Category: The Diary

I jest.

There’s nothing happening in Brisbane to entertain serious music-lovers across this month.

And that’s been the state of play as long as I’ve experienced it in five years spent here, luxuriating in heat and indolence on the Gold Coast.

The city goes to sleep and its real musicians disappear, heading for climes unknown

It’s almost enough to make you head back to Melbourne.

ADRIAN STROOPER – A WINDOW INTO SONG

Opera Queensland

Opera Queensland Studio, 140 Grey St. South Bank

Friday December 6 at 7 pm

As its last gasp for the year, our state company presents Australian tenor Adrian Strooper accompanied by Alex Raineri in a program that currently (early November) is completely unknown/unspecified. But it will include operatic arias (not surprising, considering the singer’s substantial European career and residencies, including a decade at Berlin’s Komische Oper) and lieder – which does come as a surprise as that art form doesn’t feature significantly in Strooper’s biography. But it’s always a pleasure to hear any local artist of this vocal type, although good tenors are not as rare as they used to be, say, 30 years ago. Adults can get in for $65, with a lousy concession rate of $59 (which also applies to students); as far as I can see, there’s no booking fee. Still, I can’t find any indication as to the recital’s length.

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

BACH’S CHRISTMAS ORATORIO

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Saturday December 7 at 7:30 pm

All is not as it seems here. The QSO and Brisbane Chamber Choir won’t be presenting all of the Bach collation but only four of the usual six cantatas that make up this magnificent seasonal celebration. I must confess to being spoiled with regard to the Christmas Oratorio, having heard the Australian Chamber Orchestra perform it (twice, I think) with a very lively band and a chorus made up of soloists who turned the chorales into musical bliss. Tonight, we get to hear Part 1, Jauchzet, frohlocket!, which is festive Christmas music streets above all the rest; Part 2, with that miraculous double of Und es waren Hirten with the soul-stirring Brich an, o schones Morgenlicht chorale to follow; then a rush to Part 5 and the bouncy joy of its opening Ehre sei dir, Gott, gesungen chorus; and Part 6 to finish in a blaze of affirming D Major at both ends, the final revisiting of the O Haupt voll Blut chorale reworked into a musical image of Christ’s life and work encapsulated with consummate art. Conductor Benjamin Bayl is in charge and, with his big reputation in period performance, we’re likely to get the oboes d’amore that feature across these four cantatas, as well as the oboes da caccia that feature in Part 2’s opening sinfonia as a four-part ensemble and stay that way across this cantata up to the final pastoralization of the Von Himmel hoch tune. Also, we can but hope for a trio of brisk Baroque trumpets. Bayl’s soloists are soprano Sara Macliver, mezzo Stephanie Dillon, tenor/Evangelist Paul McMahon, and baritone Shaun Brown. The only tickets left are sight-restricted in the Con theatre’s gallery and their full cost is $119 with concessions available for the elderly, students and children. Wonder of wonders, there’s no booking fee because (I assume) this event is being held in Griffith University.

BRISBANE SINGS MESSIAH

The Queensland Choir

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday December 8 at 3 pm

Here comes your annual dose of Handel being presented at the wrong time of year, but who cares? For reasons beyond rationality, Messiah is trotted out in this country’s state capitals as a matter of course around December. For this one, TQC director Kevin Power again leads his own choir, the Sinfonia of St. Andrew’s and a quartet of soloists – soprano Leanne Kenneally, mezzo Shikara Ringdahl, tenor Sebastian Maclaine, baritone Leon Warnock – in the memorable oratorio. Well, I’ve got it pretty much by heart after too many years of exposure, staying awake through many performances only by following the score – especially for the choruses where you can delight in the non-existent alto line or the disappearing tenors. To make this performance even more involving, members of the public have been encouraged to join the Choir, presumably having given prior evidence of ability as well as having attended rehearsals. It’s very democratic and might even bring some useful performance experience to a young generation. Or perhaps not. Stalls tickets range between $15 and $60; sitting further away in the balcony costs you between $20 and $70. There’s a $1.25 fee added on, which is not as irritating as the much larger charges required by other organizations but still makes you wonder what you’re being squeezed for. The performance is scheduled to last for 2 hours 45 minutes which, with an interval, is about right for the usual Part the Third-truncated readings.

CHRISTMAS AROUND THE WORLD

Brisbane Chorale

Christ Church, St. Lucia

Sunday December 8 at 5 pm

It will last only an hour but that’s enough (apparently) to perform a universally applicable Christmas celebration. The Chorale will work under its music director Emily Cox with Christopher Wrench, inevitable and indefatigable in support on the Christ Church digital organ. Their program is going to be multicultural, which is itself a promise of joy in this increasingly blinkered world now blighted even further by the prospect of another four years of Trumpian moral mayhem. We’ll have a welcome infusion of multicultural community carols, which will be a source of aesthetic balm after the usual cultural domination in enterprises like these. overwhelmed year after year by Anglican content. Further, we are assured that refreshments will be provided; presumably at extra cost. Patrons are also asked to bring a gift, pre-wrapped, to the event with intended gender and age group attached. As for the ticket prices, these range from full adult of $35 to $30 for Seniors and Concession Card Holders to $15 for students. Even with a limited knowledge of Brisbane’s geography, I know that St. Lucia is outside the central city area but it does have the advantage of being the University of Queensland’s suburb and it’s only 8 kilometres from the CBD.

PARALLEL PLAY

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St..

Friday December 13 at 1 pm

As anticipated, the final events in this calendar come from Alex Raineri‘s chamber music festival that illuminates the closing months to each serious music year in Brisbane. This final slew of seven recitals begins with a duo recital by flautist Lina Andonovska and pianist Raineri. They open with Richard Strauss’s Violin Sonata in Andonovska’s own arrangement; what she’s done with the quadruple and triple stop chords will be revelatory, I’m sure. But this work takes up half the recital’s allotted hour length, so the remaining four works must be rather brief. First comes the Australian premiere of American composer Sarah Kirkland Snider‘s 2019 duo that gives this recital its title. Then a world premiere in an as-yet unnamed new work by Judith Ring; could it be her All You Can Do Is Hang On For Dear Life which is the solitary flute/piano duet in her catalogue and dates from this year? After the Dublin composer’s offering, we hear a new work, still unnamed, and another Australian premiere from Mark Mellet (or is it Mellett?) who could be another Irish writer but he’s difficult to source, as they say. Unlike the last name on this program – Paul Dean – whose 2015 Falling Ever Deeper enjoys a resuscitation after Raineri’s previous 2021 performances with Johnathan Henderson. Tickets remain at $25 with the usual $1.99 surcharge for computer science classes (for whom?) and, out of nowhere, a GST add-on of 20 cents; you pay $27.19. And that’s progress.

This program will be repeated on Saturday December 14 at 6 pm.

THE DIARY OF ONE WHO DISAPPEARED

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Friday December 13 at 6:30 pm

A real rarity, Janacek’s 1920 song-cycle is a big ask for its tenor, a doddle for the alto and easy pickings for the three female voices that pop up (off-stage?) for two songs in the middle of operations. The only performance I can vaguely recall is one featuring Tyrone Landau during one of the Musica Viva festivals held at the Domaine Chandon winery many years ago. This time, the tenor is Brenton Spiteri whom I have probably heard in Melbourne but whose talents have not remained in the memory. His alto beloved will be sung by soprano Katherine McIndoe and the three females come from the ranks of that distinguished ensemble, The Australian Voices, which puts them in patriotic company with Spiteri, while McIndoe comes from New Zealand. Their piano accompaniment is undertaken by Alex Raineri, the impossibly hard-working festival artistic director. On either side of the Janacek are two settings of Um Mitternacht: the first that of 1901 by Mahler from his Ruckert-Lieder, which could be sung by either McIndoe or Spiteri; the second by Britten from 1959 and a setting of Goethe’s poem. This will go to Spiteri, I should think, although I remain ambivalent about what sort of voice it requires – a tenor, perhaps a baritone; certainly, a male. But it brings the event to a sombre ending, which is just right, given the program’s other content. Tickets can be bought for $25, with an added impost of $1.99 going towards books for schools, and a 20 cents GST, which I haven’t noticed in previous festival recital charges from Humanitix.

This program will be repeated on Saturday December 14 at 2 pm.

ORPHEUS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Friday December 13 at 9 pm

Alex Raineri is taking on the great Greek myth as pianist and composer, performing his own new temples in your hearing – a world premiere – as well as three pieces by female composers to give us the Euridice viewpoint, I expect. His other collaborator is visual artist Eljo Agenbach who will provide materiel to satisfy the eyes. Samantha Wolf‘s Life on Earth was first performed by Raineri in 2022 at a Brisbane Music Festival recital (also named Orpheus) and apparently revised for this re-presentation. Another revenant will be Jane Sheldon‘s Ascent: soft, uncertain and without impatience. Besides these reconstructions, patrons will be treated to Natalie Nicolas‘ Descent which is offered without revision but also featured in that 2022 first appearance of Orpheus. Festival aficionados will be pleased to reacquaint themselves with this event featuring four Australian writers which proposes a contemporary take on the tale of all-too-human love that ends in disaster, ignoring with ridicule the deus ex machina intervention by Gluck’s Amor, and forgetting the poet’s eventual dismemberment by those maddened precursors of rock’s female devotees, who also can whip themselves into hallucinatory states with a little help from their friends. Admission costs $25, the usual $1.99 impost to be spent on books for schools; not forgetting the 20 cent GST which somehow applies to the non-booking fee rather than the ticket itself.

This program will be repeated on Sunday December 15 at 10 am.

ARAGONITE

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 14 at 10 am

Aragonite is a mineral that forms in fresh or salt water environments. Melbourne-based musician Thea Rossen‘s new work, here enjoying its world premiere, utilises ceramics, corals and metal instruments to construct its aural world, one that is intended to suggest deep oceans. Or it might be intended to focus our attention on the properties of the night’s honoured mineral, although that might be a rather dry (please) exercise and not a La mer for our times. Rossen herself will play percussion, as will Rebecca Lloyd-Jones. Possibly the festival’s omni-present Alex Raineri will assist on piano. Three woodwind artists could also participate – flute Lina Andonovska, flute Tim Munro, bass clarinet Drew Gilchrist. But, as I can’t find out any specifications regarding Aragonite, the whole compositional complex might just feature the percussionists, particularly since Rossen is an expert in this field. the others could just be hanging around for American composer Terry Riley‘s In C, a historically important 1964 essay in aleatoric minimalism for an unspecified number of participants and lasting anywhere from 15 minutes to over an hour. Tickets still only cost $25, with the $1.99 fee going towards books for schools, while the 20 cents GST will end up God knows where.

This program will be repeated on Sunday December 15 at 6 pm.

WAYS BY WAYS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 14 at 1 pm

Here is a new trio ensemble – flute Tim Munro, percussion Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, piano Alex Raineri – and it’s called Ways By Ways, but let’s not get started on the possible modifications of that name. Setting their bar on a personal level, the musicians begin with a collaborative new work called (wait for it) Ways By Ways which I suppose will outline the ensemble’s performing/aesthetic/polemical agenda. Chilean-born composer resident in Perth (last I heard) Pedro Alvarez will at last hear the world premiere of his Fosforesciamo from 2012; the four-section piece (we know it’s glowing in the dark??) that investigates block chords and their assemblage is written for harpsichord solo. Then we experience Irish composer/academic Ann Cleare‘s 2010 unable to create an offscreen world for piccolo and percussion, which I’ve only heard in its electronic manifestation; the experience didn’t make much of a positive impression because of its suggestion of industrial burps. I can’t tell whether or not Jodie Rottle was born here or in America, but she spent a decade on the new music scene in Brisbane before settling down in Melbourne this year. She is represented by blueprint in shades of green (where did this e e cummings fad come from?) of 2022, an obsessive 7-minute gem which is written for flute, alto flute (I think) and assorted percussion (Lloyd-Jones played in the first performance). Finally, we hear Irish composer Jennifer Walshe‘s Thelma Mansfield from 2008, written for Ways By Ways’ actual combination and which takes its name from an Irish TV presenter who became a painter in a worthwhile career change. Tickets are $25, with the $1.99 extra fee going towards computer science classes. And don’t forget the 20 cent GST – keeping the whole country economically stable.

This program will be repeated on Sunday December 15 at 4 pm.

HOLD YOUR OWN

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 650 Queen St.

Saturday December 14 at 4 pm

You don’t come across solo cello recitals that often, unless somebody wants to work through several or all of the Bach suites. Gemma Kneale is treading a new path here by playing eight works, all of them by women composers, three of them undergoing their Australian premieres. More to the point, I’ve heard none of these scores and am only vaguely aware of the output of one of the writers; a sad state, of course, and all too typical of my antique generation and a damnable witness to a lifetime of undeveloped exposure. Kneale begins with the afternoon’s oldest music in Anna Clyne‘s Fits + Starts of 2003 for amplified cello and tape; this is, as far as I can see, the British-born composer’s first composition. Jump forward twelve years to Gemma Peacocke‘s Amygdala which explores feelings of anxiety; a malfunctioning part of the brain, then, depicted by this New Zealand composer who is based, like Clyne, in the USA. We move to Missy Mazzoli, who is a native-born American and issued her A Thousand Tongues in four different versions; we’re hearing the one for cello and electronics written (like all the other three interpretative choices) in 2011. Molly Joyce, another American (born in the let-us-down state of Pennsylvania) studied with Mazzoli and wrote It has not taken long three years ago; it is also written for cello and pre-recorded electronics. Melbourne-based Australian composer Zinia Chan wrote In Transition in 2018. It concerns an individual’s journey through space towards the unknown – which applies to most of us, I suppose, except for the space bit. The work involves cello and tape but also a flute (piccolo); I suppose someone will step in to lend a helping hand. Next is Australian Kate Neal‘s A Game from A Book of Hours, written last year and originally a composition for a quartet (flute, cello, piano/harpsichord, percussion) and screendance; doubtless this extract will be reduced in scale here. We’re back to the once-great republic for Brooklyn-born Nathalie Joachim‘s Dam Mwen Yo of 2017 which brings us back to cello+tape territory, even if the recorded content strikes me as uninspired. Finally, it’s full steam ahead into Scottish writer Anna Meredith‘s brief Honeyed Words, written in 2016 and bringing to an end a solid sequence of cello-and-electronics compositions. Entry costs $25, with the usual $1.99 compulsory contribution dedicated to books for schools, and add on that irrational 20 cents for GST.

This program will be repeated on Sunday December 15 at 12 pm.

IN PLATONIA

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 14 at 8 pm

Bringing this year’s festival to a crashing New Complexity conclusion, director-pianist Alex Raineri partners with clarinet/bass clarinet Drew Gilchrist in three contemporary works, the first by Melbourne (or is it Ballarat?)-based writer Chris Dench which gives this event its title. My limited research has led me to believe that platonia is a type of tree, rather than a physical space dedicated to the Greek philosopher. But that turns out to be useless information/fantasy. Dench has, in fact, based his 12 capsules on insights by British physicist Julian Barbour concerning the immense number of instants that make up our existential and temporal planes and which he calls Platonia. This piece was written to suit Gilchrist (bass clarinet here) and Raineri who have featured (and will continue to perform) Dench’s compositions. Michael Finnissy‘s one-movement Clarinet Sonata of 2007 is here given its Australian premiere by Gilchrist and Raineri, the latter having much to do with the British composer’s use-in-reversal of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 110 across his 20-minutes-or-so construct. Finally, the duo takes on Welsh composer Richard Barrett‘s Flechtwerk, written between 2002 and 2006. This is impossibly difficult music to synchronise for the clarinet in A and the piano, thanks to its subdivisions of tempo and virtuosic leaps across the instruments’ compasses. But the title, as I read it, means an interlacing and you can’t deny the relevance while you’re listening to it . . . or trying to take in its brushes with comprehensibility. Admission costs $25 base price, with an additional $1.99 for Humanitix’s charitable endeavours in providing literacy skills (for whom, we’re not told) and a 20-cent dollop that’s meant to cover GST – somehow.

This program will be repeated on Sunday December 15 at 2 pm.

FRANKENSTEIN!! & THE GOOSE’S MUM

Ensemble Q

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday November 3 at 3 pm

Not surprisingly, the second element in this concert’s title is Ravel’s five-part suite Ma mere l’Oye which exists in a piano duet version, a reduction for solo piano and a full orchestra transcription. What are we going to get this afternoon? Probably the piano solo version because Daniel de Borah is the only pianist noted in the personnel list and the remaining musicians number only twelve; too small for the Ravel orchestration. The group also attempts Saint-Saens’ Danse macabre, arranged by American Cicely Parnas for violin and cello; no worries about this ensemble’s cello – Trish Dean – but the violin role could be taken by Adam Chalabi or Anne Horton. Then there’s Poltergeist by William ‘Bolcome’, who I assume is William Bolcom. This is hard to pin down, as there’s a Poltergeist Rag written by Bolcom for solo piano but the advertising bumf claims that this work will be performed by a string quartet: Chalabi, Horton, Dean and viola Tobias Breider. I can’t find any such arrangement in the list of this famous American song-composer’s catalogue. So far, not so much work for the other eight listed participants. Things change for the other title work: Heinz Karl Gruber‘s 1971 ‘pan-demonium’ Frankenstein!! for chansonnier (probably Jason Barry-Smith who is listed in this cast list as ‘narrator’) and an ensemble that takes in everyone except de Borah: the string quartet plus double bass Phoebe Russell, flute Alison Mitchell, oboe Huw Jones, clarinet Paul Dean, bassoon David Mitchell, horn Peter Luff, percussion Jacob Enoka. But who’s playing trumpet? And where does harpist Emily Granger fit into this program, unless the Ravel work is being played in an unidentified arrangement? Anyway, tickets cost $75 or concession $55 with the usual QPAC add-on of $7.20 as a compulsory sting.

A SYMPHONY FOR WINDS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio

Thursday November 7

This evening opens with one of Richard Strauss’s later works, the so-called Symphony for Winds No. 2 in E flat of 1944/5, sub-titled (by the composer) ‘Happy workshop’. The more constipated among us call it the Sonatina No. 2, but it’s of a substantial length and sits in happy comparison alongside Stravinsky’s 1920 briefer essay with similar participants but also involving a slew of brass. Strauss involves 16 instruments: pairs of flutes, oboes, bassoons, then four horns, a contra-bassoon, and five clarinets – an E flat, two B flats, a basset horn and a bass clarinet. In terms of time, it’s the longest work on the program. Then a complete change of personnel for Penderecki’s 1961 Polymorphia for 48 strings (24 violins and 8 of everybody else) which could probably be the most advanced music that the QSO has played all year: a splendid sample of graphic notation and a test of Umberto Clerici‘s directional powers. This is followed by British rock guitarist Jonny Greenwood‘s 2011 tribute 48 Responses to Polymorphia which can last either 15 or 19 minutes, depending on the number of movements attempted which will in turn determine whether all 48 players need their own pacay bean shakers. Well, to be fair, it’s not a tribute but a spring-board for an uninspired and unadventurous essay in harmonic conservatism. But that’s just my opinion; listen for yourself and have that finding reinforced. Tickets range from $79 for an adult to $35 for a student or child, with the QSO’s own outrageous $7.95 surcharge on every order.

This program will be half-repeated on Saturday November 9 at 3 pm as the Penderecki and Greenwood spin-off disappear to be replaced by Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings to ensure an afternoon of harmonic emulsion. You’ll be happy to learn that the ticket prices don’t vary; nor does that over-ripe excessive booking fee.

SCOTLAND UNBOUND

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday November 11 at 7 pm

Just as the Queensland Symphony Orchestra is finishing up this month, so too is Sydney’s own ACO ending its year with this tour fronted by Scotch-Japanese guitarist Sean Shibe who is going to treat us to a long belt of Hibernian musical craft. With ACO artistic director Richard Tognetti leading the string ensemble, Shibe starts off on a normal classical (acoustic?) guitar, working through some traditional Scottish lute solos collected by the 17th century aristocrat Lady Margaret Wemyss, about whom nobody seems to know anything except her parentage and that she died aged 18. We rush forward to From Galloway by contemporary Scot James MacMillan; this was originally a two-minute clarinet solo from 2000, here transcribed by Shibe. Who continues with a suite of folk songs – could be anything – before we enjoy a new commission from Canadian-born writer Cassandra Miller for guitar and strings. Then Shibe switches to his electric instrument for Lad by American academic and co-founder of the Bang on a Can organization, Julia Wolfe; this is another transcription from the 2007 original that asked for nine bagpipes. Following which it’s over to Irish composer David Fennessy for his Hirta Rounds of 2015 involving nine violins, three violas, three cellos and a double bass; this memorialises a group of now-abandoned islands in Scotland’s St. Kilda archipelago. Like the Miller and Wolfe compositions, Hirta Rounds is receiving its Australian premiere across Shibe’s tour. To end, the electric instrument returns for some selections from another Canadian-Scot: Martyn Bennett’s 1997 nine-track album Bothy Culture which is about all I’ve heard from this musician who died aged 33 in 2005. It’s another arrangement for guitar and strings, but there’s no indication who put this set together. Tickets can be as cheap as $25 for the lucky young and move up to $129 for the affluent old, always remembering that QPAC $7.20 surcharge for exercising your attendance prerogative.

VIRGILIO MARINO

Opera Queensland

Opera Queensland Studio, 149 Grey St., South Bank

Friday November 15 at 7 pm

Here, you take things on trust – not my favourite position. Virgilio Marino is a well-known Queensland tenor; probably less famous than Rosario La Spina but working in the tradition of local legend Donald Smith. I heard Smith in his prime, and La Spina (probably) in his; Marino I’ve yet to come across. Anyway, this occasional recital for the state opera company pairs him with Alex Raineri, so you know the accompaniments will be informed and supportive. But what’s he going to sing? According to the few lines of OQ site information, we’ll hear his ‘favourite arias and songs’ These could include La donna e mobile, Questa o quella and Parmi veder le lagrime because the most important role he has sung for our national company is the Duke of Mantua. Still, he’s performed a host of major roles for Opera Queensland – Don Ottavio, Rodolfo, Nemorino, Pinkerton, Almaviva and Alfredo. Those characters are entrusted with a wealth of arias; as for his ;songs;, I’ve no idea. The event lasts for an hour and you can attend it for $65 full price, $59 if you’re a student or concession-holder (whoopee-do) and a child gets in for $33. As far as I can tell, there’s no charge for using a credit card.

This recital will be repeated on Saturday November 16 at 2 pm but don’t bother: this hearing is sold out. Mind you, there aren’t many seats in the Studio to start off with – a couple of hundred at most.

UMBERTO & NATSUKO

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday November 15 at 7:30 pm

This program is being advertised as the season closing gala and all stops are out, as they say in rugby. The QSO chief conductor Umberto Clerici is conducting two overtures and Strauss’ Four Last Songs, but he’s also returning to his instrument-wielding days and partnering the orchestra’s concertmaster, Natsuko Yoshimoto, in the radiant Double Concerto by Brahms. I, for one, can’t get enough of this masterpiece, which is something of a rarity; the last time I think it was played in Brisbane was when the ACO’s Richard Tognetti and Timo Veikko-Valve gave a dazzling performance about 4 or 5 years ago. So, here we are again with expert soloists and a chance to enjoy the score’s rolling grandeur. But wait: there’s more. Clerici conducts Schubert’s Rosamunde Overture which is no such thing but is as joyfully exuberant (when it gets over its initial solemnity) as the Symphony No. 5. This makes for an amiable if irrelevant preface to the Brahms concerto. For the night’s second half, we begin with Wagner’s Overture to The Flying Dutchman which also sits at odds with the Strauss songs, here sung by soprano Eleanor Amy Lyons. What’s the link between the opera’s youthful wildness or heaped-up tension and the intensely sad final fruits of a resigned and near-disgraced old age? Well, it’s an end-of-term celebration and the aim is clearly to drench listeners in the soporific. Top adult price is $135; children’s tickets are $35 each and there’s plenty of options in between, if no escaping the $7.20 add-on for using your credit card.

This concert will be repeated on Saturday November 16 at 1:30 pm.

MUSICA ALCHEMICA

Musica Viva Australia

Queensland Conservatorium Theatre, South Brisbane

Wednesday November 20 at 7 pm

Last Brisbane cab off the rank for this organization in 2024 is an ensemble put together by Spanish-born violinist Lina Tur Bonet. In fact, there are only three other persons associated on this tour with the metal-transforming ensemble: baroque cello Marco Testori, archlute Giangiacomo Pinardi, and harpsichord Kenneth Weiss. The group has been a mobile one over the years and Bonet has collaborated with Testori and Weiss on some tracks from her records. Most of the 10-part program being presented tonight has featured on these CDs, like the two Biber Mystery Sonatas (Nos. 1 and 10), Westhoff’s Imitatione del liuto, Schmelzer’s Sonata No. 4, the Corelli G minor Sonata and the concluding D minor Sonata from his Op. 5 set, and (I suspect) the Sonata No. 2 from Cima’s Concerti Ecclesistici. The remaining three elements will be Muffat’s G minor Passacaglia for solo harpsichord, a Telemann cello sonata in D Major, and Piccinini’s Toccata (which one?). Entry for adult best seats costs $115; student rush tickets are $15 anywhere in the hall. Once again, Musica Viva stands tall among this city’s entrepreneurs by not adding on booking charges.

CINEMATIC

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday November 22 at 7:30 pm

Nicholas Buc is back to direct this 13-part sequence of soundtrack extracts from films known and unknown – to me. As usual, a lot of composers appear in the lists – two of them get a double serving – but I wonder how enjoyable the experience is if you’re left to summon up the visual recollections in your mind’s eye; it makes for a considerable and lengthy series of mental gymnastics. Proceedings begin with Danny Elfman‘s music for Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, from which I recall only Jack Nicholson’s outrageously prominent Joker. A bit of Australiana follows with something from Caitlin Yeo‘s Ballarat-celebrating New Gold Mountain TV series score of 2021 (not actually cinematic but what’s in a name?). We can relish Carl Davis’ theme for the 1995 Pride and Prejudice TV adaptation, notable for Colin Firth’s totally unnecessary swimming exploits. Joe Hisaishi‘s 2001 score for Spirited Away is represented by One Summer’s Day; Hans Zimmer is honoured by a suite from his 1994 The Lion King score and later his music for Interstellar of 2014; John Williams also manages a double with his Superman march of 1978 and the theme from the original 1993 Jurassic Park. Continuing the TV encroachment, we hear another suite, this one by John Lunn for the Downton Abbey series that kicked off in 2010. Then a true blast from the past in Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, presumably included because of its use in the 1940 Disney Fantasia film starring Mickey Mouse and Leopold Stokowski shaking hands in a prodigious feat of cinematic legerdemain. John Powell is represented by part of what I assume is his music for the original 2010 How to Train Your Dragon which I’ve not encountered (probably because of my age-group, that being over 10). A confusing extract comes next from Alan Silvestri with both a promised suite from his Forrest Gump score of 1994 and a focus on the composer’s Feather Theme; means nothing to me because I gave up on Tom Hanks after his prissiness when faced with Ricky Gervais’ humour at the Oscars. To end, some Howard Shore in the form of The Lighting of the Beacons (the horns of Rohan loudly blowing) extracted from the last film in 2003 of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Pianist Daniel Le is soloist but I don’t know a lot of this music so can’t tell in which parts he takes on prominence. Tickets range from top adult of $135 to a child costing $35 and you can eschew your Coke and popcorn bucket as you have to find $7.20 each order for the sake of QPAC’s accounting woes.

This program will be repeated on Saturday November 23 at 1:30 pm and at 7:30 pm. Prices for entry appear to be the same whenever you go.

BEETHOVEN’S ODE TO JOY

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday November 28 at 7:30 pm

What’s puzzling about this reading of the mighty Symphony No. 9 is its projected length: 1 hour 25 minutes – and an interval is scheduled. Your average performance time is about 65-6 minutes. If you insert a 20-minute interval, you’d have to assume that the work is going to be cut in half, so that we go out for a drink between scherzo and adagio. Can’t see it myself: chief conductor Umberto Clerici plays his Mahler symphonies here straight through, so he wouldn’t be splitting up the more digestible Beethoven, would he? It could detract significantly from the vital experience of hearing the sequence of four movements, rather than just the over-used finale. Clerici’s four soloists are soprano Eleanor Amy Lyons (fresh from negotiating the Four Last Songs by Strauss a fortnight ago), mezzo Ashlyn Tymms, tenor Andrew Goodwin (that’s a brave sound to hear in the Froh variant when we go all Turkish), and bass Samuel Dundas. The Brisbane Chamber Choir will be prepared by director Graeme Morton. Tickets range from a good adult seat for $135 to a child being lucky enough to enjoy the experience for $35. And you won’t forget the joyful privilege of shelling out $7.20 an order to keep the QPAC financial team chuckling in an abundance of fiscal Freude.

This program will be repeated on Friday November 29 at 7:30 pm and on Saturday November 30 at 1:30 pm. No price reduction for the matinee.

VIGNETTES

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday October 6 at 11:30 am

The QSO’s Grand Panjandrum Umberto Clerici is guiding us through this French or French-connected set of scraps, with an emphasis on the saxophone, an instrument invented by a Belgian. This morning’s soloist will be Nick Russoniello who will front – inevitably, given this program’s nature – the Debussy Rhapsody for alto saxophone, written in 1911 with piano accompaniment, then orchestrated eight years later by Roger Ducasse. The only other element of the program featuring this instrument prominently is Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition where the second stop, The Old Castle, features a famous (alto) sax solo. Still, Clerici is conducting selections only from this showcase, so the odds of hearing this gem are about 15 to 1. Also in the allied rather than native-born genre will be Gershwin’s An American in Paris with its brilliant central blues and unintentional (one hopes) suggestions of a loud-mouthed tourist out of his depth. The event opens with a suite from Rameau’s 1735 Les Indes Galantes, hopefully (as footballers say) including that great finale Forets paisibles. Along the way we hear Les Gymnopedies by Satie – presumably all three. And the female-acknowledging extra will be the Overture No. 2 in E flat by Louise Farrenc, written in 1834. That’s an awful lot of playing to fit into a scheduled 70 minutes with no interval, but you’ll be charged from $76 to $109 full price, with various concessions (some of which are useful) as well as the usual outrageous transaction fee of $7.20 attached to every booking.

SOUNDS LIKE AN ORCHESTRA

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday October 11 at 11:30 am

Never too late to start. This program is aimed at children aged from Prep (Is it still called that? My younger granddaughter went through a process called Foundation last year, but that was in Victoria which might as well be a different country) to Grade 6. Conductor Jen Winley has a fair bit on her plate this morning but she’s being assisted by versatile composer/presenter Paul Rissmann and vocalist/educator Ashleigh Denning. First up is the first movement, Dance, from Coleridge-Taylor’s 1909 Othello Suite: a mildly ebullient excursion to get this familiarization process under way. The Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 5 in G minor is also fine, if not exactly calculated to enchant the target audience. For Oz content, we have Elena Kats-Chernin‘s Dance of the Paper Umbrellas from 2013 which exists in seven different versions and is perky enough in a Playschool minimalist manner to appeal to the most jaded of juvenile palates. Rimsky’s bumblebee enjoys a ventilation and the finale is the main theme to John Williams’ Star Wars music. Before that comes a Rissmann composition in Leon and the Place Between which will feature Denning as focal interpreter – a role that she has undertaken at previous airings of this setting of Angela Mcallister’s fantasy adventure. I can’t see anywhere else on the entertainment list where she could feature as well. Tickets are $35 straight, as far as I can tell; no card-use penalty added on.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 12 at 10 am.

REEL CLASSICS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday October 11 at 7:30 pm

All of this content is familiar and none of it comes from the John Williams era of composition for the screen, or soundtracks in a contemporary adolescent’s experience (or a young adult’s, for that matter). Conductor-host Vanessa Scammell brings in some adopted oldies, like the Intermezzo from Mascagni’s 1890 opera Cavalleria Rusticana, used in Scorsese’s 1980 Raging Bull film. She brings back Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette of 1872 which introduced Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV mysteries from 1955 on. But the rest is a sequence of memorable tunes. You have Henry Mancini’s subtle The Pink Panther from 1963; John Barry represented by both Born Free (1966) and Goldfinger (1964), both put in place by London-born arranger/orchestrator/composer Nic Raine; a selection from Elmer Bernstein’s The Magnificent Seven of music of 1960 as well as Leonard Bernstein’s Times Square sequence from that golden oldie of 1949, On the Town. You can’t go past Harold Arlen’s even older (1939) Somewhere over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz in an arrangement by ‘Hurst’ (can that be the ABC’s own Michael?); nor can you get away from the Carousel Waltz/Overture (1945) by Richard Rodgers. Bernard Herrmann is represented by a little suite from his music for Hitchcock’s Psycho, which made 1960 memorable. And we can never forgive/forget Kubrick’s use of Strauss filius’ The Blue Danube for his 2001: A Space Odyssey; written in 1866, the oldest music on this program and, dare I say it, the best? All this is yours for $95 to $135 full price, with lavish concessions for students and children, worthless ones for the elderly, and the usual $7.20 overcharge for taking your money.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 12 at 1:30 pm. Tickets here cost either $115 or $135 full price; the concessions comments above still apply, as does the loathsome supercharge.

ENSEMBLE Q & WILLIAM BARTON

Musica Viva Australia

Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University

Saturday October 12 at 7 pm

The country’s leading chamber music organization here presents Brisbane’s premier mixed ensemble; its nature is reflected in this program, as in everything it attempts. Didgeridoo master William Barton has become a familiar presence on concert platforms, playing others’ music but becoming more notable as his own composer. Tonight is the end of a fortnight’s tour for Musica Viva and the ensemble’s regulars take on a challenge, half the program devoted to works by its interpreters. They begin with Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles, derived from an earlier Musica ricercata (1953) for solo piano, here transferred to wind quintet: flute Alison Mitchell, oboe Huw Jones, clarinet Paul Dean, horn Peter Luff, bassoon David Mitchell. Then follows Paul Dean’s 2018 Concerto for Cello and Wind Quintet, fronted by Trish Dean with the oboe doubling cor anglais and the composer employing both bass and B flat instruments. The soloist also gets to star in the eloquent Brahms Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor, eventually finished in 1865 and here arranged in 2007 for wind quintet and an ad lib double bass (in this instance, almost certainly Phoebe Russell) by German conductor and composer Heribert Breuer. Finally, Barton appears in his own Journey to the Edge of the Horizon, commissioned by Musica Viva for this tour. This involves all the night’s players and invites its listeners into the composer’s indigenous world-view, about which I know as much as most white Australians. Tickets range from $15 student rush to $115 full adult in the stalls. As far as I can tell, there’s no booking/transaction fee, which puts this organization in a class of its own.

CHAMBER PLAYERS 5

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Brisbane

Sunday October 13 at 3 pm

Here’s another example of the QSO moving between the lines. All eight participants in this concert are cellists; I count seven in the orchestra list, but only six are specified in the material relating to this event. We have principal Hyung Suk Bae, Kathryn Close, Andre Duthoit, Matthew Kinmont, Kaja Skorka, and Craig Alister Young. No mention of Matthew Jones, who features in the QSO’s official cello line-up. And anyway, that leaves us one short. Whoever the lucky musician is, s/he/they will first off get to take part in what I assume is an arrangement of Grieg’s joyfully robust Holberg Suite; actually, I’ve found versions for five, six and twelve cellos, so there are certainly precedents. Popper’s Requiem follows, written for three cellos and piano (another un-named participant?), although I’ve also come across an orchestration of this one-movement work by the great 19th century Bohemian cellist-composer. A favourite encore for cello soloists is Faure’s song Apres un reve, which may or may not feature that spectral pianist, or it could be a solo with cello supporters rumbling underneath. Finally, we’ll enjoy Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1 – as the publicity has it, ‘reimagined’ – although, if the phantom pianist really is there, you might have . . . No, it’s the cellos’ afternoon and God knows the music is malleable enough. Tickets range from $35 to $59 with the QSO’s home-ground money-wrenching tax of $7.95 added on to every purchase.

INTO PARADISE: FAURE AND DURUFLE REQUIEMS

Brisbane Chorale

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday October 13 at 3 pm

This is a lovely idea: matching up the two top French Requiems in one program. There’ll be a few moist eyes at the end of Faure’s In Paradisum setting of 1890, but the Durufle 1947 work grabs me from the outset with its Requiem aeternam based on the unforgettable plainchant. Both operate on a non-histrionic level and register as spirit-centred rather than the usual Timor mortis conturbat me tenor of Berlioz and Verdi – even Mozart. And we have the recent memory of Musica Viva’s guests, the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, giving us the spartan choir+organ version of the Durufle to offer a comparison between the chaste all-male timbre and the more credible male-female complex. The two works will be conducted by the Chorale music director, Emily Cox, with venerable organist Christopher Wrench underpinning the process, while the Sinfonia of St. Andrew’s will probably provide smaller-scale accompaniments which exist for both works, although it seems to me that there’s a lot of leeway in the older work, thanks to the composer’s multiple over-writings and changes of opinion.. Soprano Sarah Crane and baritone Shaun Brown take part in the Faure and the Durufle, Crane shifting to mezzo for the latter. Entry ranges from $15 for children and students to a top of $55 for adults with some meagre concessions and a piddling, petty charge of $1.25 for each purchase.

RACHMANINOV’S PIANO

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday October 18 at 11:30 am

Well, you can’t expect the QSO to have imported an instrument used by the composer, can you? What they have in mind is an entertainment that features the Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, a work that these days depends for its reach on the 1996 film Shine, telling the story of David Helfgott. I think this work has now surpassed the once-inevitable Concerto No. 2 in C minor as far as regular live performances are concerned. It’s a cow to play but nowhere near as superhumanly demanding as the film makes out. Anyway, you can bet that guest Nobuyuki Tsujii will have it under control, even if he’s not recorded it. Continuing the obvious theme, the QSO under Eduardo Strausser (who, for a young conductor, will turn 40 next year) will perform Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7 in C sharp minor. The composer wrote an alternate up-beat ending for this 1952 work in order to win a Stalin Prize but instructed that the original quiet finish should be substituted when the roubles were in the bag; as far as I can see, he didn’t win, in any case. But it’s a programming rarity, heard nowhere nearly as often as the Symphony No. 5 or the very popular and crisp Symphony No. 1. So good on (relatively) young Strausser for learning this work and giving it, the composer’s last in the form, a Brisbane airing. Full-price tickets range from $76 to $109 but a child can settle into a good seat for $35; as usual, you have to stump up QPAC’s $7.20 for dealing with your order.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 19 at 7:30 pm with the addition of the Waltz from Tchaikovsky’s ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, presumably to justify the hike in entry costs. Tonight’s full-price tickets move between $95 and $135; your child can get a poor seat for $35, but don’t forget that spirit-grinding surcharge.

RACHMANINOV SYMPHONIC DANCES

Queensland Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra

Conservatorium Theatre, South Brisbane

Friday October 18 at 7:30 pm

Continuing the Russian composer’s fortunate run of performances, the Conservatorium musicians, under an as-yet unknown conductor, is performing this masterful product of Rachmaninov’s final years in America. Despite the writer’s innate melancholy and gloom, this score radiates as much energy and spiritedness as the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with more than enough demands to keep what will be a large orchestra (including a big percussion group) operating at full bore throughout its three movements. Then, you can follow up yesterday morning’s reading of the Piano Concerto No. 3 from Noboyuki Tsujii with this evening’s interpretation of the Piano Concerto No. 2 from Reuben Tsang, a prize-winner at last year’s Sydney International and first place in this year’s Lev Vlassenko. The Rachmaninov double will be interleaved by works from Mozart and the Luxembourgeois/Australian near-recluse Georges Lentz who was highly favoured by Markus Stenz during his time as chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. This event takes your regular two hours including interval and you can gain entry for $45 full price, $35 concession, $25 for a student. As usual, it seems that there’s no transaction fee – a mark in favour of this institution’s fiscal responsibility in times of duress for us all.

MAGIC, MYSTIQUE AND MELANCHOLY

Southern Cross Soloists

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday October 20 at 3 pm

For the most part, this exercise sticks to its last of focusing on the Belle Epoque and the Ballets Russe. The outlier is a new work by Perth-based writer Lachlan Skipworth that involves the talents of didgeridoo player Chris Williams who is the Soloists’ actual soloist in residence. From what I can make out, the score will be a collaboration between Skipworth and Williams in the best ‘what do you do with this un-notatable instrument?’ tradition. There will be a dash of Tchaikovsky with the Meditation movement from the 1878 three-part Souvenir d’un lieu cher violin/piano duet. For an epoque grounding, we’ll hear Saint-Saens’ Le cygne from the 1886 Carnival of the Animals suite; it will/should probably be expounded by a cello. More populism follows with Faure’s elegant Pavane, originally for piano, from 1888; then the composer’s 1898 Fantaisie competition piece for flute and piano. Further to the period comes Dukas’ showy Villanelle of 1906 for horn and piano. The afternoon’s most challenging work features last: Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka. I don’t know how this is going to be carried out; the original 1911 score requires a large orchestra and the 1946 revision isn’t that much smaller. There’s a transcription available of the original for symphonic wind band but most of the other versions are for piano solo, four hands, or two pianos. Perhaps here is where the concert’s two other soloists – violin Catherina Lee and trumpet David Elton – will feature, although it’s pretty obvious that Lee will forefront the Tchaikovsky scrap. If you’re under 30, you can get in for $35; if you have a concession card, you pay $73; normal price is a flat $88. Well, it’s not really flat as you’re lumbered, wherever you sit on the schedule, with QPAC’s $7.20 surcharge for attempting to support these players.

NOBUYUKI TSUJI

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday October 21 at 7:30 pm

A QSO guest performing the Rachmaninov D minor Piano Concerto a few days ago, Nobuyuki Tsujii here presents a recital that doesn’t appear in the orchestra’s schedule; so you’d have to assume that the real sponsor is QPAC on whose site I found this event. Not that the musician is casting a particularly wide programmatic net; for instance, he is opening with Beethoven’s C sharp minor Piano Sonata, the Moonlight. These pages are very familiar and you have to be something of a non-pareil to bring anything new to them. He then gives us a couple of Liszt works: the Consolation No. 2 in E Major (well, at least it’s not the following well-worn No. 3 in D flat) and the Rigoletto Paraphrase that focuses throughout on the Act IV Bella figlia dell’amore quartet and is a brilliant exhibition piece for anyone brave enough to enter its challenging cadenza-rich pages, Then follows the placid, ambiguous Pavane pour une infante defunte by Ravel, one of the composer’s best-known piano solo works. The evening’s novelty comes in Nikolai Kapustin’s Eight Concert Etudes from 1984 which are brilliantly voluble exercises in jazz/classical fusion: the sort of thing Gershwin might have written if he’d lived longer and heard more adventurous works. Kapustin has a keen technical insight into writing out what sounds brilliantly improvisational and he shows a mastery of the medium’s modes – cakewalk, blues, Michael Kieran Harvey-type toccata. It will make for a splendid finale to this otherwise predictable occasion. Mind you, there’ll be some trouble getting in: the performance is sold out, so all you can hope for are cancellations.

SOUNDS OF ITALY

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St., Brisbane

Friday October 25 at 7 pm

This recital opens the second round of the festival’s recitals with artistic director Alex Raineri playing an unusually smaller role in the six events, all of which are offering repeat performances, usually on the following day. Here, the 26-year-old Italian pianist Andrea Molteni – on a tour that takes in Western Australia, the ACT, and Sydney – is presenting an action-packed program that features music by Italian writers and some other works thinly associated with that country. For instance, he opens with Bach’s Italian Concerto; well, to be honest, it’s cast as ‘in the Italian taste’, isn’t it? And he finishes with Liszt’s 1874 Concert Fantaisie on Bellini’s ‘La Sonnambula’ which is something of an adoption rather than home-grown. Still, the body of his presentation is authentic enough. He is playing old Italian in a Scarlatti sonata: the G minor K. 30, known as the Cat’s Fugue. And then he focuses on two contemporary greats. First is Dallapiccola’s Sonata Canonica su Capricci di Niccolo Paganini in four movements that utilize seven of the supreme violinist’s caprices in a language that closes a gap between modernity (in 1943) and Scarlatti’s formalism, especially in the final E flat Major-tinted pages. And then appear two pieces by Petrassi: the 1933 Toccata which in its concise but episodic character mirrors the earliest formats of this type of work, rather than the all-in unstoppable thunderings of the composer’s contemporaries; and the Beckett-inspired Oh! Les beaux jours, the composer’s final piano product which appears to be a diptych composed across a 35-year gap. Entry costs $25 with a $1.99 surcharge, dedicated by the Humanitix booking agents to computer science classes.

This program will be repeated on Sunday October 27 at 10 am.

RENAISSANCE

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St., Brisbane

Friday October 25 at 9 pm

I’m not at all sure what to expect in this event. It presents as a solo violin recital from Julia Hill but there’s no indication of what she will be playing. The program refers to this player’s ‘touching story of recovery and resilience’, which suggests to me an illness or a breakdown, but references to any such crisis are absent on any of the many websites and accounts that focus on the young violinist. And then there’s the event’s title and that could mean anything from a spiritual awakening to a return to physical life. We know Hill is well-travelled, with an obvious penchant for Japan; she has also performed/studied in Switzerland, China and Singapore, thanks to several scholarships and a distinguished course of study at the Queensland Conservatorium. The only ‘dark’ reference I can find is to COVID, which curtailed a lot of Hill’s plans. Not only hers. Anyway, if you’re after a clean slate event where you go in knowing nothing and happy in anticipation, this is for you. Admission is $25 flat fee, with an additional Humanitix surcharge of $1.99 to subsidise books for schools.

This program will be repeated on Sunday October 27 at 12 pm.

PIANO ROOM

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St., Brisbane

Saturday October 26 at 10 am

This enterprise is sponsored by HOTA, Arts Queensland, and the Regional Arts Development Fund. As far as one can tell, the exercise au fond combines poetry, background music, and actual live-performed music. The last-named is provided by Corrina Bonshek and Liszt, the latter in the form of his Chasse-neige study, last of the Transcendental Etudes in the set of twelve published in 1852. As for the poetry component, that will be provided by Merlynn Tong. Bonshek has a four-part function: concept, composer, sound-art and collaborative direction.. Tong’s role falls under three headings: writer, voice actor and co-creator. We are blessed with an ambience designer in Tiffany Beckwith-Skinner, and James Clark (also known as Tonepacer) is the sound engineer for this project. In the middle sits pianist Roger Cui. Piano Room is by way of being a ;fever dream’ and we’ve all enjoyed one or twenty of those in our time. The whole thing reeks of the happenings of three generations past and its publicity suggests a surrender of self and critical faculty that I would find hard, unless Cui’s playing is sensationally good – which it may well be, considering his career and achievements so far. Tong is best known as a playwright and an actor but there’s no ban against expanding into verse. In the end, you get to enjoy a sensual feast with lots of manipulated sounds thrown into the mix. Tickets cost $25 with the customary Humanitix $1,99 charge going towards books for schools.

This program will be repeated at 6 pm.

PRELUDE, ELEGY, BURLESQUE

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St., Brisbane

Saturday October 26 at 12 pm

Two genuflections to tradition, then it’s on with the motley. This recital is being given by the Karlsruhe Concert Duo – cello Reinhard Armleder, piano Dagmar Hartmann – which has been in existence since 1998. The pair open with the G Major Prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 as arranged by Moscheles for cello and piano; well, the keyboard part seems to be original and there’s an added cello melody on top. Happy but mindless. The duo moves to a cello/piano classic with Faure’s Elegie of 1880 which is well-worn territory. Czech writer Jindrich Feld‘s Elegy and Burlesque of 1954/5 follow; unknown territory to me but a bona fide cello/piano duet. Sadly, these musicians then opt for Part‘s 1978 Spiegel im Spiegel where minimal creativity is brought into play; but, my word, it’s very popular and subject to many performance combinations, of which cello and piano is a permissible one. Enter American bassoonist and composer Chuck Holdeman whose Karlsruhemusik Concert Piece, written three years ago, is here enjoying its Australian premiere; nothing seems to be extant about this score but you’d have to suspect that it was written for this lucky pair of executants. Back to the North for Rautavaara’s 1955 Prelude and Fugue for cello and piano; the trouble is that he composed two of them – their fugues based on the names of Bela Bartok (B-E-B-A), the other on the name Einar Englund (E-A-E-G-D). On to another Burlesque, this for the cello-piano format by Nikolai Kapustin from 1999 and packed with jazzy cross-rhythms and syncopations. Finally, the atmosphere drops markedly for Piazzolla’s Le Grand Tango which I, for one, have heard too many times. But at least you have the preceding Kapustin as a benchmark for what you can achieve with popular tropes. Entry is $25, with the Humanitix $1.99 impost for computer science classes.

This program will be repeated on Sunday October 27 at 4 pm.

WAYFARING

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall, 540 Queen St., Brisbane

Saturday October 26 at 2 pm

We have three soloists in this event, the constant fulcrum being the festival’s artistic director and pianist Alex Raineri who accompanies baritone Camilo Lopez and cellist Michael Gibson. Raineri enjoys one definite solo in Debussy’s La plus que lente waltz of 1910, before he accompanies Gibson in Webern’s Op. 11 Three Little Pieces for Cello and Piano from 1914. To conclude the recital, the pair play Ligeti’s two-movement Cello Sonata, finished in 1953 and redolent of his senior countrymen Kodaly and Bartok. In the exercise’s first half, Lopez sings seven Latin/South American songs, most of which I don’t know. Famous Mexican composer Manuel Ponce’s 1912 Estrellita is a familiar quantity but the rest are well outside my ken. First off is Cantiga en la distancia from 1946 by the Cuban Cesar Portillo de la Luz. Then we hear the 1982 Todo cambia by the Chilean expatriate Julio Numhauser, followed by Gardel’s El dia que me quieras, the Argentinian writer’s popular (so they tell me) sung tango of 1934. Next comes Ahora by Otilio Galindez, a Venezuelan countryman of Lopez who wrote this piece in 1978, and then another Argentinian in Carlos Guastavino and his lushly Romantic 1942 La rosa y el sauce. Finally space is found for Venezuelan Simon Diaz’s folk song Caballo viejo which became immensely popular after its publication in 1980. Linking both halves of the recital, Gibson and the hard-worked Raineri perform Gaspar Cassado’s 1931 encore piece Requiebros. As usual, tickets cost $25 for all comers, with a $1.99 for Humanitix to cultivate literacy skills.

This program will be repeated on Sunday October 27 at 6 pm.

FAIRY TALES

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall, 540 Queen St., Brisbane

Saturday October 26 at 4 pm

Finishing this segment of his festival, artistic director/pianist Alex Raineri performs a three-part solo recital. He opens with Ravel’s three-part suite Gaspard de la nuit of 1908, its first movement – Ondine – fitting well into the fairy tale scheme. Le gibet which follows proposes a desolate landscape on which is found a scaffold while a bell tolls incessantly in the distance. Scarbo is a goblin, a very active one and possibly malicious into the bargain; but the piano writing is intensely difficult and marvellous to experience. After this we hear a new work by Ian Whitney, here enjoying its world premiere. So far, no news about a title or any content; let’s hope Raineri is more informed than we are. Finally, the pianist performs Melbourne-based academic/composer Melody Eotvos‘ Piano Sonata No. 2, A Story from the Sand Dunes, written three years ago. and commissioned by Raineri. The piece takes its inspiration from a Hans Christian Anderson story concerning a shipwrecked baby who is of noble birth but lives his life as an adoptee fishing on the Danish shoreline.. This substantial sonata – about 25 minutes long – falls into five segments and speaks in a unique voice that suggests mobile power and emotional restlessness.

This program will be repeated on Sunday October 27 at 2 pm.

QSO FAVOURITES

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday October 27 at 11:30 am

Eduardo Strausser is back to direct this catch-all miscellany that bounds across the orchestral repertoire with frolicsome abandon. To help him on his way, Ashleigh Denning puts in another appearance, following her participation in the QSO events on October 11 and 12 (see above), to host this entertainment. Our morning begins with Bernstein’s Candide Overture from 1956, one of the composer’s smartest and sassiest products gifted with a finely-spun love theme, Oh, Happy We, in the middle of the ruckus. Our own Elena Kats-Chernin comes up next with her Dance of the Paper Umbrellas recycled from the QSO’s October 11 concert (see above). Violinist Ein Na, the orchestra’s Young Instrumentalist Prize winner last year, fronts the Saint-Saens Introduction and Rondo capriccioso delight from 1863 (to be honest, I’d rather hear the melting Havanaise). The Beethoven Symphony No 7 from the fateful year of 1812 is programmed also, but surely not all of it in this 70-minute, no-interval program. Likewise, Tchaikovsky’s 1889 ballet Sleeping Beauty is also on the schedule, but that must refer to the Waltz only – another recycle from Strausser’s October 19 QSO concert. Balancing out the arthouse pretensions of Kats-Chernin’s frolic, we are treated to The Man from Snowy River music by Bruce Rowland for George T. Miller’s 1982 film of happy memory. For a rousing finale, what better than Sibelius’ hymn to freedom, Finlandia? Composed in 1899, this is the ne plus ultra in high-minded nationalism and makes a somewhat lofty companion to Rowland’s derivative sound-track. Full-price tickets cost between $76 and $109 but a child can get a good or a lousy seat for $35; other reductions are available for concessionaires and students. All will pay the QPAC fee of $7.20 for a richly over-funded accounting exercise.

CHAMBERS PLAYERS 4

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio

Sunday September 1 at 3 pm

Just two works being played this afternoon, one of which is a perpetual source of delight: the Brahms String Sextet No. 1 in B flat with its astonishing quantity of warm melodies enjoying the most benign of developments and restatements. As a partner, behold the Sonata for Two Violins by Miklos Rozsa, master of those legendary film scores stretching over a 45-year career. The Hungarian-born writer had the benefit of revising his score several times after its initial appearance in 1933 until the final version appeared in 1973. Which raises the question of what we’re hearing this afternoon because the original is listed as Op. 15, while the revision became Op. 15a; this program lists the former. Whatever happens, the nationalistically-inflected three-movement duet will be performed by Mia Stanton and Sonia Wilson, both from the QSO’s first violins desks. For the sextet, they are joined by violas Imants Larsens and Nicole Greentree, alongside cellos Hyung Suk Bae and Kathryn Close. Once again, I’m perplexed by the recital’s proposed length of 1 hour 20 minutes, as the Brahms lasts about 37 minutes on average while Rozsa’s sonata takes up about 17 minutes. Tickets rage from $59 full adult to $35 for a student, with the QSO’s inexplicably self-indulgent ‘transaction fee’ of $7.95 added on to every purchase.

PUCCINI DOUBLE BILL

Queensland Conservatorium – Griffith University

Conservatorium Theatre, South Brisbane

Tuesday September 3 at 6:30 pm

As usual with the Conservatorium events, I’m in the dark about most details regarding this three-performance season. As you’d expect, the organizers have left out Il tabarro; a pity, because of those two powerful, passionate duets involving Giorgetta. So here we get the trite religiosity of Suor Angelica and then the farce based on one joke that is Gianni Schicchi. You can get involved in the angst that runs through the story of Angelica’s last hour but the eventual redemption from the stigma of suicide sounds to me like special pleading of an unpleasant nature, particularly when faced with the suicide of Doria Manfredi in 1909. The final tableau always strikes me as ridiculously bogus, a sop to the composer’s bourgeois morality and a sad self-justification. The trouble with the comic opera is trying to establish personalities for so many of the dead man’s relatives; two of them are interesting (well, perhaps three), but in productions I’ve seen most of the other six are given nothing to do. Mind you, the compensations include two splendid arias for Rinuccio and Lauretta but the work’s dramatic success depends totally on Schicchi. For all I know, the Con has an able baritone to carry off this difficult role. The conductor will be the establishment’s opera guru, Johannes Fritzsch, and Lindy Hume directs. Tickets are a flat $55 with no extra costs.

This program will be repeated on Thursday September 5 at 7:30 pm and on Saturday September 7 at 2:30 pm.

EUCALYPTUS – THE OPERA

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Wednesday September 4 at 2 pm

From various sources, it seems that Jonathan Mills‘ new opera, based on Murray Ball’s all-but-forgotten novel, received its premiere at the Perth Festival on February 21 this year. The work is also on the schedule of Victorian Opera for mid-October, the difference being that the WA premiere was a concert version while the Brisbane and Melbourne presentations are fully-staged, this Concert Hall one directed by Michael Gow, set and costume designs by Simone Romaniuk. From what I can glean from various sites, Desiree Frahn is singing Ellen and her crazy father Holland will be taken on by Simon Meadows. Mr. Cave is sung by Samuel Dundas and the stranger with talk of a world outside the forest that circumscribes the heroine has been entrusted to Michael Petrucelli. Conductor at the premiere and in Melbourne – and therefore here, probably – is Tahu Matheson. The work is in two acts, I suppose; at least we are informed that the opera in its Brisbane shape lasts 2 hours 20 minutes including interval. The odd thing is that I can’t find out when the central body responsible for its creation – Opera Australia – will be mounting this work at its home base (let’s be honest: its home) in the Opera House. After all, the Perth, Melbourne and Brisbane co-commissioning companies have done it the courtesy of a prompt airing or two in their regular venues. Tickets at QPAC range between $89 and $120, with the usual $7.20 ‘transaction fee’ added on, just to ensure that the event attracts even fewer patrons than it might have done.

This performance will be repeated on Thursday September 5 at 7 pm.

SPIRIT OF THE WILD

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday September 13 at 11:30 am

Here’s an eerie three-part concert that vaults from one historical phase to an extreme opposite. In the beginning is the overture to Haydn’s The Creation oratorio: The Representation of Chaos which, to Haydn’s mind, meant withholding the resolution of cadences. It’s a very Age of Reason musical depiction of the colossal muck-up that preceded the Big Bang, the Grand Deflation, or whatever descriptor tickles your primordial fancy. The world having been established, Umberto Clerici and his musicians move to Nigel Westlake‘s oboe concerto that gives this event its title. In its original 2016 form, the work was scored for Diana Doherty‘s solo (which she recreates here), four horns, timpani, five percussionists, harp, piano and strings. Westlake found his impetus to write from a visit to Bathurst Harbour in Tasmania, although he knew about the state’s wilderness from his youth. The program’s second half involves American writer John Luther Adams‘ Become Ocean of 2014 which is organised in three instrumental groups that will keep the stage crew busy throughout interval. The score works as a palindrome and the little I’ve heard should not perturb Debussy admirers; Adams spends his 40-plus minutes layering textures in what would function quite satisfactorily as the soundtrack to a sub-marine documentary. A child gets in for $35; the full adult rate is $109 for a good seat. And then there’s QPAC’s usurious credit-card-use fee of $7.20.

This program will be repeated on Saturday September 14 at 7:30 pm. Top price increases to $135 and most other costs rise too, but a child’s ticket continues to be $35.

TOGNETTI. MENDELSSOHN. BACH

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday September 16 at 7 pm

For this appearance here, the ACO appears unrestricted by any guest appearance(s). The evening’s solitary soloist will be artistic director Richard Tognetti, who takes front position for Bach’s A minor Violin Concerto which he recorded with the ACO in 2006; some of musicians from that time still survive in the ensemble’s ranks. As a preface, the orchestra plays an octet: Illumine, written in 2016 by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir. I’m assuming that this will be expanded to include all 17 or so of the ACO forces; it originally asked for a double bass and cut back by one on the regular number of violins. Anyway, this short piece has nothing to do with intellectual or spiritual light, but dawn: a natural phenomenon that delights you some of the time. We’re also enjoying the premiere of a work by Adelaide-based composer Jakub Jankowski; it’s apparently for string orchestra so will fit right in here but – as yet – the score lacks a title. And the ACO concludes its night with another octet: that by Mendelssohn which we’ve heard from the group several times and which the ensemble recorded in 2013. Entry costs $25 for a student, plus almost an extra third of that price for daring to enter into a financial transaction with QPAC; top tickets for adults cost $139, plus that $7.20 supercharge.

KRISTIAN WINTHER & DANIEL DE BORAH IN RECITAL

Queensland Conservatorium – Griffith University

Ian Hanger Recital Hall, South Brisbane

Thursday September 19 at 7:30 pm

Here’s hoping that Conservatorium faculty member and pianist Daniel de Borah attracts a larger crowd than his last recital in the Hanger space attracted. Tonight he’s partnered with violinist Kristian Winther of whom I’ve heard and seen very little since he left the Australian String Quartet in 2014. In this short outing, the duo perform two 20th century gems. One is the Shostakovich Violin Sonata of 1968, written for Oistrakh and an unsettling instance in its first movement of the composer coming to terms with 12-tone music: that is – use it, then lose it. Still the remaining two segments make for an intensely involving experience. The other piece is Bartok’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in three movements. Written in 1921, this work shows the composer at his most hard-bitten and confrontational with some shatteringly virtuosic passages for both executants. What makes this event most attractive is not the quality of the playing (about de Borah, I have no qualms) but the fact that you rarely hear either of these works on a mainstream program; in fact, I’ve not come across either of them in years. Tickets are $22 and, as far as I can tell, there are no concessions. But there’s also no booking fee – o brave new conservatorium that has such accountants in it.

CHAMBER MUSIC SIDE-BY-SIDE WITH THE L. A. PHILHARMONIC

Queensland Conservatorium – Griffith University

Conservatorium Theatre, South Brisbane

Friday September 20 at 7:30 pm

This sounds sensational but, as you’d expect, needs to be taken with several grains of salt. For one, the Los Angeles orchestra has not arrived at the Queensland Con en masse; just a few of them have made the trip – a wind quintet. Indeed, the group is here primarily to give an Utzon recital in the Sydney Opera House on Sunday September 22. Perhaps there’ll be common ground between the two events but at this Brisbane exercise, the American players will be joined by staff and students for a solid two-hour presentation. The visitors are flute Denis Bouriakov, oboe Marc Lachat, clarinet Boris Allakhverdyan, horn Andrew Bain (whom I remember from a stint he put in with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra over a decade ago), and bassoon Whitney Crockett. It’s great to see that the visitors are all principals with the LA Phil and – a special Californian tribute to the rightness of things – they’re all male. As usual, there’s no indication what the mixed ensemble will be playing; if you’re interested, you’ll just have to come along on spec. Students get tickets for $25 apiece, the concession rate is $35, and the full adult price is $45. In line with previous recital/concert bookings at this venue, I can’t detect a superimposed fee.

REQUIEM FOR THE LIVING

The Queensland Choir

Old Museum, Bowen Hills

Saturday September 21 at 7:30 pm

To begin, the choir will be singing Vivaldi’s Gloria RV 589 (vague memories of playing continuo organ for a joint PLC/Xavier performance in Monash University’s Robert Blackwood Hall too many years ago) which ranks among the composer’s best-known vocal works and remains buoyant throughout its half-hour length. I can’t find out the names of the three soloists, if there’ll be an orchestra (oboe, trumpet, strings, continuo), or who is conducting (Kevin Power, probably). After this comes the title work by American composer Dan Forrest, which exists in three versions; I suspect that the full orchestral one will not be given this evening. The composer sets his work in five movements: an Introit/Kyrie, an amalgamated set of Scriptural scraps in sympathy with the usual Dies irae (why not take on Thomas of Celano’s original?), an Agnus Dei (out of sequence in the Mass liturgy), then a Sanctus, finally a Lux aeterna. What I’ve heard of this work is heartfelt and simple-minded, traditional and smoothly accomplished with no problems for singers or instrumentalists. Finally, I’m unsure about the venue: the Choir’s website refers to ‘The Old Museum’, but the Old Museum (Bowen Hills) has nothing on its own website about this concert. Are there two Old Museums in this city?

FROM THE NEW WORLD

Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra

Old Museum Concert Hall, Bowen Hills

Sunday September 22 at 3 pm

Here’s a lushly Romantic program that opens with two difficult pieces for any orchestra to negotiate, and then concludes with a magniloquent repertoire warhorse that holds a closetful of taxing moments. Conductor Steven Moore sets the bar high with the Prelude and Liebstod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, following these studies in deferred resolution with Chausson’s Poeme de l’amour et de la mer. The afternoon’s hard-worked soprano in both works is Nina Korbe who will be tested early on by her instant entry into the Wagner outpouring. I remember a hapless guest singing with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra many years ago, vocally clutching for her entry point and looking desperately at conductor Oleg Caetani for a note after the Vorspiel‘s unhelpful concluding, almost inaudible low G in the cellos and basses; she came in several steps away from the actual E flat required. The French composer’s three-part song-cycle makes a fine if controlled partner to Isolde’s massive stream of abnegation and assertion. Chausson sets up two eloquent vocal landscapes on either side of a refreshing, if puzzling, interlude. And good fortune to the players when venturing into Dvorak’s evergreen Symphony No. 9 with its double-sided character of being both a celebration of the composer’s time in America and his anticipated return home to the welcoming streets of Prague.

FEMALE COMPOSER CONCERT

School of Music, University of Queensland

Level 4, Zelman Cowen Building, University of Queensland

Monday July 1 at 6 pm

As usual with events that feature student participants (and initiatives like this one that are student-led), information amounting to specifics is vague, the project well-meant if amorphous. Some names are inevitable – Clara Schumann and Amy Beach, who has recently rocketed to stardom as one of the few American women music writers of any note since the country gained its independence. Others are known but generally not honoured, like Ethel Smyth and Louise Farrenc. Of course, we will explore the Australian repertoire as well, even if the only named writer is Sally Greenaway, while the others number current and rising composers from within the UQ School of Music – which is fair enough although you have to worry about gender-centric occasions like this one where today’s commentators and critics are expected to praise without stint, regardless of quality. As far as I can tell, this event is free but you have to register on the school’s/university’s website.

DIDO AND AENEAS

Opera Queensland/Circa

Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday July 11 at 7: 30 pm

When I first moved to the Gold Coast, I came into the capital to watch the opening night of a collaboration between these two organizations that centred on Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. The Circa troupe has been a notable contributor to the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s entertainments and one of these has been brilliant in mining a link between athleticism and musical performance, but the Gluck exercise failed to convince – basically – that the acrobats/gymnasts were informing the opera. Mind you, I had the same reaction to an effort by director Stephen Page working for the Victoria State Opera and investing his efforts into giving this opera a new Bangarra context. The trouble is a disconnect between what you hear and what you see. Will this be the case for Purcell’s small-scale work? Probably. As with Gluck’s revolutionary masterpiece, the cast for Dido and Aeneas is small: Anna Dowsley sings the Queen of Carthage, Katie Stenzel her handmaiden Belinda, the casual Trojan refugee is Sebastian Maclaine, and the Sailor who gets to lead that wonderful bounding chorus is Lachlann Lawton. No mention of who is handling the supernatural roles – yet. Conducting the hour will be Benjamin Bayl with Yaron Lifschitz from Circa directing and stage designing. For all that, the best reading I’ve heard of this opera came in a concert by ‘Les Arts Florissants’ in Melbourne’s Hamer Hall over 20 years ago: a luminous and unforgettable night. Tickets cost between $65 and $129, with the usual overcharge of $7.20 as a transaction fee.

Further performances will be presented on Saturday July 13 at 1:30 pm, Tuesday July 16 at 6:30 pm, Thursday July 18 at 7:30 pm, Saturday July 20 at 7:30 pm, Tuesday July 23 at 6:30 pm, Thursday July 25 at 7:30 pm, and Saturday July 27 at 1:30 pm.

LEV VLASSENKO PIANO COMPETITION AND FESTIVAL – GRAND FINAL

Conservatorium of Music, Griffith University

Conservatorium Theatre

Saturday July 13 at 6 pm

It strikes me that not many people in the country’s general public outside of Queensland know much about this competition which is one of the major piano events in our music competitive calendar. Slightly longer than the big Sydney marathon, it runs from its first rounds starting in Sydney on Wednesday June 19 to the grand final on this date. There’s room for some stabs at contemporary work but the main fare is solidly traditional; just look at the list of prescribed concertos. More than a little bemusing is the list of finalists which includes some names from previous Vlassenko competitions. Still, unlike Sydney, the Brisbane exercise seems to involve only locals (including, for some strange reason, New Zealanders), and it’s held every two years rather than Sydney’s usual rate of every four years (recently disrupted: thanks again, COVID). Tonight, I assume that it’s concerto night because the Queensland Symphony Orchestra is involved, although the conductor isn’t mentioned. It costs $90 for the right-hand side of the hall, $110 for the left – which makes no sense, but such a distinction never has. Fortunately, this event has managed to escape the bad publicity and overt recriminations that the Sydney event enjoyed in earlier times; probity, thy name is Queensland.

XANADU SKY

Ensemble Offspring

Nickson Room, Zelman Cowen Building, University of Queensland

Thursday July 25 at 1 pm

This group is (on paper) a sextet, founded and headed by percussionist Claire Edwardes. The group is a touring one and this particular program involves three musicians: Edwardes, double bass Benjamin Ward (unlisted in the ensemble’s website but a 15-year-long member of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra), and piano Alex Raineri (without whom no chamber music recital in Brisbane is complete but who isn’t an Offspring member as such). Anyway, the program is impressively eclectic, starting with American writer Caroline Shaw‘s 2012 Gustave Le Gray for solo piano, which takes Chopin’s Op. 17 A minor Mazurka as its kicking-off point. Next is a two-year-old double bass solo by First Nations writer Brenda Gifford called Walimbaya (Return) that was given its Canberra premiere two years ago by Ward. We move to Andrian Pertout‘s Musica Battuta of 2016 which exists in nine versions; possibly this one will most likely be the percussion one as Edwardes is slated to play a solo, and good luck with what promises to be mathematical dynamite. Last and longest will be an Australian premiere: (another American) Sarah Hennies‘ Spectral Malsconcities from 2018 which involves all three of these instrumentalists (Edwardes on 4-piece drum-kit, with appurtenances). This score lasts for about about half an hour and consists of repeated sequences of bars – anywhere from 30 times to 8 – and is a splendid example of superimposed rhythms that don’t settle into anything solid but wear you down by simple aural intrusion. Offspring’s recital is free but you have to register on the University’s website, just as for the ‘Female Composer Concert’ on July 1.

THE CHOIR OF KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

Musica Viva Australia

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday July 25 at 7 pm

Back again for another Musica Viva appearance or nine, this famous choral group is presenting two programs which will be heard only in Sydney. The rest of us – Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane – will not be treated to the Stravinsky Mass or Tallis’ Videte miraculum but will have to make do with Zadok the Priest and Durufle’s Requiem. Also being sung is Bainton’s And I saw a new Heaven which is splendid Anglican affirmation but only brings resentful thoughts to my mind about how Bainton refused to employ Schoenberg at the New South Wales Con where he was director because he was scared of the contemporary, preferring to bore Sydney witless with works by his fellow Brits. Still, he was blinkered enough to have ignored Bartok and Stravinsky as well, evident from his concert programs and puffery for conservative languages, keeping Sydney in the serious music backblocks for decades. As well, we get to hear a new commission in Australian composer Damian Barbeler‘s Charlotte; that’s a compulsory part of both programs for maximum exposure but the positive thing is that the composer is well-known for his multimedia efforts, so there’s a chance that the singers will branch out from their usual style of presentation. But probably not. Daniel Hyde has been the choir’s director since 2019, but is this his first time on an Australian tour? I think it might be. Tickets are currently only available in the rear stalls ($55 to $102) and the balcony ($55 to $130) and I don’t know about any excessive scrounging fee.

A HEAVENLY VIEW

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Bank

Friday July 26 at 7:30 pm

To be frank, I’m almost longing for a performance of the Mahler Symphony No. 4 as the composer wrote it. Over the past few years, we’ve become very familiar with Erwin Stein’s reduction for Schonberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances. On this night, we get to hear Klaus Simon’s re-working of 2007 for the Holst Sinfonietta playing in Freiburg. The woodwind are one each (flute/piccolo, oboe/cor anglais, clarinet/bass clarinet, bassoon), one horn, two percussionists, piano, harmonium or accordion, and a single member of the five string sections, with a maximum allowable of 6-5-4-3-2. This is the composer’s most approachable symphony with a form in each movement that is easy to assimilate, as well as some brilliantly pointillist orchestration, the score ending in a lied: The Heavenly Life, extracted from Des Knaben Wunderhorn collection. Soprano soloist in this will be Alexandra Flood, while the QSO concertmaster, Natsuko Yoshimoto, is directing the work which is scheduled to last for 1 hour 20 minutes without an interval. This last factor takes me by surprise because I’ve not come across an interpretation that can stretch to an hour. Tickets cost $79 for an adult, the usual laughable reduction to $71 for concession card holders, and $35 for students and children. Don’t forget the intrepid QSO overcharge of $7.95 for handling your business.

This program will be repeated on Saturday July 27 at 3 pm.

MASS IN BLUE

The Queensland Choir

Old Museum, Bowen Hills

Saturday July 27 at 7:30 pm

A jazz quartet – piano, sax, bass, drum-kit – appears to be the only backing needed for this program that centres around English composer Will Todd‘s mass written in 2003 and which asks for a soprano soloist as well as your usual SATB choral body. I’ve listened to parts of it and its sound-world is moderately groovy if more than a bit self-conscious, as I’ve found be the case whenever jazz is used as the basis for liturgical music of any kind. The whole business of jazz-in-church also reeks of patronizing your audiences if they’re believers because, to put it mildly, that sound-world isn’t compatible with the transcendent properties of the church’s rituals and ceremonies. Still, it’s worth a try, isn’t it? I’d say no but that’s no reason not to experience this performance which is taking place in a wholly secular environment. As well, the Choir and a pianist and double bass will present George Shearing‘s Songs and Sonnets from Shakespeare, premiered in 1999 and made up of the following: [Come] Live with me and be my love (which I always thought was Marlowe), When daffodils begin to peer from The Winter’s Tale, It was a lover and his lass from As You Like It, When daisies pied and violets blue from Love’s Labours Lost, Who is Silvia? from Two Gentlemen of Verona, Fie on sinful fantasy from The Merry Wives of Windsor, and When that I was and a little tiny boy from Twelfth Night. In other words, no sonnets at all. Tickets range from $20 to $60, but don’t expect much of a reduction for your concession card; they’re available for $55. For all that, there’s no handling fee.

FAREWELL TOUR

David Helfgott

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday July 28 at 2 pm

At the age of 77, this well-loved Australian pianist, given temporary immortality in the 1996 film Shine for which Geoffrey Rush won the Best Actor Academy Award, is leaving the concert-giving platform. I’ve seen Helfgott play two or three times, the first with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 which was given to a packed house and greeted with inordinately ardent applause. But it struck me then that people were reacting to the man rather than his interpretation, admiring him for coping with his condition and actually getting through the concerto, even if the journey was not without exaggerations and distortions. But over the past 50 years or so Helfgott has managed to follow a career of sorts, emerging every so often to show his oddly touching personality and stage mannerisms. The big attraction this afternoon will be the afore-mentioned Rachmaninov concerto in a two-piano arrangement made by the composer in 1910. Helfgott’s partner in this exercise is British pianist Rhodri Clarke – good luck to both, but they actually recorded this work in 2017. Also, the program contains favourite pieces by Chopin (Helfgott’s recorded all the populars like the Raindrop Prelude, Fantasie-Impromptu, A flat Polonaise) and Liszt (could be La Campanella, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Funerailles, Un sospiro, the B minor Sonata). If you want to see a legend (not flawless by any means) for the final time, you can get in for between $69 and $109, plus the add-on of $7.20 imposed by QPAC for inexplicable reasons.

THE LOST BIRDS WITH VOCES8

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday June 8 at 7:30 pm

It’s getting a bit difficult to keep track of who or what is playing with or under the auspices of the QSO. But it seems pretty clear that this fine British vocal octet is going to work through a mainly avian-favouring program with the orchestra. The night opens with Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture which has vague suggestions of sea birds – or does it? Then Jack Liebeck, Royal Academy professor and director of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, takes the solo line in Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending, But this will be in an arrangement format with the violinist supported by the vocal octet and the orchestra; you may well ask why. More regular fare comes with American writer Caroline Shaw‘s and the swallow which is a version of part of the opening verses to Psalm 84 for SSAATTBB choral forces, and very pretty it is, too, if brief. But the big offering is Christopher Tin‘s The Lost Birds, a 12-movement cantata about 45 minutes in length, written for chorus, harp, timpani, percussion and string orchestra, which memorializes specific birds facing extinction (if not already in that state). This exercise is a repetition of a LIVE from London broadcast of October 15 2022 but without the Mendelssohn. You can hear this for the customary $95 to $135 full price, depending on where you sit, with the usual concessions that can amount to a lot, but can also be trivial. No matter what you pay, you still get stung $7.20 for booking.

This program will be repeated almost intact on Sunday June 9 at 11:30 am. Only the Mendelssohn overture will be omitted. Attendance is cheaper this morning, ranging from $76 to $109 full price, but you still need to find $7.20 for putting your money down.

SING WITH VOCES 8

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Bank

Monday June 10 at 6:30 pm

While they’re in town,. the members of VOCES8 are spreading the word for choral music and it’s a bit of an improvement on those wild-and-woolly pub congregations belting out crowd favourites. You can acquire the music in advance (it’s on the QSO website, if you’re after a sneak preview), and thereby you can prepare – or not. The promoters say, ‘No previous singing experience is required’, but I think that might make the 2 hours 30 minutes duration of this workshop an unpleasant experience for those choristers who show up expecting a bit of upper-level training. The group’s factotum, Paul Smith, will lead the session as the public and the British octet grapple with: Marta Keen‘s Homeward Bound which Smith has arranged for SATTB with extraordinary confidence in the plethora of tenors that will turn up; Grace by Bobby McFerrin, Yo-Yo Ma and Roger Treece in a simple SATB arrangement by Smith; Jonathan Dove/Alasdair Middleton‘s Music on the Waters gets the Smith treatment and starts with three treble clef voices that expand to five by the end in the most free-wheeling of the four pieces; and finally, the traditional tune Wayfaring Stranger which Smith eventually builds to another SATTB organization. You can enlist in this exercise for $65, and add on the $7.95 ‘transaction fee’ that the QSO slugs you with when left to its own devices.

2024 COMPOSE PROGRAM

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio

Saturday June 15 at 6:30 pm

This reminds me of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s start-of-year Cybec 21st Century Australian Composers Program where a lucky few university-level applicants get to submit a new orchestral score for mentoring by a name composer, then performance in a January free-for-all, the best being chosen for inclusion in the Metropolis season later in the year. The QSO opts for secondary school composers and is giving space to 29 young writers: four from Brisbane Girls Grammar, four from Kenmore State High, three from Narangba Valley State High, three from Toowoomba Anglican, and the other 15 from individual schools (I suppose). Mentors for these hopefuls are QSO cellist Craig Allister Young and Griffith University’s Timothy Tate. Two conductors are involved: QSO violin Katie Betts and Nathaniel Griffiths from the Australian Conducting Academy. Ticket prices range from $20 to $39, which is a step up from Melbourne’s event which I think was free, thanks to the sponsor’s liberality. But you’re still liable for the QSO’s $7.95 impost which, if you’re a student, is getting close to being half the cost of your ticket. Can you really call this encouraging the young?

CHAMBER PLAYERS 2

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio

Sunday June 16 at 3 pm

Eight violins, a viola, a cello, a piano: that’s the oddly-shaped personnel for this Sunday afternoon outing for some members of the QSO. The program ends in orthodoxy with a string quartet by Fanny Mendelssohn: the only one extant from her mature years as a writer. I loved the fact that her brother disapproved of it but she didn’t change a note; God knows it’s more ardent than most of his efforts in the form. In front of this comes Australian writer Anne Cawrse‘s Songs Without Words, a piano trio in three movements – Ornamental, Lied, Swansong – that serves as a minor homage to the Mendelssohn siblings and to a certain extent echoes their language. But the entertainment begins with Andrew Norman‘s Gran Turismo of 2004. Written for eight violins, it takes its impetus from the racecar game, Baroque concerto grossi and Italian Futurism (Balla, Russolo, Marinetti and all the gang). The whole outpouring lasts for about 8 minutes and will feature Natsuko Yoshimoto, Alan Smith, Rebecca Seymour, Brenda Sullivan, Mia Stanton, Stephen Tooke, Sonia Wilson and Ann Holtzapffel. The viola and cello in Fanny’s piece will be Charlotte Burbrook de Vere and Kathryn Close respectively, and the pianist for Cawrse’s trios is Therese Milanovic. This event is scheduled to last for 1 hour 20 minutes without interval; I can see it lasting half that time, unless the players give us some really substantial introductory addresses. Tickets range from $35 for a child to $59 for a concession-less adult with the QSO’s typical add-on fee of $7. 95 for ludicrously over-priced book-keeping.

ALTSTAEDT PLAYS

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday June 17 at 7 pm

Haydn bookends this program, directed by guest and solo cellist with theatrically unruly hair, Nicolas Altstaedt. It’s the German/French musician’s debut with the ACO and he hasn’t spared himself by performing the highly popular Haydn Cello Concerto in C Major in a new (and probably necessary) arrangement for strings (obviating the original score’s demand to carry around pairs of oboes and horns on a national tour), as well as Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations (also in an all-strings version so that the pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns in the original can disappear, leaving only the memory of their timbres behind). As for the other Haydn, we’re to hear selections from the Seven Last Words of Christ: that series of meditations originally written for orchestra, then cut down for string quartet, further curtailed for piano, finally appearing in a soloists/choral/orchestral version – all organized by the composer – but this is another arrangement, probably of the string quartet version. Moving abruptly to our times, Altstaedt leads another arrangement of Kurtag’s 1989 Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervanszky (the Hungarian composer whose first name was Endre); originally a string quartet, it holds 15 short movements, the whole lasting about 11/12 minutes. As well, the ACO revives the Four Transylvanian Dances of Sandor Veress (1944, 1949), actually composed for string orchestra, which the ensemble recorded back in 1995. In the only contemporary music on this night, Altstaedt takes his forces through Xenakis’ Aroura of 1971, another string orchestra original which will make a strange, unsettling interruption to this otherwise staid collection of works. Prices of tickets range from $25 to $150, with a ‘handling fee’ of $8.50, which is really getting up there if you’re angling for the cheapest seat available.

KIRILL GERSTEIN

Musica Viva Australia

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Wednesday June 19 at 7 pm

This pianist is a well-known name in the virtuosic field, especially in the United States, of which country he is a citizen despite being born in Russia. Across his career, he has made a few odd repertoire choices, including the first recording of the original score to Tchaikovsky’s B flat minor Piano Concerto. This seems to be his first Musica Viva tour and may be his first time on these shores, for which occasion he has assembled a far-reaching, eclectic program. He is presenting two Chopin pieces: the A flat Major Polonaise-fantaisie which is packed with stops and starts and never seems to settle into a real dance; and the F minor Fantaisie which is a powerful and formally compact narrative. Both lie marginally outside the usual waltz/polonaise/etude/prelude/impromptu/scherzo/mazurka field that many other pianists plough – which is all to the good. Other off-centre gems include Liszt’s E Major Polonaise, Schumann’s Carnival of Vienna. Faure’s last nocturne, and the imperturbably fluid/spiky Three Intermezzi by Poulenc. The odd men out are a new Transcendental Etude by Australian composer Liza Lim, commissioned for this tour by Musica Viva; and a homage to the elder French composer in a Nocturne from the Apres Faure collection by American jazz pianist/composer/arranger Brad Mehldau. You can gain admission for between $15 and $115; I don’t know about any booking/purchase/handling fee.

BRAHMS & RACHMANINOV

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday June 21 at 11:30 am

What you see is what you get: two works, one each, by the named composers. The main element will be the Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor with its chaconne finale and as close to perfect as a final symphony gets for any composer. The conductor is Jaime Martin, currently chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and apparently flourishing in the job. I’ve never seen him at work so know nothing about his handling of the standard repertoire. Alongside this splendour comes Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, neglected for several decades until its use in the 1953 romance trilogy film The Story of Three Loves where its 18th variation became a Hollywood trope for unfulfilled passion. This performance features soloist Denis Kozhukhin whose expertise was well demonstrated by his performance of all four Rachmaninov piano concerti at a Barcelona festival two years ago. I’ve not seen mention of his encounters with this rhapsody, but you should expect something informed and gripping. You can gain admission for between $76 and $109 full price, with the usual concessions available, and the inevitable $7.20 surcharge

This program will be repeated on Saturday June 22 at 7:30 pm, with the addition of Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin for absolutely no reason I can think of. Here, you pay more – from $95 to $135 full price; Ravel doesn’t come cheap.

PIERS LANE

Medici Concerts

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday June 23 at 3 pm

Brisbane’s well-loved near-native son is appearing under the Medici banner again. You’ll hear quite a few surprises in this program which begins with Bach’s French Suite No. 2 in C minor – which makes a change from hearing the regularly-trotted-out No 5 in G Major. Mind you, this is a rather dour work but can shine in the right hands. John Field’s Variations on a Russian folk song is an amiable enough creation, written in one continuous block and recently recorded by Lane for Hyperion. A better-known work follows with Mozart’s F Major Sonata K 332: three elegantly-shaped and good-humoured landscapes. A bracket of Chopin follows, beginning with the F minor Fantaisie that Kirill Gerstein is playing four days previous (see above); as well, Lane performs the A flat Etude that kicks off the Op. 25 set, plus the D flat Op. 28 Prelude. The recital’s formal program ends with Glazunov’s Theme and variations from 1900, apparently based on a Finnish folk tune. There are 15 variants, starting off sensibly enough but turning virtuosic in the later reaches; this also has been recorded by Lane, on the same disc as the Field variations mentioned above. Admission is $90, with a concession price of $80 available (big deal) and the atrocious QPAC booking fee of $7.20 tacked on.

DENIS KOZHUKHIN PIANO RECITAL

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio

Monday June 24 at 7:30 pm

Coming close on the heels of Piers Lane’s recital, Kozhukhin is playing a solo recital under the QSO’s auspices. Mind you, it’s not a lengthy event – scheduled to last 1 hour 10 minutes – but you get two big masterpieces for your time. The Russian-born pianist lays down the law with Schubert’s B flat Piano Sonata, the last one in the canon and a gripping saga from start to finish. As most performers view it, this sonata stands up as half a program in a full recital but tonight it is paired with the Liszt B minor Sonata, the model of four-part compression under the high Romantic banner and just 10 minutes shorter than the Schubert. It’s hard to se this pair sitting comfortably side by side, particularly when you consider the Hungarian writer’s tendency towards the flamboyant although this score is less glittering than many another in the composer’s output. Kozhukhin has played the B flat Sonata fairly recently, last year in Alicante, but the B minor score has not appeared on his recent recital content. You can hear this program for $35 if you’re a student or child, $79 full fee, and a brave $71 if you happen to have a concession card – big whoops. And never forget the obligatory $7.95 penalty.

AUSTRALIAN STRING QUARTET

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio

Thursday June 27 at 7:30 pm

You get to hear three substantial scores in this recital that will run for an uninterrupted 1 hour 20 minutes. The ensemble opens with what I expect will prove the most difficult to imbibe element: Beethoven No 12 in E flat – the first and least performed of the final group; of string quartets. It’s still a challenge for even expert ensembles, not least for its formal quirks and often unsettling nomadic quality (that meandering Adagio). And the ASQ ends with Korngold’s No. 2, also in E flat and written in 1933, just before he decamped to Hollywood and ‘real’ fame, This is a true rarity and I can’t remember hearing any performance live. Still, there’s always room for the composer of Die tote Stadt (which I’ve only experienced live in a concert performance at one of the early Brisbane Music Festivals) and the mellifluous Violin Concerto (that I last heard from the outstanding James Ehnes). Also, the ensemble is presenting Harry Sdraulig‘s new String Quartet No. 2, here enjoying its premiere by its commissioners on the ASQ’s national tour. I’m impressed by this young Australian’s works whenever they turn up and so have high hopes for this re-entry into a difficult form. Tickets are the same as for Kozhukhin’s recital above; same measly concession, same disadvantaging purchase fee.

MY HOMELAND

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday May 3 at 7:30 pm

I’ve seen this done once before, in Melbourne, but for the life of me I can’t remember who put that city’s symphony orchestra through the whole cycle. The homeland is that of Smetana, the Bohemian master, who wrote six tone poems depicting various scenes or characters from his country. He starts with Vysehrad, the castle in Prague where the country’s kings had their seat; then Vltava, better known as The Moldau, referring to the river that eventually flows through Prague – the only well-known entity in the cycle and refreshingly picturesque; Sarka comes next, depicting the career of a female warrior with a penchant for killing men; followed by Z ceskych luhu a haju which is usually translated as From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields, gifted with an arresting opening and the only other one of the group that some of us might know; Tabor is fifth, referring to the stronghold of the Hussites which is still thriving; finally, Blanik is a mountain in which King Wenceslas and his knights sleep and will awaken when the country faces its gravest peril. Leading this nationalistic excursion will be Czech conductor Tomas Netopil, so at least you know the performances should be suitably coloured. The QSO’s normal range of full-price tickets falls between $95 and $135, with plenty of fruitful concessions available, but never forgetting the unreasonable $7.20 ‘transaction fee’ or grift.

MATTHEW RIGBY & ALEX RAINERI

FourthWall 2024 Concert Series

540 Queen St., Brisbane

Friday May 3 at 7:30 pm

Part of the ongoing FourthWall series of presentations that have been popping up as the year progresses, this duo recital from violinist Matthew Rigby and pianist Alex Raineri is well-stacked with material. The players open with Beethoven, the Sonata No. 2 in A Major, which is rarely heard compared to the Spring, Kreutzer or the C minor that Brahms is said to have transposed at sight because Remenyi refused to adjust his instrument’s strings for a semitone-flat piano. Then we hear Szymanowski’s solitary Violin Sonata in D minor from 1904 which lasts about as long as the Beethoven. A few touches of Australiana arrive, first in the world premiere of Michael Bakmcev‘s Nocturne; as you can understand, no details are available about this piece anywhere. Another nocturne appears, this one a 1944 miniature by Margaret Sutherland in a deft remembrance of an older native composer. And the duo finishes its entertainment with the Ravel Sonata No. 2 – which is the one we all know and love with its Blues middle movement; yet again, the No. 1 of 1897 is left unexplored. Well, that’s an amiable program, substantial enough to have an interval (you get wine at the break) and the whole thing lasts 90 minutes only. Admission is a straight $35, with a niggling $2.63 booking fee added on by Humanitix.

This program will be repeated on Saturday May 4 at 1 pm.

MOZART REQUIEM

Brisbane Chorale

Old Museum Concert Hall, Bowen Hills

Sunday May 5 at 3 pm

If memory serves correctly, this hall space is a small one; judging by the Chorale’s website, few seats are still available and most of those are at the rear or on the side, well out of the full-blast zone. But prices range from $20 to $60 and, as far as I can tell, there’s no surcharge for taking your money. For this reading, the Chorale is associated with the Brisbane Symphony Orchestra which I hope is rich in trombones to follow those agile choral lines. And some basset horns would go down nicely, as well, particularly for those magnificently evocative opening bars to the Introit. The choir’s regular director, Emily Cox, has charge of proceedings and her soloists are soprano Sarah Crane, alto Beth Allen, tenor Connor Willmore, and bass Shaun Brown. On the assumption that the group will use the Sussmayr completion, the experience should last about an hour, give or take five minutes, Everybody who has suffered through the Amadeus film knows that Mozart stopped at the Lacrimosa and a drop in inspiration that hits at the Offertory is remarkable. But the work ends with a recapitulation of the composer’s earlier material that sends us home slightly purified. It’s a great experience but the best Requiem I ever heard was as part of a real funeral in Austria. Even for free-thinking Mozart, appropriateness was the name of the game.

MOZART’S MASS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Elizabeth St.

Friday May 10 at 7:30 pm

The QSO moves out of the concert hall and studio to help celebrate the 150th anniversary of the city’s Catholic cathedral. Chief conductor Umberto Clerici directs the Mass in C minor; well, what there is of it. Most of the Credo‘s latter verses are missing after the Et incarnatus, and the Agnus Dei has disappeared completely (if it was ever written). Still, the score makes a formidable composition and fleshes out your big Mozart choral experiences after the Requiem of five days previous. The composer asks for two soprano soloists (Sara Macliver and Sofia Troncoso), a tenor (Andrew Goodwin) and a bass (David Greco) as well as a double choir (Brisbane Chamber Choir and St. Stephen’s Cathedral Schola). As a happy prologue to this swelling act comes Lili Boulanger’s 5-minute setting of Psalm 24 (Psaume XXIV) which uses four horns, three trumpets, four trombones, a tuba, harp, organ, and timbales – as well as an SATB choir. The piece lasts about five minutes but all sorts of preconceptions could surge up when the choir breaks into the French composer’s version of Lift up your heads, o ye gates. Seats are going for between $35 and $135, with a bracket-creeping booking fee gouge of $7.95 per order – and this for an event scheduled to last for 1 hour 20 minutes interval-less; obviously lots of scene-changing and altar rearranging will take up the extra time.

This program will be repeated on Saturday May 11 at 1:30 pm and at 7:30 pm.

ESME QUARTET

Musica Viva Australia

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Monday May 13 at 7 pm

This group’s composition presents a puzzle from the start. The original Esmes found each other in 2016 when all members were studying in Cologne. Further, all of them were Korean – and female. At this current point in time, three of them have survived: violins Wonhee Bae and Yuna Ha, and cello Ye-Eun Heo. Jiwon Kim was the original viola, but her place has been taken by a musician with the nationally ambivalent name of Dimitri Murrath (born in Brussels, of course), who also labours under the added distraction of being the ‘wrong’ gender. Still, what can you do but swallow the inevitable incursion of the male? The program that they are presenting begins with Webern’s Langsamer Satz of 1905 that kicks off in C minor and ends in E flat Major, without a trace of the major works in its passage. Continuing this early days strain, we hear Mendelssohn No 2 in A minor from the composer’s 18th year and notable for its Beethoven references. Expanding the Esmes’ horizons comes young Australian (but is the poor fellow still an expatriate academic working in Miami?) Jack Frerer‘s Spiral Sequences from 2018, written when he was 22/3. To end, the ensemble plays the solitary quartet by a 31-year-old Debussy: the night’s only well-known offering. Seats range from $15 to $115, and I can’t find details of any booking fee.

SYMPHONY FANTASTIC

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday May 17 at 7:30 pm

The name just doesn’t ring true, does it? Translated directly from the French, this concert’s title is correct, but stupid, particularly when you consider the modern-day degeneration of the adjective’s meaning. Berlioz was dealing with phantasm more than fantasy, as shown by the final two movements, if nowhere else. Nevertheless, the QSO PR team is possibly hoping to drag in the unsuspecting who, given their attention span, will nod off Trump-style in the Scene aux champs, then come to life for those bracing snarls on the way to the scaffold. The rest of us can just marvel at the brilliance of this work’s scale and orchestration while coping with some scene-setting from actor Robert Hofmann; for one glorious moment, when I saw Hofmann’s name, I thought the program might have included Lelio! Chief conductor Umberto Clerici leads the way through Berlioz’s revelations, preceding which we hear two short works. First comes Saint-Saens’ Danse macabre, followed by Ravel’s Tzigane featuring (for about ten minutes) a visitor, Jozsef Lendvay, who happens to be stopping by for this Hungarian/Gypsy compendium. I assume that the visitor won’t be leading the Danse, which may have its prominent violin solo taken by concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto. Anyway, the orchestra will be enjoying an early interval (after about 17 minutes’ playing) before the symphony in this all-French program which you can hear for between $95 and $135 with various concessions, escorted by the customary $7.20 fee per order (has anybody thought of promoting a Senate inquiry into this unjustifiable variable tax?)

This program will be repeated on Saturday May 18 at 1:30 pm

MAHLER’S SONG OF THE EARTH

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday May 20 at 7 pm

What is on offer here is not the original version of Das Lied von der Erde but a scaled-down orchestration started by Schoenberg and finished by Rainer Riehn 60+ years later. The ACO will present string and wind quintets, three percussionists, piano, celesta and harmonium. Richard Tognetti and his agglomerated forces will accompany mezzo Catherine Carby and tenor Stuart Skelton as they alternate the score’s six components, from Skelton’s Trinklied to Carby’s Abschied. Before the big song-cycle, the ACO performs Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll – wasted flattery on that unpleasant wife but then he himself was not much in the extra-musical personality stakes. The program’s oddity appears in three songs by Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel in world premiere arrangements by David Matthews. commissioned by the ACO. The titles are Laue Sommernacht, Die stille Stadt, and Bei dir ist es traut. – all from a set of five songs published in 1910 and edited by Mahler who, in his post-Freudian analysis phase, changed a prohibitory attitude to his wife’s composing. A little too late, as it turned out. You can hear this program for $59 up to $166 full adult price; concessions are available but don’t forget the usual QPAC add-on of $7.20 booking fee for your aspirational impudence.

LYREBIRD TRIO

Ian Hanger Recital Hall

Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University

Wednesday May 22 at 7:30 pm

The Lyrebird Trio swept the boards during the 2013 Asia Pacific Chamber Music Competition and its members have maintained their partnership during the intervening years, despite violin Glenn Christensen being occupied in a major role with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and cellist Simon Cobcroft playing principal cello with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Only pianist Angela Turner is a determined Brisbane resident, on the staff of the Queensland Conservatorium and the University of Queensland. Of the three works programmed for this recital, Smetana’s Piano Trio of 1855 is the most substantial, weltering in tragedy from its solo violin first bars. The group will also play Josef Suk’s Elegy Op. 23, one of the most earnest of the Czech composer/violinist’s compositions, if a brief one (coming in at about six-and-a-half minutes long). Moving a little east, the Lyrebirds will play a work by Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov, who escaped from his home country in 2022 at the Russian invasion. His Fugitive Visions of Mozart was composed about 17 years ago, so well before Putin’s army forced its way into Silvestrov’s homeland. Your normal ticket costs $22 but pensioner and alumni concessions reduce this amount. I don’t think there’s a booking fee.

BEETHOVEN 7

Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Friday May 24 at 7:30 pm

To take these young players through Beethoven’s A Major Symphony, here comes Johannes Fritzsch, a welcome and familiar face in this city’s serious music world. Commentators talk about this score’s vivacity, its innate energy, then rabbit on about Wagner’s overblown description of it as the Apotheosis of the Dance; ridiculous, especially when considering the even numbered movements. But it’s both exhilarating and exhausting for any band of musicians to reach a reasonably coherent standard of realization, on top of which you need a very committed body of upper strings. Prefacing the concert will be Margaret Sutherland’s Haunted Hills of 1950, a memorial to this country’s first peoples and their despair at an encroaching, unsympathetic colonial civilization. In the centre of this program stands the usual concerto; in this case, Elgar’s masterpiece for cello of 1919, his last completed major work and still towering over its competition because of its strong-minded, often grim despair coupled with emotional warmth. Soloist on this night is Stirling Hall who is a student at the Con, as far as I can tell. Tickets for students are $25, for concessionaires $35, and for adults $45 with no extra fees or charges.

CHORAL SPECTACULAR

Brisbane Chorale, The Queensland Choir, Brisbane Symphony Orchestra

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday May 26 at 3 pm

Part of the 4MBS Festival of Classics, this event doesn’t really have a program – so far. The Chorale’s websites are taken up with performances of Mozart’s Requiem (see above). The Choir mentions some composers’ names that could lead you down the fruitless path of guessing what choruses could be classed as spectacular. For instance, Brahms: part of the German Requiem, maybe? Or some of the motets, lieder or Song of Destiny/Alto Rhapsody (for the males) excerpts? None of it really spectacular. Then there’s Bach, and some of the unaccompanied motets; or the Jauchzet, frohlocket chorus might qualify, this last-mentioned with the potential to knock your sockettes off. Gounod I don’t know much about in the choral sense except the operas (Soldiers’ Chorus); maybe one of the unspectacular masses (St. Cecilia?) could feature, or that endless list of motets. Wagner can be entertaining according to gender (The Flying Dutchman) or he can fake bourgeois jubilation (Lohengrin and Tannhauser). As for Verdi, well, there’s the Anvil or Aida‘s Act 2, and you can always fall back on the trite Va, pensiero. Mozart has the masses and some marvellous motets but it’s all pretty restrained in resources and content (if they’re not the same thing). Also, there will be a soloist in soprano Mirusia, which distracts somewhat from the choral nomenclature. The combined (are they?) choral forces will be conducted by their musical directors: Emily Cox and Kevin Power; of the orchestra’s new conductor, Paul Dean, I can’t find any mention. Tickets are available from $15 to $60, with a booking fee of $1.25 – which is almost reasonable compared to the outrageous extras charged by other organizations/venues.

EASTER CONCERT

The Queensland Choir

St. Stephen’s Cathedral, 249 Elizabeth St.

Friday April 5 at 7:30 pm

To observe the liturgical season, this choir has chosen two formidable works. First up comes Bach’s Christ lag in Todes Banden cantata, one of the earliest in the catalogue and a splendid instance of the composer’s emotional compression, the whole seven movements being in E minor and the choral lines direct and focused. Then we get to enjoy a true rarity: Beethoven’s oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, in which the composer and librettist proposed the idea of Christ as Man more than God, with a lot of emphasis on letting the chalice pass, as outlined in the Passion parts of the Gospels. I don’t know this work at all; wasn’t even tempted to listen to it as a curiosity in those halcyon days when most of Beethoven was a well-thumbed book. Full marks to the Choir for working through it. The three soloists are soprano Leanne Kenneally as an angel, tenor Sebastian Maclaine singing the title role, and bass Leon Warnock playing Peter. Kevin Power conducts the choral forces and the Sinfonia of St. Andrew’s. Tickets fall between $20 for a child or full-time student and $65 for an adult full price. You also have to stump up $1.25 that falls under the generic heading of ‘fees and charges’; this is a reasonably piddling amount but you still have to ask: for what?

HOPELESSLY DEVOTED: A CELEBRATION OF OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday April 6 at 1:30 pm

The country has spoken and Newton-John has been elevated to the status of national saint, mainly because of her work for cancer research rather than for her contributions to music and singing. Helping this popular canonization was her relatively early death, relative to many another senior citizen as she passed away aged 73 in 2022. I can’t explain why this tribute has been so long in the making but here it is with the QSO conducted by energetic young arranger/composer Nicholas Buc. Hosting the evening will be Courtenay Act (Shane Jenek) who has well-established pop credentials and seems to turn up when you most expect it on ABC TV or at public events that favour drag artists – which is just about everything in this country. Patrons will hear 22 numbers from the Newton-John catalogue, some of them familiar even to a distant observer like me: I Honestly Love You. the night’s title number, and Physical. Re-creating the singer’s sound – or not – will be David Campbell, Jess Hitchcock, Georgina Hopson and Christie Whelan Browne, all of whom will share in the programmatic spoils, maybe even splitting some of them in various combinations. Tickets can be obtained for $95, $115, or $135 full price; concessions are available and the usual QSO transaction fee of $7.20 applies, regardless of the concession you claim.

This program will be repeated at 7: 30 pm

FOR THE LOVE OF MUSIC

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday April 8 at 7 pm

It’s difficult to determine the provenance of this event. It is absent from the ACO’s own brochure for this year, so I suspect the origin is the ABC which here presents two of its journalist stars in a 90-minute chat punctuated by music. The speakers/conversationalists are Leigh Sales and Annabel Crabb who will be interviewing members of the orchestra, asking them a battery of searching questions about matters that have little to do with aesthetics and everything to do with personal revelations and gossip. I’ve come across similar ventures some decades ago when Mairi Nicholson and Emma Ayres put on a duo act in front of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra which was meant to entertain with its wit but quickly turned into excruciating silliness. Apparently, the Sales-Crabb combo has presented a previous incarnation of this gabfest, and the two journalists have attested to their enjoyment of the experience: hence, its repetition. Sketchy details only have come through of what Richard Tognetti and his musicians will perform: Tchaikovsky’s Andante cantabile from the String Quartet No. 1 in an arrangement for cello and strings, presumably fronted by principal Timo-Veikko Valve; a suite from Sufjan Stevens‘ Enjoy Your Rabbit 2001 album, reworked by Michael Atkinson (among others) for the Osso String Quartet as Run Rabbit Run. The only other prescribed work is Piazzolla’s wretched Libertango which revisits an ACO phase when accordionist James Crabb collaborated with members of the ensemble in a swatch of the Argentinian composer’s monocular output. Tickets can be purchased for $49, $89, $109, and $129 full price with some concessions available, and the usual $7.20 QPAC impost applies to whatever you choose.

JURIS ZVIKOVS AND SANITA GLAZENBURGA

University of Queensland School of Music

Nickson Room, Zelman Cowen Building, St. Lucia

Thursday April 11 at 1 pm

Little escapes this institution’s musical walls, and you have to look hard to find out what the faculty is offering the public within its own grounds. Most of the time, the recitals/concerts on offer can be visited on a livestream website, so you don’t have to trek out to St. Lucia for your experience. This coupling is Latvian in origin; duo pianists with ‘a penchant for adventurous collaboration’, they find material in contemporary fields (naturally) and the Baroque (do they indeed?). Surprisingly enough, the university’s website has no details about what Zvikovs and Glazenburga will play in this hour-long recital; I can’t even find any details about CDs that the pair may have generated. You would have thought something on disc might have come from the collaboration which has apparently lasted over two decades. Still, the great thing about these events is that they’re free. You have to register if you’re attending in person, but no such requirement is needed if you’re content to watch/hear the livestream.

TRIUMPHANT TCHAIKOVSKY

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday April 12 at 11:30 am

No soloist at this event, unless you count the conductor. Andrew Gourlay is a young (well, early 40s: nobody seems to know his birth date – a retiring celebrity, then) British musician who has been around the English, European, American and Australian traps for some years since winning the 2010 Cadaques Orchestra International Conducting Competition. He has enjoyed a solid relationship with the Britten Sinfonia, which might explain his first offering on this program: the 1940 Sinfonia da Requiem, written for a Japanese government commission and rejected by that country’s official voices because of its Latin movement titles and its sombre mood, although God knows they had need of it in the following five years. The composer’s longest purely orchestral composition, it is rarely heard here; you can trace familiar prefigurations in it of much from Peter Grimes to the War Requiem. As a companion to this comes the Symphony No. 5 by Tchaikovsky which is an audience favourite and rightly so: packed to the gills with brilliant melodies, concentrated in its dramatic framework, directly orchestrated with a splendid sense of showmanship. But nothing gets to me quite as much as the bar 128 D Major woodwind tune in the finale, cutting through the portentous grit and grime with dazzling simplicity. There are few tickets available online for this matinee, but the range is from $76 to $135 with the usual concessions and, yet again that invidious $7.20 booking fee.

This program will be repeated on Saturday April 13 at 7:30 pm.

THE TROUT

Ensemble Q

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday April 14 at 3 pm

No problem with guessing the main event at this particular event. The ensemble will present five quintets, climaxing with the great Schubert construct which features a double bass (Phoebe Russell?) in the string quartet combination alongside that treble-happy piano part (Daniel de Borah, maybe). Before this reading, we get to hear Reicha’s buoyant Variations for bassoon and string quartet (seven of them with a framing introduction and coda), presumably featuring David Mitchell from the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Then comes everyone’s favourite newly discovered female American composer, Amy Beach, and her Theme and variations for flute and string quartet (only six in this composition) of 1916; the focus line will probably be played by Alison Mitchell, QSO principal. We nod to national spirit with Lachlan Skipworth‘s concise Clarinet Quintet of 2016 (featuring Ensemble foundation guru Paul Dean, I’d guess) before Glazunov’s Idyll which I can’t trace. There’s a work by that name for solo piano and YouTube has a performance of a completely different composition for horn and string quartet, as well as another video which brings in a flute as well. This afternoon. we’re promised a horn – probably Q regular Peter Luff, formerly from the QSO – and the accompaniment will almost certainly be a string quartet, following the program’s pattern. Anyway, things wind up with the happy, long Schubert masterpiece. For this ‘intimate’ recital, the Concert Hall is restricted to only a few rows front and back of the stage and tickets are $75 with a $55 for concession holders, accompanied by the usual $7.20 surcharge which is rich as it constitutes nearly 10% of a full ticket and more than 8% of a concession admission.

LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR

Opera Queensland

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday April 20 at 7 pm

As you can tell from the venue, this is not a fully staged presentation of Donizetti’s most popular opera; well, popular in this country, thanks to the epoch-making performances of Joan Sutherland starting in 1959. What we have is a concert presentation, directed by Patrick Nolan. Not that you’re missing much by way of scenery which only takes on importance when the heroine emerges from her mariticidal bedroom for the opera’s stupendous climax. The Queensland Symphony Orchestra and the company’s chorus will be under the control of Richard Mills, who must be the country’s most experienced opera conductor left standing. Jessica Pratt sings Lucia and will doubtless do credit to the role. I heard her sing the part in Opera Victoria’s 2016 presentation at Her Majesty’s Theatre, also conducted by Mills. On that night, she was a bright light in a vocally penumbral space. As was the case eight years ago, she’s partnered by Carlos E. Barcenas as Edgardo, along with Sam Dundas (Enrico), David Parkin (Raimondo), Virgilio Marino (Arturo), Hayley Sugars (Alisa) and Iain Henderson (Normanno . . . or will it be Rosario La Spina, as some of the advertising states?). You can expect a finely honed night’s singing, thanks to the absence of theatrical distractions, although costumes by Karen Cochet and Bianca Bulley are threatened. Admission ranges from $75 to $149 with concessions available, starting from $65 for a child. It doesn’t matter: every order attracts the usual QPAC $7.20 fee/penalty. Also, this enterprise comes under the Brisbane Bel Canto umbrella, a company that promises ‘a new festival for the Brisbane stage.’

This performance will be repeated on Saturday April 27 at 2 pm.

DANIEL DE BORAH IN RECITAL

Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University

Ian Hanger Recital Hall

Friday April 26 at 6 pm

This pianist is Head of Chamber Music at Queensland Con and has managed to elevate himself above the ruck of Australian pianists by being exemplary in his work, particularly on the few occasions I’ve heard him in live performance. This recital forms part of the university’s piano series and, as usual, you labour in vain to find out exactly what de Borah will present. All you find on the man’s own website is ‘Program: TBC’. In the interests of sanity, you’d probably take that as “To Be Confirmed’, rather than the cryptic title of some contemporary score. Oddly enough, this appears to be the only solo recital that de Borah is mounting this year; the rest of his activities involve other groups, like Ensemble Q (see above) or colleague duettists. Mind you, his online diary does contain information that was lacking from the Ensemble’s program: the identity of the string quartet personnel in the April 14 program: violins Sophie Rowell and Anne Horton, viola Christopher Moore, cello Trish Dean. Tickets are $22, with a concession price available of $17; not bad for 90 minutes’ worth of music-making – and no handling charge!

ROSSINI STABAT MATER

Queensland Conservatorium Orchestra and Chorus

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Friday April 26 at 7:30 pm

Straight after Daniel de Borah’s recital (see above), the Conservatorium is presenting this major sacred work by the great Italian opera master. As you’d expect, this setting of the medieval hymn has all the bells and whistles that made the revival of Gregorian chant in the last century so welcome: double woodwind, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings, with four vocal soloists and an SATB choir that is hardly exercised until the last two numbers – actually, the last one would be more accurate. Executants find several hurdles along the way, none of them over-taxing but the work relies on operatic overstatement – just like Verdi’s Requiem – and a flexible approach to phrasing and metre. Richard Mills, in the middle of conducting two nights of Lucia for Opera Queensland, is to direct the Queensland Conservatorium Orchestra and a choir of sixty vocal students, all fronted by an as-yet-unknown quartet of soloists who will be put through their paces cruelly in two numbers that have no orchestral support. As well, the tenor will enjoy expounding the well-known, bracing Cujus animam solo early in the work’s progress. By the way, I don’t think this venue is sufficiently resonant for such a drama-laden composition, but you can’t have everything – not even a convenient local church, apparently. Top ticket price is $65 but concessions are available. Best of all, you don’t have to countenance a booking fee.