Category: The Diary

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.

MOZART’S JUPITER

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Friday March 1 at 7:30 pm

This is the first of a pair of concerts, sharing one constituent only in the last Mozart symphony. Great to see this work serving as a program fulcrum, even if questions, doubts and disappointments arise whenever you hear it live. Tonight (and tomorrow) Umberto Clerici directs his players in this magnificent tribute to musical conservatism, and I estimate that the whole exercise will be fine up to the finale. At about bar 53, the texture will thicken as the whole crowd forces the forte into something more power-driven as the brass push their whole-bar chords forward and the strings are made to feel line-heavy: I must urge out to make my mark.  Worse follows, of course, as the polyphony strengthens, so that the essential strophes of light fade into weighty timbral output. Sorry, but I’ve heard it from too many eminent bodies and conductors who become engrossed in the skill rather than the composer’s vivacity. Pianist Andrea Lam begins the night with Beethoven’s Op. 27 No. 2, which is then followed by the same composer’s Moonlight Sonata, but only the first movement. This presents a bit of a problem because the Op. 27 No. 2 is the Moonlight; so Lam plays the whole sonata and then repeats the Adagio sostentuto? Whatever she does, the follow-up will be Kurtag‘s . . . quasi una fantasia . . . for piano and orchestral groups.  Why, you ask?  Maybe because Beethoven’s sonata was marked Quasi una fantasia and some happy spirit decided to juxtapose the well-known with a wispy piece of post-Webern touch-me-not. Further adding to a listener’s experience comes Mark-Anthony Turnage‘s Set To for brass dectet; another problem here is that I’ve not seen a score but the performances you can see online all have 11 players. There will be an interval, although the Kurtag and Turnage works are brief. Full-price tickets go from $95 to $135; I can’t see any concessions but you can print out your tickets for free and there are np signs of the usual handling-fee extortion.

MOZART’S JUPITER

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Saturday March 2 at 7:30 pm

So here we are, enjoying the same Mozart in C Major: the best output the poor fellow could manage at the time, given his home-life and monetary circumstances. We’re the winners. Take the Symphony No. 41 as a supreme gift; there’s not much of such substance in the whole late Classical to cling to as a comparable pinnacle. Or am I being too soft? Perhaps it’s coloured by an aversion to the nickname which is ridiculously inappropriate, considering both the god and the work’s content as a matched pair. At all events, Clerici and his band have another chance to achieve something passable. Prior to this, Andrea Lam fronts the Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor which is a traditionalist’s delight these days, even if the concluding vivace enjoys a good many weltering modulations without changing the music’s tenor. As makeweight overture-substitute, we’re to hear Takemitsu’s Rain Tree - or are we? The original 1981 work was written for three percussionists; a year later came Rain Tree Sketch I for solo piano. Ten years later, Takemitsu wrote an in memoriam for Messiaen, which is Rain Tree Sketch II, also for piano.  Given Lam’s activity in the alternate program, I suspect that patrons are likely to hear her in one of these Sketches. Ticket prices are the same as for last night’s event; forget that nonsense about it always being cheaper to attend the matinee.

DIVINE ALCHEMY

Southern Cross Soloists

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday March 3 at 3 pm

I don’t understand these Soloists’ concerts; there’s too much, it’s all programatically fractured, and the forces required to carry off the programs boggle the unprepared mind. The afternoon ends with Konstantin Shamray as soloist in Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto K. 491, for which the support required is the biggest that Mozart wanted for any of his works in this genre: flute, pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, along with the usual string group. A little before this, more Mozart comes with the Kyrie and Lacrimosa from the Requiem: pairs of basset horns, bassoons and trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, strings and organ. Fortunately, neither of these excerpts requires soloists – only an SATB choir. Then you have to put these alongside Debussy’s Violin Sonata - but in a new chamber transcription. Why? What’s wrong with having Shamray accompany guest-colleague violinist Amalia Hall? The program opens with Bach’s G minor Oboe Concerto which only asks for strings to back the soloist (artistic director Tania Frazer?).  We experience the Australian premiere of Elegie by Thibaut Vuillermet, which features Hall’s solo line and a string (I think) orchestral accompaniment to its Bloch-like sentimentality. Then, to cap it all, the Soloists’ Didgeridoo Commissioning Project comes to the fore with a freshly minted composition, The Wise Woman, by Sean O’Boyle and the organization’s fountainhead for these pieces, didgeridoo expert Chris Williams. You can get in for $88, with the QPAC booking charge of $7.20 to spoil the experience.

ALEX RAINERI: SPEECHLESS

Opera Queensland

Opera Queensland Studio, 140 Grey St. South Brisbane

Friday March 8 at 7 pm

Brisbane’s most active music personality, Raineri will present an hour-long program for the state’s opera company which will probably involve transcriptions of operas in the best 19th century tradition. Well, when I say ‘transcriptions’, I really mean fantasias on themes from certain operas. It’s fair to say that Liszt is the most well-known originator of these works, what with his thematic elaborations of Norma, Lucia, La Juive, Les Huguenots, Don Juan, Rigoletto, and a welter of Wagner. Raineri is due to play re-visitings of Verdi, Wagner and Mozart. He’s also scheduled to give us some Richard Strauss, and he has certainly performed the Dance of the Seven Veils and its consequents from Salome in what I vaguely remember was his own transcription. But there’s also Puccini in the list of offerings and here we enter a land that I don’t know at all. Of course, Raineri may play his own fantasias, reminiscences or musical tours of Turandot or Tosca but I believe that today’s practice is simply to isolate a piece and elaborate it in the best Lisztian manner.  God knows there’s plenty to choose from, like O mio babbino caro, Un bel di, or O soave fanciulla. Still, it’s a healthy employment of this pianist’s considerable gifts. Entry costs between $59 and $65 and I can’t trace a booking fee.

This program will be repeated on Saturday March 9 at 2 pm.

OPERA GALA

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday March 8 at 7:30 pm

Yes, it’s a night of opera but it’s confined to one composer: Puccini. We have no indication as to which specific arias or duets will be essayed (bar one), but educated guesses indicate some possibilities. Tonight’s conductor will be Giordano Bellincampi, a notable figure in Danish opera houses and currently music director of the Auckland Philharmonia.  He’s in charge of the QSO’s efforts supporting soprano Sae-Kyung Rim, tenor Kang Wang, and baritone Phillip Rhodes, with the Voices of Birralee working through some choruses. There’s Tosca, where Wang has two big arias, Rim will probably work at Vissi d’arte, and even Rhodes could give us Va, Tosca! We have La Boheme (which the QSO puff-writers seem to think is set in 1930s Bohemia) and here the soprano and tenor have all of Act 1’s second half at their disposal, or Rim could take on Musetta’s Act 2 delight. Madama Butterfly isn’t only Un bel di; we might also get the Act 1 duet Viene la sera, or the Humming Chorus, or possibly those sweeping final pages as Butterfly says goodbye to her child. In the best of worlds, the organizers could offer us that wrenching scene between Butterfly and Sharpless in Act 2. As far as Manon Lescaut is concerned, nobody knows much beyond Sola, perduta, abbandonata and Donna non vidi mai; perhaps patrons will be offered that final tragic duet, Fra le tue braccia, amore. The solitary program certainty is Wang in Nessun dorma: the only excerpt from Turandot, which also holds two glorious soprano arias and a wealth of chorus work. Tickets are at their lowest for a child ($35) and move to top adult of $150, with the inevitable $7.20 surcharge.

This event will be repeated on Saturday March 9 at 1:30 pm

CASINO ROYALE IN CONCERT

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre

Friday March 15 at 7:30 pm

Are people that enamoured of Daniel Craig’s attempts to play James Bond that they’ll come out to see his first film in the role, even if he does his best to give us a male Ursula Andress at the opening? Perhaps I’m out of touch with the Fleming-conscious zeitgeist but I doubt if the new characterization’s sulky somnolence would drag me out on a humid Friday night. What makes the experience even more questionable is the ridiculous storyline that deviates monstrously from the author’s original novel, right up to that cataclysmic Venetian conclusion. Anyway, you could go along ‘for the music’ which was assembled by David Arnold and formed part of his considerable Bond oeuvre. Fair enough, although John Barry had the best lines in that branch of the film composer’s art, identificatory tropes that his successors have recycled over and over. The exercise recalls nothing as much as the current Nemesis betrayals occurring on ABC TV; you’re getting nothing new after the first half-hour. Tonight’s conductor is Vanessa Scammell, an aficionado of these sound-track efforts across the country. Entry rates range from $79 to $135 with Ticketek’s service fee of $7.40 added to every order; that’s even more than QPAC and I thought that rip-off was over the top. Oh, the event runs for 2 hours and 35 minutes with an interval interpolated which will last only 11 minutes as the film itself takes 144 minutes.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre

Saturday March 16 at 1:30 pm

A day after its 007 excursion, the QSO hops back onto the Potter bandwagon with this live soundtrack concert playing under the film. To demonstrate the relative popularities of the two exercises, this one involves a second performance for more mature (are there any?) Potter fans in the evening. By this stage in the epic, the films have turned to an overall grey-to-black colour palette and – as with the Bond films – the soundtrack elements that remain present like a second language are those already familiar; in this instance, from John Williams’ scores for the first three of the series. Of Alexandre Desplat‘s new music and themes for the last two films, nothing comes surging out of my memory. Mind you, I haven’t watched The Deathly Hallows for some years; I’ve been particularly ignoring the first one because the death of Dobby makes me laugh inordinately and that tends to upset the grandchildren. Vanessa Scammell is back to lead the QSO through these same-day readings; fine, but I could have sworn that Desplat’s score involved a chorus. Tickets cost the same as for the Bond film above, but there’s something odd about the timing – again. The original lasts for 146 minutes; this concert’s two parts (either side of a 20-minute interval, run for a combined 139 minutes. Don’t tell me: the Potterverse has been censored to fit in with Queensland’s prevailing cultural ethos. Egad, we could be in Florida.

This concert/film will be repeated at 7:30 pm

AYESHA GOUGH IN RECITAL

Griffith University Queensland Conservatorium

Ian Hanger Recital Hall

Thursday March 21 at 7:30 pm

As the city’s music-conscious universities lurch into gear, this event struck me as one of the few interesting exercises on the Griffith calendar. I haven’t heard Gough live, even though she has been a feature of Brisbane’s musical life for some years. But she has skin in the game, having won the 2015 Lev Vlassenko Piano Competition, and she carried off the Michael Kieran Harvey Scholarship in 2022. Tonight, her program is an individualistic wander around the repertoire, involving works by Mozart, Chopin and Liszt to satisfy the elderly, or those of us who want to see what novelty she can bring to well-trodden paths.  On the contemporary side, she is presenting works by Harvey and French writer Yann Tiersen (of Amelie soundtrack fame). The odd man out is Rossini, who is usually represented on piano programs by a peche de vieillesse. Tickets are going for $22 but discounts are available for the elderly and Griffith alumni. 

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio

Friday March 22 at 7 pm

Umberto Clerici, the QSO chief conductor, takes his players into the organization’s studio to give us a program that will display the clarity of intonation to be found in the various ranks.  Or so we hope. The night begins with Rossini at his most transparent: the Overture La scala di seta which will set up the strings pretty nicely. Then comes the aberrative Symphony No. 8 by Beethoven, sitting between those bully-boys, Nos. 7 and 9. Here is a more mellow mind at work with some humorous passages, although nothing as light as Haydn being quaint or even Rossini keeping himself entertained. To end this 80-minute pleasure party, Clerici & Co. perform a suite from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream music.  In fact, given the time available, the executants could get through the entire incidental music if they felt like it. But that’s not likely as you need two vocal soloists and a choir, as well as a speaker, and none of these are mentioned.  I’ve seen it done by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (after a fashion) featuring Joel Edgerton. But it’ll probably just involve the Overture, Scherzo, Nocturne and Wedding March, as usual. Tickets range between $79 and $35 and, on its own ground, the QSO charges top dollar for its services, adding $7.95 to your purchase as an over-priced ‘transaction fee’. Or perhaps the fiscal branch of this organization takes longer to do the ‘job’ than its professional counterparts.

This program will be repeated on Saturday March 23 at 3 pm

MESSIAH

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday March 28 at 7:30 pm

There was a time when you could count on three performances of Handel’s great oratorio at Christmas time from some of the nation’s state orchestras. We have a different generation doing the patronage these days and so Brisbane is mounting a single Messiah. Mind you, it’s being presented at the right time of year, temporally related to its premiere in Dublin on April 13, 1742 and following the work’s main thrust towards the Resurrection, not the Nativity. By the way, I love the subtitle attached to this occasion – An Easter Passion; as if you could have a Pentecost Passion or an Advent Passion. Tonight’s conductor is Brett Weymark, long-time director pf the Sydney Phlharmonia Choirs.  His soloists are soprano Celeste Lazarenko, mezzo Stephanie Dillon, tenor Alexander Lewis, bass Christopher Richardson with the Brisbane Chamber Choir taking on the brunt of the work with those wonderful tub-thumping choruses.  The night’s operations will be completed in 2 hours 30 minutes, including an interval – and that tells me that we’re going to be missing about half an hour’s music as some time-honoured cuts will obtain, particularly in Part the Third. You want to get in? It costs $35 for a child and $135 for a full adult with the usual fee of $7.20 for bothering to be present at this sometimes-uplifting annual ritual.

OLIVER SCOTT & ALEX RAINERI

FourthWall Arts

540 Queen St. Brisbane

Friday February 9 at 7:30 pm

As Brisbane’s serious music year slowly grinds into action after an interval of almost two months of torpor, the path back is led by the individual who saw us into the Christmas season: Alex Raineri. who turned 30 last year and has put in more useful organizational work than most of his peers accomplish in their lifetimes. FourthWall Arts is the venue for the Brisbane Music Festival and is starting its own recital series with this event in a little under a month; I’m assuming its genesis comes from Raineri who is not one to let the months slip by as passively as others. Not that he’s going out on a limb with this evening’s program. He and cellist Oliver Scott (a BMF performer) will work through Beethoven’s Sonata No. 2 in G minor, with the happy G Major rondo second movement to finish; then Brahms No. 2 in F Major, the less appealing of the two but a mighty example of what a difference 20 years makes; and Arvo Part’s Spiegel im Spiegel which I’ve heard in performances that last 4, 10 and 45 minutes. As this event is scheduled to last for 90 minutes, and there’s an interval with a free glass of wine thrown in, I’d think that its duration will be somewhere between the last two lengths. But all bets are off: it’s Estonian minmalism, and slow-moving at that. Tickets cost $35 each, with an add-on or two: a $2.39 booking fee, with a GST of 24 cents on the booking fee!  It’s a bleak new fiscal year we’re facing: God bless us, every one!

This recital will be repeated on Saturday February 10 at 1 pm.

AN ITALIAN VISTA

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, SouthBank

Saturday February 10 at 7:30 pm

This program will be repeated on Sunday February 11 at 3 pm.

A lot of this evening’s content is Italian of a kind. The only solidly national work comes with Puccini’s Crisantemi. the composer’s last essay in string quartet writing and a lament for his pal, the Duke of Aosta. You’d have to think it will be given in a string orchestra version, as in its once-frequent presentations by the Australian Chamber Orchestra. The QSO’s major offering will be Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, known to us all as the Italian and representing a youngish German’s reactions to his pilgrimages in that country. To my mind, the finest moments come at the start with that breathless introduction and the hurtlingly infectious first subject. Mind you, it’s all a bit chocolate-box for me, especially after exposure to the seediness of the country from north to south; a better set of images comes from Berlioz’s Harold. But the odd man out appears at the start when concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto takes her forces through Grieg’s Holberg Suite, written to celebrate the prominent Danish-Norwegian playwright whose work I’ve never seen, heard or read. Doesn’t matter: the Suite is a generous masterwork, packed with brio and sentiment and a delight as long as the performers are disciplined. The whole thing lasts an hour and tickets cost between $79 and $35, with the usual outrageous booking fee of $7.95.  How can any organization justify that flagrant over-charging?

RIVER

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday February 12 at 7 pm

Here’s another of this organization’s visual-aural extravaganzas. The last one I witnessed was here in Brisbane: The Crowd and I, some time in August 2022.  ACO artistic director Richard Tognetti and Jennifer Peedom follow their collaboration on Mountain with this look at the world’s waterways, natural and manipulated, with plenty of aural/visual meshes of which I’m sure that some will startle and surprise. What is the music to go along with the pictures? It’s an even more eclectic hodge-podge than usual, with some scraps to satisfy the conservative ACO patrons, along with some boppy numbers to entertain the great unwashed. Bach and Vivaldi will sound: the former’s Chaconne, the latter’s slow movement from RV 232 and opening pages of RV 578. Add to these the Vivace in Sibelius’ Voces Intimae D minor String Quartet, the Ruhevoll that occupies centre stalls in Mahler’s G Major Symphony, Ravel’s String Quartet’s Assez vif, the retrospective O Albion from Ades’ Arcadiana, with a mellifluous gob-stopper in Peters Vasks’ Vox Amoris (please God, not the whole thing). Tognetti scores himself in as a writer, but I can’t pick out which tracks belong to him and those that come from adjunct composer Piers Burbrook de Vere. Didjeridu player William Barton participates as soloist and composer of Wildness, Ritual, and Spirit Voice of the Enchanted Waters. Radiohead takes up space with their Harry Partch (In Memory Of) which has the benefit of lasting between 5 and 6 minutes and might be sung by the ACO’s Satu Vanska. Jonny Greenwood from that group is also listed as a composer but of what, I’m not aware, apart from his string-arrangement support for the Harry Partch song. Tickets range from $25 to $166, with a huge booking fee of $8.50 - for a $25 ticket??!!

WORLDS COLLIDE

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday February 18 at 11:30 am

This program launches the QSO’s Music on Sundays series and is billed as something of a travelogue. All right, then. Conductor Douglas Boyd opens with Australian composer Harry Sdraulig‘s Torrent from 2021 which has been played by both Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras; based on previous experience, I’d say that here is a voice worth attention. After this fanfare, four of the QSO principals come forward for Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for wind soloists: oboe Huw Jones, clarinet Irit Silver, bassoon Nicole Tait, horn Tim Allen-Ankins. Not the whole work, sadly; only the middle Adagio. Moving a little sideways geographically, the focus changes to Dvorak’s New World Symphony (only the boisterous movements 3 and 4). Cross the Channel for Welsh writer Grace Williams’ Penillion, but only the first movement of the four will be heard. Dart back across Europe for Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from the opera Prince Igor that we’re never going to see on these shores; very colourful and spilling over with great tunes but it’s a pity that the excitement won’t be ramped up by including the original’s chorus. Running time is 80 minutes, without an interval, and there’s the usual $7. 20 booking fee-for-bugger-all added on to ticket prices which range from $76 to $109; concessions are available.

LONG LOST LOVES (AND GREY SUEDE GLOVES)

Anna Dowsley & Michael Curtain

Brisbane Powerhouse

Thursday February 22 at 7 pm

In a departure from usual practice, Musica Viva is presenting this display case at the city’s Powerhouse, which is hard to get to for those of us over-challenged by Brisbane’s night traffic. Still, I’m sure there are many good reasons - acoustic and environmental - why mezzo Anna Dowsley and pianist Michael Curtain have been assigned this venue to present some of the Cabaret Songs by veteran American composer William Bolcom.  Like a select few, I’ve had no exposure to Bolcom’s music – neither the light, nor the heavy – but am intrigued by his life-long ambition to bridge the divide between popular and serious music. On this occasion, however, it seems that the one will preponderate over the other. Mind you, it’s hardly the American writer’s fault that Britten has predisposed me to discount this genre; added to which, the high reputation of Weill has always left me at a loss. But then, ‘cabaret’ covers a multitude of sins and, where the definition is so wide, the hope must also be generous. If you can negotiate your way to New Farm, this night’s Bolcom celebration might be just what the entertainment doctor ordered. Tickets range from $40 to $115 and even this ultra-trendy venue doesn’t stint on the service fee (what service?) - here, $7.20.

UMBERTO’S MAHLER

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday February 23 at 7:30 pm

The orchestra’s chief conductor, Umberto Clerici, pursues his ambition to drag us through another Mahler odyssey. This addiction to present all nine of the symphonies has recently taken on renewed interest with the arrival of the Maestro film that sort of chronicles the life of Leonard Bernstein, its musical climax being a heaving rendition of the final pages to the Symphony No. 2 with Bradley Cooper giving a pretty good impersonation of the fabled conductor’s histrionic look-at-me style (admittedly, I only saw him once live). As far as I know, the only successful complete cycle achieved here was that of Markus Stenz during his Melbourne Symphony Orchestra suzerainty.  I don’t think Sir Andrew Davis was able to conduct his finale, a projected No. 8 at Rod Laver Arena. And I’m pretty much in the dark as to other attempts. Good luck to Clerici who’s setting up his own artistic hijrah, here reaching a major milestone with No. 7 that sprawls in its outer movements which surround a pair of Nachtmusiken and a scherzo, the whole eventually optimistic (but you could say that about most Mahler finales). Tickets range from $95 to $135 with concessions available (a child gets in for $35, if she/he wants to), with the inevitable $7.20 sting. Fortunately, nothing else is programmed (I vividly recall Stenz partnering No. 2 with Ives’ The Unanswered Question; what a pairing was there, my countrymen).

This program will be repeated on Saturday February 24 at 1:30 pm

There’s no denying it: nearly everybody goes to sleep in January, as far as serious music is concerned. I’ve written before about Melbourne’s two festivals that brighten up an otherwise lacklustre month: the Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields and the Monington Summer. But these are – for want of a better phrase – out-of-town, and neither brightens the cityscape at all. You could visit Sydney and its outré festival that is souping up Bach, as well as giving Genevieve Lacey the chance to play Telemann recorder fantasias with the support of a dance corps (well, 32 untrained dancers are slated to take part), and Gluck’s Orfeo is on at the Opera House. But that all presupposes money and travel – for what I consider is scant reward.

But Brisbane has one recital-entertainment that should prove very popular, not least because it is a shining light in a pitch-black space.

WORLD TOUR

TwoSet Violin

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Tuesday January 25 at 7:30 pm

Being behind modern trends, I wasn’t aware of this violin duo – Eddy Chen and Brett Yang – until seeing them on YouTube where TwoSet Violin is overwhelmingly present, the pair covering a wide range of material – some of it entertaining, some of it worthwhile, some of it risible. Chen and Yang aim to make serious music accessible, an ambition that they achieve usually with success, mainly because both are engaging personalities with absolutely no pretensions and a respectable swag of knowledge. Most importantly, they enjoy themselves while exercising a humour that manages to be self-deprecating, mocking (each other), neo-undergraduate, and (for musicians) infectious. That they both gave up careers with the Sydney and Queensland Symphony Orchestras to take on the lifestyle of stand-up comedians with musical talent is admirable and I can’t think of anyone in serious competition with them, on their inexorable rise from a crowd-funded world tour to the heady heights of packed, enthusiastic houses wherever they go. In fact, I think this event is already booked out! If you can get in, their accompanist is Sophie Druml (who appears on some of their YouTube videos). Tickets range between $79.05 and $179.10, with the usual QPAC ‘transaction fee’ of $7.20 added on; you have to admire the sheer graft of it.

FESTIVAL GALA #3

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Monday December 4 at 7:30 pm

This isn’t the start of Alex Raineri‘s annual galaxy of recitals; they began last month but details came too late to be included in November’s Diary. However, there’s plenty to report for this month’s exercises, which have been condensed to a one-week span. We start with this triptych of stage works, opening with Menotti’s venerable The Telephone of 1947 with soprano Katie Stenzel and baritone Jon Maskell in the thankless role of the suitor trying to be heard by his mental rag-tag girlfriend. No orchestra, but two pianists accompanying in Francis Atkins and the omni-present Raineri. Poulenc rears his sixty-years-dead head with Le bal masque, a 1932 song cycle/cantata with a Stravinskyesque chamber accompaniment, here reduced to Raineri’s piano with baritone Jason Barry-Smith taking on the work’s vocal line. And for the third course we enjoy a new work: Staged, by Raineri and Finnian Idriss which involves soprano Ali McGregor, cellist Daniel Shearer, and Idriss manipulating electronics. Pace Poulenc, I think this last may be the most interesting element of the evening even if – as usual – contextual details are completely absent. Admission to all events in the Festival costs $25 a time; don’t know if any concessions are on offer or if a booking fee is added but I suspect this last is a reality because the handling agency, Humantix, is donating all such fees to disadvantaged children’s charities. Is that any excuse for charging such an impost anyway? Not in my book.

SCHUBERT’S LAST SONATA

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Tuesday December 5 at 7:30 pm

This is, of course, the big Sonata in B flat – well, some of it’s in that key. The work is substantial, even without observing the first movement repeat, and its repetitions and elongations can both inspire and irritate. Whatever you think, it’s a beast for any pianist; few of the great can offer a complete fabric in the outer movements but there’s always hope. I don’t know this evening’s executant, Laurence Matheson; at least, I can’t recall any of his Melbourne appearances. He put in his time at the Australian National Academy of Music, studying with the estimable Timothy Young, but whatever he played there passed me by. Still, he’s a young man and you might as well smash your aspirational head against this sonata as anything else. Which he is also doing by prefacing this Schubert with Chopin’s Grande valse brillante: a rather amorphous title, given that it could refer to the Op 18 or any one of the three Op. 34 compositions. As a gender differential, Matheson has inserted the middle one of Fanny Mendelssohn’s Funf Lieder Op. 10, which is called Abendbild and for which the pianist will doubtless incorporate the original’s vocal line to a text by Lenau. Tickets are $25 with a booking fee.

LIGHTS DOWN LOW # 2

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Tuesday December 5 at 9 pm

Put those lights down too low and everybody will go to sleep. At this recital – focused for some, diffuse for others – festival director Alex Raineri will perform Morton Feldman’s For Bunita Marcus of 1985 – all 75 uninterrupted minutes of it. The composer’s penultimate piano composition, the work hymns his pupil/colleague/partner Marcus while also being a tribute to his mother; as an insight into either woman, it serves as a voluminous veil. Nevertheless, these days few of us have the opportunity to hear a Feldman work live. I’ve heard a few from the Australian National Academy of Music performers of which little remains in the memory but gratified surprise that the experiences proved more incident-rich than I’d expected from a brief encounter with this standard-bearer of the American avant-garde in the 1960s. Full marks to Raineri for expounding this work that sounds so simple and yet keeps the performer on the edge of disaster with its constantly moving time-signature changes and seemingly endless transpositions of limited material. To get in, you pay $25 plus the usual extra fee for daring to exercise your state-given right to a credit card.

ANGELUS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Wednesday December 6 at 7:30 pm

Four performers in four works, two of which enjoy their premieres in this country: exactly what you want from a chamber music festival offering a wide range of experiences. First up is the evening’s title work from approaching-Grand-Old-Woman-status Mary Finsterer; written in 2015, it was inspired by Millet’s painting of two field-workers pausing for the mid-day prayer and will involve the talents of clarinet Dario Scalabrini, cello Katherine Philp, and pianist Alex Raineri. An Australian writer working in London, Lisa Illean wrote fevrier to a commission for Radio France (hence, you suppose, the linguistic barrier-crashing title) and it involves the same instrumentation as the Finsterer composition. Next comes a world premiere from local jazz saxophonist Rafael Karlan; no details yet (isn’t that always the way with your true improvisation-wielding performer/composer?) but I’m almost certain it will involve the clarinet and piano. Finally, it’s just a local premiere for Irish writer Judith Ring. Her fine feathers far below the blue floor makes plenty of contemporary sounds and involves Scalabrini, Raineri and viola Nicole Greentree as well as the airing of a supportive tape. Tickets are $25, plus a booking fee of unknown proportions.

MAHLER 4

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Thursday December 7 at 7:30 pm

We’ve become habituated to Erwin Stein’s reduction of this symphony which omits the bassoon and horn lines but introduces piano and harmonium (shades of Herzgewachse). Nothing so flash here. The instrumental forces are reduced to two pianos – Laurence Matheson and Alex Raineri – with Katie Stenzel‘s soprano taking on that theologically glutinous finale. The arrangement is for two separate instruments by Jestin Pieper, an American organist, conductor and arranger who published this version in 2010. At least it’s not another version that I came across written for piano four-hands, which would have condensed the action to the point of claustrophobia. Still, not much is gained by Pieper’s reduction, least of all the variety of timbres that Mahler crafted, especially for his concertmaster in the second movement. But it will make the last movement lied all the more welcome and Stenzel will enjoy minimal dynamic competition. Then there’s the point of mounting this work in the first place, with its hints at the composer’s smaller-scale-than-most technical schemata and instrumental arrays. Anyway, good luck to all concerned with this slightly-less-than-an-hour complex; it will certainly be of interest to those who know the original well. Tickets are $25 each, with the usual handling fee superimposed.

DECLASSIFIED

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Friday December 8 at 7:30 pm

Adam Herd is an Australian musician, originally from Coffs Harbour, who is currently living and studying in Finland. Well, he’s not alone in following that path as the Helsinki-Australia connection seems to get stronger as the years pass. Today he is presenting a piano recital, one that will already have been performed at the Espoo Cultural Centre in Tapiola country on November 12. What do we and the more aesthetically aware Finns get? Herd begins with three of the 1984 Eight Concert Etudes by Russian writer Nikolai Kapustin: Pastorale, Intermezzo and Toccatina. This composer fused classical and jazz, they say, although that was probably a big deal in his country. We move to the politically polar opposite with some Earl Wild versions of Gershwin songs, now become 4 Virtuoso Etudes: Embraceable You, Fascinatin’ Rhythm, The Man I Love, I Got Rhythm. A bit of a Scandinavian detour gives us three pieces (all preludes) from Norwegian composer Trygve Madsen’s 24 Preludes and Fugues Op. 101. Back in Finland, Herd plays two folk-song arrangements by Oskar Merikanto: Jos voisin laulaa kuin lintu voi (If I could sing like a bird can), and Iso lintu merikotka (A big bird, the white-tailed eagle). Finishing off an avian trilogy comes the pianist’s own arrangement of McCartney/Lennon’s Blackbird from the 1968 White Album. All that certainly denotes declassification . . . unless Herd is simply asking us to detour into non-Classical zones. Admission is $25 plus the usual ticket tax.

POULENC TRIBUTE #2

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 10:30 am

Good luck for the French composer who is being celebrated just on his own merits, not for any notable anniversary of birth, death or lifetime achievement. This program comprises works that I’ve never heard live – a situation that I believe may also be the case with other festival patrons. Cellist Daniel Shearer appears tonight in order to play the Cello Sonata with either Alex Raineri or Francis Atkins; the score occupied the composer off and on between 1940 and 1948 and the result is generally considered disappointing. One of the pianists (or perhaps they’ll divide the labour) will play two of the 15 Improvisations: No 7 in C Major and No 13 in A minor. Then one of them will outline the Soirees de Nazelles: eight variations and a cadence, surrounded by a prelude and a finale, all of which occupied Poulenc between 1930 and 1936 and comprise portraits of friends in the best Enigma mode. At night’s end, both pianists will be engaged in the Sonata for four hands of 1918, a three-movement and brief (6 minutes?) product of the composer’s late teens. That’s the point of a tribute, I suppose: you have to take the not-so-good as well as the outstanding – following our national trait of being all-inclusive as witnessed by the recent referendum. Tickets retail for $25 with an additional charge for having the cheek to buy them.

HELLISH CELLIST

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 1 pm

What can we make of this? The cellist in question, Daniel Shearer, is taking, as the basis of his expedition, Bach’s Suite No. 1 in G. He is theatricalizing it, promising us a journey to emulate that of Virgil and Dante, while he himself (presumably: no other performers are cited) takes on an ‘unadulterated character’ – which throws up all sorts of questions, the chief one being: who says you were adulterated in the first place? Whatever shape the dramatic interpretation takes, the musical one is going to give Shearer a big problem in that the suite itself lasts about 20 minutes. As the recital is scheduled to stretch between 1 pm and 2 pm, is he going to work through it three times? Or will there be infernal interludes to illustrate the Nine Circles? That would be a big ask of a composer who was known to be Lutheran conservative, not given to Italianate excess. By the same token, Bach could arrive at gripping depictions of Hell’s menace (Sind Blitze, sind Donner, for instance) and the consequences of sin. All of this speculation does nothing to prepare us for the reality which could be truly disturbing; I hope so. If you want to see this, it will cost you $25, along with a booking fee for your impertinence.

NOTES FOR TOMORROW

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 2:30 pm

In this recital, patrons are treated to three works of some relevance to the program’s title and one definite throwback in Poulenc’s aggressive Bagatelle in D minor of 1932 for violin and piano; in this performance, Courtenay Cleary and Alex Raineri respectively. As for the prospect of tomorrow, we’re greeted by Gerard Brophy‘s new score that gives the evening its title; this also involves Cleary and Raineri. Composed in 1995/6, Olga Neuwirth‘s Quasare/Pulsare also asks for violin and piano (prepared); there’s no hesitation in my mind at nominating Cleary and Raineri for the performance. Now, the odd one out is a song cycle by American writer/guitarist David Leisner. His Confiding for high voice and guitar, written during 1985-1986, sets ten poems ‘mostly Emily Dickinson and Emily Bronte’, that have to do with fluctuating relationships. In fact, Leisner sets four Dickinsons, four Brontes, and one each by Americans Elissa Ely and Gene Scaramellino. To handle this work, we’re to hear Blue Stockings – luckily, a voice-guitar duo comprising Alison Paris and Chloe Hasson. For this partly-futuristic cornucopia, you’ll be charged $25 admission, with an extra fee on top to show that – like the world to come – nothing is as it seems.

THE FIREBIRD

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 4 pm

Plainly, the high-point of this recital should/will be Stravinsky’s ballet suite. Actually, you won’t hear all of it: just the Infernal Dance, Berceuse and Finale in a colossal transcription by Guido Agosti which should test the recital’s executant, pianist/festival director Alex Raineri. Before entering this maelstrom, he’ll perform Rachmaninov’s Sonata No. 2 in one of its various incarnations; no matter which, this is a much-neglected marvel for the instrument that I must have heard only once live in a long span of concert/recital exposure. A few Poulenc gems are embedded as a continuation of the festival’s homage to the French writer; in this case, the Pastourelle of 1927 (the composer’s contribution to the ten-composer ballet, L’eventail de Jeanne), and the 1934 Humoresque in G Major – both brief and illustrative of the composer’s brilliant facility. To open his innings, Raineri will play the Australian premiere of Jakob Bragg‘s latest production for piano solo: Fourteen piano transcriptions from across the plane (plain). This was given its first outing during February of this year by Raineri in Huddersfield where the composer is writing his Ph. D. Bragg describes the work as ‘a surveying of the geography of the piano across a unique x-y axis notational model’; well, you can’t say fairer than that. You want in, it’ll cost you $25, as well as the usual churlish booking fee.

COURTENAY CLEARY IN RECITAL

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 6:30 pm

The young violinist is expending her gifts on a solo program that stretches over a lot of ground. She begins with a formal flourish in Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G minor BWV 1001: all four movements, including that well-used second movement Fuga. Leap forward 300 years and we come to local string teacher Stephen Chin‘s Three Capriccietti which I can’t find in the composer’s voluminous catalogue; perhaps it’s a score confided to Cleary alone. We move to a more senior Australian voice with Ross Edwards and one of the versions of his White Cockatoo Spirit Dance; in Cleary’s version on YouTube, she sets in train an electronic background of high twitters before she starts on the work itself. Anyway, this is familiar Edwards in Maninyas mode, the piece written in 1994. Back a bit to 1947 for Prokofiev’s much-decried Sonata in D Major; actually, I find it remarkably sunny and easy-going, particularly when you consider the constant menace facing the composer at this time. Now come forward two decades for French writer Eric Tanguy‘s Sonata breve in three movements across an 8-minute time-span. In the end, Cleary leaves unexplored the period between 1720 and the end of World War Two; well, it’s performer’s choice and this artist is playing to her strengths. You can hear her for $25, plus a charge for your charging it.

ROMANCE BY THE BOOK

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10 at 10:30 am

Here is one of the festival’s more well-organized song recitals in which soprano Katie Stenzel partners with pianist/festival director Alex Raineri. They are working through eleven songs in total, four from musicals/operetta, Britten’s four Cabaret Songs, and an art song each by Liszt, Debussy and (the inevitable) Poulenc. I know Glitter and be gay from Bernstein’s Candide because of the delight that every aspiring coloratura takes in yodeling through its arpeggiated arabesques. No big deal that I know Kern’s All the things you are which has been assaulted by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Carly Simon; a favourite of jazz combos for all its 7th chords, or so I’m told. As for Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Malloy, it’s clearly a slab of Tolstoy’s novel and No One Else should be sung by Natasha rather than Pierre. Somehow, I’ve seen Into the Woods (Victorian Opera?) but have no memory of On the steps of the palace but, if it’s Sondheim, it’s more challenging than most in the genre. As for the Debussy, it will be C’est l’extase, one of the Ariettes oubliees; the Liszt is Oh! quand je dors; Poulenc’s submission takes the form of a sentimental waltz, Les chemins de l’amour. I’m not as enthusiastic these days about Britten’s Auden settings, probably because they try to hard to be louche and were published well past their relevance date (if there actually was one). But they please popularly – well, a good deal more than the Michelangelo or Donne Sonnets. And they slot in well with the Broadway material. You can have all this for $25, plus the added financial hurdle of a service fee.

CONCORD

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10 at 1 pm

Alex Raineri isn’t presenting a peace-inspiring program, filled with charitable wishes concerning conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine or anywhere more local – like Townsville. His Concord is the Massachusetts town, famous denizens of which place made source material for Ives’ massive Piano Sonata No. 2: Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau. I grew up with the recorded performance by Aloys Kontarsky which for me stands out for its authority and impetus amid a plethora of interpretations, from Ives himself to Phillip Bush. Raineri is serious about living up to the composer’s demands by employing the short-lived services of Tim Munro on flute for the Thoreau finale and a viola from Nicole Greentree for the briefest of appearances in the opening Emerson movement. The entire Concord is a draining experience for any listener, but festival director Raineri has added to our aural burden by giving the world premiere of Australian writer Lyle Chan‘s Sonate en forme de cri, which may also employ the services of Munro and/or Greentree (and/or Raineri, so non-existent is the information about this new composition by a writer who apparently delights in giving nothing away). As with several other programs in this second grouping, Concord is a splendid example of real festival fare. All you need to hear it is $25 and a strongly-exercised forbearance in tolerating the credit-card-use fee.

TEN OF SWORDS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10 at 2:30 pm

The recital’s title puts us in in Tarot territory, this card signifying defeat or resignation to your lot – as well as the more optimistic reading (and there always is at least one) of recovering from disaster by pulling yourself together and striving against the world’s negativity. What any of this has to do with the afternoon’s music-making will become clear, I’m sure, as the program continues. To begin, the Blue Stockings duo of soprano Alison Paris and guitarist Chloe Hasson are presenting songs of their own creation. Whether these connect to the Major or Minor Arcana is anyone’s guess but it’s more probable that the Stockings are linking in with the mystical pack than anything that follows. Which showcases clarinet Dario Scalabrini and pianist Francis Atkins in three duets: Elena Kats-Chernin‘s Grand Rag of 2021 and nobody enters into the ragtime spirit with as much enthusiasm as this composer; Schumann’s Drei Fantastiestucke Op. 73, that multi-varied collection which can also be heard with violin or cello as the non-keyboard element; and a Fantasy on themes from La Traviata, Verdi transmogrified by Donato Lovreglio, a southern Italian flautist who arranged several Verdi-based fantasies – none more flashy than this one which treats Ah! fors e lui, the Libiamo with a Di quell’amor from Un di felice interlude, and a final flashy splurge on Sempre libera. In other words, Lovreglio didn’t get beyond Act 1; still, there’s plenty of lyrical matter there, God knows. To hear this split-level program, you pay $25 along with a ticket tax of still-unknown proportions.

JINGLE FINGERS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10 at 4 pm

A Christmas concert of sorts, to give the festival an emphatically seasonal spirit, this program comprises works for two pianos, with artistic director Alex Raineri and Adam Herd taking us through the late afternoon. They begin with a work by the newly-discovered American composer Amy Beach who has been transformed into a significant figure in that country’s musical development by people who should – and probably do – know better. Here is her 1924 Suite for Two Pianos Founded upon Old Irish Melodies. Four movements – Prelude, Old-Time Peasant Dance, The Ancient Cabin, Finale – give you a virtuosic set of arrangements on some defenceless tunes that get subsumed in the composer’s generously applied decorations/ornamentations. Then comes the festival’s final Poulenc salute: the Sonata for Two Pianos of 1953. This is a solid, sometimes clangorous construction that raises for me the spartan concentration of the Dialogues of the Carmelites, begun in the same year. It certainly makes for a bracing contrast with the ephemeral nature of the other Poulenc pieces we’ve heard in this second tranche of the festival. To end, we are treated to traditional Christmas Carols arranged by pianist Herd; perhaps he’ll confine himself to Finnish ones, including (if the recital’s title is being taken into account) a Scandinavian equivalent to Jingle Bells. On the bright side, you can hope for a sing-along to really get you in the mood for the commercial orgy that is to come. All this is available to you for $25 plus a handling fee to Humanitix for charitable purposes – the only way to do business.

THE SOUND OF CHRISTMAS

The Queensland Choir

The Old Museum, Bowen Hills

Saturday December 16

You can’t purchase tickets for this event until December. I can understand such reticence; who would want to be organized too far ahead? A little more worrying is the lack of decision about a time of day. But, by means of intrepid research, I’ve concluded that this will have to be an afternoon concern because Josh Daveta and the Sequins are taking over the space at 7:30 pm. Also, the organization’s previous two concerts have been presented at 3 in the afternoon and I can read a pattern as closely as the next code analyst. Still in the guessing game, I’d propose that the conductor will be Kevin Power, since he’s one of the two choir personnel noted on the group’s website. By exactly the same token, the accompanist (no organ at the Old Museum, so it’ll most likely be piano) is Mark Connors. There’s no way of predicting what these office-bearers and their forces will consider to be Christmas sounds but the outcome will most likely be the usual collection of British standards with some forays into the American seasonal repertoire. All seems rather vague? Well, what I know, you know – and, at present, that’s all there is to know.

4MBS CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR

Brisbane Chorale

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday December 17 at 3 pm

The Chorale is not alone at this concert but will be in collaboration with the Brisbane Symphony Orchestra under conductor Stefanie Smith. This afternoon’s soloist will be soprano Mirusia Louwerse, familiar to many from Andre Rieu’s extravaganzas. And what will patrons hear? As with The Queensland Choir above, details are lacking. Everything will fall under the generic heading of ‘Christmas Carols and other traditional Christmas fare’, which last seems to be a promise of food appropriate to the feast-day. At least this event has a definite time of day, unlike the concert listed above. But I note that this event isn’t listed online among the concert activities of the orchestra; either their contribution is too slight to bother mentioning, or perhaps their administration is unaware of the ensemble’s participation. However, counterweight that with the booking of the Town Hall – so they’re expected. Once again, I’m predicting the customary stolid British content that prevails during this country’s Christmases: comfortable, Anglican, spiritually numbing. Tickets are available for between $25 and $85; wherever you sit and whatever your concession/status, you attract a $1.25 tax that is just applied without explanation or justification.

SONATA PROJECT 1

Yundi Li

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Wednesday November 1 at 7:30 pm

Yundi Li, laureate in 2000 at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw and the youngest performer to win that distinguished event, began a world tour in 2019. In that year, he presented sonatas by Schubert, Chopin and Rachmaninov. He’s back again with a new, all-Mozart program: the K. 331 in A Major with the Rondo alla turca finale; the just-as-popular K. 310 in A minor; and the K. 457 in C minor which prefigures Beethoven’s Pathetique, they say. These latter two exhaust Mozart’s output of keyboard sonatas in minor keys. As well, Li will give us the hefty Fantasia in C minor K 475 which was published simultaneously with the K. 457 work. That’s quite a solid night, exhibiting the kind of concentration that most artists avoid, and it’s particularly interesting coming from an artist not known for his Mozart. Li has recorded the delectable K. 330 Sonata in C Major and he played the A Major Concerto K. 488 with the Staatskapelle Dresden during a 2017 tour of Germany and China. But his most sustained efforts have gone into Chopin with a little spattering of Liszt. Tickets range from $59 to $179; mind you, I tried booking just now and was met with an ‘error’ message every time I followed directions to make a reservation. Nevertheless, what I do know is that QPAC will still charge its disproportionate booking fee, no matter where your seat is.

INAUGURAL PADEREWSKI TOUR

Friends of Chopin

Old Museum, Bowen Hills

Saturday November 4 at 7 pm

A group that’s new to me, the Friends are commemorating (a bit early) the Australian 1904 tour by Paderewski, the famous pianist/composer/prime minister of Poland who was the most famous of the post-Liszt virtuosi who came to this country to be met with a wave of riotous enthusiasm. As with most events presented at the Old Museum, details are there on the website, but scant. For example, participants in this recital will be the Orava Quartet – expert and amiable locals – alongside pianist Aleksandra Swigut whose main claim to fame in the Chopin stakes is her experience on historical instruments. Hard to tell what she’ll be using for this exercise but I’m pretty sure it won’t be a Pleyel, Broadwood or Erard. Now, what are these musicians playing? Two of the names are familiar: Chopin and Penderecki; Swigut will be exercising her gifts on the former, the Oravas on the latter – in fact, the third (2008) one of Penderecki’s four quartets. The third composer is Wojciech Kilar, once a part of the New Polish School along with Penderecki and Gorecki, but turning his back on all that to write your normal harmonically conservative, sometimes folksong-inflected compositions including a string orchestral work, Orawa, which ties in neatly with our string quartet. As for Swigut’s contribution, that will consist of the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, probably with the orchestra reduced to the available four strings. Tickets move between $40 concession (with a $3.35 fee for nothing) and $70 full (shackled to a $4. 86 fee – the $30 difference in price makes such a difference in handling?).

SPOTLIGHT ON THE DOUBLE BASS

Brisbane Symphony Orchestra

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday November 5 at 3 pm

Billed as this orchestra’s final concert for the year, the BSO takes over the Town Hall for this program that highlights Queensland Symphony Orchestra principal double bass Phoebe Russell taking on the solo part in Bottesini’s Double Bass Concerto No. 2 in B minor of 1853. Not that anybody should have anything against the bass but this piece is interesting mainly for its relationship to the cello concertos of its time and a little later; from the first solo notes (and they come pretty quickly), we’re in the Romantic world of quiet complaint and melancholy, which obtains through a substantial slow movement, changing to something more aggressive for a polonaise-rich finale. Still, it’s great to hear this instrument treated as a lyrical voice, for once (no, Mahler: you don’t count). As far as I can tell, only the first movement was scored for full orchestra (11 wind plus strings) and most through-performances feature string accompaniment only. Conductor Paul Dean finishes the afternoon with Sibelius’ Symphony No 5: an unadulterated joy from first to last of its three movements, with an unforgettably sprawling conclusion: Finland at its most triumphant. The event will probably begin with James Ledger‘s Signal Lost, commissioned by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra for a premiere in June this year and here enjoying its Queensland debut. It sprang from considerations of Beethoven’s deafness coming on him about the time of the Eroica, and a parallel loss of communication outlets for us all during the COVID crisis. From the composer’s notes, cantus firmus/passacaglia/ground bass (to repeat myself) seems to be the main operating fulcrum. This piece asks for the largest orchestral forces among the scores being essayed. Tickets range from $20 to $40 with no credit-charge-managing fee, as far as I can tell.

ORGAN RECITAL

Simon Nieminski

St. John’s Anglican Cathedral

Thursday November 9 at 7 pm

In a building of this type, you’re bound to have a few recitals for this Norman and Beard/Hill, Norman and Beard/Simon Pierce instrument, if only to expose its extensive four-manual range. This time round, we have Nieminski visiting from St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney where he is assistant director of music, working under the newly-appointed Daniel Justin, one presumes. As far as I can see, the recital consists of one work: Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 in E minor, as transcribed by this performer. Well, that’s a 50-minute extravaganza, well-known to Melbourne Symphony Orchestra patrons of a certain age because of Hiroyuki Iwaki’s enthusiasm for it. You’d have to suppose that Nieminski will enjoy himself finding the variety of colours needed to animate this sometimes voluptuously expansive score; I’m thinking of that broad-beamed A Major Adagio and the ejaculation-rich E Major finale. Good luck to him; as far as I can find, nobody else has made another such transliteration of this score. Tickets range from $20 concession to $35, school students admitted free; there’s a 50-cents booking fee, which sounds about right, if you have to charge such a thing at all.

CHOPIN & THE MENDELSSOHNS

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday November 13 at 7 pm

Rounding out our Chopin piano concerto experience for this month, here comes Polina Leschenko with the No. 2 in F minor, also in an arrangement for string support only. There’s precedent for this, with an arrangement for string quintet being published by Breitkopf und Hartel in 1836; added to which, the composer has suffered from being faulted as an orchestrator for nearly two centuries. As for the Mendelssohns, we first get to enjoy Fanny’s String Quartet in E flat Major of 1834, a work her brother disapproved of for its formal eccentricity (what a Victorian prude he was) but of which she changed not a note. We’ll be hearing a string orchestra transcription but so far I can’t find a name behind this expansion of forces. To end, we have Richard Tognetti, the ACO’s artistic director, collaborating with Leschenko in Felix’s Concerto for Violin and Piano in D minor. This will be the original version with string accompaniment only, as distinct from the later orchestration involving winds and timpani. Mind you, this work was a product of the composer aged 14, so don’t expect too much; it’s sturdy enough but, to my ears, completely unmemorable. Seats are priced between $59 and $149 with an astonishing $8.50 ‘handling fee’, which sounds like an extra service from a brothel, although there you get value for money.

MICRO-MASTERPIECES

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday November 17 at 11:30 am

To kill off the year in its regular venue (as opposed to the Lyric Theatre where the players will congregate for three rounds of the Wagner Ring in December), the QSO is being controlled by chief conductor Umberto Clerici. As part of an unremarkable observance that takes in the last three Mozart symphonies over three years (really?), the program glories in the Symphony No. 39 in E flat which may see the repeats observed in its finale. Clerici begins with Rossini’s Overture to The Barber of Seville – a joy in any context, even this specious one: the Italian is his country’s answer to Mozart. Also in this collection of small chefs d’oeuvre we find Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, called Classical. More Haydn than Mozart, this score is a diatonic marvel which demonstrates the composer’s melodic felicity and brilliantly appropriate orchestrational skill. In his QSO website puff-piece, Clerici talks about the Schubert Symphony No. 5 and this composer’s admiration for Mozart; but the work is not included in the program list below these prefatory remarks. If it were, the program would blow out from about 50 minutes’ worth to over 77 – improbable as the event is scheduled to take 65 minutes without interval. Tickets move between $45 for a student to $130 full price, both despoiled by the $7.20 hyper-charge for employing the only currency available: credit card.

This program will be repeated on Saturday November 18 at 7:30 pm.

A JOYFUL NOISE

Brisbane Chorale

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday November 19 at 3 pm

For this afternoon, patrons can be assured of two works, the first being Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs. I’m assuming the version being offered is that for baritone solo (and who would that be?) with SATB choir and orchestra. For this afternoon, the only musicians mentioned are the John Coulton Brass Ensemble and organist Christopher Wrench – along with regular conductor Emily Cox. I’m sure something practicable will be cobbled together, if stretching the sources specified by the composer. As well, we’re to hear John Rutter’s Gloria for choir, brass, percussion and organ (or orchestra if there’s one lying around). which has for me reminiscences of Belshazzar’s Feast, if not as dramatic or daring. Both these add up to about 40 minutes of listening experience, but the promotional material offers ‘ . . . and more!’ Such a prospect dizzies with its suggestiveness and I question what could cap these two British choral gems but more of the same? You can buy tickets for between $15 and $60, with a ‘Fees & Charges’ tax of $1.25; I suppose this is small enough, especially when compared to other organizations’ unreasonable levies, but why have it at all?

WILDSCHUT & BRAUSS

Musica Viva Australia

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Wednesday November 23 at 7 pm

This violin/piano duo is here at the half-way point of a national tour. As far as I can see, Noa Wildschut (violin) and Elisabeth Brauss (piano) have no long-standing relationship, if you judge by their published schedules. Following the practice of many another Musica Viva guest ensemble,, they are presenting two programs, although there’s only one major difference between them. Common elements are Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor, Messiaen’s early Theme et variations, Debussy’s late (final) G minor Violin Sonata, and an Australian novelty in May Lyons’ Forces of Nature, commissioned for this tour (as is Musica Viva’s wont). The point of difference is that half of the recitals will hear Enescu’s folklore-infused Violin Sonata No. 3 in A minor; the other half (including Brisbane) have to settle for that welcome war-horse, Franck’s A Major (eventually) Violin Sonata. Well, these artists may not meet again after this set of recitals, but at least they’ll always have Australia. Tickets move between $15 and $109; I don’t think there are any extra charges.

HANDEL’S MESSIAH

Oriana Choir

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday November 26 at 3 pm

Thank God: for a moment I thought the barbarians had taken over and our annual Christmas dose of Handel’s oratorio wasn’t going to be spooned out. But here it is, presented by a near-20-years-old Sunshine Coast organization. Oriana has again gained the services of Andrew Wailes, long-time director of Melbourne’s Royal Philharmonic Choir and a consistent presence in a remarkable number of other choral bodies; in my experience, he has directed several outstanding performances of choral+orchestral music. He also has the outstanding quality among musicians of not measuring out his friendship in proportion to favourable reviews. His soloists are soprano Elisabeth Wallace Gaedtke, contralto Anne Fulton, tenor Tobias Merz, and bass Jason Barry-Smith – locals all, these days. But the bulk of the work falls to the chorus which, from its websites, sounds ultra-enthusiastic. The Sinfonia of St. Andrew’s will provide the instrumental support and this performance will follow an out-pf-town reading on the preceding night in Buderim. You can hear the Brisbane performance for between $15 and $55, with that usual added surcharge of $1,25 that seems to be peculiar to Brisbane Town (city) Hall presentations.

ZEPHYR: VOICE WITH WINDS

Brisbane Chamber Choir

St. John’s Anglican Cathedral

Sunday November 26 at 3 pm

This body is singing on its home turf in St. John’s where it is chamber choir in residence, but it also has strong affiliations with the University of Queensland School of Music with which it is affiliated. Its conductor is (and has always been) Graeme Morton, who is an eminence at both the cathedral and university. Alongside the singers we’ll hear a double wind quintet from the UQ School of Music, cellist Patrick Murphy, soprano saxophone Diana Tolmie, and organist Andrej Kouznetsov who is Morton’s assistant at the cathedral. As to what is on the program, details are scanty. Front and centre will be Stravinsky’s Mass for Mixed Chorus and Double Wind Quintet, the latter comprising two oboes, cor anglais, two bassoons, two trumpets and three trombones. All well and good; I’ve not heard this score in live performance and would appreciate the opportunity. But it lasts – at best – 20 minutes. Now we’re promised other music that puts voices and winds together but no details are available. Still, if you put your trust in these performers, you’ll give them the benefit of a fairly solid doubt. And, who knows? Perhaps the other works might explain the event’s title. Admission falls between $20 and $50 with a 50 cent booking fee per seat – which is cheap but irrational.