or F Major?) which I believe comes from the same year. Anyway, tickets follow the usual costings: students $10, concession $35, adults $45 plus a nonsensical booking fee of minute proportions, although still a nuisance to fork out.

DARKNESS AND DELIGHT – JERRY WONG

Ballarat Organs and Fine Music Festival

Ballarat Mechanics’ Institute, Sturt St.

Monday January 12 at 6 pm

A 60-minute recital from the Head of Keyboard at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music is a singular surprise in this festival line-up. Jerry Wong hasn’t detailed what he is going to present, like so many contributors to this enterprise, but he opens a pretty wide door by introducing certain names as contributing agents. There’s Bach, Beethoven, Liszt – and Miriam Hyde, as a kind of satisfaction for our nationalistic yearnings. But the evening’s title gives an immense scope, as all of these composers have dealt with both the highs and lows of human experience. Still, it’s always worth your while listening to an artist of Wong’s calibre and, if the names strike you as promising, then you can get in for the usual fee: adults $45, concession holders $35, students $10, and the small booking fee that nevertheless nags like an itch in the middle of your spine.

MEDITERRANEAN – ELISABETTA GHEBBIONI

Ballarat Organs and Fine Music Festival

Loreto College Chapel

Tuesday January 13 at 11 am

Starting the festival’s final day comes Italian harpist Elisabetta Ghebbioni, a veteran performer at this festival and a professor at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice. As is characteristic of so many performers in these Ballarat days, her program is unknown, even if her publicity refers to a few names: Albeniz, Saint-Saens, Einaudi ‘and others’. The first of these will probably involve an arrangement because I can’t find any harp works by Albeniz. Saint-Saens has a solo Fantaisie from 1893 and a 1918 Morceau de concert but nothing else relevant or practicable (apart from more arrangements). As for Einaudi, I assume this artist will be playing pieces from his album Stanze of 1992, although he has endorsed arrangements of some piano works for the harp. By the way, Einaudi is visiting Melbourne next month, playing at the Myer Bowl. Still, what information there is on this recital seems – even in this context – a bit vague, while Ghebbioni’s screed in the festival bumf is too brief to be of much use to anyone. Tickets for this event will be the same as all the others at the centre of this festival: $10 a student, $35 a concession holder, $45 full price, with the nugatory booking fee attached, increasing slightly as your price goes up. But, doing dutiful research, I couldn’t get on to the booking site – Error 404 made its entry for no apparent reason.

SUITES & SONGS

Ballarat Organs and Fine Music Festival

St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Bakery Hill

Tuesday January 13 at 2 pm

Cellist Josephine Vains is at the centre of this recital, although Jack Stacey is again going to preface proceedings with a solo on the church’s J. W. Walker organ, and why not? He’s this church’s organist. You’d have to assume that we’re going to hear at least part of a Bach cello suite; it’s also possible that we’ll hear all or part of one of the three Britten suites written for Rostropovich. Also mentioned in the publicity material is Gabrieli, whose cello works escape me; perhaps Stacey will kick in with some support here for – what? Then another one of the festival’s few dives into the vernacular with Ross Edwards; possibly Prelude & Laughing rock from 2003, or perhaps Monos I from 1970. As well, we’re to hear some Casals, who wrote a fair few works for cello, as you’d expect, but they all involve piano accompaniment; the Song of the Birds from 1941 might enjoy a sentimental visit. It’s all up in the air but tickets run through the familiar format: students pay $10, concession holders $35, and full adult tickets cost $45, all with a handling fee, which I assume only applies if you book on line.

FESTIVAL CLOSING CONCERT – SONGS OF LIGHT & DEVOTION

Ballarat Organs and Fine Music Festival

St. Patrick’s Cathedral

Tuesday January 13 at 6 pm

The subtitle to this final program is Life, Death & the Passion of 17th Century Italian Music; you can’t expect more in a concert than enjoying the two great existential fag-ends and, when you add in the Italian Baroque – be still, my beating heart. As usual, nothing specific is set down, nothing as vulgar as a set program, but we have some insinuations. For instance, we will definitely hear some late sacred music by Monteverdi; pieces from the 1641 Selva morale e spirituale, you’d reckon, or some scraps out of the Messa et salmi of 1650. As well, we can expect one (or more?) of the sacred oratorios by Luigi Rossi, with perhaps some extracts from the famous one for Holy Week whose provenance is even now questionable. Also, there will be a psalm setting or two from Giovanni Rigatti; there’s plenty to choose from as he published them across his brief career in 1640, 1643, 1646 and in the year of his death: 1648. Another name is Domenico Mazzocchi, famous for his motets so there should be a couple sung here, like the Videte et gustate published in 1664. Stephen Grant will be directing (as well as singing bass), principally his e21 Consort, but also Stephanie Eldridge and Lizzy Welch on baroque violins, Linda Kent at her harpsichord, John Weretka seated at (probably) a chamber organ, Hannah Lane bringing her triple harp into play for the third time this festival, and overall director of everything during these past days, Laura Vaughan plays both her gamba and a lirone. Tickets are currently unavailable on the usually reliable Humanitix website – not the best of omens. But I’d anticipate that they mirror those for the opening night and everything else – $10 for students, $35 for concession holders, $45 for adults with the by-now traditional small booking fee that seems to be necessarily attached to any event for which you either book online or pay by credit card.

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.

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.

BRUCKNER AND STRAUSS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday October 2 at 7:30 pm

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

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

GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS

Luminescence Chamber Singers

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday October 3 at 7 pm

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

TRANSCRIBED SONATAS

Kristian Chong & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday October 4 at 7 pm

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

TRIO ISIMSIZ

Musica Viva Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday October 7 at 7 pm

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

WATER MUSIC

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday October 9 at 7 pm

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

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

JOURNEYS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus

Iwaki Auditorium, Southbank

Saturday October 11 at 7:30 pm

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

LUX AETERNA

Melbourne Ensemble

Iwaki Auditorium, Southbank

Sunday October 12 at 5 pm

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

BENJAMIN GROSVENOR

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday October 14 at 7:30 pm

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

IMPRESSIONS OF PARIS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday October 23 at 7:30 pm

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

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

AUSTRALIA FAIR?

Flinders Quartet

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday October 29 at 7 pm

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

A CELEBRATION OF SIBELIUS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Melbourne Town Hall

Thursday October 30 at 7:30 pm

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

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

MOSTLY MOZART – EINE KLEINE NACHTMUSIK

Australian National Academy of Music

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday September 3 at 11 am

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

A MUSICAL AWAKENING

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday September 6 at 7:30 pm

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

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

SPRING BLOSSOM, AUTUMN HARVEST

Australian New Goldberg Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Sunday September 14 at 6:30 pm

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

SONGS WITHOUT WORDS

Selby & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Monday September 15 at 2 pm

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

This program will be repeated at 7 pm.

CLARA-JUMI KANG + LATITUDE 37

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Monday September 15 at 7:30 pm

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

STEPHEN MCINTYRE PLAYS SCHUMANN

Melbourne Recital Centre

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Thursday September 18 at 7 pm

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

MOZART’S GREAT MASS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday September 18 at 7:30 pm

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

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

CARMINA BURANA

Melbourne Bach Cho

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday September 19 at 8 pm

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

ENSEMBLE LIAISON & FRIENDS – BEETHOVEN’S SEPTET

Ensemble Liaison

Hanson Dyer Hall, Ian Potter Southbank Centre

Monday September 22 at 7 pm

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

AN EVENING ON BROADWAY

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Wednesday September 24 at 7:30 pm

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

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

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MOZART AND THE MENDELSSOHNS

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Melbourne Town Hall

Thursday July 3 at 7:30 pm

What used to be simply called the Town Hall series has apparently been amplified in its geographical scope but the essentials remain the same. The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is playing under its chief conductor, Jaime Martin, but the program isn’t as barnstormingly popular as you’d expect., Yes, the forces wind up this evening’s entertainment with Felix Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony in A Major (well, half of it is) of 1833 which can never wear out its welcome from the first frothing wind chords to the emphatic saltarello‘s last belt. But, we begin with a true rarity, even in these anti-misogynist times: Fanny Mendelssohn’s Overture in C, written in 1832 and an intriguing chronological partner for her brother’s brilliant symphony. As for the essential concerto, the MSO offers four of its principals – oboe Johannes Grosso, clarinet David Thomas, bassoon Jack Schiller, horn Nicolas Fleury – as soloists in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante of 1778 . . . or is it really his? A lot of water has passed under the musicological bridge and the absence of an original score is only the start of questions about this quadruple concerto’s provenance. Standard tickets run from $45 to $105, concessions are a princely $5 lower, and anyone under 18 gets in for $20, but let these last beware of the $7 transaction fee that costs a third of your admission cost – that’s the way to get the young interested.

This program will be repeated in the Frankston Arts Centre on Friday July 4 at 7:30 pm, and at the Ulumbarra Theatre in Bendigo on Saturday July 5 at 7:30 pm.

JESS HITCHCOCK & PENNY QUARTET

Melbourne Recital Centre and Musica Viva Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Monday July 7 at 7:30 pm

I wrote about this event (see March Diary 2025) while still living on the Gold Coast (ah, those halcyon years of heat and humidity) when the program was played at the Queensland Conservatorium on March 4 It seems a long time to be still on the road four months later for Jess Hitchcock and the Penny Quartet but here they are, fleshing out the Melbourne Recital Centre‘s monthly program and still (co-)sponsored by Musica Viva Australia. I have a feeling that the original program was altered before the March recital, but in its present format, nine composers offer arrangements of Hitchcock songs, including three by the singer herself as May Lyon, Matt Laing and Nicole Murphy have disappeared from the original list. It’s to be hoped that the Penny personnel stay the same – violins Amy Brookman and Madeleine Jevons, viola Anthony Chataway, cello Jack Ward – especially for the program’s final offering: a string quartet from American writer Caroline Shaw called Plan and Elevation: The Grounds of Dumbarton Oaks, written in 2015. Admission for your regular patron moves between $65 and $125, concessions on a sliding scale that operates between $56 and $110, the Under 40 bracket get in for $49, while First Nations peoples from any country only have to stump up $15. Your transaction fee at this site falls anywhere between $4 and $8.50 (a riveting exercise in fiscal logistics, reminiscent of Trump’s mercurial tariff rates) which is hard cheese for the Aboriginal, Torres Strait, Maori etc. patrons.

FOLK REIMAGINED: EAST IN SYMPHONY

Ryan Maxwell Event

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Wednesday July 9 at 7:30 pm

What you’re offered here is a transformation exercise: Chinese folk-song into symphonic form. The executants in this enterprise are the Guizhou Chinese Orchestra and a body called The Australia Orchestra. The visiting ensemble was founded in 2003 and is conducted by Long Guohong in its current Sydney and Melbourne appearances. The local group cannot be traced online (well, I can’t find it) but is to be conducted by Luke Spicer, who is a well-known presence in Sydney for work with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Opera Australia. And what do you hear? For openers, there’s the Guizhou Kam Grand Choir which will probably be singing a cappella. Then comes that well-worn fusion classic, the Yellow River Piano Concerto, followed by a symphonic sequence of scenes from four great classical Chinese novels, and more solid orchestra (which one?) work in a fantasy springing from the gaming activity Black Myth: Wukong which itself has to do with an Eastern monkey hero questing in the West. For soloists, you will hear Jiang Kemei playing a concerto called Deep in the Night on her jinghu (two-stringed violin) and Zhang Qianyang on the suona (double-reed oboe/horn) in one of the most famous pieces for her instrument, A Hundred Birds Paying Homage to the Phoenix. Admission costs between $35 and $169 with some piddling concession reductions; groups of ten-plus and students pay between $55 and $107. On top of this, factor in that swinging transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50; could that impost factor in Chalmers’ tax review, I wonder?

PASTORALE

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall

Thursday July 10 at 7:30 pm

Since I’ve been away, Sophie Rowell has taken over the artistic directorship of the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra as well as having recently been posted to the role of associate professor of violin and chamber music at the University of Melbourne. She’s been busy over the years, what with the Tankstream/Australian String Quartet and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra co-concertmaster position for eight years. Tonight, she takes her charges through two string masterworks at either end of the program: first, Barber’s Adagio for Strings of 1936 – a favourite when Americans want to be serious or funereal – and Tchaikovsky’s lush Serenade for Strings, written in 1880. Both of these are more than familiar, so it’s as well that the central works offer some variation. Aura Go will be soloist in Doreen Carwithen’s Concerto for piano and strings which the British composer wrote in 1948 and which is probably here enjoying its Australian premiere. The work’s three movements appear to be worked out in solid neo-classical style with definite tonalities obtaining across its half-hour length; there’s even a good old-fashioned cadenza in the Moderato e deciso conclusion. And the program takes its title from a Peter Sculthorpe excerpt, the central segment of his String Quartet No. 4 written in 1949, then upgraded to string orchestra standing in 2013. It has an even more checkered history in Sculthorpe’s own recollections. but it might well be his last ‘composition’, as the MCO publicity has it. Still, as it’s only about 4 minutes long, who wants to argue? Adult tickets range from $72 tp $124 with some reasonable concession reductions and a flat charge of $30 for students and children. The booking fee on the seat I selected was $7, which – to put it mildly – is excessive for the work involved.

This program will be repeated on Sunday July 13 at 2:30 pm.

YINYA DANA: LIGHTING THE PATH

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall,, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday July 11 at 7:30 pm

In honouring the 50th anniversary of NAIDOC Week, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is paying an exceptional honour to Deborah Cheetham Fraillon whose compositions are the focus of this event. I’ve not encountered any of her music but I suppose that’s because her recent grounds of operation have been in Melbourne, particularly with the MSO who appointed her to a five-year tenure of their First Nations Creative Chair in 2021; I did experience her work as a soprano with Short Black Opera but that was some time ago. Details about what is actually being performed tonight are hard to find. but the range operates between her 2018 Eumeralla: a war requiem for peace (two movements of which were recorded by the ABC in 2020) and last year’s Earth. A pair of conductors share the honours: Aaron Wyatt and Nicolette Fraillon. as for soloists, Cheethem Fraillon will be singing, as will vocalists Jess Hitchcock and Lillie Walker. That sine qua non of Aboriginal serious music events, William Barton, brings his didgeridoo to the mix of colours and the MSO Chorus is joined by members of the Dhungala Children’s Choir, an offshoot of Cheetham Fraillon’s opera company. Standard tickets range from $68 to $113; concession prices are $5 cheaper which should bring on a chorus of that old favourite, Thanks for Nothing. Mob Tix are available for $25, but how do you prove your standing? Just be prepared to hand over the $7 transaction fee, whether you’re a member of the First Nations or a Johnny Come Lately like me.

BENAUD TRIO 20TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT

Melbourne Recital Centre

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Saturday July 12 at 3 pm

Yes, it’s a celebration of a kind, if a short one as it’s only an hour long: no interval, quick in, quick out. The members of the Benaud Trio – brothers Lachlan Bramble (violin) and Ewen Bramble (cello), Amir Farid (piano) – still maintain a relationship; although the brothers are both associate principals with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and Farid is based in New York. They’re playing two works: Dvorak’s Dumky of 1891, which they have played here before in the heyday of their Benaud-Melbourne years; and Jakub Jankowski‘s Piano Trio No. 2. The latter is an Adelaide composer with a modest body of work to his name. The Benauds seem to have premiered this particular trio in 2018, a few months after the debut of Jankowski’s Piano Trio No. 1 from the Seraphim Trio. Now the piece is back for another airing. It would be handy if more information was available about the piece, but background is sadly lacking. Entry is a flat $50, concession $40, and you have to negotiate the Recital Centre’s odd ‘Transaction Fee’ charge that runs from $4 to $8.50 according to some criterion that escapes me.

This program will be repeated at 6 pm.

FIESTA! DVORAK’S CELLO CONCERTO & CHINDAMO

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday July 17 at 7:30 pm

This was originally labelled ‘Journey to the Americas’ but has since been recast more sensibly so that it covers the entire night’s work. Yes, there is some emphatically relevant-to-the-Americas music on the program in Peruvian composer Jimmy Lopez’s Fiesta! Four Pop Dances for Orchestra, written in 2007 and the writer’s most popular work, here promoted by tonight’s conductor (and fellow-Peruvian), Miguel Harth-Bedoya who commissioned it. Joe Chindamo’s Americas connection might emerge in his Concerto for Orchestra of 2021, composed for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra; most of us would associate him with the field of jazz, and so easily American. And then we come to the large-framed Cello Concerto by Dvorak, completed in 1895 and written while the composer was living in New York during his last unhappy months directing the National Conservatory of Music. Here is a rich score loaded with melody and a splendid vehicle for its soloist, who on this occasion is German musician Raphaela Gromes; I believe she has made tours of North and Central America. Standard tickets range from $51 to $139; concession card holders might as well pay full price because their deduction is only $5. If you’re under 18, you are charged $20, which makes the compulsory transaction fee of $7 sting all the more sharply.

This program will be repeated in Costa Hall, Geelong on Friday July 18 at 7:30 pm and back in Hamer Hall on Saturday July 19 at 2 pm.

AXIS MUNDI

ELISION Ensemble

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre

Friday July 18 at 7 pm

The ELISION Ensemble is almost 40 years old, which puts into perspective a fair few of us who were around in its heady early years. Speaking of the few, some of the original musicians survive, including founder Daryl Buckley who remains one of the most adventurous guitarists I’ve come across. A fair bit of tonight’s program is up-to-date, beginning and ending with 2025 compositions. Melbourne-based academic Charlie Sdraulig‘s fresh Air opens us up in a septet (possibly) for flute (all three played by Paula Rae), bassoon (Ben Roidl-Ward), saxophone (Joshua Hyde), trumpet (Tristram Williams), trombone (Benjamin Marks), violins (interesting as there’s only one such player listed: Harry Ward) and contrabass (Kathryn Schulmeister). Then clarinet Richard Haynes performs John Rodgers’ Ciacco solo for bass clarinet of 1999 before we encounter Mexican-born Julio Estrada‘s yuunohui’ehecatl (2010?) to be played by trumpet, trombone, bassoon and contrabass. After interval comes the program’s title work, written for solo bassoon by ELISION evergreen Liza Lim in 2012-13, followed by indigenous composer Brenda Gifford‘s new score Wanggadhi for saxophone, trumpet, trombone and bass. Then we hear Victor Arul‘s Barrelled space featuring bass clarinet, saxophone, bassoon, trombone, percussion (Aditya Bhat and/or Peter Neville), and bass. If you haven’t had enough, you can wait around for a post-recital performance of Double Labyrinth v2, a new construct by British writer Bryn Harrison that calls for alto and bass flute, clarinet d’amore (Haynes had one made about five years ago), clarinet in A, flugelhorn (Williams, presumably), harp (Marshall McGuire), percussion and violin. Tickets are $55, concession $45, and don’t forget that peculiar transaction fee of between $4 and $8.50 that slugs every order you make.

MOZART’S CLARINET

Musica Viva Australia

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre

Tuesday July 22 at 7 pm

A trio of specialists take us through a set of works by Mozart and Beethoven in this latest Musica Viva recital. The entertainment features Nicola Boud on ‘historical’ clarinets, Sydney Symphony Orchestra cellist Simon Cobcroft, and Erin Helyard playing the fortepiano. I think their combined aim is to give us the experience of listening to this music as it would have sounded when it was written – a delight for musicologists, an aural adjustment or three for the rest of us. We begin with Beethoven’s Sonata for Fortepiano and Horn Op. 17 of 1800, arranged for basset horn (with the composer’s approval, apparently) by Josef Friedlowsky in about 1802. A touch earlier in his life, the composer wrote his Variations on Ein Madchen oder Weibchen from Mozart’s The Magic Flute for cello and piano in 1798; a puzzle as it’s catalogued as his Op. 66. All three players are involved in Mozart’s Kegelstatt Trio of 1786, even if the original called for a viola, not a cello. Back to Beethoven for the Aria con variazioni (four of them, with a coda) tacked on to the Three Duos for Clarinet and Bassoon WoO 27 and written somewhere between 1790 and 1792; you assume Cobcroft will stand in for the lower voice. Helyard then performs the familiar Sonata in C K. 545, composed for all piano learners’ delight in 1788, and the ensemble concludes this exercise with Beethoven’s Gassenhauer Trio Op. 11, written in 1797 with clarinet, cello and keyboard as the designated players. Tickets range from $20 to $153, and, on booking, you will encounter the $7 transaction fee: a disappointment we have always with us.

A GHOSTLY AFTERNOON

Selby & Friends

Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre Wednesday July 23 at 2 pm

This recital features two young musicians in the latest Selby & Friends recital. Violinist Natalie Chee, Sydney-born and recently nominated as the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s concertmaster for 2026, and cellist Benett Tsai, fresh from delivering the Saint-Saens Concerto No. 1 with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, will partner with Kathryn Selby in three piano trios. First comes an arrangement by the Linos Trio from 2001 of Debussy’s Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune – one of the more formidable works that ushered in a new musical era as far back as 1894. From the program title, you would have guessed that Beethoven’s Op. 70 No. 1 was on track for a hearing, and so it is although perhaps not as spectral as it seemed to listeners in 1809. To end, the group takes on the gripping Shostakovich Piano Trio No. 2, a 1944 work that never fails to absorb its listeners from the keening cello harmonics of the opening to the three last bars of soft E Major chords that offer a close but no consolation. Entry ranges from $63 for a student (and a concession card holder), to $79 for a senior, to $81 an adult. You’ll also pay between $4 and $8.50 if you order online or by phone. What if you show up at the box office, cash in hand? Worth a try.

This program will be repeated at 7 pm.

SAMSON ET DALILA

Melbourne Opera

Palais Theatre., St’ Kilda

Sunday June 1 at 2:30 pm

it’s been quite a while since Saint-Saens’ enduring opera of 1877 has been staged here. The one and only time I can recall is from November 1983 when the Victorian State Opera forces, conducted by Richard Divall, presented a version in Hamer Hall, the company’s chairman, Sir Rupert Hamer, having to make a small statement defending the microcosmic amount of nudity that occurred during the Bacchanale. Mind you, this was during the oddly strait-laced premiership of John Cain Jr. who was no stranger to the art form. A lot was made of some naked bodies that were intended to spice up Act 3, Scene 2 and the more salacious among us were looking forward to a bit of real Philistine brouhaha, especially as you had to sit through a fair amount of tedium before the fun started and the roof caved in. Let’s hope that Melbourne Opera has better luck with its orgy. Details are slim: mezzo Deborah Humble is taking on the temptress role; tenor Rosario La Spina will wind up shorn but triumphant as the strongman judge, The director is Suzanne Chaundy, conductor Raymond Lawrence. It seems as though the company is not using the Palais lounge or balcony while ticket prices range between $69 and $199, never forgetting the $7 ‘handling fee’ which gives an expensive venture a little extra bite – and a fiscal necessity for reasons that nobody can explain to me without blushing.

This program will be repeated on Tuesday June 3 at 7:30 pm.

SCHEHERAZADE

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Monday June 2 at 6:30 pm

Have you ever heard a satisfactory live performance of this marvel of orchestration? I can’t say that I have, but my experiences have been limited to three state orchestras in this country. I mean, you can be wrapped in a pleasant cocoon of sound as Rimsky-Korsakov’s suite from 1888 moves from its snarling opening bars to the soaring, placid triumph of its conclusion, but an average reading loses your interest in the middle movements to do with the Kalendar Prince, and then the Young Prince and Young Princess which test the phrasing inventiveness of several exposed individual players. Conducting the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in this gem is Elim Chan, the young Hong-Kong-born musician who has been wooed with various degrees of success by British and European organizations. Scheherazade is the only work on this program which belongs to both the Quick Fix at Half Six and the Meet the Music: Years 9-12 series which have different modes of preparation for their two distinct types of audience member. Mind you, it pays to be a secondary school student: their tickets are only $9 each. If you’re after the quick fix, your standard ticket costs between $62 and $99 (a hell of a lot for one work); concessionaires can expect to pay $5 less (big deal), and your child under 18 will pay $20. Add the compulsory $7 transaction fee, of course; administering your credit card deployment is so time-consuming.

STEPHEN HOUGH

Melbourne Recital Centre

Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, MRC

Monday June 2 at 7:30 pm

The formidable British pianist is a guest of the Melbourne Recital Centre and is always good value, not leat for the spread of his programming. This time round, Stephen Hough opens with a group of three pieces by Cecile Chaminade: Automne from the Op. 35 Six Etudes de concert of 1886, Autrefois from the Op. 87 collection of Six pieces humoristiques written in 1897, and the 1892 Les Sylvains. which is Chaminade’s Op. 60. Well, it’s his program but the little I’ve encountered from the French writer’s catalogue strikes me as fin-de-siecle Light. This triptych is followed by Liszt’s B minor Piano Sonata which will probably overshadow anything that precedes it, anyway. Hough then treats us to his own Sonatina Nostalgica, a 2019 work comprising three movements, all with a combined timing of less than five minutes. This mimics the positioning of the Chaminade in preceding another formidable score: Chopin’s final Sonata No. 3, composed in 1844 and enjoying less exposure in the modern recital hall than its predecessor, the Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor. You’d think this presents as a rather eccentric array of offerings; you’d be right. But Hough has the ability to maintain your interest, even in his easy-going moments. Standard tickets cost between $67 and $115, with some half-decent concessions for students and the elderly. There’s also the inevitable $7 levy for taking your money, an unreasonable tax which has apparently infected every musical enterprise across the city.

FIRST VOICES SHOWCASE

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Iwaki Auditorium, Southbank

Wednesday June 4 at 6:30 pm

Here is one of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra‘s special excursions – the First Voices First Nation Composer program under a Music and Ideas banner. I don’t know how the organization is approaching this concept of giving a voice to Aboriginal writers but this strikes me as tentative. For one thing, it’s not hard to fill the Iwaki space. For another, the event is scheduled to last only an hour. For a final touch, all tickets are $15 . . . and you can add on almost half that again for the gouging transaction fee which pushes your price up to $22. Anyway, what do you get for your money? Three works, as it turns out. First comes James Howard‘s Nyirrimarr Ngamatyata/To Lose Yourself at Sea; followed by Leon Rodgers‘ Seven Sisters; the set concluding in Fragments by Nathaniel Andrew. Howard is a well-established academic with a solid background in tracing cultural heritage. The piece by Rodgers was programmed in last year’s First Voices concert, according to a still-extant website. Andrew presents as the most versatile musician with a strong base in performance both here and overseas. I know nothing of the work of any of them but, if in the audience, would be waiting with anticipation for any sign of innovation or irregularity elements that are absent all too often in the output of contemporary writers.

NORTHERN LIGHTS

Musica Viva Australia

Melbourne Recital Centre, Southbank

Tuesday June 10 at 7 pm

An inevitable title, given the Swedish-Norwegian background of this recital’s violinist, Johan Dalene. This young celebrity appearing for Musica Viva will be partnered by Hobart-based Jennifer Marten-Smith, latest in a long line of pianists who have partnered Dalene across an active schedule of performances. Mind you, some of the material he’s presenting tonight has been part of his duo programs for some time, like Rautavaara’s Notturno of 1993, and Ravel’s spiky Tzigane from 1924. Dalene also specializes in Grieg’s Violin Sonata No. 2, written in a nationalistic blaze during 1865. And he has been known to play Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 8 in G, last of the Op. 30 set of three written in 1902. Three other works that the artists present tonight seem to be new. The most unarguable in this respect us Tilted Scales by (fairly) young Australian Jack Frerer, commissioned for this national tour. Another is Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher of 1878 in which we will be hearing all three parts, not just the popular Meditation. And Lili Boulanger’s D;un matin de printemps enjoys a hearing, written near the composer’s death in 1918. Prices range between $20 and $153; don’t say you don’t have choices. And there’s no avoiding the $7 fee which will be really welcome for those who qualify for the cheapest tickets.

A REFLECTION IN TIME

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Thursday June 12 at 7:30 pm

Back in the well-furrowed trench of orchestral concerts as they were held in this country for years, this presentation follows a venerable pattern, its main components a concerto and a symphony. The difference this time around is that the night’s three components all show their composers at highpoints in their public careers. Conductor Benjamin Northey opens the event with Barber’s Adagio for Strings, originally the slow movement from the 26-year-old composer’s String Quartet Op. 11 from 1936. Christian Li, the Australian-born 17-year-old violinist, is soloist in Korngold’s concerto of 1945; this has become a standard these days, suffering no little neglect for several years after the composer’s death. Finally, Northey takes the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra through Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, written in 1937 allegedly as a response to Stalin-inspired criticism of the composer’s modernist tendencies. These days, the work is seen to have undercurrents of protest against the Soviet state and its oppression of artists. You’d be a noggin-head to take all that final movement bombast at face value but plenty of people do. Whatever the reaction you have, Shostakovich was seen as toeing the Party line, especially by the time-serving music critics in the Russia of that time. It’s all a fascinating reflection of the decade across which these works were written. Standard tickets tonight fall between $75 and $139, concession card holders enjoying a $5 discount, while children under 18 can get in for $20. And there’s the eternal $7 booking/transaction fee/extortion to add on to your cost.

This program will be repeated on Friday June 13 at 7:30 pm in Relaxed Performance mode with special consideration for audience members with disabilities (special prices apply for tickets on this occasion of $35 standard and $30 concession), and on Saturday June 14 at 7:30 pm under regular operating conditions.

ANAM AT THE CONVENT: ELISION ENSEMBLE

Australian National Academy of Music

Rosina Auditorium, Abbotsford Convent

Friday June 20 at 7 pm

The country’s premier contemporary chamber ensemble is playing in the Australian National Academy of Music precincts and also features among its ranks some ANAM alumni. All the same, I think that, from the publicity material, regular Elision Ensemble players will be reinforced by current ANAM musicians. In any case, tonight’s offerings hold memories for me, including the ensemble’s long-time advocacy for the works of Franco Donatoni, whose 1977 Spiri for ten instruments is being played here. Also, the voice of Liza Lim, an Elision essential, will be heard in her Veil for seven players of 1999. Then there’s a work by Xenakis to start the second half – his Eonta of 1964, written for a most mixed sextet of piano, two trumpets and three trombones.. We have an Australian premiere in German composer Isabel Mundry‘s Le Voyage, written in 1996 for four woodwind, three brass, two percussion and a string septet which makes it the most substantial work we’ll hear in terms of participant numbers. Lastly, Russian-born German-based writer Dariya Maminova is represented by her Melchior from 2021; scored for two synthesizers and samples, this promises to exhibit the composer’s attempts to fuse contemporary with rock – I know: an impossible task but the texts come from Edward Thomas and Pasternak, and the piece lasts for ten minutes. Pricing is one of those 1960s box office deals where you can offer $60 if you have the cash, $40 if you fit into the standard patron category, and $20 if you’re feeling the cost of living weighs heavily. And, to show that the organization is really a freedom-loving, libertarian revenant from the hippie era, your booking fee is only $5. As the old song has it, who could ask for anything more?

CLASSIC 100 IN CONCERT

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday June 20 at 7:30 pm

Not sure about these popularity polls for serious music because they usually display the responders’ lack of musical experience as the outcomes, especially near the top, are numbingly conservative. This year, the ABC Classic FM hosts and announcers have focused on the piano and are asking which work written for this instrument as a solo, as part of a chamber ensemble, or having the instrument in front of an orchestra happens to tickle your fancy. At moments, I feel like doing a Tom Gleeson and fixing the vote by having numerous people propose Boulez’s Piano Sonata No. 2, or Webern’s posthumous piano scrap, or Paisiello’s Concerto in D. You have until 1 pm on Monday June 2 to make your voice heard. Needless to say, patrons won’t be hearing the complete election result; rather, selections will be presented by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under conductor Benjamin Northey (who is also billed as having ‘creative direction’) , with Andrea Lam as the focal pianist who presents the concertos and solos and chamber music extracts: the sole fount of pianistic wisdom – all without Harry Connick Jr. Your normal everyday customer can pay between $59 and $109 for a seat; the concession reduction remains a risible $5 and the booking fee of $7 still obtains, despite the fact that you have no idea what you’re going to hear – although I’m guessing that surprises will be almost non-existent.

This program will be repeated on Saturday June 21 at 2 pm.

ACO UNLEASHED

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Sunday June 22 at 2:30 pm

A continuation of the Australian Chamber Orchestra‘s 50th birthday celebrations, this event serves to showcase some individual talents from the ensemble’s ranks. The program has been curated by artistic director Richard Tognetti, but he is shining the opening spotlight on violins Helena Rathbone, Satu Vanska and Anna da Silva Chen (the ACO’s latest recruit) through Bach’s Triple Concerto BWV 1064R, which actually enjoyed reconstruction as a three-harpsichord concerto during the mid-Leipzig years. Then Vanska takes the solo line in Ravel’s Tzigane of 1934, here arranged with a strings and percussion support). After this, we can relish Tognetti’s own arrangement of the Beethoven String Quartet No. 11, the Serioso. of 1810 which will be followed by Schubert’s 1820 Quartettsatz; that too will probably involve the ensemble rather than a select four – more’s the pity. Finally, we hear a true rarity in Jaakko Kuusisto’s Cello Concerto, written in 2019. It was the composer’s last completed orchestral work before his 2022 death from brain cancer and will have principal Timo-Veikko Valve taking the solo line; as in the Ravel arrangement, this piece’s orchestra comprises percussion and strings. Standard tickets range from $49 to $141 in the stalls, the cheapest rising to $71 in the circle. Top price for concession card holders is $113 while Under 35s can get in for a flat $35 for those seats still available.. But there’s a lavish $8.50 ‘handling fee to queer your economical pitch; at the moment, this sum tops the list in add-on costs for following live performances of serious music.

This program will be repeated on Monday June 23 at 7:30 pm.

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne

Friday June 27 at 11 am

A short program in the MSO Mornings series, chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Jaime Martin, has charge of Mussorgsky’s formidable piano suite in its Ravel orchestration. For years, this has been held up as an ideal example of how to transcribe from one medium to another and the process is packed with memorable touches, like The Old Castle‘s saxophone solo, an exposed tuba powering through the first 20 bars of Bydlo, the strings’ bite throughout Baba Yaga, and the overwhelming cascades of sonority in the last pages of The Great Gate of Kiev. Fleshing out this experience, if not by much, comes Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso; originally a piano piece from the Miroirs collection of 1905 but orchestrated by the composer in 1918. All of which is very interesting if you know the piano originals of both works, although the orchestral tapestries are fascinating in themselves. Your everyday punter pays between $62 and $99, concession holders $5 less, children under 18 pay $20 – and you add on the $7 ‘transaction fee’ to flesh out that warm feeling that always accompanies meaningless, mindless charity.