Category: The Diary

Friday June 3

Sydney Symphony Orchestra Brass Ensemble, Australian National Academy of Music, 7 pm

Most of the northern orchestra’s corps will appear on this program which is being toured across the country – well, the lower east coast.   From the publicity material, it looks like four trumpets, four horns, three trombones and a tuba are involved, which makes a comfortable number.   Leading the group, guest conductor James Somerville is the principal horn in the Boston Symphony and naturally a bit of the Republic’s music gets an airing, climaxing in the Symphonic Dances from Bernstein’s West Side Story arranged by Eric Crees, principal trombone at the Covent Garden Opera House (Royal) and erstwhile co-principal of the London Symphony Orchestra.  The fertile Morten Lauridsen is represented by his most famous choral work, O magnum mysterium, complemented by Gabrieli’s setting of the text as well as a Magnificat from the Venetian master.   British veteran Mark-Anthony Turnage appears with a brass specific work, Out of Black Dust, and the ne plus ultra of film composers, John Williams, waves the Stars and Stripes with his 2014 Music for Brass which may present some logistical problems as it calls for 9 trumpets, 5 horns, 5 trombones, 2 bass trombones, 3 tubas, timpani and extra percussion.

 

Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 8 pm

Diego Matheuz, who put in a stint here over the past three years as Principal Guest Conductor of the MSO, returns to lead this all-Russian night, beginning with Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain in its original form, apparently, before Rimsky-Korsakov got his hands on it.   Joyce Tang will be soloist in the exemplar of a Romantic piano concerto  –  No. 2 in C minor by Rachmaninov   –   and Matheuz will take the MSO through excerpts from the great ballet score that ends the night.   The entertainment proceeds in neat chronological sequence – Tsarist, pre-Revolutionary, Communist – and gives a lop-sided portrait of Slavic musical genius.   Tang will doubtless enjoy much success with the concerto, although, given its melodic riches and spectacular-looking virtuosity, so would any pianist.

The program will be repeated on Saturday May 4 ( 8 pm) and Monday May 6 (6:30 pm).

 

Monday June 6

Alexander Gavrylyuk, Great Performers, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7:30 pm

Always a pleasure to have this USSR-born, Sydney resident pianist back here.   In this instance, Gavrylyuk forms part of the MRC’s Great Performers series and has assembled a fine miscellany, starting with Schubert in A, the three-movement gem that radiates summery good humour at every turn.   A bracket of Chopin contains the F minor Fantaisie challenge (leisurely or Lisztomanic?), the Nocturne in C minor from the Op. 38 set with the clangorous central chorale, and the mighty A flat Polonaise of 1842.  Then Gavrylyuk hones in on his birth country with Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 3, the shortest of the nine.  After this come some of Rachmaninov’s earlier set of Etudes-tableaux, and then that finger-twisting barnstormer, Balakirev’s Islamey – which is something of a Gavrylyuk specialty.

 

Tuesday June 7

Enso String Quartet, Musica Viva, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7 pm

Both programs that this US ensemble brings to us feature a new work by Melbourne composer Brenton Broadstock, part of the Musica Viva ongoing commitment to furthering the cause of contemporary Australian work which has led to some fine creations as well as some dross.   Another program constant is Beethoven’s Harp in E flat.  For this night, the group plays to one of its strengths with the middle Ginastera quartet, the Ensos having recorded all three to sustained acclaim.   And, keeping to the Latin ambience, the group will perform Turina’s 10-minute Serenata from 1943.

For the second program on Saturday June 18, the performers will exchange Turina and Ginastera for a Renaissance medley arranged by the quartet’s first violin, Maureen Nelson, and conclude with the familiar pages of Ravel in F.

 

Thursday June 9th

Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Recital Centre, 8 pm

Concertmaster Eoin Andersen  puts himself front and centre of this night by directing and playing the solo for Mendelssohn’s evergreen concerto, the one everybody knows in E minor rather than the D minor score from the composer’s youth discovered by Menuhin mid-20th century.   Less familiar but still a concert hall staple, Strauss’s tone-poem Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks appears in new chamber orchestra garb, specially prepared by Brett Dean.   More Strauss opens the night with the Serenade for 13 Wind Instruments, a teenager’s work of rich timbres and traditionalist-pleasing melodic orthodoxy.   To cap the occasion with a dash of sophistication counterbalancing Strauss’s lumpy rapscallion, Andersen leads Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite, that quirky arrangement of (alleged) Pergolesi pieces that signifies the composer’s movement into neo-classicism.

The program is repeated on Friday June 10 at 8 pm in the Robert Blackwood Hall, then back to the MRC for a final account on Saturday June 11 at 6:30 pm.

 

Tuesday June 14

Bach’s Circle, Latitude 37, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

Back once more in the Local Heroes league, this period music trio – violin Julia Fredersdorff, gamba Laura Vaughan, harpsichord Donald Nicholson – hits the Baroque with confident panache, this time round presenting Bach’s keyboard G Major Toccata with its jolly fugue-gigue finale, and the Violin Sonata in E minor.   As for the circle, a Telemann trio sonata definitely fills the bill, as does a sonata from Buxtehude.   The public Baroque comes with a Handel aria, Col partir la bella Clori from the canata Ah! che pur troppo e vero, presumably arranged for one of the string players, and a lesser-known light of the era will emerge in the Trio Sonata No. 4 by Philipp Heinrich Erlebach; one of the few surviving works of this Bach contemporary; his impressively full output was largely destroyed by fire 20 years after the composer’s death.   Still, we should enjoy what’s left and the Latitudes are well positioned to help us.

 

Wednesday June 15

Flames Within, The Consort of Melbourne, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

Addressing the pyromaniac in all of us, this fine vocal ensemble hosts guest Hannah Lane and her Baroque triple harp.   Tonight, the Consort goes for fires, both spiritual and physical, heading for the former definitely (one hopes) with a bit of Hildegard von Bingen, and possibly continuing in that elevated strain with a Marenzio madrigal alongside a Monteverdi or two, although you can’t be sure with either of those two.   Definitely, matters will take a turn for the erotic with the arrival of Gesualdo, our favourite homicidal ultra-Mannerist Prince of Venosa, and should then lighten up through the advent of that polite ardour to be found in Morley’s Fire, fire.   On the home front, the singers will work through Elliott Gyger’s 12-year-old Fire in the heavens setting of verses by Christopher Brennan.   Morton Lauridsen’s Five madrigals represent the USA, although the only relevant works I can find in the composer’s copious output are the Six Firesongs, madrigals setting Italian texts.    And that tragic figure who did not survive the Nazi era, Hugo Distler, is represented by his six-part setting of Morike’s Der Feuerreiter.

 

Musical Offering, Selby & Friends, Deakin Edge Federation Square, 7:30 pm

Kathryn Selby comes back for the third in her subscription series recitals for this year. Once again, she has cellist Timo-Veikko Valve from the Australian Chamber Orchestra as a collaborator/friend, and young Canadian Nikki Chooi is the ensemble’s violinist.   Both friends enjoy a solo spot – Valve with the Brahms Sonata No. 1 in E minor, Chooi in the Schumann Sonata No. 1 in A minor – before all three musicians work through that glory of the piano trio repertoire, Schubert in B flat: 40 minutes of sustained jubilation.   As a taster, the musicians are playing Julian Yu’s 1999 Prelude and not-a-fugue, the composer’s tribute to Bach on the 250th anniversary of the master’s death; the pseudo-fugue uses the B-A-C-H motif not so much as a subject but as a cantus firmus.   It is hard to over-recommend these events; Selby and her associates never fail to bring an intellectual mastery and interpretative brilliance to their work and this year’s events have been superb accomplishments so far.

 

Thursday June 16

Rachmaninov’s Paganini, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 8 pm

One of the concerts of the year, this program welcomes back Sir Andrew Davis for another tour of duty as the MSO’s chief panjandrum.   The curtain-raiser is early Haydn, the Symphony No. 6, Le matin, the first written for the Esterhazy court and one that involves more than its fair share of solo spots for the executants.   Solo pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet delighted or outraged audiences with an idiosyncratic Mozart G Major Concerto K. 453 last August under Davis; he’s back with the sparkling Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini by Rachmaninov in which the plainchant Dies irae has rarely been put to better use.   To end comes a real rarity  –  the Ives Symphony No. 4 which isn’t that long but involves a large orchestra, three or four pianos with two of them tuned a quarter-tone apart, a mixed chorus for the outer movements, a massive percussion section, organ (always a problem these days in Hamer Hall) and usually an additional conductor for (at least) the second movement’s metrical complexities – which is what this work has in spades.   For those of us who have been carrying an Ives torch for decades, this is an important occasion, especially because, for most of us true believers, this may be the first time we get to hear the work live in its revised form.

The program will be repeated on Friday June 17 at 8 pm.

 

Saturday June 18

Bach: Spirit & Spectacle, Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Peninsula Community Theatre, Mornington, 7:30 pm

Yet another Bach night, you say.   Yes, it is, but there’s quite a bit on this program that would be unfamiliar to your run-of-the-mill concert-goer.   The MCO’s artistic director, William Hennessy, takes back the reins for the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and the Contrapunctus V from The Art Of Fugue, continuing the journey started by the Australian Chamber Orchestra at its last subscription concerts; in this exercise, the composer torques his subject into various situations simultaneously.   Later, Anne-Marie Johnson takes the solo line in the D minor Violin Concerto, which is a version of the well-known keyboard concerto in the same key.   Adding to the arcana, soprano Sara Macliver sings the B minor Mass’s Laudamus te, the slow-moving aria with flute obbligato Bete aber auch dabei from the cantata Mache dich, mein Geist, bereit, and another cantata aria (this one with obbligato violin), Vergnugen und Lust from Gott ist unsre Zuversicht.   Bach in chocolate-rich transmuted form appears in Stokowski’s transcription of the elegiac chorale melody Mein Jesu, was fur Seelenweh.  And, for a touch of the modern-day, the MCO and Macliver air Calvin Bowman’s Die linien des lebens, seven brief settings of verses by Holderlin.   Out of left-field, on the bill for the Mornington night, we are scheduled to start with Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata; very welcome, of course, but who’s playing this cello/viola-sonata-by-another-name remains a mystery.

In the city, this program will be performed on Sunday June 19 at 2:30 pm in the Deakin Edge, Federation Square, and at the Melbourne Recital Centre on Friday June 24 at 7:30 pm.

 

Sunday June 19

Frei aber einsam, Trio Anima Mundi, Holy Trinity Anglican Church, East Melbourne, 3 pm

This ensemble – violin Rochelle Ughetti, cello Noella Yan, piano Kenji Fujimura – has moved from its previous performing space in the Melbourne Recital Centre to East Melbourne where it is now presenting its usual subscription series of three recitals.   Opening the sequence, these musicians perform one work by each of the composers who collaborated in the F-A-E- Sonata, a tribute to the violinist Joachim whose life-motto gives this afternoon its title.   Schumann, the project’s originator, is represented by his 6 Studien in kanonischer Form, originally written for piano with an attached pedal board but more commonly heard on organ; here it appears in a transcription by Theodor Kirchner for piano trio.    Brahms’ last work in the form, Op. 101 in C minor, is the most familiar work on offer, while the third collaborator, Albert Dietrich, is represented by the first of his two attempts, also in C minor.

 

Songs Without Words, Team of Pianists, Rippon Lea, 6:30 pm

A mixed bag, this night has two guest artists: Sydney Symphony Orchestra principal second violin Marina Marsden and her SSO colleague and viola-playing sibling, Justine. Together with one of the Team’s senior members, Robert Chamberlain, they will play arrangements for their various combinations of pieces from Mendelssohn’s seemingly endless Lieder ohne Worte.    The sisters collaborate in Mozart’s K. 423 Duo, all three play Hans Koessler’s four-movement Trio-Suite.   Later, the inescapable Piazzolla appears in Oblivion, Eduard Herrmann’s arrangement of Three Russian Songs by Glinka give a refined Slavic polish to proceedings, and the Danish composer Jacob Gade’s catchy Jealousy Tango stands as a sort of programmed encore.   All over the place, this is an old-fashioned all-in bag of mixed sweets which asks you to just sit back and relish the sugar and schmaltz.

 

Friday June 24

Gabriel Faure, Australian National Academy of Music, 7 pm

Pianist Roy Howat is visiting ANAM and, as an expert on French piano music, particularly Debussy and Faure, what better way to use his time here than in nurturing his charges in the techniques and insights needed to give informed interpretations of the latter?   This recital will probably follow the same path as that of the recent Paavali Jumppanen appearances at ANAM: the teacher/performer will participate in some works, leaving the others for his now-up-to-speed juniors.   The program includes the Elegie for cello and piano, the Fantasie for flute and piano, the late Piano Trio in D minor, the second of the piano quartets, and some miniatures that I assume will be delineated by the visitor.   By night’s end, we should know a good deal more about the composer’s range (outside the Requiem, Pavane, and Pelleas et Melisande music) than we did at the start – and no songs! The real interest of events like this one lies more in watching the ANAM musicians finding their interpretative feet, although there is also the added benefit of hearing a master interpreter of this epoch in his element.

 

Saturday June 25

Gluzman Plays Brahms, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 2 pm

Sir Andrew – still here – directs the MSO in excerpts from Berlioz’s Romeo and Juliet symphony; one day, someone will bite the bullet and perform the whole thing – warts, beauty spots and all.    Meanwhile, we’ll always have the Queen Mab scherzo, the Love Scene, and possibly Romeo seul.    The MSO Chorale is not involved, so the work’s last scene will not be given.   Helas.  The concert begins with the world premiere of Hollow Kings by Australian composer James Ledger.   It concerns four Shakespearean figures: Lear, Macbeth, Richard III and Henry VIII and ties in with the Berlioz: both have been mounted to amplify the 400th anniversary celebrations of the dramatist’s death.   Not connected with the Swan of Avon in any way except in its breadth, the Brahms Violin Concerto will be performed on his distinguished-heritage Stradivarius by Ukrainian-born Vadim Gluzman, here in Melbourne for his first visit, I believe.

The program will be performed at Geelong’s Costa Hall on Friday June 24 at 8 pm, and again in Hamer Hall on Monday June 27 at 6:30 pm

 

Monday June 27

Buonamente, Continuo Collective, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

Another Local Heroes recital, this one features the mainstays of the ensemble, Samantha Cohen on theorbo/guitar and Geoffrey Morris playing the chitarra attiorbata or theorboed guitar which has 16 strings – no, I’d never heard of it, either.   Helpers in the work are violinists Rachael Beesley and Emma Williams with Laura Vaughan on lirone/viola da gamba.   The aim is to put the spotlight on a Baroque still water, Giovanni Buonamente, many of whose compositions are lost.   What little I’ve seen has a sparkle and flair, although short-winded; expect plenty of repeats.   The Continuo will focus on works involving two violins and continuo – trio sonatas, in short.

 

Tuesday June 28

Midori – A Night in Vienna, Great Performers, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7:30 pm

The Japanese-born American violin star is taking her Vienna seriously; not much sentimentality or glutinous Sachertorte on this program.   In partnership with pianist Ozgur Aydin, she performs Schoenberg’s Phantasy, which will stretch the ears of the unwary.   The composer was certainly born in Vienna but wrote this last of his instrumental works in Los Angeles during 1949.   Also celebrating the Viennese spirit is the Brahms Sonata in G, first and most summery of the three.  The association with Austria’s capital is stronger in this context as the composer spent a large part of his life there.   A Mozart violin sonata (not identified at the time of writing) could not be more appropriate, although the cynics among us cannot forget the city’s treatment of this musical colossus.   Ditto Schubert, whose great Fantasie in C fills out a hefty night’s work. As an ice-breaker, I presume, Aydin will play Liszt’s nine Soirees de Vienne, Valses-caprices d’apres Schubert which take Schubert themes and transform them with skill and a surprising lack of chandelier-rattling flamboyance.

 

Thursday June 30

Mahler 6, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 8 pm.

Sir Andrew Davis rolls on his Mahler series, here coming to the centre of the generally accepted canon.   As a prelude, American pianist Jonathan Biss is soloist in Mozart’s Concerto No. 21 in C, forever associated with the 1967 Swedish film Elvira Madigan which over-utilised this work’s central Andante.   Biss performed Mozart three years ago, again with the MSO under Johannes Fritzsch: a top-rank reading of the rarely-performed Concerto No. 22 in E flat.   Delightful as all this reminiscence may be, the night’s purpose is the large Mahler work, which remains a problem or twenty for every interpreter.   Mahler re-ordered the movements’ sequence; various authorities put them back the way they were.   The instrumentation is malleable, with some indications asking for more than the set number of the original prescription.   And are there three or two big hammer-strokes in the finale?    All of which is interesting but has little bearing on the work’s superb vigour and developmental surprises.   Rarely performed, the Sixth is profoundly dark, despite some ardent melodic content and complete disruptions of tension, like the use of cowbells.    The conclusion is an emotional gloaming, with a dark night inevitable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday May 1

Three of the Best, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chamber Series, Iwaki Auditorium, Southbank, 11 am

This recital’s name promises much.  I’d be prepared to go along with 2/3rds of its claim: the program contains the Ives Piano Trio, now enjoying a re-discovery as players realise that it is negotiable, if hard work; and it ends with the Smetana Piano Trio.  But the opener is an unknown quantity, to me at least: the Francaix String Trio of 1933, written when the composer was 21.  Of course, in the limited world of such trios, it may be outstanding.  We’ll see.   Performers are violin Robert Macindoe, viola Lauren Brigden, cello Rachael Tobin, with chamber music expert pianist Caroline Almonte doing duty in the morning’s major works.  This series usually attracts a sell-out crowd, although this menu is a pretty rarified one.

 

Monday May 2

Schubert’s Flights of Fantasie, Kristian Chong & Friends, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

A local reflection of the Sydney-based Selby & Friends series, this sequence of three recitals spread across the year starts tonight with the personable pianist-host in alliance with Sophie Rowell, the MSO’s current Associate Concertmaster.  Their title, with its specific last word, holds little mystery: the evening’s main content will be the famous duo in C, D. 934, preceded by a Mozart violin sonata, the last one to be written in B flat, and also Andrew Schultz’s Night Flight, which Chong premiered with Dmitry Tkachenko at an Australia House London Remembrance Day recital in 2003.   Both artists bring plenty of experience to the scores,  Rowell’s violin a familiar sound thanks to her years with the Australian String Quartet.

 

Tuesday May 3

La Boheme, Opera Australia, State Theatre, 7:30 pm

This starts the national company’s autumn season here.  Gale Edwards’ production with Brian Thomson’s sets moves the locale forward to 1930s Berlin; keep an eye out for Schoenberg et al in Act 2’s crowd scene, I don’t think.  Conductor is Andrea Molino and the Mimi/Rodolfo pairing features singers not heard in this city, I believe: Lianna Haroutounian and Gianluca Terranova.   Musetta is Jane Ede, Marcello will be sung by Andrew Jones.  There are 10 performances, the last on Saturday May 28.   I think this version has been played here before but can’t be sure; so much Puccini and middle-period Verdi has been temporally and geographically relocated over the past 30 years or so to cater for a generation of directors and their acolytes who have an unnerving fascination with the Weimar Republic and World War Two.  Still, if the look upsets your sensibilities, you can always shut your eyes and trust that the singing will be of a decent quality.

 

Wednesday May 4

Through Nature to Eternity, Tinalley String Quartet, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7:30 pm

Back in Melbourne, this ensemble that took its name from the University of Melbourne’s only straight-through thoroughfare is hosting singer/songwriter Lior Attar, who contributes his well-known My Grandfather from the Scattered Reflections album, Sim Shalom which opens his Songs of Compassion collaboration with Nigel Westlake, and a new song cycle written in partnership with Melbourne composer Ade Vincent.   Framing these sung pieces, the Tinalley group plays Ravel in F, three of Dvorak’s twelve Cypresses, and the Barber Adagio.  The recital is in the Murdoch Hall; just as well, as the Australian/Israeli musician has a considerable following and possesses undoubted musical ability, as shown in his 2014 performance under Westlake when the composer/conductor led the MSO in the Compassion construct during that year’s Myer Bowl free concerts.

 

Saturday May 7

The Pearl Fishers, Opera Australia, State Theatre, 7:30 pm

Bizet’s second-best-loved work, although the way Australian companies keep on pushing it, you’d have to think it now takes precedence over Carmen.  The run lasts for 8 performances, ending with a matinee on Saturday May 28, and the production is directed by Michael Gow with Robert Kemp’s set and costume design.  This version fits the opera with a 19th century French colonial backdrop, although the main action stays in Ceylon/Sri Lanka.  Emma Matthews has the role of the priestess Leila, torn between two men and gifted with the fine Comme autrefois aria.  The best friends/rivals will be Dmitry Korchak as Nadir, who scores that wonderfully languid solo Je crois entendre encore,  and Jose Carbo sings Zurga, the poor high-minded bastard who stays behind to face the music while the feckless lovers run off; which just goes to show how ephemeral is friendship, even when it gives rise to such a superb achievement as the Au fond du temple saint duet – music that permeates this opera to wrenching effect.   Conductor is Guillaume Tourniaire, a firm presence in this company’s operatic personnel.

 

Sunday May 8

Richard Tognetti: Beethoven Mozart V, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 2:30 pm

Settling down after the all-in-together nature of the recent Cinemusica program, the ACO reverts to the venerable canon with an afternoon of Beethoven, Bach and Mozart.  The content begins and ends with fugues by Beethoven: the middle-to-late Op. 137 for string quintet featuring two viola lines, here arranged for string orchestra, and the Grosse Fuge which was the original last movement to the String Quartet in B flat Op. 130 and which, I suppose, will here be tacked on to the scheduled performance of that chamber music masterwork in its revised form.   Maintaining the afternoon’s path, we hear the first four Contrapunctus from Bach’s The Art of Fugue; these open the entire work and are simple fugues, all based on the subject that Bach treats throughout his incomplete compendium. At the centre of the event, Richard Tognetti is soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto in A Major, the last of the five and a sprightly effervescent joy in this company.

The program is repeated on Monday May 9 at 7:30 pm

 

Saturday May 14

Beethoven and Crumb 2, Australian National Academy of Music, 7 pm

Paavali Jumppanen is back, bringing a pianistic lift to ANAM with two programs juxtaposing a name synonymous with Western classical music and a senior member of the American avant-garde.   On Friday May 13 at 11 am, Jumppanen shares the stage with Academy pianists putting Beethoven’s last three sonatas alongside parts of Crumb’s Makrokosmos, Zeitgeist and Celestial Mechanics cycles.  On this night, he is soloist/director for the Emperor Concerto and Makrokosmos III: Music for a Summer Evening, scored for two amplified pianos and a pair of percussionists – yet another Bartok semi-reference.  What do the two have in common?   Having listened to the Crumb construct, I’d have to say: not much.   But that is clearly not the point; perhaps its simply a preconception-boggling juxtaposition of two completely different, original voices.  If so, you couldn’t hope for better.

 

Saturday May 14

City Life, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Recital Centre,  8 pm

The first of three Metropolis New Music concerts where the MSO takes on the contemporary – maybe.   The podium presence for all of these events is Robert Spano, chief conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.  This year’s over-arching theme is music dealing with the urban, tonight’s title referring to the program’s final work by Steve Reich that puts 1995 New York into the minimalist-style cross-hairs.   Another American, Michael Daugherty, does much the same for Los Angeles in his 1999 frolic, Sunset Strip.  For light relief, Spano changes focus to South Korea, with Unsuk Chin’s Graffiti for chamber orchestra – let’s hope she has some positive sounds about what is for most of us a civic blight.   And Alex Turley’s city of ghosts, first heard earlier this year at the Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers concert in the Iwaki Auditorium, gets another guernsey; this time around, one hopes, with a fuller complement of strings.

 

Sunday May 15

Germanic Cello, Team of Pianists, Rippon Lea, 6:30 pm

They don’t come any more German than Schumann and Brahms.  The MSO’s Rohan de Korte and the Team’s Darryl Coote work through both Brahms Cello Sonatas, which is worth the price of admission in itself.    As for the senior composer, the pair review his Op. 70 Adagio and Allegro, originally written for horn and piano but less stressful for the listener in this garb.   Further in this alternative instrumentation penchant, de Korte and Coote will play Schumann’s Fantasiestucke Op. 73 that, in its original form, asked for a clarinet rather than a cello, although the composer said either a viola or cello could also get the job done.   I’ve missed quite a few of the TOP’s events over the past few years but this one is very inviting; and, a friendly warning:  it doesn’t take much to pack out the stately home’s ballroom.

 

Monday May 16

Luisa Miller, Opera Australia, State Theatre, 7:30 pm

A mid-career Verdi opera and one among several in the composer’s earlier output from which I don’t know a bar; well, apart from the tenor show-piece Quando le sere al placido. Based on a Schiller play, the work proceeds in three fraught acts to a Romeo and Juliet-style conclusion.  The company knows that interest will be limited and has scheduled four performances only.  Original director Giancarlo del Monaco prepared this production for the Opera de Lausanne; its revival is being managed by Matthew Barclay.   Andrea Licati conducts a cast headed by Nicole Car as the heroine, Riccardo Massi as Rodolfo, the object of her affections, Steven Gallop sings the intriguer Wurm and David Parkin his partner in secret criminality and blackmail, Count Walter.  Like the company’s La Boheme production, this version of the opera’s setting moves the time to the 1930s, rather than the 17th century; the promotion photos suggest that the setting is no longer a Tyrolean village; and, similar to The Pearl Fishers in this season, the opera is told in flashback.

 

Wednesday May 18

Cityscapes, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Recital Centre, 8 pm

Second in the series, this concert continues its metropolitan theme with Copland’s Music for a Great City of 1964, based on his own soundtrack to Something Wild, the last film for which he provided music and which depicts an unappealing New York.  Conductor Robert Spano has also programmed two Cries of London: Orlando Gibbons’ early 17th century God give you good morrow and Berio’s 1974 cycle.  The Italian composer’s work was originally written for the King’s Singers sextet; two years later, he expanded it to 8 lines.  As the Song Company is performing them, I’d suspect the earlier version might appear.  Michael Kurth, bassist with the Atlanta Symphony, is represented by his three-movement Everything Lasts Forever which Spano premiered in 2013; the piece shares a link with the first Metropolis concert’s Graffiti by Unsuk Chin in that it too was inspired by ‘street art’. The program is completed by Jennifer Higdon’s City Scape, written for the Atlanta orchestra in 2003, celebrating that city in three substantial movements, and also premiered by Spano.

 

Thursday May 19

Paavali, Poulenc, Debussy & Beethoven, Australian National Academy of Music 7 pm

Another product of the Finnish pianist’s visit.  Beethoven begins and ends the night with the early Trio for clarinet, cello and piano, the Gassenhauer, and the Quintet for piano and winds Op. 16.  Poulenc, fecund in the chamber music field, is also represented by two pieces: the Elegie in memory of Dennis Brain for french horn and piano, distinctive for a 12-tone row flirtation, and the early Trio for oboe, bassoon and piano.  And, would you believe, Debussy has two brackets as well: the all-too-brief Cello Sonata of 1915, and selections from the Preludes.  How much Jumppanen takes on will be an interesting question: the Preludes, you’d expect, but it’s significant that every other work involves a piano.  Certainly, the night gives some of the ANAM musicians a chance to shine, especially the wind players.

 

Saturday May 21

Heavenly Cities, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Recital Centre, 8 pm

Yes, it’s Messiaen time in this final Metropolis New Music concert.  Couleurs de la cite celeste is a 1963 composition for piano, 13 wind and 6 percussion, first performed at the following year’s Donaueschingen Festival with Boulez conducting his Domaine Musical people and the composer’s wife, the phenomenal Yvonne Loriod, at the keyboard.   It is based on five quotations from the Apocalypse and sets about the Celestial City depiction with sharp-edged aggression, rich in the whole Messianic panoply: Hindu and Greek rhythms, bird song, Gregorian chant, grinding and repeated dissonances.  Oliver Knussen’s The Way to Castle Yonder is a potpourri extracted from his children’s opera Higglety, Pigglety Pop!, a collaboration with Maurice Sendak.   Barry Conygham’s Diasporas (about which I can find out absolutely nothing) will enjoy its world premiere while Michael Bakrncev’s Sky Jammer, the pick of the Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers concerts in January, will enjoy its second hearing.   Fleshing out the night is senior German composer/academic Heiner Goebbels’ Surrogate Cities: Samplersuite of 1993/4.  The suite is, in fact the real thing: a set of ten Baroque period dances using sampler and orchestra, the electronic implement allowing the use of non-orchestral sounds while Goebbels gives us his aural insights into the ‘phenomenon’ of the city; Heidegger’s still around, no matter where you look.

 

Sunday May 22

Sax and Sensitivity, The Melbourne Musicians, St. John’s Southgate, 3 pm

Through sheer forgetfulness – here comes Alzheimer’s – I missed the Musicians’ last concert on March 20 which promised a fine program.  Today’s one offers Molly Kadarauch of the Sutherland Trio, Monash University and guest spots with the Melbourne Symphony and Melbourne Chamber Orchestras in C.P.E. Bach’s Cello Concerto in A minor, refined and tempestuous at once.   Saxophonist Justin Kenealy, a young musician with an impressive list of awards and educational personnel and institutions behind him, takes centre-stage for the one-movement Glazunov Concerto, a staple of the instrument’s repertoire and lavishly Romantic in its language.  Frank Pam and his players also offer an alternative Russia to that of Glazunov in Shostakovich’s Sinfonia Op. 110, which I assume is Rudolf Barshai’s arrangement for string orchestra of the composer’s even-more-fraught-than-usual String Quartet No. 8.

 

Monday May 23

Homage to the Classics, Inventi Ensemble, Melbourne Recital Centre, 2 pm and 6 pm

This group is new to me, although it has been active since the start of 2014.  Its brief comprises concerts, workshops, community outreach and corporate/wellness performances.   Founded by flautist Melissa Doecke and oboist Ben Opie, the personnel for this recital include violinist Jessica Bell, violist Phoebe Green and cellist Blair Harris.  What they have set their combined talents to perform is a Quintet in D, the last of the Op. 11 set by J.C. Bach which offers freedom of choice for its top lines – two violins, or an oboe or a flute (or both) substituting for one of the strings (or both); Mozart’s Flute Quartet in D, the first of the ever-fresh series of four; Britten’s Op. 2 Phantasy Quartet for oboe, violin, viola and cello, written for Leon Goossens when the composer was 19; and Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony No. 1 arranged for the five musician-participants in this recital.  An ambitious program with a well-proportioned mix of names and styles.

 

Thursday May 26

The Lonely Planet, Flinders Quartet, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7 pm

Cutting down on its number of performances, this popular ensemble starts off its MRC appearances under the Local Heroes banner with Mozart in G, K. 387, the first of the Haydn set and distinguished by its fugato finale opening.   Local composer/academic Stuart Greenbaum’s String Quartet No. 6, which gives the night its title, comes next – the first performance after the Flinders players premiere the work (which the ensemble commissioned with support from Julian Burnside) four days previously at the Montsalvat Gallery.  Complementing the Mozart comes Haydn’s No. 2 from the Op. 33 set which, all things being equal, should be that one nicknamed The Joke with its audience-deceiving finale-rondo.   And, as a capstone, we hear Beethoven No. 4, the only one from the six-strong Op. 18 set in a minor key.  Because of the rarity of Flinders appearances, I find it hard to keep up with changes in personnel but, as far as I know, Helen Ireland continues on viola and Zoe Knighton on cello.  The first violin is Shane Chen and the second chair is now occupied by Nicholas Waters.

 

Saturday May 28

Finishing the month with an old-style program after the Metropolis detours, the MSO plays a solid but odd program, juxtaposing three disparate works of the highest quality. Guest conductor Christoph Konig begins with Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin, four movements in memory of friends who died in World War I and still, almost a hundred years on,  a series of hurdles for any orchestra.   Soloist is British violist Lawrence Power, celebrated among other things for his work in the Nash Ensemble.  He is fronting the Bartok Concerto, a work he has recorded on the Hyperion label.  The score, left in sketch form by the composer at his death in 1945, has been subjected to revisions and amendments, not least the one by Bartok’s son, Peter.  For the inevitable symphony, Konig & Co.offer Brahms in E minor, the most clear-headed of the composer’s four, climaxing in that magnificent, sombre chaconne which possibly provides an emotional link to the world-weariness of the night’s concerto . . . if you’re feeling charitable.

This program is also performed on Friday May 27 in Costa Hall, Geelong.

 

Monday May 30

Joe Chindamo and Zoe Black I, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

Tonight is the first of two appearances across the year in the Salon by this pianist/violin partnership; like the Flinders Quartet, they also appear under the MRC’s Local Heroes catch-all category.  The musicians perform original works by Chindamo and also re-imagine classics, as they did with Bach’s Goldberg Variations, recently performed both in New York and here.   As with every sustained experiment, some of these re-creations work better than others but the duo has the talent of persuading  you – sometimes – to re-conceive familiar works that have become stale through repetition over the years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday April 3  

Composers’ Concert, St. Stephen’s Anglican Church, Richmond, 2 pm

To my shame, not one of the five writers featured on this program is known to me; nor are most of the performers – the Briar String Quartet, Nimbus Trio, Melbourne Composers’ Orchestra (although I’m very familiar with the work of this body’s conductor, Andrew Wailes).   It’s an afternoon of many premiere performances: Carol Dixon’s String Quartet No. 1 and first Piano Trio, as well as her Ocean Oasis from the Nimbus group; Kitty Xiao, central figure in the Nimbus ensemble, is represented by trio works, including the first hearing of her Emei; pianist/composer Hana Zreikat plays her own Elan, Soldier’s Suite and interprets Sarah Elise Thompson’s Riven; Benjamin Bates’ Symphony No. 3 enjoys its first performance under Wailes; and Thompson’s First String Quartet rounds out the event’s premieres.  For $15/$10 (kids under 12 free), it’s a large dose of new music  – 11 works in all – and, with so many composers contributing, variety is pretty well guaranteed.

 

Friday April 8

Camilla Tilling, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7:30 pm

Familiar to aficionados as a versatile opera singer, this Swedish soprano in mid-career is here showing her abilities on a more demanding platform, appearing in the MRC’s Great Performers series.   At the time of writing, her program comprises Berlioz’s Nuits d’ete, Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -Leben, and Berg’s Seven Early Songs . . . which is all great music, if a touch underwhelming in terms of length; perhaps there’ll be a hefty swag of encores.  Still, all three cycles are proper recital fare, even if we generally hear the Berlioz in the orchestral form that the composer eventually gave them.  And the young Berg also put his late Romantic settings into orchestral garb 20 years after the originals were produced, not adding much in the process except to smooth out any innate chromatic edges.  As far as I can tell, this is Tilling’s only recital, after which she goes to Sydney to sing the Berg lieder with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.  Her associate on this night is Leigh Harrold, a dab pair of hands in this role as evidenced by his being singled out as most outstanding pianist in the 2014 Mietta Song Competition.

 

Sunday April 10

Australian Chamber Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 2:30 pm

This program, as usual, will be repeated the following day at 7:30 pm.   For this tour, the ACO is in partnership with another Sydney ensemble, Synergy Percussion;  it seems odd, but I can’t recollect a previous performance here from this latter group since a Myer Bowl event during the 2006 Commonwealth Games Arts Festival.   As you’d expect, the program is contemporary in flavour, from the soporific to the hard-hitting.   The senior moment is Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, 80 years old this year.  Film music gets a decent representation with Bernard Herrmann’s 1960 score for Psycho, from which a string suite has been constructed; and Thomas Newman’s percussion-heavy accompaniment to 1999’s American Beauty gives the Synergy players a right of reply.  As for more taxing listening, the forces offer two gripping, grating constructs by Xenakis – Voile (1995) for 20 strings (does the ACO have that many?). and the 1975 graphically-notated Psappha percussion solo.  To complement these almost blasts-from-yesteryear products, some of them approaching the venerable,  the program offers a new work for both sets of musicians by Timothy Constable, Synergy’s artistic director.

 

Tuesday April 12

Lucia di Lammermoor, Her Majesty’s Theatre, 7:30 pm

Victorian Opera moves back to traditional fare with Donizetti’s masterpiece, very popular in this country thanks to Dame Joan Sutherland’s association with it, including her first recording of the Mad Scene – still the finest interpretation on disc.  So Jessica Pratt has her work cut out, even if she has sung the title role in La Scala.  For the company’s five performances, ending on April 21,  artistic director, Richard Mills conducts and the cast includes Carlos E. Barcenas (Edgardo), Jose Carbo (Enrico), and Michael Petruccelli (Arturo).   Cameron Menzies directs a production which comes from West Australian Opera,  Mills’ old stamping ground.  So far, information suggests that the work is being taken at face value, rather than transplanted to a contemporary setting in Cottesloe Beach with the heroine transforming into a white pointer.  Pratt has enjoyed VO successes in the last two years and, pace her colleagues, is the focus of attention in this airing of a true bel canto classic.

 

Wednesday April 13

Songmakers Australia, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

Three famous composers; three unfamiliar works.  This adventurous organization is giving a rare airing to Mozart’s Six Notturni; well, that’s if they are by Mozart.  The composer’s wife said the first five weren’t and, despite what you see in Amadeus, she was in her husband’s confidence.   The last one of the vocal trios, Piu non si trovano, is definitely Mozart, so the scholars say.   Their accompaniment is either for three basset horns or two clarinets with a basset horn; you’d assume that Andrea Katz will replace them with her all-embracing piano.   No worries about the Beethoven; An die ferne Geliebte, a sequence of six songs, is often referred to as the original song-cycle leading to Schubert, Schumann et al.   Speaking of Schumann, he is represented here by his Spanisches Liederspiel: ten songs, half of them duets, three solos, and two for vocal quartet.  Tonight’s singers are Songmaker regulars: soprano Merlyn Quaife, mezzo Sally-Anne Russell, tenor Andrew Goodwin, bass-baritone Nicholas Dinopoulos.  These recitals stand out for the participants’ professionalism and welcome splashes of personality.

 

Selby & Friends, Deakin Edge, Federation Square, 7:30 pm

Selby’s recitals get better as the years go past; somehow, the changing personnel is yielding extraordinary performances, both in trio and duet formats.  For this program, the artists perform an impressive bank of four trios: Brahms No. 2 in C and Mendelssohn No. 2 with its glowing Lutheran finale, and the Shostakovich No. 1 – not the famous E minor but a student work in one long movement of which the last 16 bars were left by the composer for a pupil, Boris Tishchenko, to finish.   Copland’s Vitebsk, study on a Jewish theme, has been gaining enthusiasts for some years, although it’s a strident, challenging twelve minutes’ worth where the composer, for the only time, uses a tune taken from his own heritage to give images in music of life in a shtetl.   This time around, Kathryn Selby has enlisted the services of Australian New-York based violinist Susie Park, formerly of the glamorous Eroica Trio as well as many other bodies in the USA, and American cellist/composer Clancy Newman who has been a Selby & Friends collaborator in several previous seasons.

 

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 7:30 pm

Sir Andrew Davis has long been associated with the BBC Proms, a series of concerts best known for its Last Night but, at this stage of its history, swollen to a vast program of over 100 events spreading outside the regular Royal Albert Hall venue.  As far as I can tell, Davis is restricting his Melbourne venture (this year) to two concerts, including a Last Night that follows the traditional path.  This opening night is not particularly unusual – unless they take the Hamer Hall stalls out for people to stand.   A fresh Nigel Westlake work, Dream of Flying, will be heard for the first time.   Laura van der Heijden, BBC Young Musician Competition winner in 2012, takes centre-stage for the Saint-Saens Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, a former audience-pleaser that seems to have fallen out of favour.   Then the orchestra whips up that fine festal feeling with the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, always surprising and fresh and a particular show-pony for the MSO.   In fact, the night follows a rather old-fashioned sequence –  overture, concerto, symphony.   Not that every Prom has to break new ground at every turn . . . far from it.

 

Friday April 15

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Deakin Edge, Federation Square, 7:30 pm

This program will be repeated on Sunday April 17 in the Melbourne Recital Centre at 2:30 pm.   Guest director, Rebecca Chan,  is a familiar face from a variety of roles with orchestras, chamber groups and as a soloist, although we’ve seen less of her in this last role over recent years, more’s the pity.   The program is headed The Gypsy Palace and it takes in a wide field: Telemann’s La musette suite, two Vivaldi concertos, a C.P.E. Bach string symphony, Haydn’s G Major Violin Concerto.   From out of nowhere come Josquin’s Ave Maria in a string orchestra arrangement; ditto for Gesualdo’s O dolce mio tesoro madrigal; the finale of Carl Vine’s Smith’s Alchemy, his own string orchestra arrangement of the String Quartet No. 3; and selections from the Uhrovska Collection, compiled in 1730 and containing about 350 works – well, violin lines – from Polish, Hungarian and Slovakian sources.  The thesis put forward by some musicologists and musicians is that the Uhrovska melodies have resonances in the compositions of the time, viz. some of those on this program.   From a very limited exposure to the Collection, I can see merit in the proposed influence/connection, especially when the arrangements pile on the Gypsy tropes.   For this occasion, the MCO and Chan have gone in wholeheartedly for variety, their scope of action tonight stretching across more than five centuries.

 

Saturday April 16

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 7:30 pm

This is already sold out but I fear that, although it follows the usual pattern, it will be a pale imitation of its London original.   Sir Andrew finishes the night with the patriotic quartet – Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs, the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 with A.C. Benson’s ludicrously jingoistic words for the trio section, Arne’s Rule, Britannia! which is even worse in its self-congratulatory back-slapping, and Parry’s Jerusalem to satisfy any soccer hoons in the hall: the unspeakable singing the incomprehensible.  As opener, we get Beethoven’s weighty Egmont Overture, followed by Liane Keegan singing Elgar’s Sea Pictures as a complement to the night’s concluding bracket.   Percy Grainger’s four-movement In a Nutshell suite with its extraordinarily adventurous Pastoral is preceded by three of the Slavonic Dances of Dvorak.   It’s inevitable that enthusiasts will dress for the occasion and plenty of flag-waving will happen at the traditional points; obviously, the enthusiasm is there but I can’t help thinking that it’s sad to be aping such a locally-specific celebration.

 

Sunday April 17

Team of Pianists, Rippon Lea, 6:30 pm

A constant presence in Melbourne’s chamber music world, the Team maintains its presence at the National Trust mansion on six Sunday nights across the year, this the first of them.   In the house’s ballroom, Aura Go will perform Mozart – the earliest of the three  B flat Major sonatas and the emphatic C minor, as well as the Fantasia K. 475.   Brahms also features: his Liebeslieder Waltzes – well, those 18 in the Op. 52 set.   In fact, one of the few performances of these lilting gems with rock-solid foundations came from the Team, so long ago only a shadowy memory remains.   Soprano Kate Amos, mezzo Karen van Spall, tenor Michael Petrucelli and baritone Daniel Carson – all young voices, just what you need for this cycle –  will be supported by the Team’s founder Max Cooke and senior partner Darryl Coote playing one piano four-hands.   While it’s true that the piano rules at these events, guest artists come from across a wide range and this quartet of career-burgeoning singers adds to an impressive list of visiting artists.

 

Tuesday April 19

Stephen Hough, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7 pm

The polymath (The Economist and Intelligent Life honour him so) British  pianist  is back for another Musica Viva tour.  He combines the well-trodden track with a byway that many of us will never visit again, I suspect.   Re-running a program he gave last October at the Barbican, Hough starts (presumably) with Schubert’s A minor Sonata, D. 784, the last one in the oeuvre that has only three movements and revealing the composer at his most gloomy, even in the middle Andante whose gentle melodic calm is continually punctuated by muted rumblings.   Then, Franck’s Prelude, Choral and Fugue tribute to Bach which amalgamates chromatic 19th century pianism with a hectic but consistently observed Baroque discipline (if you can refer to such a characteristic without peals of laughter), complete with an interpolated cadenza/toccata.   Hough winds up his 19th century tour with the first two of Liszt’s four Valses oubliees from the early 1880s.   Most of us know (or will recognize) the first of these; taking us further into the collection is giving fine service, if only to demonstrate why the remaining waltzes have been left to wither.   At the recital’s centre, the pianist turns composer, performing his Sonata No. 3 with the potentially illuminating title Trinitas, written to celebrate the 175th birthday of The Tablet, that quizzically Catholic British magazine to which Hough has been an enthusiastic contributor.   The new sonata is in three movements and, like the musician’s playing, combines athleticism with intellectual rigour.

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

 

Friday April 22

Australian  National Academy of Music, South Melbourne Town Hall, 7 pm

This month, the brass get their day in the sun at the National Academy.   Under the heading Interstellar Call, American trumpeter Edward Carroll directs the ANAM brass and percussion members in a feast of mainly 20th century works.  The recital begins with the title work, one of the centrepieces to Messiaen’s Des canyons aux etoiles . . . and a supremely difficult solo for horn; the composer didn’t want it played separately from the major work, which is odd as he originally wrote it as a discrete item several years previously. Hindemith’s Konzertmusik Op. 49, the one for brass, two harps and piano from 1930, shows a less strident development in the great writer’s voice, complete with a folk-song quotation.   American composer David Lang’s Are You Experienced? of 1987, a set of variants on Jimi Hendrix’s famous song, features an electric tuba in place of the original guitar.  Silvestre Revueltas’ 1938 masterpiece of Mexican colour and movement, Sensemaya, came to Melbourne’s attention at one of the Myer Free concerts from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra when Diego Matheuz first hit the Principal Guest Conductor seat; you’d expect a brass/percussion arrangement for this airing.   There’s also The Devil Inside by (not Hugo) Wolf, about which I know nothing except that, in my world, it’s a book and a film.  Of course, it could turn out to be that sample of pop-bumf by the Bring the Wolf group, but I’m hoping not.   Also along the way comes the program’s most contemporary piece (unless the lupine product turns out to take the up-to-date honours).   Canadian-Estonian composer Riho Esko Maimets will be represented by an arrangement of his motet from 2012 for six voices, Media vita, which, in its original form at a little over fifteen minutes, sounds like a progression from Gregorian chant to Middle Renaissance polyphony; euphonious, slow-moving, reminiscent of a lot of Baltic religious music of the last half-century.

 

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Town Hall, 7:30 pm

Putting patrons in the mood for winter, the latest MSO Proms (old-fashioned Town Hall variety) offers a quietist experience, culminating in the Faure Requiem, an idiosyncratic version of the Catholic Mass for the Dead as it was observed pre-Vatican II.   The French composer’s emotional language is of a quiet grief coupled to an almost stoic melancholy, punctuated by some gloriously soaring pages in the Sanctus and In Paradisum.   Naturally, the MSO Chorus will carry the score’s main vocal burden, with soloists soprano Jacqueline Porter and bass James Clayton.   Prior to this,  Benjamin Northey will take his forces through Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, a world of tragedy and resignation in two majestic, masterful movements.   The real novelty comes at the night’s start with an exceptional and welcome rarity: Schubert’s Gesang der Gesiter uber den Wassern.  This setting of a Goethe poem asks for eight male voice lines supported by violas, cellos and double basses, and its effect is as consolatory as the major scores that follow it.  Whoever put this program together had a definite vision, even if the experience won’t send the audience home in high spirits.

 

Wednesday April 27

Ensemble Liaison, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7 pm

Hard to believe this group has been active for ten years; a well deserved happy birthday, then, to David Griffiths, Svetlana Bogosavljevic and Timothy Young.   To start the celebrations, the trio welcomes four guests: violins Sophie Rowell and Elizabeth Sellars, viola Christopher Moore, horn Roman Ponomariov.   The night opens with Bloch’s Three Nocturnes of 1924 for piano trio, which in the last segment stretches the usual definition of nocturne.  Dohnanyi’s Sextet for Piano, Clarinet, Horn and String Trio dates from 1935, has four action-packed movements and, because of its personnel requirements, is never heard outside establishments like conservatoria.  What adds further interest is that it’s the composer’s last major chamber music score, even though he lived another 25 years. Later, the Liaison again indulge their enthusiasm for Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov; his The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, inspired by the teachings of a medieval Provencal rabbi,  requires a clarinet/bass clarinet (played in the Klezmer style) and string quartet.   Its format consists of a prelude, three substantial movements, and a postlude; its language is easy to imbibe, both woodwind and string parts packed with incident and the whole a half-hour essay in melodic simplicity with an underpinning of dissonance.

 

Thursday April 28

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 8 pm

Guest conductor Paul Goodwin, an expert in Baroque performance, is visiting to lead the MSO in a pair of Haydn symphonies, encasing a brace of Bach orchestral suites.  The Rediscover Haydn movement has never quite taken off here, although those of us with fair memories can recall the preference expressed by Markus Stenz, when he was first installed in the MSO’s chief conductor role, for programming lots of the symphonies; I can recall two being played during his tenure, although a few more might have slipped  through to the archival keeper.   But these days it seems that our Haydn experience (apart from the ubiquitous Cello Concerto No. 1) comes from bodies like the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Frank Pam’s Melbourne Musicians, or the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra. Goodwin begins with the Symphony No. 49, La Passione, which has nothing to do with Easter, and winds up with No. 82, the Oxford.   Not exactly breaking new ground, is it? There must be about 80 other symphonies, most of them without nicknames, that would have expanded our live Haydn exposure.   At any rate, they bookend the Orchestral Suites Nos. 2 and 3.   The first of these is close to a flute concerto, bringing the skill of principal Prudence Davis to front-of-stage; the other is noted for the Air on the G String, which is nothing of the kind.

This program will be repeated in Geelong’s Costa Hall on Friday April 29 at 8 pm, and again in Hamer Hall on Saturday April 30 at 2 pm

 

Friday April 29

Duo Chamber Melange, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6:30 pm

A piano/violin partnership, this duo makes a solid European sound with the standard repertoire at the core of its exerpertise, although the choices made by the performers are not what you’d necessarily expect.  Pianist Tamara Smolyar and violinist Ivana Tomaskova both teach at Monash University and what I’ve heard of their interpretative approach shows both forthright enthusiasm and calm mastery.  Their chief focus on this night is Brahms – the first Violin Sonata in G, and the most vernal of the three – and Janacek’s solitary exercise in the duo sonata format from 1914, an informative illustration throughout its four movements of the Czech composer’s idiosyncratic vocabulary and melodic power.   As far as I can recall, I’ve never heard it in live performance.   As well, the artists are playing the Scherzo in C minor by Brahms, his splendid contribution to the F-A-E Sonata, a compendium in honour of the great violinist Joseph Joachim consisting of two movements by Schumann, one by his student Albert Dietrich, and this exhilarating piece.  The recital’s real novelty emerges in a piano solo by Smolyar, the world premiere of Enceladus by Romanian composer Livia Teodorescu-Ciocanea, a significant creative voice and academic in the serious music world of her own country who did post-doctoral studies at Monash in 2008 and whose music has been recorded here on the Move label.   As for her new work’s title, it may refer to one of Saturn’s moons, or to the Giant from Greek mythology who fought Athene, although how you give either a musical character will be intriguing.

 

Saturday April 30

Ensemble Gombert, Xavier College Chapel, 5:30 pm

Starting its suburban series for 2016, John O’Donnell’s fine chamber choir presents works of the Capilla Flamenca, or Flemish Chapel – a body of singers (and instrumentalists)  in the service of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Philip II of Spain.  The works come from the Franco-Flemish school (another of those wide-ranging shorthand terms that covers vast differences), those represented being Alexander Agricola, Pierre de la Rue, Antoine Brumel, Thomas Crecquillon and Nicolas Gombert himself whose Missa Quam pulchra es caps the evening’s work.   Agricola’s motet Salve, regina and Brumel’s Laudate Dominum contrast close contemporaries, the restrained with the daring.   From de la Rue, the Gomberts will perform one Magnificat from the composer’s eight for six voices.   But for me, the most interesting are two . . . well, motets of praise is not too ripe . . . by Thomas Crecquillon, both praising the Emperor Charles in the sense that one apostrophises him as being greater than his predecessor Charlemagne, the other more or less telling him off in the most laudatory terms for his great mercy in forgiving his enemies – all couched in precise and elegant polyphony as only the best Renaissance compliments were.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday March 1

Ensemble Gombert, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6pm

Hard to tell how this excellent choir will cope with the dry acoustic of the Salon.  John O’Donnell directs his formidable singers in the opening program to a two-part series: Music of Great Renaissance Chapels.  First up is the Sistine,  and the main work illustrating its pre-eminence will be that fundamental of Catholic church music, Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli.  Companions are motets by Desprez and Morales which could conceivably have been performed in that celebrated chamber.  Frankly, I’d like a bit more space and elbow-room.

Victorian Opera, Playhouse, Ats Centre Melbourne, 7:30 pm

This sounds like a Gen Y delight.  Four friends are having their annual restaurant meal; this time round, each tells the others a deep secret.  Which probably explains the title: Banquet of Secrets.  Not so much an opera as a musical, its text comes from Steve Vizard, music by Paul Grabowsky.  Roger Hodgman directs singers Antoinette Halloran, Kanen Breen, Dimity Shepherd and David Rogers-Smith.  The last Grabowsky vehicle of this nature that I can recall was a collaboration with Joanna Murray-Smith, Love in the Age of Therapy,  an entertainment of which little substantial remains in the memory except the participation of Breen (taking it all off for art) and Shepherd – both are optimistically back for more.

Runs till March 5.

 

Wednesday March 2

Dejan Lazic, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7:30 pm

Zagreb-born piano wunderkind – well, not so much of the kind: he’s 28/29 years old – is playing an esoteric program of ‘selected sonatas and fantasias’ by C.P.E. Bach, ‘selected sonatas’ by Scarlatti (plenty to pick from), Britten’s early Holiday Diary suite of four pieces, and a welcome helping of Bartok: the Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm that conclude the mighty Mikrokosmos books, Three Rondos on Slovak Folk Tunes, and the composer’s arrangement of the Funeral March from his symphonic poem Kossuth that few people I know have experienced live.  This breaks the established mould of the piano recital, but with a clear purpose: all four composers wrote unusually idiomatically for the keyboard. This recital begins the Recital Centre’s Great Performers series for the year; here’s hoping. In 2014, Lazic took exception to a critique published in The Washington Post four years previously, endeavouring to have it removed from the internet by means of the European Union’s ‘right to be forgotten’ law; apparently, every time you entered his name, the review came up.  As criticism, it strikes me as fair and reasoned; oh, it’s still extant.

 

Thursday March 3

Luisa Morales, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

Spanish harpsichordist Morales was a student of the brilliant Rafael Puyana and the breathtaking Ton Koopman.  She appears in the Salon Solo series sponsored by the Recital Centre.  Her program promises Rameau and Scarlatti in a kind of juxtaposition exercise, highlighting the two composers’ approach to the fandango; well, it’s a great dance, even in the hands of Gilbert and Sullivan.  Her Scarlatti sonatas have been nominated; the Rameau remain under the generic heading of Pieces de clavecin.  As usual, the recital lasts an hour but we get the all-too-rare chance to hear a visiting harpsichord expert and scholar.

Australian String Quartet, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7 pm

Running swiftly, you might manage to get from Morales in the Salon to the ASQ in the Murdoch Hall.  Perhaps for a while the ensemble’s personnel will stay constant; it has been a chameleonic body over the last few years.  At last sighting, the violinists were Dale Barltrop and Francesca Hiew; Stephen King continues in the viola chair and Sharon Draper maintains the cello position.  Guest artist is Sydney percussionist Claire Edwards who is down here to participate in a new work by Matthew Hindson (at the time of writing still unidentified) and some extracts from John’s Book of Alleged Dances by John Adams which – last time I looked – asked for a string quartet and a prepared piano; in this arrangement by Edwardes we are offered hand percussion . . . which doesn’t narrow things down much.  Bookends are the last of the Beethoven Op. 18 and Schumann No. 1.

 

Friday March 4

Grigoryan and Tawadros Brothers, Melbourne Recital Centre, 7:30 pm

The title is Band of Brothers, which gets marks for appropriate if obvious Shakespeareanism.  The four have collaborated before at this venue and clearly enjoyed that occasion.  As you’d expect, the music ranges over a wide spectrum; that is, as far as you can go with two guitars, an Arabian lute and tambourine.  All are experts and the place should be packed out with a highly appreciative band of followers. Every so often, a moment of brilliance breaks through the frenetic rhythmic interplay and tropes that are becoming very familiar as the years wear on.

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Town Hall, 7:30 pm

An old-fashioned overture/concerto/symphony program format brings back memories of past concert series as the MSO gives its Prom patrons what they want.  Benjamin Northey, the happiest conductor in the country, directs the Sibelius chestnut, Finlandia, breathing nationalistic fire in the face of Russian intrusiveness – which shows how little has changed in 117 years.  Daniel de Borah will play the solo part in the most famous of Romantic piano concertos, the A minor by Grieg.  Found it hard to take this piece seriously after learning that Liszt, while praising it, played it at sight.  After interval, the MSO will once again negotiate Dvorak’s final symphony, the New World, after striking away from the rutted path by giving the No. 7 at a Myer Bowl free concert some weeks ago. A night packed with golden memories and cosy consolations.

 

Saturday March 5

ANAM Orchestra, South Melbourne Town Hall, 7 pm

Speaking of Sibelius, the ANAM musicians open their year with the rousing, popular Symphony No. 2 under Antonio Mendez, a 31-year-old Majorcan who has an active schedule ahead and already a wealth of experience behind him.  One of the night’s soloists is Kaylie Melville, an ANAM alumnus, who will be the focus of Per Norgard’s 1983 Percussion Concerto No. 1, a four-movement construct taking its impetus from the I-Ching/Book of Changes, that fertile source of inspiration for John Cage and his followers.  Paul Dean, recently retired ANAM Director, is represented by a new work, as yet title-less, which may employ the services of new director, Nick Deutsch, on his oboe.

 

Sunday March 6

MSO Chamber Series, Iwaki Auditorium Southbank, 11 am

A Sounds of France morning opens this usually packed-to-the-doors series.  Ravel’s Piano Trio is well-known to chamber music aficionados, in the repertoire of every ensemble of this nature.  Much less well-known is the Chausson Concert for violin, piano and string quartet, one of the composer’s first successes and full of delightful touches.  It lasts for about 40 minutes but you wouldn’t know it.  Kristian Chong is the fortunate pianist, Sophie Rowell (probably) the solo violin, assisted by Matthew Tomkins and Phillipa West on violins, Lauren Brigden’s viola, and cellist Rachael Tobin.  The groupings for these recitals are necessarily ad hoc but the results can be refreshingly coherent.

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, Melbourne Recital Centre, 2:30 pm

First up for the year, the MCO presents a varied but full-bodied menu, complete works with no scraps or isolated movements in evidence.  Mozart is represented by two masterpieces: the G minor Symphony No. 40 and the Clarinet Concerto with the estimable David Griffiths as soloist.  As preface to both come French works.  First, Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet – a model of lucidity, over all too quickly.  More attention is paid to Melina van Leeuwen’s harp in Debussy’s Danses sacree et profane, one of each and strikingly exhaustive of the solo instrument’s potentialities.

The program will be repeated on Friday March 11 in the Deakin Edge, Federation Square at 7:30 pm.

 

Monday March 7

Australian Baroque Brass, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

Founded in 2003, this ensemble is fresh territory for me.  It seems to be a mobile set of experts in a tricky field, well-versed in collaborations, resident at St. James’ Church in the city of Sydney.  For this hour-long recital, the group under John Foster will play a Beauty & the Brass program of Heinrich, Marini, Erbach, Handel, Daniel Purcell and Monteverdi with soprano Anna Sandstrom providing the beauty and taking centre-stage for Let the bright Seraphim, Lascia ch’io pianga and Lamento della ninfa among others.  The web-site shows nine brass players, with David Drury supplying organ support; should be a real test of control, up close and personal in the Salon.

 

Wednesday March 9

Melissa Doecke and Mark Isaacs, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

An agglomeration of flute-and-piano works by French and Australian writers.  The local products come from Ross Edwards and pianist Isaacs (two pieces each), while the Gallic content comprises Poulenc’s amiable Flute Sonata and the 1943 Sonatine by Dutilleux, that difficult writer’s most commonly-heard work.  In the middle, these performers are offering three improvisations, reflecting Isaacs’ strong involvement in jazz.  Seems to be packing a good deal into the allocated time-span but you can’t say you won’t get value for your dollar.

 

Thursday March 10

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 8 pm

Sir Andrew Davis is back for one of his extended visits and leaps into cataclysmic action with An Alpine Symphony of Richard Strauss, the bloated orchestral forces inflated by wind and thunder machines for the inbuilt storm/tempest and prospective avalanche.  A long time in the making, this work lasts for close to an hour but maintains interest as one of the great final gasps of Romanticism.  Ray Chen is soloist in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto.  You’d think that would be enough for the night but, honouring the conductor’s heritage, the playing starts with Vaughan Williams’ delectable Serenade to Music, a setting of words from Act V of The Merchant of Venice for 16 solo voices (or, in this case, the MSO Chorus) and orchestra – one of the composer’s most opulently textured constructs.

The program is repeated on Friday March 11 and Saturday March 12 in Hamer Hall at 8 pm

 

Friday March 18

ANAM Musicians, South Melbourne Town Hall, 7 pm

Two wind serenades feature in this second ANAM offering for the year.  Director Nick Deutsch again takes up his oboe to lead Mozart No. 11 for pairs of clarinets, horns, bassoons and – oboes.  Dvorak’s Wind Serenade ups the ante to this combination by adding a third horn, as well as cello and double bass to give the bottom line extra oomph. Finally, a bigger ensemble takes on Brahms’ Serenade No. 2 in A which adds violas, cellos, double basses and a pair of flutes (with a piccolo for added frisson at the end) to the mix. The word usually associated with this piece and its companion in D is ‘genial’; can’t say fairer than that and here’s hoping the ANAM people bring out its bounce as well as its brio.

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Robert Blackwood Hall, 8 pm

Are we sick of Mahler yet?  Well, I’m not over-eager to hear No. 4 again; in fact, could give the first three a rest for some years.  This is the mid-way point in Sir Andrew’s review of the complete set of symphonies: No 5 which starts out in C sharp minor but doesn’t stay there.  The work is best known for its simple, expressive Adagietto for strings and harp, linked forever with Aschenbach/Dirk Bogarde’s progress up the lagoon at the start of the film Death in Venice; Visconti has a lot to answer for.  Because the symphony lasts a bit over an hour, the program is fleshed out with Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, featuring guest Pierre-Laurent Aimard; a score more sombre and passionate than most in the composer’s oeuvre and, to be fair, not just a fill-in but an intriguing prelude to its sprawling companion.

This program is repeated on Saturday March 19 at 2 pm and on Monday March 21 at 6:30 pm, both performances in Hamer Hall.

 

Saturday March 19

La Compania, Deakin Edge at Federation Square, 6 pm

One of my favourite period music groups has moved from the Melbourne Recital Centre to the more central Deakin Edge.  This program is called El fuego and proposes a musical salad from the master of the ensalada, Mateo Flecha.  I believe the program will comprise salads for 4 and 5 voices and possibly some villancicos by the Aragonese composer as well as pieces by his contemporaries and successors in this vibrant, catchy field of work.  Can’t praise this group highly enough; where you might expect dry scholarship and dust, you get spirited playing with a continual shift in textures and an infectious rhythmic buoyancy.

 

Sunday March 20

Melbourne Musicians, St.John’s Southgate, 3 pm

Frank Pam and his core body of strings will be amplified for this concert with a healthy dollop of wind players.  The program is pretty focused, the earliest offering Haydn’s Symphony No. 49, La passione, of 1768 which, not too surprisingly, has no real connection to Christ’s suffering or to overwhelming fits of rage.  The bulk of the afternoon is dedicated to Pam’s beloved Mozart.  The 1775 Violin Concerto No. 5 in A with its ‘Turkish’ finale elements remains a challenge for any soloist, in this case Anne Harvey-Nagl, concertmaster of the Vienna Volksoper.  As a pendant, Harvey-Nagl performs the Adagio in E which Mozart wrote a year later as a substitute slow movement for this concerto, his original soloist not happy with the first one.  Soprano soloist Sarah Lobegeiger de Rodriguez sings three arias, including L’amero, saro costante from Il re pastore, written in the same year as the program’s violin concerto.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Melbourne Recital Centre, 5 pm

Part of the Recital Centre’s Great Performers series.  I’ve heard Messiaen’s mammoth Vingt regards sur l’enfant-Jesus live only 2 1/2 times; one performance took place improbably late in the evening and the effort of staying even minimally focused was doing the work and the performer no service.  However, the experience, for the well-rested, can be illuminating, especially if the listener takes pains to enter the composer’s sound-world with an accepting mind.  Aimard studied these Twenty Contemplations with Messiaen’s wife, Yvonne Loriod, so you can expect an ultra-informed interpretation.  But it’s a big ask; for the half-performance mentioned above, the audience at interval was well below 50.

 

Monday March 21

Mary Finsterer, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

Co-sponsored by the Recital Centre and the Australian National Academy of Music, the Australian Voices series has served as both an introduction to present-day composers as well as a reminder of voices from the past, both still living and departed.  To begin this year’s sequence (and I can’t find details of further events under this heading), Sydney saxophonist Christina Leonard is curating a program of works by Mary Finsterer, currently a professor in composition at Monash University and a creative presence in Melbourne for many years.  Also scheduled are works by Finsterer’s teachers, Louis Andriessen and Brenton Broadstock.  The performers are, of course, the young ANAM musicians whose dedication to these recitals is beyond praise.

 

Tuesday March 22

Hamer Quartet, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

This group disappeared about five years ago as its members took on positions in other cities or other countries.  Now, three of the original members – violin Rebecca Chan, viola Stefanie Farrands, cello Michael Dahlenburg – are re-grouping and will be collaborating with a number of violinists as the year goes by.  Tonight’s lucky winner is Zoe Black who participates in Janacek’s No. 2, Intimate Letters, and the middle Brahms, No. 2 in A minor. As a warm-up, the quartet offers a selection of Monteverdi madrigals; nice, although the best ones (the ones I know) are in five parts.  Still, it will be an intriguing exercise to see how the players sound after several years apart and with a new voice in the mix.

 

Wednesday March 23

Kristian Chong, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

Another one in the Salon Solo series, popular pianist Chong presents an all-Schubert recital featuring some of the late works: the 1827 Impromptus D. 935 and the final sonata in B flat, emerging in the last months of the composer’s life.  All are exacting pieces, the four impromptus restrained and liberal-handed in turns, notably in the B flat third one, distinctive for its pliant variations.  The sonata, with strong echoes of Beethoven’s insistence and rumbling bass content throughout a wide-ranging first movement and also distinguished for the stirring beauty of its slow movement’s modulations, asks for real interpretative depth; hearing it in live performance can be an intensely moving experience.

 

Friday March 25

Melbourne Bach Choirs and Orchestras, Melbourne Recital Centre, 2:30 pm

The ultimate in Good Friday observances, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion takes its audience/congregation right into the heart of the Easter mystery.  For this one-off airing, Rick Prakhoff conducts his Melbourne Bach Choirs and Orchestras (a nice touch: you do need two of both) as well as the Choir of St. Michael’s Grammar school, presumably for those chorales floating above the welter in the opening Kommt, ihr Tochter and the first half’s concluding O Mensch, bewein) fronted by ten – count them – soloists.  Andrew Goodwin takes on the exhausting responsibilities of the Evangelist; Warwick Fyfe recapitulates his Christus, the part he sang for this organization’s first Matthaus-Passion a decade ago; Lorina Gore and Jacqueline Porter share soprano duties; ditto Sally-Anne Russell and Belinda Patterson with the mezzo pages; Henry Choo and Michael Petrucelli split the tenor arias between them; and Andre Collis and Jeremy Kleeman alternate in the bass work.  An all-star cast but the work sinks or swims by its choral forces’ input and their avoidance of a relentless chugging delivery mode.  In any case, a brave enterprise.

 

Wednesday March 30

Latitude 37, Melbourne Recital Centre, 6 pm

This trio of period music experts – violin Julie Fredersdorff, viola da gamba Laura Vaughan, harpsichord Donald Nicholson – performs a Bach & his Ancestors program.  As centrepiece, the group works with bass baritone Nicholas Dinopoulos in Johann Sebastian’s Ich habe genug cantata which is accompanied by oboe, two violins, viola, organ and continuo.  The scheduled woodwind soloist is Kirsten Barry; the other personnel remain unspecified at the time of writing.  Further pieces are Johan Christoph (JS’s first cousin once removed) Bach’s Lament Wie bist du denn, O Gott with a rich solo violin line complementing the bass soloist; a five-line suite by Dietrich (presumably Sixt); and Franz Tunder’s O Jesu dulcissime for bass and two violins that runs from the funereal by way of some vocal gymnastics to a modestly jubilant Alleluia.  An ensemble whose work is always well-informed and balanced.

 

Thursday March 31

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, 7 pm

Branching out into films of gravity, the MSO plays Nino Rota’s soundtrack score for Francis Ford Coppola’s grim The Godfather.   Justin Freer conducts, having carried out the same process over 2014-15 with orchestras in London, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sydney; in other words, after all those out-of-town try-outs, you’d expect him to be a dab hand at this exercise.  Definite crowd-pleasers, these film-supporting concerts are invariably eye-opening, although more often than not the musical content gets subsumed in the visual action.   But, for the interested, every composer’s scoring impresses as more clear-speaking in this live environment – with the added benefit that the dialogue has to be put in subtitles, so strong is the musical input.  And it’s a memorable score, especially if you have a penchant for minor keys.

Program repeated on Friday April 1 at 7 pm in Hamer Hall.