Category: The Diary

A QUEER ROMANCE

Michael Honeyman and Sally Whitwell

Opera Queensland Studio, 149 Grey St. South Bank

Friday October 6 at 7 pm

As for picking lyrical products for this song recital, I don’t think baritone Honeyman and his accompanist will have much success – that’s if the adjective ‘queer’ relates to sexuality and isn’t just used as a general term for off-centre or outre. You could go for the Michelangelo Sonnets of Britten – no: they’re written for tenor. What about Poulenc’s songs for Bernac? Fine, but you look for sub-texts in vain across the work of this repressed writer. You might have better luck with Ravel’s L’indifferent or Debussy’s Chansons de Bilitis although both are heard more often/successfully from female singers. But an actual romance along LGBTQI lines expressed in unambiguous music is pretty hard to come across; lots of hints and possibilities, very little that’s explicit . . . or maybe I haven’t heard of it yet. As for Honeyman, my experience has been limited to his Opera Australia appearances, best exemplified in a towering King Roger that threw the rest of that particular Melbourne season (2017?) into the shade. Whitwell I know nothing about, but she’s a Sydney musician and that city’s musical life hasn’t impinged on my consciousness for over 60 years. The recital is sponsored by Opera Queensland. Tickets range between $77 and $85; I don’t think there’s any credit-card gouging.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 7 at 2 pm.

NOCTURNE

Orava Quartet

The Edge Auditorium, State Library of Queensland

Saturday October 7 at 7 pm

The city’s favourite ensemble of this shape is offering a delectable 90-minute program in a string quartet-favouring location, with a close acoustic from memory. The players – violins Daniel Kowalik and David Dalseno, viola Thomas Chawner, cello Karol Kowalik – open with Borodin No. 2 which features a slow-movement Notturno familiar to all lovers of the musical Kismet, not forgetting the Scherzo which, with its second theme, gave us Baubles, Bangles and Beads. But it’s a satisfying work in its own right, making me wonder yet again: why don’t we ever hear its predecessor based on a theme from a late Beethoven quartet? Then come the Five Pieces by Erwin Schulhoff of 1923 which show a facility that this composer possessed when pushing beyond Les Six. Finally, the Oravas offer us Sculthorpe’s String Quartet No. 9. Commissioned in 1975 by Musica Viva Australia, it’s a work I’ve not heard for many years. But you could say the same about most of the Australian writer’s output in this form, all of it very approachable. This occasion also marks the launch of the ensemble’s second album, for which no details are available. Tickets range from $25 to $69, organized through Eventbrite who will probably charge you for their services, limited as they are.

THE DINNER PARTY

Ensemble Q

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday October 8 at 3 pm

The Ensemble is celebrating a famous dinner on the night of Strauss’s Salome premiere in Graz. Those present included Schonberg, his students Berg and Webern, his brother-in-law Zemlinsky, his idol Mahler, as well as Strauss himself and Puccini (in town for the spectacle). By some clever programmatic variety, we will hear Schonberg’s Six Little Piano Pieces of 1913, Berg’s Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano from the same year, and Webern’s Three Little Pieces for Cello and Piano from the following year. Puccini is represented by his string quartet lament Crisantemi, composed way back in 1890 between Edgar and Manon Lescaut. Zemlinsky produced his 4-minute Humoreske for wind quintet in 1939 after escaping the Nazis. A neat confederation comes in Schoenberg’s 1920 arrangement of Mahler’s 1885 Songs of a Wayfarer for flute, clarinet, string quartet plus double bass, piano, harmonium, triangle and glockenspiel. Then, the night’s second half is all-Strauss: the Piano Quartet Op. 13, contemporaneous with Mahler’s song-cycle; and Till Eulenspiegel – einmal anders! in which the Austrian academic Franz Hasenohrl in 1954 reappraised the 1895 tone poem by reducing its content by about half and cut the orchestral forces to a violin-double bass-clarinet-bassoon-horn quintet. Don’t know who’s participating in any of the above except for baritone Shaun Brown who sings Mahler/Schoenberg’s four lieder. It’s at QPAC, so the tickets range from $55 concession to $75 full, with the gross impost of $7.20 as a penalty for giving up your Sunday afternoon.

EUROPEAN MASTERS

Academy of St. Martin in the FieldsAcademy of St Martin in the Fields Academy of St Martin in the Fields with Joshua Bell

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Wednesday October 11 at 7 pm

This famous British ensemble has allied with super-duper American violinist Bell, currently the Academy’s music director, for a tour that involves three nights in Melbourne’s Recital Centre (audience limited to 1,000), three nights in Sydney’s Opera House (God knows how many it holds after the latest re-configuration) and two nights in Brisbane; blessed be the east coast. I’ve heard them once at home and once in Melbourne; no question but that this group is top-notch with a burnished output that has been delighting us for 65+ years. The European writers that they’re presenting begin with Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, yclept Classical because it offers a modern-day (1916-17) Haydn flavour. It’s fine as long as it isn’t turned into a rapid-fire onslaught in the outer movements. I believe Bell will be front man for Bach’s A minor Violin Concerto BWV 1041; you see, this night’s work is emphatically popular and such a warhorse should go down a treat. The director will also probably take prime position for Saint-Saens’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, in which I can already hear the sparks flying in the concluding Piu allegro. To end, Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony – his last in the form (probably because it took him so long to finish) and notable for its absence of breaths between movements and the snappy Scots references in the scherzo and finale. Tickets range from $89 to $199 (no concessions); well, they all need recompense for coming so far, don’t they? While splurging on this, never forget QPAC’s extra impost of $7.20 on any order.

CLASSIC GRANDEUR

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields with Joshua Bell

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday October 12 at 7 pm

Following its array of popular favourites from last night, the Academy and its music director go straight for that old-time religion with a program that could have come from the 1930s. We are beginning with Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro and it’s almost a certainty that Bell and his forces will spring no surprises with this brief burst of brilliance but will mount a crisp presentation; mind you, what else can you do? Bell steps forward for the Beethoven Violin Concerto which will be punctuated by the soloist’s own cadenzas; fair enough, as the composer didn’t supply any himself and who needs Kreisler’s any more? I can remember Nigel Kennedy playing them with timpani support on one of his visits here – probably taken from Beethoven’s own arrangement of the work for piano and orchestra. In any case, Bell’s cadenzas have been around for a while without causing controversy. And we return to Mozart for the Symphony No. 40 in G minor: the most popular of the set and a challenging task for any group of players faced with its inspired bravery and emotional conviction. Tickets cost the same as at last night’s event – $89 to $199, with the same booking-fee exaction of $7.20. Perhaps it’s worth the expense to see these fine flowers from Britain’s musical garden on display.

HEARTLAND CLASSICS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday October 13 7:30 pm

The orchestra’s one city concert for this month does come from the centre of Europe, beginning with the Hungarian frolic of Kodaly’s Dances of Galanta from 1933, oozing national colour and verbunkos format. It’s a friendly suite with some flattering orchestral work, particularly for clarinet which will give Irit Silver plenty of scope to exercise her skills. An Armenian guest then comes forward: violinist Sergey Khachatryan. This youngish (38) musician will take the solo line for Mendelssohn in E minor, which is about as close to music’s early Romantic heartland as you can get and the acme of the composer’s achievement in the concerto format. After this German effusion, we’ll hear Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor from 1885 which certain commentators put at the forefront of the Czech composer’s output, despite the prevalence of the New World on every major orchestra’s annual schedule as the years roll on. I’ve a sneaking affection for this score as I first encountered it at the Melbourne Conservatorium where Noel Nickson conducted it in the early 1960s while I sat at the back of the violins and heard student tentativeness in full cry for the first (but not the last) time. Anyway, the conductor here is Otto Tausk from the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Tickets full-price fall between $90 and $130, but concessions are available; still, you can’t avoid that swingeing booking fee, no matter where you sit or what price reduction you manage to acquire.

This program will be repeated on Saturday October 14 at 1:30 pm

FLORESCENCE

Australian String Quartet

Ithaca Auditorium, Brisbane City Hall

Thursday October 19 at 7 pm

Here’s a fairly well-travelled group. Not that Brisbane is a constant on its touring schedule these days but, unlike quite a few other string quartets on the national scene, the ASQ doesn’t neglect us entirely. The ensemble – violins Dale Barltrop and Francesca Hiew, viola Christopher Cartlidge, cello Michael Dahlenberg – has survived the Great Interruption and comprises the same personnel format as when I heard the group some years ago. As for what they’re playing in this well-polished, atmospherically cold space, it starts with a Movement for String Quartet, written in 2020 by Justin Williams, associate principal viola with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and a founding member of the Tinalley Quartet (although that ensemble hasn’t been heard of for some time now). This brevity (the composer’s first creative gambit) is followed by Haydn in B minor, first of the six in the Op. 33 set and the only one of them not in a major key (although the composer has his little ambisexual harmonic jest at the start). I assume there’s an interval break (after about 36 minutes’ playing) before we jump back to Purcell’s Fantasia No 6 in F which is a substantial work, considering most of its companions. To end, we have Dvorak No. 14 in A flat, the last of the composer’s output in this form and nowhere nearly as well-known (or performed) as No 12, the American (once called the Nigger, especially in slavery-enriched England). That’s a very original program with nothing familiar about it – and so to be highly commended. Tickets? $33 to $78 with no apparent extra charge: another cause for commendation.

THE NEW WORLD

Southern Cross Soloists

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday October 22 at 3 pm

The Soloists are going all-American in this all-things-to-all-men compendium which begins with Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, last heard here from the Australian Chamber Orchestra on August 7; this time, in its string quartet format. Then we are treated to a bit of ersatz Americana in the Largo from Dvorak’s New World Symphony, Goin’ Home; presumably being sung to words provided by the composer’s American pupil, William Arm Fisher . . . otherwise, why not just stick with the piece’s original title? Then comes Artie Shaw’s Clarinet Concerto of 1940 which makes hay with the composer’s big band sunshine. The ensemble hits the inspirational if imaginary national vein with Three Scenes from Aaron Copland’s Rodeo ballet – which is odd as the usual collation features four of the work’s original five scenes. Konstantin Shamray will play his reading of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue; presumably as a piano solo, but you can’t tell with the Soloists. The final essay is a Piazzolla (well, he lived in the USA for 10 or 11 years): Fuga y misterio which comes from the composer’s opera Maria de Buenos Aires. It’s a frustrated tango, or so it seems to me, despite its formal qualities that sound as natural as the instrumental section to Bernstein’s Cool. In the program’s centre is an as-yet unnamed new work/collaboration between guitarist John Jorgenson (of Elton John band fame) and Chris Williams, the Soloists’ Didgeridoo Soloist in Residence. You’d suppose that the work will feature both composers as executants but – apart from Shamray – other participants on the night remain anonymous. Tickets are from $35 (student) to $85; it’s QPAC-sponsored, so have your extra $7.20 ready.

SONGBIRDS

Ensemble Offspring

Brisbane City Hall

Saturday October 28 at 7:30 pm

Is this group in a state of constant expansion or contraction? Last time I looked, it appeared to be a mixed trio; from its website, you’d think it was a sextet. For this particular program, three sound-sources are nominated: flute, clarinet and percussion. This last is certainly the ensemble’s founder/artistic director Claire Edwardes whose name is well-established among adherents of Australia’s contemporary music activity. The flautist will be Lamorna Nightingale, the clarinets negotiated by Jason Noble; these musicians have participated in Offspring recitals earlier this year. Three composers are singled out for mention on one particular informational platform: Gerard Brophy, Fiona Loader, and Nardi Simpson All three will be represented by some ‘beloved’ works. We know that they’ll be Australian birds – Brophy’s 2019 Beautiful birds, Loader’s Lorikeet Corroboree of 2015, perhaps Simpson’s Of Stars and Birds (which you can see the Offspringers play on YouTube). And then we move away from the avian and more to the environment with two Hollis Taylor/Jon Rose collaborations in N’Dhala Gorge @ Ross River and Bitter Springs Creek 2014, alongside Brenda Gifford‘s Mungala (Clouds), Ella Macens‘ Falling Embers, Alice Humphries‘ The Visitor (Sorry, I can’t stay), and Bridget Bourne‘s Wood Grooves – all written between 2018 and 2022. Tickets aren’t yet on sale.

KINGS AND CASTLES

South East Queensland Symphonic Winds

Old Museum, Bowen Hills

Sunday October 29 at 2:30 pm

A few unusual features about this event, which is the only one in October’s calendar for the Old Museum that appeals. First, it’s a dress-up event: you come attired as a king (or queen) and you could win a prize – an initiative that would spark up many a more grave event at QPAC. Second, the program is remarkably broad – and vague. The 60-piece ensemble (that’s a massive lot of winds) under Adam Pittard is promising a feast of music from around the globe – royalty of all types and times. We will hear musical insurrections (Khovanshchina? Va, pensiero?) and Holy Grail quests (Parsifal? or more likely Indiana Jones?). Geographical locations move between Ancient Persia – we could all do with a dash of Ketelbey, or a few selections from Kismet – and the Kingdom of Siam, which for many of us is forever associated with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I. The Winds choose their repertoire from light classical, Broadway musicals, movie themes and original compositions; some of my suggestions above might obtain, although perhaps not the Wagner and Mussorgsky operas. Tickets fall between $19 and $24, a dollar extra if you buy at the door. And there’s a 2% credit card fee – a matter of cents, I suppose, but necessary?

BIRDSONGS

Birds of Tokyo and Queensland Symphony OrchestraQueensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Art Centre

Friday September 8

And again, the QSO is seeking contemporary relevance by going into partnership with a rock band, viz. this five-man ensemble from Perth. Needless to say, I know nothing of the Birds of Tokyo’s output except that it is not avian-based; nor is it Far Eastern in flavour. But what’s a bit of nomenclatural misdirection between friends? The QSO publicity machine promises us works like Plans (2011), Lanterns (2014), Anchor (2015) and Good Lord (2020) from the Tokian oeuvre and, as with all such exercises, the QSO will be reduced to filling in the background – both physically and sonically. From limited (very) research, I’ve found that the Perth group has distinguished itself by playing at two AFL Grand Finals – a lesson in futility from my remembrances of these events: who is listening? Tickets range between $95 and $129 without concessions: this is no country for kids and the elderly. That usual $7.20 self-tip applies but, oddly enough, the QSO site has no seats on sale at the time of writing; nothing seems to be sold, but nothing is available. If the event materializes, the QSO will be led in their labours by Nicholas Buc who is well-versed in such trans-media exercises.

This concert will be repeated on Saturday September 9 at 7:30 pm.

UNDERWORLD: AN OPERATIC JOURNEY TO HELL AND BACK

Griffith University Faculty of Music

Conservatorium Theatre, South Brisbane

Saturday September 9 at 7:30 pm

This sounds more menacing than it is. The Griffith tyros will engage in excerpts from three operas dealing with the Orpheus myth: Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, and Philip Glass’s 1991 Orphee. Of the Gluck, I know everything; of the Glass, nothing except that it’s the first part of a trilogy that honours Cocteau by setting his film to music. You’d have to think that the Gluck bits would include Chiamo il mio ben, Che puro ciel, and Che faro: a nice night, then, for a tenor/soprano/mezzo/counter-tenor. As for the Offenbach frolic, there’s always the Galop infernal but much of the score involves a chorus or ensembles for the principals. What I’ve heard (today) of the Glass chamber opera shows the same promise as you can hear in Einstein on the Beach and Akhnaten, i.e. none. But that’s all right: we have a theme and doubtless the promised intersection of these three sources will result in an Orphic illumination. The whole is conducted by Johannes Fritzsch while the director is Michael Gow. Tickets are $40, $50 or $60, depending on your standing as adult, concession-holder, or student. As far as I can tell, there’s no credit-card-use extortion fee.

This performance will be repeated on Tuesday September 12 at 6:30 pm, Thursday September 14 at 7:30 pm, and Saturday September 16 at 2:30 pm.

VOYAGES

University of Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday September 10 at 2 pm

The University of Queensland players come down the river for a night of travel music. They start with a movement from an Hawaiian work by Michael-Thomas Foumai: Raise Hawai’ki: Kealaikahiki, the whole construct celebrating the round-world voyage of a voyaging canoe, Hokule’a, in 2017. It’s an eight-movement choral symphony but I suspect that we’ll be hearing an orchestra-only excerpt. The next trip takes us to Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in the hands of final-year UQ student In Yi Chae. Finally, we travel to Saint-Saens for his Symphony No. 3 in C, the one with the organ, four-hands piano and an irretrievable association with Chris Noonan’s 1995 film Babe. Well, it’s not so much the world-travelling that is the point of this program, but the intellectual and emotional transplantations that come over us while we’re listening. The conductor is local musician Dane Lam who is directing a new Foumai work, Children of Gods, with the Hawai’i Symphony, an organization for which he is all too soon taking on the role of music director. Tickets move from $17 for children and students to $35 for adults, with the usual QPAC fee of $7.20 for handling your booking – the blight continues.

ICONIC CLASSICS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Brisbane

Thursday September 14 at 10 am

A Prep to Grade 6 morning where the young ears are attuned to music that sits at the forefront of that art. Truly? The program lasts 50 minutes but there are no details about anything connected with this exercise except that tickets cost $30 each and, for every 10 of these, a teacher gets in for free. That’s one way of ensuring a minimal standard of discipline in what could be a fraught situation. No specific conductor is listed; no particular works are marked down for a run-through. But the aim is to expose these very young people to great music. Can’t go wrong, can you? Especially in the close quarters of the Studio where the audience can get too close and personal with the sound sources and gaze in wonder at the artistry on display. And you’re expecting that from Prep-age children? No, this isn’t going to happen. By the time they approach Grade 6, young people have sometimes acquired the self-control of shutting up for 50 minutes; anything younger and you’ve got no hope. Of course, the program could be structured in such a way that each segment lasts 2/3 minutes – which is about the length of a good Wiggles number. But you can’t reduce many ‘iconic’ classics to that time-span – unless you want to fool your audience that great music comes in pop-song slices.

This concert will be repeated at 11:30 am.

ICONIC CLASSICS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Brisbane

Friday September 15 at 10 am

Following from yesterday, the QSO is playing today for students from Years 6 to 10. The program will necessarily change, you’d expect, given that the level of audience naivete will have substantially reduced in this morning’s patrons. By the way, ticket prices stay the same and the stipulation of one free teacher for every 10 paying students still applies. Again, no conductor is listed and no works are scheduled by name. From past experiences at Melbourne school concerts pitched at students in the upper reaches of these ages, you can expect about 5 minutes of tolerant bemusement, even if the work being played is familiar, But you need a charismatic MC or conductor and a few whizz-bang young soloists to encourage your garden-variety students to stay the course. If the orchestra is performing for music students, then you’d have no worries; but your average Grade 9 pupil is not susceptible to anything except the most obvious and loud classic. The organization probably believes in doing public service this way, opening horizons and expanding choices. Maybe so, in a small number of cases, but I believe that a real awareness of great music rarely starts until the age at which these concerts leave off.

This program will be repeated at 11:30 am.

BENJAMIN BRITTEN’S WAR REQUIEM

Brisbane Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble Q, Brisbane Chorale, Canticum Chamber Choir, Voices of Birralee

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday September 16 at 7 pm

A work that has everything to satisfy a Britten admirer. I had an unalloyed enthusiasm for Britten’s work after coming across the first recording with Vishnevskaya, Pears and Fischer-Dieskau, then buying (and working through) the score, as well as relishing the opportunity to revisit all those Wilfred Owen poems that I’d studied five years before at school. Still, after 60 years, the score has many passages of remarkably affecting effectiveness: the Dies irae opening, the conclusion to The Parable of the Old Man and the Young, the pairing of Strange Meeting and In paradisum – all still impress me as showing the composer at his least prissy. As you can see from the list above, a good many of Brisbane’s musicians are participating; they’ll all be needed to cope with the composer’s triple grouping, including a large orchestra and a sizeable chamber ensemble. This night’s soloists are soprano Eva Kong, tenor Andrew Goodwin, baritone Hadleigh Adams, with the whole shebang conducted by Simon Hewett, taking time off from the opera/ballet pit to lead his forces through this flamboyantly sombre composition. There are no concession tickets; prices move from $49, through $65, to $75 although there are few of the expensive ones left.

GUY NOBLE’S GREAT TUNES

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Art Centre

Sunday September 17 at 11:30 am

To celebrate the conductor/host’s 18 years of directing the QSO’s Music on Sundays series, the organization asked Guy Noble to nominate his favourite works and present them to us. It’s a very broad selection he’s put together but I’d guess it comprises pieces that have meaning for him. The program begins with Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel; not the whole thing, I expect, but probably the overture and not much else because no soloists or choir are listed as participating and most of the opera requires one or both. Chabrier’s Espana puts in a welcome appearance; I’ve not heard it live for some time. And another piece of national colour emerges with the first of Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsodies: a mittel-European delight and the sort of thing Bartok could have written if only he hadn’t been so hidebound by reality. We leave Europe momentarily for home with Nigel Westlake‘s Babe Concert Suite which, as far as I can see, involves three parts from the original score. A return to Europe, lurching to Finland for the conclusion to the Sibelius Symphony No. 5 in E flat with its superb move from Lemminkainen’s Return to a swaying sunrise paean. Down to Germany where Weber wrote an Andante e Rondo Ungarese for his viola-playing brother in 1809. By 1813, he’d recast it for a bassoon soloist and this morning we hear QSO principal Nicole Tait fronting this rarely-heard gem. Finally, Noble brings his 80-minute extravaganza to an American close with the end credits from Field of Dreams, the 1989 Phil Alden Robertson film with a score by James Horner. Tickets range from $30 for a child to a top price of $105 for an adult in a good seat – plus the $7.20 handling fee for taking your money.

CLERICI CONDUCTS MAHLER

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday September 22 at 7:30 pm

The orchestra’s chief conductor Umberto Clerici is continuing a Mahler cycle begun by Alondra de la Parra during her stint in Brisbane. I don’t know how far she got, or whether she took the process in numerical order so that Clerici is left with the final four: the big rump. In any case, here he goes with No. 6 in A. I’ve heard a complete series in Melbourne from Markus Stenz who was able to negotiate the vast No. 8 in the Exhibition Building as part of a Federation Centenary shindig. Sir Andrew Davis got through all of the nine except No. 8 which was scheduled for a performance at (I seem to remember) Rod Laver Arena. But that fell through thanks to the advent of COVID and I don’t know if it was ever re-scheduled. Anyway, good luck to all connected with this performance because it’s long and arduous – except for the hammer-player who gets his two (or will it be three?) points of exposure in the grim finale. As well, Clerici will give the premiere of Justin Williams‘ Symphony No. 1, a work co-commissioned by the QSO and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra where the composer is associate principal viola, if more familiar to many of us as the alto line in Melbourne’s Tinalley Quartet. Obviously, he was a colleague of the conductor in the latter’s cello-playing days; useful, that old school bow. Clerici speaks of Williams as a late Romantic voice; not actually a help to those of us who want something from our writers that takes into account developments across the last century, at least. Tickets run the usual gamut from $30 (child) to $130 (full adult in a good seat), plus the $7.20 shakedown/booking fee for the sake of it.

This program will be repeated on Saturday September 23 at 1:30 pm

POSTCARDS FROM ITALY

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday September 25 at 7 pm

Only six members of the ACO will be playing at this geographically defined program: leader of the second violins Helena Rathbone, a second-rower violin in Ike See, head viola Stefanie Farrands and colleague Elizabeth Woolnough, principal cello Timo-Veikko Valve and his first desk support Julian Thompson. The night starts with a quartet playing the first movement, Venezia Notturna, from Thomas Ades‘ Arcadiana collection; not much to it, especially when compared to other elements in this collection. Valve offers his own arrangement of Bach’s Italian Concerto for an unknown number of participants – possibly a trio, if he’s confident enough. Mind you, the ‘Italian’ name is simply proposing contrasts; in the original, this is achieved by changing dynamics and (possibly) consoles/keyboards. We revert to the solidly Italian with Giovanni Sollima‘s Viaggio in Italia: not the whole thing,, but selections – presumably, ones without a vocal line . . . no, they come from a new version. The original for Schubert-style string quintet has 14 movements, so there’s plenty of scope for choice but, from what I’ve heard, a little goes a long way. Boccherini, that Italian/Spaniard hybrid, is represented by a quintet in the same format as Sollima’s: his Op. 45 No. 1 in C minor – 4 movements, 20 minutes’ worth. And, to end, Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence sextet, given this name because the composer conceived one of the work’s themes in that city when on an Italian sojourn with his brother following a disastrous attempt at marriage, so sensitively depicted in Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers 1971 film. For all its southern inspiration, the work is half-Russian (the later two movements), so the night will end on an ambiguous note (actually, a triad).

VISION STRING QUARTET

Musica Viva Australia

Queensland Conservatorium Theatre,. South Brisbane

Tuesday September 26 at 7 pm

This group – Florian Willeitner, Daniel Stoll, Sander Stuart, Leonard Disselhorst – is based in Berlin and is now 11 years old. The ensemble’s web-site is full of this visit to Australia, still going the full European scream about travelling to the ends of the earth. Which makes you wonder: how old are these people? Anyway, the lads are performing a standard program, with the extra bonus that they play from memory. First off is Bloch’s Prelude of 1925, subtitled Receuillement – about 5 minutes of eloquent late Romantic angst . . . but you could say that about a good deal of the composer’s more popular output. Bartok No. 4 follows, allegedly in C Major and a riveting score across its 23-minute length. The composer had ideas about expanding this work for string orchestra, so it would be handy to see what there is in this composition that is lacking in the Quartet No. 5 that Richard Tognetti recently expanded for his Australian Chamber Orchestra. To end, the ensemble performs Dvorak No. 13 Op. 106. A bit more lengthy, this delighted-to-be-home construct of 1895 lasts for about 40 minutes and helps to flesh out our chamber music experiences of this composer whose quartet output has been confined (in my experience) to one or two well-worn gems. Tickets can cost as little as $15 and as much as $109; I still don’t know whether Musica Viva charges a booking fee for its events but hope springs eternal.

NGAIIRE & QUEENSLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Princess Theatre, Woolloongabba

Friday August 4 at 7:45 pm

Here, the QSO is participating in Open Season, which is basically a government initiative in music and art (so music isn’t one?) run out of the Tivoli and the Princess Theatre and demonstrating how you can fuse anything, I suppose. Ngaiire is a First Nations Papuan New Guinean songwriter whose work is apparently not confined to any specific genre; which is nice to know because, whatever happens, you won’t succumb to any dashed expectations. What the orchestra is doing in collaboration is anyone’s guess but its forces could be amplified by a band of some kind; that’s usually my experience when fronting up to one of these cool-meets-conservative love-ins. Nothing like a program is set down so far but I’m sure the QSO will rise to the occasion with a spirited line in chords, melodies and rhythms that have been weltered to death over the past 600 years. Benjamin Northey conducts and you’d have to wish him well in what I feel – from bitter experience, and not just through this latest NAIDOC week – will add up to something eminently forgettable. Tickets are $79 if you want to sit down, $65 if you’re feeling the need to stand/dance/shuffle, with a reduction to $55 for 4ZZZ subscribers. I’ve tried logging on to the sitting-down Mezzanine option: it doesn’t work. Added to which, regardless of your mode of attendance, there is a ‘handling’ fee (handling what?) of $5.95 as well as a booking fee dependent on how you want your ticket(s) delivered. Good luck with all that.

BOHEMIAN SERENADES

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday August 7 at 7 pm

We’re applying a pretty broad definition of Bohemianism here. On the one hand, you have the free-for-all of Puccini’s opera; on the other, we’re concerned with the Czech Republic or its antecedents and the earth that it occupies/occupied. So we’re getting Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings and that’s great because the composer was a born Bohemian in the land sense; as far as I know he wasn’t a Beat precursor. As well, we have Josef Suk’s Meditation on the Old Czech hymn ‘St Wenceslas’; a palpable hit as Suk was another native Bohemian and, to keep it all in the nationalistic family, he married Dvorak’s daughter. Then we have a couple of outliers. Bartok’s String Quartet No. 5 gets the Tognetti treatment, arranged for his ACO forces which should be a fine test of ensemble, especially in the middle scherzo/trio. But this composer is all-Hungarian, although his work offers a worthwhile commentary on the Romantic Czechs with whom he is here allied. Tucked in the middle, like the Suk, we hear American writer Caroline Shaw’s 2011/14 Entr’acte which takes its genesis from Haydn’s Minuet and Trio from the Op. 77 No. 2 String Quartet in F Major, the composer’s last work in the form. Why is this here? Well, it’s a sort of dance, so it has some bearing on the Bartok and the Dvorak. And when I say ‘sort of’, the connection is very tenuous; but not everything has to conform to a standard, does it? Tickets are going for between $25 and $129 with a ‘handling’ fee of $7.50 – which goes to somebody for documenting your purchase. What a pity that nothing is actually being handled but a computer.

COSI FAN TUTTE

Opera Queensland

Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday August 10 at 7:30 pm

The least popular of the four celebrated Mozart operas, if the easiest to stage; the dramatic setting stays the same except for a change of costume. Nothing much happens, compared to the riotous action of Don Giovanni, or the fairytale surprises in The Magic Flute, or the Feydeau ins-and-outs of The Marriage of Figaro. Two idiots are tempted to test the fidelity of their women; it all turns out morally badly and I’ve seen productions where the happy reconciliation of both ethically bankrupt sets of partners is undercut by hurt rejection, no matter how jocund the Act 2 finale sounds, with its insistent claims that the happy man bella calma trovera. The two mutable young things, Dorabella and Fiordiligi, are sung by Anna Dowsley and Samantha Clarke respectively; their companions, Guglielmo and Ferrando, are taken on by Jeremy Kleeman and Brenton Spiteri. Don Alfonso will be Shaun Brown, Despina is Leanne Kenneally. The Queensland Symphony Orchestra is to be conducted by Zoe Zeniodi and the director is Patrick Nolan. It’s all great entertainment if the four main principals have interesting voices; otherwise, it can drag to the point of desperation. You can see it for between $75 and $165 with the usual $7.20 fee added on; but the concessions (Senior, Student, Child) are good value, for once.

CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Queensland Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Bank

Friday August 11 at 7:30 pm

Peter Luff, an associate professor at this Conservatorium, is directing an ensemble in a straightforward program featuring works that these young musicians might never encounter again in their professional lives. The night begins with Haydn’s Symphony No. 92, often called the Oxford because the composer is said to have conducted it in that city while receiving an honorary doctorate. Nobody is saying for certain that this is the one but it’s got the name and its academic pseudo-provenance suits this occasion. The night’s finale is Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony which occupied the writer, on and off, for 13 years or so. In the end, Mendelssohn didn’t propose the Scottish sobriquet but you can hear enough skirling suggestions to justify the title. The work is unusual in being played without breathing spaces between its movements. Between the symphonies, bassoonist Chris Buckley fronts the Ciranda das sete notas by Villa Lobos which plays around with the C Major scale in the guise of a children’s dance. The accompaniment is for string orchestra but the woodwind soloist dominates proceedings. Tickets run between $25 and $45 but there’s no booking/handling/penalty fee attached.

REEL CLASSICS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday August 13 at 11:30 am

Once again, the QSO is drawing a connection between its endeavours and those of Hollywood. We’re treated to a series of musical scores that accompany some outstanding films – and some pretty ordinary ones. But the best feature of this program is that each composer gets a single representation, so the range on offer is pretty broad. Nicholas Buc conducts and hosts. His fare begins with Monty Norman’s theme for James Bond, what you hear at the start of every film when the credits start; the online QSO literature promises ‘Music from James Bond’ but, as far as I can tell, Norman wrote only that one theme for the wavering gun barrel. Miklos Rozsa’s Parade of the Charioteers from Ben Hur will bring back memories of Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd indulging in their final romantic exchange of looks over the backs of sweating chariot horses. Next comes music from Gone with the Wind, attributed to John Barry; but it was surely written by Max Steiner – unless there’s another screen version of Mitchell’s awful novel that I’ve not come across since the 1939 original. Bernard Herrmann compiled his own suite of three sections from his soundtrack for Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Then come well-remembered images of Richard Todd leading his squadron to wash up the Ruhr dams escorted by Eric Coates’ Dam Busters March. And, while we’re on a British patriotic binge, what better than Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou’s Chariots of Fire theme; just the thing to make you want to run along a beach with a cluster of other Hooray Henries. Piling Pelion upon Ossa comes Maurice Jarre’s Overture to Lawrence of Arabia and its relentless combination of desert-longing and the responsibilities of empire. Do an about face for the Love Theme from Nino Rota for The Godfather which shows American-Italo sentimental corruption at its finest. A switchback and here comes Kenneth Alford’s Colonel Bogey March which is to the British Isles what the Radetzky March was to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was used in David Lean’s 1958 film The Bridge on the River Kwai to singular effect, a swaggering delight in a plethora of tosh – thanks, Alex Guinness. A real work by John Barry comes with his score (not all of it?) for Out of Africa; one of the better features of this tedious film. Back to the USA for an antidote to Rota’s glorification of the underworld; Henry Mancini’s Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany’s which celebrates fey idiocy with significant panache. Just in case you thought our own native land had been neglected, we’re treated to a rolling out of the Blue Hills Pastorale by Ronald Hanmer; not exactly film music but who needs Tina Turner belting out We Don’t Need Another Hero? Then, a return to Hollywood with John Williams’ March from Raiders of the Lost Ark – the only Indiana Jones film worth watching. Tickets are $75 to $130 with hefty discounts for children and students but the inevitable $7.20 booking swindle.

SPIRITED

Ensemble Trivium

Old Museum, Bowen Hills

Thursday August 17 at 7 pm

In this presentation, the ensemble has four participants: flute Monika Koerner, violin Anne Horton, viola Yoko Okayasu, and double bass Marian Heckenberg. You won’t find many scores that cater for all four at once, so this program is a hard-worked one, including a new composition by Brisbane’s own John Rotar. Written for flute, viola and bass, this work is called Bromeliad Dances, setting up a rush of floral visions that will probably not be realized, just as Cyril Scott’s Lotus Land disappoints (probably nothing to do with horticulture) and as the Waltz of the Flowers suggests humans more than plant life. As well, Koerner, Horton and Okayasu will present an arrangement of Kodaly’s 1920 Serenade for two violins and viola; not that there’s much re-organization involved. Also, three of the group will play Erwin Schulhoff’s Concertino for flute, viola and bass from 1925; a deft frivolity in which the flute changes to piccolo in the even-numbered of its four movements. Tickets range from $22 to $55, depending on your age and whether you buy at the door; whatever your classification, a 2% credit card fee applies, which is indicative of some performers’/venue penury but, at these prices, isn’t as bad as at nearly every other musical event in Brisbane these days.

DEATH AND THE MAIDEN

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Bank

Sunday August 20 at 3 pm

Obviously, this afternoon will come to a climax with the great Schubert quartet, a score that always grips you, even if the reading proves mediocre. Here, we have associate concertmaster Alan Smith, his wife violin Jane Burroughs, viola Nicholas Tomkin, and cello Andre Duthoit. They’re all QSO members and play together in what I presume is collegial bliss; more importantly, these four musicians are members of the Adina String Quartet which has been a unit for over 17 years. Before this masterpiece, we are treated to some novelties. First comes Etienne Perruchon’s 5 Danses Dogoriennes, composed as an instance of folk art in the composer’s imagined European country of Dogora and requiring a cello and five timpani (plus three woodblocks, apparently). Then we hear a new work (as yet unnamed) by David Montgomery, the QSO’s long-time principal percussionist. Reciprocity by Texas-born low-brass master James Meador follows, in this incarnation for associate principal trombone Ashley Carter and the orchestra’s Mr. Tuba in Thomas Allely. A final duo comes with West Australian Myles Wright’s Pair Up for marimba and trombone, presumably Montgomery and Carter. Going by the prevailing ethos, you’d have to think that Montgomery’s new work is also a duo, possibly for himself and principal timpanist Tim Corkeron who’ll be on hand for the Perruchon dances. Tickets range between $30 and $55, amplified by an outrageous $7.95 ‘transaction fee’ – a charge for nothing more than having the audacity to attend this recital, it seems.

CLASSICAL CONNECTIONS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Bank

Friday August 25 at 7:30 pm

Another small-scale concert from the QSO, conducted by Umberto Clerici, this event runs for 70 minutes without interval. The first two elements of the program are divertimenti: Mozart in E flat K. 166, and Bartok Sz. 113. The first is a five-movement decet for pairs of oboes, clarinets, cors anglais, horns and bassoons and dates from the composer’s 17th year, still in Salzburg. Not much here to cause the plaudits to rain down except its characteristic polish and some unexpected melodic oddities. The Hungarian master’s Divertimento was the last work he completed in Europe and a mild-tempered construct, a more idyllic work than the composer’s previous commission from Paul Sacher and the Basel Chamber Orchestra: the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. For this reading, Clerici is calling on the complete corps of 46 QSO strings, over double the minimum that Bartok specified to handle the score. The last component of this afternoon is Haydn’s Symphony No. 45, the Farewell, where the orchestra gradually denudes itself of players in the last movement until only two violins are left playing an exquisite, moving duet. The only problem I’ve encountered with this eloquent finale is the stomping off by some players where rubber soles should have been the management’s order of the day. You can buy tickets for between $30 and $75, with the traditional QSO charge of $7.95 for paying you the courtesy of taking your money.

FRENCH CONNECTIONS

The Queensland Choir

St John’s Anglican Cathedral, Ann St.

Friday August 25

At the time of writing, only a few details are known about this event. What is certain is that the Choir will be essaying two works: Faure’s Requiem and the Te Deum in D by Charpentier. Which version of the idiosyncratic Mass for the Dead will be used – 1888, 1893, 1900 – is uncertain, as are the identities of the soprano and bass soloist. Also, we don’t know the conductor’s name, although you’d have to anticipate that it would be the Choir’s regular director, Kevin Power. The only part of the Charpentier work that is well-known is the opening Prelude, a march that is popular among organists for post-ceremony wedding music. But it involves a smaller orchestra than the Faure: four woodwind, two brass, timpani and strings (not many). Finally, there are no details about the price of tickets or whether booking fees apply. Which means everything is remarkably up in the air still, about six weeks away from the performance.

ROMANCE

Queensland Youth Symphony

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday August 26 at 7 pm

These youngsters will have more than a cupful of romance before this night is over. Under conductor Simon Hewett, they begin with Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe Suite No 2, basically the last third of the ballet and featuring both a sparkling vision of dawn and a bacchanale several steps more persuasive than Saint-Saens’ effort 35 years earlier. It’s a fine display piece for everyone involved with one of your great non-Debussy flute solos near the start. After interval comes the Symphony No. 2 in E minor by Rachmaninov, very popular on ABC Classic radio – they seem to give it an airing once a week. And it was a favourite of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, thanks to Hiroyuki Iwaki’s enthusiasm for the score. It’s long but, thanks to the quality of its melodic inventiveness, never tiring. Guest Lewis Blanchard – well, sort of: he’s the QYS’s principal – will front Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, presumably in the easier version of 1948/9, adapted to commissioner Benny Goodman’s technical limitations. Not so much romance here, although the first movement of the two has its own lyricism which is generally obliterated after the cadenza linking it to the Latin American dance finale. Admission ranges from $18 (student) to $45 (adult) with nothing in between, and the usual QPAC excessive charge of $7.20.

RAY PLAYS TCHAIKOVSKY

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday July 7 at 7:30 pm

Nice to see the QSO administration being so relaxed with this guest artist. Violinist Ray Chen has returned to Brisbane where he spent some youthful and adolescent years learning his craft and sweeping various prize pools. He’s here to take on the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto: one of the most familiar works of its kind in the standard repertoire and a never-failing source of delight to observers as its executants generate rolling lyrical fabric and scintillating technical passages. The little I’ve seen (and heard) of Chen augurs well for this interpretation. Tonight’s conductor, Giancarlo Guerrero, is new to me but not to this city as he appeared here in 2018 to conduct the Shostakovich Symphony No. 10. This time around, he’s directing the same composer’s symphony No 8, nicknamed the Stalingrad in those halcyon days of misplaced trust before the end of World War Two. I don’t know where Guerrero acquired the reputation as a notable interpreter of the Russian master’s works – perhaps the result of too little research from the QSO’s publicity staff – but he’ll have little trouble with this C minor five-movement score that stands out among the composer’s output of 15 symphonies for its stark tension. Tickets range from $90 to $130 with some concessions available, whittled down by a booking fee that could teach the Reserve Bank a thing or two about financial outrage.

This program will be repeated on Saturday July 8 at 1:30 pm

CHOPIN’S PIANO

Musica Viva

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday July 13 at 7 pm

This entertainment centres around the composer’s Op. 28 Preludes, written in Majorca where Chopin, George Sand and her children retreated for health reasons – a disastrous venture, except in terms of Chopin’s creativity. The pianist for this dramatised venture is Aura Go who is complemented by actor Jennifer Vuletic in a staging of a book by Musica Viva’s director Paul Kildea, the exercise directed by Richard Pyros. From what you can make out from publicity shots, the instrument being used is not actually an imitation of the small local piano that Chopin used, but a modern-day grand. You’d have to assume that Go plays all the preludes and Vuletic does – what? Also from the Musica Viva publicity, both artists are dressed the same, so perhaps one represents the artist at work while the other represents his psychological workings. All fine, as far as it goes. Why was the choice made to feature women artists only? Is it an ironic comment on the late 19th century idea that the composer’s music was for females – too feminine, too delicate? Or is it a trendy transgender concept: every woman her own Chopin? This staging was first essayed in 2021, so this seems a bit soon to bring it back. Perhaps it’s very good. Tickets move between $15 and $109 (those cheap ones are Student Rush) and I can’t tell whether or not a booking fee is added on.

SUNSET SOIREE

Southern Cross Soloists

Foyer, Judith Wright Arts Centre, Fortitude Valley

Saturday July 15 at 5 pm

This entry is going to be short: there’s no indication yet as to what is being played here in this hour-long recital. The players are listed: Courtenay Cleary violin, James Wannan viola, Guillaume Wang cello, Tania Frazer oboe, Daniel Le piano. The possibilities are many, of course, although you might hope for Mozart’s Oboe Quartet, and you could pretty much name any piano trio, quartet or violin/viola/cello sonata and it could turn up. What I have observed about these Sunset programs given by the Southern Cross younger set is that they rarely contain a complete work; rather, these ad hoc ensembles offer movements from larger compositions. And the three artists listed for the previous exercise in the series are also playing in this one: Wannan, Wang and Frazer. Tickets fall between $30 and $48 without, as far as I can see, any booking fee/extortion.

DAY IN THE ORCHESTRA 2023

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio South Bank

Saturday July 15 at 7 pm

Here’s the ultimate in popular appeal: an invitation for selected community instrumentalists to play with the state’s leading orchestra in some regular repertoire. The assembled forces begin with The Mastersingers Overture by Wagner, move to Maria Grenfell’s River mountain sky for a touch of (currently) Tasmanian art, switch to the growling nationalism of Sibelius’ Finlandia, finally go for broke with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. Comes the day and the combined ensemble sits down to rehearsal – God knows how long it takes to get these four pieces into assimilable shape, but I’m sure conductor Richard Davis will be able to organize the works into position. Or perhaps there are a series of preliminary runs-through and we’ll wind up with excellent readings. In any case, if you were interested in participating, applications have closed and you’re reduced to the rank of spectator like the rest of us. Tickets range from $20 to $39 but the booking fee remains the same at all levels: $7. 95. To be fair, you’re getting about 50 minutes of music for your dollars.

FISH, CHIPS & WARM BEER

Ensemble Q

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday July 16 at 3 pm

We’re promised a boozy affair here, with running around, mugs clinking and all the frowsty fun of an English pub. Sadly, a lot of the music on offer militates against this nostalgic (for some) scenario. I’m not even sure about the suitability of the night’s first offering: Vaughan Williams Six Studies in English Folk Song which are mostly rather wistful and slow, apart from the last one (‘As I walked over London Bridge’). The set was originally for cello and piano but the composer authorised versions for violin, viola and clarinet. Next comes Vaughan Williams’ pupil Elizabeth Maconchy’s String Quartet No. 3 which some group played here last year; a 10-minute but somehow lavishly coloured work in one movement with five sections. Leaping from 1938 to 1991, we encounter Thomas Ades Catch Op. 4 for violin, cello, piano and errant clarinet which looks more amusing than its music actually sounds. Still, you’d only encounter this sort of thing in a particularly eclectic hotel. Malcolm Arnold’s Three Shanties require a wind quintet and make much more suitable ‘public’ music, in particular the first which makes play of ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor’. Frank Bridge’s Phantasy: Piano Quartet, another one-movement score, builds on the composer’s success in Cobbett’s Phantasie competition to have composers revisit ye olde Englishe methodology. This is matched with a score by Bridge’s most famous pupil: Britten’s Sinfonietta Op. 1, probably in its original scoring for five wind and five strings. Last comes an odd Australian composition in Frederick Septimus Kelly’s Elegy in memoriam Rupert Brooke for harp and strings, possibly in the string quartet version arranged by Richard Divall. This is definitely not pub/beer/chips music despite the composer’s devotion to all things British; its first performance was directed by Bridge and it’s become something of an Australian equivalent to the Barber Adagio. As usual, performer details are non-existent but ticket prices are not: $55 or $75, with a $7.20 fee for daring to book and (compulsorily) use a credit card.

DREAMS AND FANTASIES

Orchestra Corda Spiritus

Old Museum, 480 Gregory Terrace, Bowen Hills

Sunday July 16 at 3 pm

From what I can make out, this is an organization of enthusiasts who set themselves a high bar. For this program, they are following a predictable first-half format but change their pace after the concerto. To begin, we hear Weber’s Oberon Overture, which is a none-too-safe staple but we live in some hope. Guitarist Hamish Strathdee then takes the lead for Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez which asks for a small orchestra – pairs of woodwind, trumpets and horns, and strings (not too many). But the work is scored for transparence and nobody can deviate in pitch or attack. Then the players under Chen Yang take on extracts from Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and again you have very clean writing with nowhere to hide. No singers are involved, so that precludes Ye spotted snakes: my favourite from the whole set of 14 pieces. It will probably be the Overture, Scherzo, Nocturne and Wedding March, with the Intermezzo an optional extra. Tickets cost between $20 for students to $33 for an adult, with a few concessions in between.

FINAL FANTASY

New World Players

Brisbane Powerhouse, New Farm

Wednesday July 19 at 7:30 pm

Not sure about this one, but that’s only because this style/school/genre of music is out of my sphere; more attuned to my grandchildren’s tastes, I’m assuming. Final Fantasy is both a media organization and an apparently endless game, capable of limitless variants in action – and music. It’s hard for the venerable among us to take video games seriously; my one-time computer repairman/technician used to snigger into his Kleenex when he saw the games that I played – Solitaire, Super Granny, Turtix, Roads of Rome – and promise to lend a hand when I got into ‘real’ games like the sado-masochistic murderous futuristic warfare that seems to be the current stock-in-trade. But you can come across music for contemporary games on ABC Classic FM’s Game Show, so this sort of output must have gained some cachet with the powers-that-be. What is promised on this program are ‘classics and surprises’ from the music for Final Fantasy, performed by the New World Players under Eric Roth with ‘visionary contributions’ from writers such as Nobuo Uematsu and Arnie Roth (Any relation? Yes, indeed: father and son). To be honest, I’m not smitten with this soundtrack material; what I’ve heard of Meena Shamaly’s offerings strikes me as derivative beyond the realms of belief although I admire the way the man can pronounce the names and products of game show creators – such a change to the usual ABC announcers who fall to pieces when faced with a Georgian, Icelandic or Vietnamese composition/composer (but then, like Eddie McGuire, they never seem to rehearse their offerings). Seats are available at $85 and there is a ‘service fee’ of $6.90 – which seems a trifle odd as the site claims ‘no additional fee’ for having your ticket(s) delivered by SMS or PDF . . . but clearly, there is!

MUSICAL THEATRE GALA

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday July 22 at 1:30 pm

Yet another in the QSO’s understandable quest to get bums on seats, here with a selection of 21 excerpts from musical theatre. This time around, I’m recognizing more composers, which probably means that the program organizers have erred on the conservative side. Music and lyrics for Guys and Dolls were provided by Frank Loesser and we’re to hear the Overture, If I were a bell and Luck be a lady from that estimable show. Another three products come from Stephen Sondheim in the Night Waltz and Send in the clowns from A Little Night Music, plus Giants in the sky from Into the Woods. Still another treble will appear from Claude-Michel Schonberg: On my own, Bring him home, and Do you hear the people sing?, all from that strange digest, Les Miserables. Bernstein scores two numbers, both from West Side Story: the Cool Fugue from his Symphonic Dances arrangement, and Maria. Single honours are awarded to Jerry Bock for Vanilla icecream from She Loves Me; Stephen Schwartz’s Pippin represented by Corner of the sky; Come what may from David Baerwald and Kevin Gilbert for Moulin Rouge; the classic Anything you can do from Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun; and, from Jekyll and Hyde, Frank Wildhorn’s This is the moment – the solitary memorable item from that work’s score. But the night’s major contributor is Alan Menken with five numbers: Colours of the wind from Pocahontas; the Overture and Take as old as time from Beauty and the Beast (the latter in its ‘pop version’); from Hunchback of Notre Dame, Out there; and Somewhere that’s green from Little Shop of Horrors. The QSO’s direction falls to the evergreen conductor of such events, Guy Noble, and his vocalists are Martha Berhane, Ashleigh Denning, Daniel Belle and Jonathan Hickey. Tickets come between $90 and $130 with concessions as low as $30 for a child. But the surcharge is $7.20, which is a cover-all for multiple tickets.

This performance will be repeated at 7:30 pm

OTTOMAN BAROQUE

Australian Brandenburg Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday July 24 at 7 pm

The ABO has a habit of mixing its media. Who can forget its concerts involving groups like the Circa troupe or La Camera delle Lacrime where ambition sometimes met up with reality? On this occasion, the Brandenburgers are venturing where the Australian Chamber Orchestra recently ventured in trying to forge a link between the Baroque and Islam; I don’t think there’s much in it but stand to be corrected. Obviously, the entertainment’s main attractions are members of the Mevlevi Sufi Order from that conservative city Konya in southern Turkey. Pushing the local influence even further, the Brandenburg Choir will sing settings of poems by Konya’s own Rumi. We are promised Ottoman instruments ( the oud? ney? kanun?) and a recreation of the mystic ceremony which is the main purpose of these dervishes who aren’t concerned with display but with Islam. Which could be a problem with the ABO and its flamboyant director, Paul Dyer, who tend to be very concerned with the exercise of personality and that brand of Western music-making where the musician is set somewhere above the music by means of virtuosity or the exercise of craft. I don’t know: you could be transported but, for some of us, the whole thing is bound to be an entertainment more than an enlightenment. Will there be anything else, something to justify the Baroque tag? It’s not clear, nor is the length of this concert/meditation. Definitely worth a look, not least because this is the first appearance by the ABO in Brisbane for some time. Concession tickets start at $39 but the regular prices move between $59 and $102, with the usual QPAC add-on fee (for standing in the middle) of $7.20.

BEETHOVEN AND ELGAR

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday July 28 at 11:30 pm

Only two works on this program: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C and the Elgar Symphony No. 2. Soloist in the concerto is Dalby-born London resident Jayson Gillham whom I’ve heard play with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to fine effect. He’s made quite a name for his Beethoven performances, including an album of the complete concertos with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra under Nicholas Carter which at least got nominated in the 2021 Aria Awards. Elgar in E flat is the one with the Shelley quote on the first page: ‘Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight!’ – which invocation he goes on to substantiate at some length. The work is a too-fine farewell to the Edwardian decade, a generous encomium dedicated to and wasted on a doggedly unpleasant monarch. The night’s conductor will be Joseph Swensen who was (maybe is) a noted violinist, now translated into the Paradise of musical directors. I can’t see that he has any particular affinity with Elgar but he was principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra for ten years, now emeritus with that body. Here’s hoping he has sympathy with the work; otherwise patrons are in for a gruelling hour. But the Beethoven concerto is also substantial: the longest of the five, in fact. Tickets in the normal run of events start at $89 and rise to $130, concessions starting at $30 and the usual gouge of $7.20 still applies for taking your money.

This concert will be repeated on Saturday July 29 at 7:30 pm

GARRICK OHLSSON

Musica Viva

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Thursday June 1

One day in 2020, it was Ohlsson appearing for Musica Viva; the next, it was COVID and we all fell down. Now the Canadian master is back, beginning another MV tour and presenting works by Schubert, Liszt and Scriabin. In Adelaide, Perth and the second recitals in Sydney and Melbourne, he’s playing Debussy’s Suite bergamasque, sonatas by Barber and Chopin and some other bon-bons by this last-named. Common to both programs is a new work commissioned for Musica Viva: Thomas Misson‘s Convocations. Yes, I know: sounds like Meale’s Coruscations of 1971, written before that writer changed his style for something old and predictable. What I’ve heard of Misson’s constructs is promising, dealing in advances in composition with integrity, not wallowing in the tried and sometimes not-true. Anyway, Ohlsson at Queensland Con plays the Schubert C minor Impromptu, Op.90 No. 1 – the one of the four that nobody touches. Then the Liszt B minor Sonata – a one-movement composition of high technical demands and a (for Liszt) high watermark of emotional compression. After the new Misson comes a fair sample of the Russian mystic’s creativity: three etudes from different sets (Op. 2, Op. 8, Op. 42), the first of the Two Poems Op. 32, and the Sonata No. 5: like Liszt’s, in one movement. Not that I’m an enthusiast, but we rarely hear a concentrated dose of Scriabin; you can hardly imagine better hands than these through which to have this experience. Prices of tickets range from $15 to $109, but I don’t know if that’s bumped up by the credit card usage fee/theft.

A BAROQUE TRIBUTE

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Brisbane

Friday June 2 at 7:30 pm

As I’m coming to expect, this concert’s title is not quite accurate. Stretching relationships and time-scales, it’s taxing to align some parts of this modest program with the Baroque. To open, the QSO strings under director/concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto will run through Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue K. 546, written about the time of the Jupiter finale and at a period when the composer was doing Bach research and arrangements. Tick for this one, then. Next comes real Baroque in a canon and fugue from the Art of Fugue, transcribed by George Benjamin; the canon is the one alla Ottava, the fugue is Contrapunctus 7 per Augment et Diminut. This instrumentation calls for flute, two horns, three violins, two violas and a cello. It doesn’t get more of the period than this. Now come the temporal outsiders, first with the Haydn Symphony No. 70 in D which can only be included in this tribute because its second movement is a double variation canon – and nothing spells ‘Baroque’ better than a canon. To finish, we have Stravinsky’s Concerto in D (‘Basle’) for string orchestra which – as far as I can see – fits into the program because its middle movement is an arioso. The outer ones don’t strike me as much more than the composer’s usual neoclassical style coming to an end during his freshly-naturalized period (1945 or thereabouts). This concerto is sprightly and direct and you won’t find any excrescences indulged throughout its brief length – not a trace of self-indulgence. Still, it’s a splendid test of precision playing. Tonight’s performance is sold out, but . . .

This program will be repeated on Saturday June 3 at 3 pm. Prices range from $30 to $75 with the usual outrageous booking fee which is close to $8.

LEON AND THE PLACE BETWEEN

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday June 8 at 10 am

A kids’ concert, pitched at Years 1 to 6; yes, Year 1 – it is to laugh. The story is by Angela McAllister, the music comes from Paul Rissmann, the pictures are by Grahame Baker-Smith – all UK creators and so terrifically relevant in the aftermath of watching two elderly and uninspiring marital defaulters stagger towards the thrones of England. Their tale is allegedly set in a circus, although one publisher’s website puts Leon and his siblings at a ‘magic show’; no matter the environment, our protagonist learns heaps about all those human qualities that make today’s young so repulsively assured enough as to express their ignorance loudly and to put their feet up on train seats. I know nothing about Rissmann’s products, although he has a strong connection with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and has appeared with several state orchestras, while his reputation in the UK is high as a presenter, raconteur, host, explicator and front-man for children’s music. It’s fortunate that he will be on hand to take us through this work, which will be directed by Jen Winley, the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra’s assistant conductor. Tickets are a flat $30 and, with each 10 students, a teacher gets in free. The whole thing seems geared to schools, presumably on the understanding that primary teachers can control their charges across this 50-minute-long operation. As I said at the start, it is to laugh.

THE LOST THING

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday June 9 at 10 am

The audience here is children in Years 6 to 10 and the QSO plus Voices of Birralee is conducted by Jen Winley from Perth. To those in the know, The Lost Thing is a picture-book by West Australian Shaun Tan; Scottish-born composer Paul Rissmann wrote a score to accompany the tale in this concert format, commissioned by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in 2020. I’ve seen some of Tan’s work in concert and you wouldn’t say it’s going out of its way to entertain, the illustrator/author’s monumental environment reminding me of a colourless Chirico world. Rissmann will be there to present – his own score, at least. It’s inserted in medias res with some intriguing surrounds. The QSO begins with Elena Kats-Chernin’s 2013 Dance of the Paper Umbrellas; then come Rimsky’s Flight of the Bumblebee, the Hungarian Dance No. 5 by Brahms, a Star Wars Suite by John Williams to end and a true oddity in Coleridge-Taylor’s Othello Suite: Dance, Children’s Intermezzo, Funeral March, The Willow Song, Military March – this last adding up to about 15 minutes’ playing time. The performance is meant to last for an hour, but Rissmann’s score only endures for 22 minutes, according to his catalogue of works. So you’d have to assume that the two performances on offer are presenting the full program, despite the QSO website not listing the above bevy of compositions for this Friday bridging-the-primary-secondary-gap experience. As with yesterday’s event, tickets are $30 per student.

This program – probably in yesterday’s format – will be repeated on Saturday June 10 at 10 am in a Family Concert when tickets will range from $39 to $49 with the credit-card fleecing fee of $7.20

OPERA SPECTACULAR

4MBS Festival of Classics

Main Auditorium, City Hall, Brisbane

Sunday June 11 at 3 pm

The city’s specialist serious music radio station presents this night – part of a long chain of events across May and June – that features a quartet of well-known soloists. Soprano Eva Kong leads the way and she is the only artist about whom a program detail might be gleaned as she is singing some Madama Butterfly – inevitably Un bel di, unless she is put into harness with tenor Rosario La Spina for the duet ending Act 1. And the meagre publicity blurb does mention ‘excerpts’. The other soloists are La Spina’s wife, mezzo Milijana Nikolic, and baritone Jose Carbo. The Ensemble Q Orchestra (love to see that when it’s at home) will be conducted by Tahu Matheson, currently working with Opera Australia, and filling in the gaps with an intra-number narration will be Matheson’s brother, Tama. Other details are unavailable but I’d anticipate that everything will be quite familiar; what’s the point of going spectacularly operatic unless you can wow your audience with arias (and that’s really all that’s promised) known by all and sundry? So I don’t think we’ll be hearing any Richard Strauss; probably no Wagner; Monteverdi will be absent from the feast, and you can be pretty sure that another innovator – Gluck – won’t be present, either Holding out for Berlioz? Not a chance. Here’s looking at you, Britten, but your time has probably not yet come at this kind of concert. Mozart? Maybe. All the same, you have to thank 4MBS for organizing an opera concert in a city where the art form is rarely performed. Tickets cost between $89 and $30 with a booking fee of $1.25.

TERRIFIC TRUMPET

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday June 16 at 11:30 am

What appears to be in play here is that the QSO is welcoming its newly-appointed principal trumpet, Rainer Saville. Great to see, although I think Saville has been in the ensemble for a while. Anyway, he’s taking on the Tomasi Trumpet Concerto, beloved of trumpeters for a host of reasons: it’s short, shows off technique, doesn’t call for any timbral insanities, covers a bevy of compositional styles without falling too heavily into that irritating pseudo-jazz French 1920s genre, has no melodies worth remembering, serves as a splendid instance of physical jerks with a just-long-enough central Nocturne to display arabesques, and boasts a flashy first-movement cadenza supported by snare drum, Filipino-Finnish conductor Tarmo Peltokoski – a tender 23- year-old – escorts Saville through this flashy ephemera before turning to the Sibelius Symphony No. 2, which is exhibitionism of a different water: all those ice sheets, shadow-drenched fjords, pastel veils of the Aurora Borealis, and the rest of that Finnish malarkey. This score stands out from the rest of the composer’s symphonic output for its Romantic breadth and audience-pleasing accessibility, while asking its interpreters for a sobbing warmth of approach as well as stamina. At all events, the concert is scheduled to last for 65 minutes without interval.

With the addition of Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy-Overture Romeo and Juliet, this program will be repeated on Saturday June 17 at 7:30 pm.

FROM THE HEARTLAND: VIENNA TO BUDAPEST

Southern Cross Soloists

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday June 18 at 3 pm

If you take that title literally, it’s not much territory to cover. The trip takes 2 1/2 hours by car and you move from Austria straight into Hungary; hence, your compositional choices are geographically limited. This recital/concert ticks some of the expected boxes, as in Mozart’s last (and best-known) Horn Concerto K. 495 which here stands alongside the Viola Concerto by Bartok – well, the composer left sketches for completion by a friend and his own son. Anyway, that sort of takes in the two European capitals, even if the Hungarian master wrote his work in New York. Later on, we hear the Totentanz by Liszt: the original version for piano and orchestra involving double woodwind plus piccolo, double horns and trumpets, three trombones plus tuba, timpani and three other percussion, with the full string complement. Still, it’s a full Hungarian work, regularly played by Bartok and momentarily reminiscent of his Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Now we move a little further afield to the north-east of the Austrian capital with Two Moravian Songs by Pavel Fischer; the former first violin of the Skampa Quartet has organized a pair of folk songs for voice and string quartet, so I suppose these are what we’ll hear. Then we move to Poland for Lutoslawski’s Dance Preludes in the 1955 version for clarinet, harp, piano, percussion, and strings; folk tunes, they say, although nobody has identified which ones and the composer wasn’t giving his game away. Anyway, we’ve moved to Warsaw, 850-plus kilometres north of Budapest – so, a well-expanded heartland. As well, we have a homegrown novelty from trumpet virtuoso James Morrison in collaboration with the Southern Cross’s didgeridoo-in-residence, Chris Williams; they are producing a new work, as yet nameless. That’s a big program and you can hear it for $85 (adult) or $35 (youth) with a credit card fee of $7.20. Why didn’t Chalmers and Albanese do something about this unjust impost in their mealy-mouthed budget, instead of wasting time on avaricious gas companies and the under-privileged?

QSO FAVOURITES

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday June 24 at 1:30 pm

What the QSO thinks of as ‘favourites’ seem to be selections. For instance, this program launches itself with selections from the Suites 1 and 2 from Bizet’s Carmen, compiled after the composer’s death by Ernest Guiraud. The first collection is better suited for orchestra as it includes the Prelude and all three entr’actes, while the second comprises transcriptions of sung numbers only. The occasion concludes with selections from the three suites from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet. Conductor Umberto Clerici has 20 numbers to choose from, although it has to be observed that the best collection comes from Suite No. 1. As some sort of filler, the QSO presents the Main Theme and Love Theme from the Ennio and Andrea Morricone score for Cinema Paradiso. OK, although why this should be a favourite is a bit of a mystery. Central to the entertainment is Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez which is a melodic feast and spirit-lifting in its outer movements. Soloist will be Karin Schaupp, a Queenslander since her 8th year. It’s great to see that the orchestra takes pleasure in this particular score, especially as its instrumentation is lean: your normal double woodwind, pairs of horns and trumpets, strings. But its high attraction for me is that the orchestra sparkles when everyone is on board. And I’m so pleased that the nonsensical legends about the Adagio being a Civil War lament or an elegy on the bombing of Guernica have been put to rest.

This program will be repeated at 7:30 pm.

PIERS LANE

Medici Concerts

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday June 25 at 3 pm

The popular Brisbane-raised pianist is here presenting a recital of works by Chopin and Rachmaninov, the central work being the Russian composer’s rarely-heard Variations on a Theme of Chopin. The scrap chosen for elaboration is the C minor Prelude No. 20 from the Op. 28 set and the interpreter has to cope with 22 variations in all; you can hope that Lane will work through them all, rather than following a widespread practice (allowed in later editions) of cutting out some later parts of the work. At all events, on either side of this exhibition, we hear a selection from the Chopin preludes and another collation plucked from the ballets Chopiniana and Les Sylphides. The first comprises five works orchestrated by Glazunov: the A Major Polonaise, the F Major Nocturne, the D minor Mazurka from Op. 50, the C sharp minor Waltz, and the Tarantelle. Les Sylphides has 8 numbers, beginning with the same polonaise but ending with the Op. 18 E flat Major Waltz. In the middle come the A flat Major Nocturne, two waltzes in the G flat Major and the C sharp minor recycled from Chopiniana, a pair of mazurkas (Op. 33 No. 2 and Op. 67 No. 3), and not forgetting the A Major Prelude. Pick your poison but I’m betting the Tarantelle won’t get an outing. And it’s no use asking why the big Rachmaninov in the middle: it’s his 150th birthday this year and even a work written when he was 30 (surely not juvenilia) should enjoy a dusting-off.

MOZART

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday June 26 at 7 pm

Topping up on a previous (2015?) Mozart symphonic excursion featuring the last three in the catalogue, artistic director Richard Tognetti and his band of renown move back a little to present three more, each with a nickname. The night opens with the Symphony No. 31 in D, called the Paris because it was premiered in that riotous city and enjoyed favour right from the start. Only three movements but a big orchestra with double woodwind – all four of them – with pairs of trumpets and horns, strings and timpani. Another D Major follows in the Symphony No. 35, Haffner, written for the semi-noble family of that name and using the same instrumentation as the Paris composition but expanded to four movements with the use of a menuetto surviving from the earlier Haffner Serenade. To conclude the triptych, we hear the Linz Symphony No. 36 in C, written in that town during a stop-over in late 1783. It also has four movements and differs from the others on this program by lacking flutes and clarinets. Fleshing out the symphonies, which last a bit over an hour, the ACO will play the Ballet Music from Idomeneo K. 367: Chaconne, Annonce, more Chaconne, Pas seul, Passepied, Gavotte, Passecaille. This uses the same Paris/Haffner forces and lasts about 19 minutes – thereby pushing the concert out to a solid length. As for tickets, they fall into a tight range between $94 and $129, with the customary booking fee of $7.20. Still, it’s been a fair while between drinks, the ACO having called in here last on March 13 and the group’s appearances are to be treasured in this shrinking age for serious music-making.

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS

Brodsky Quartet

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Tuesday May 2 at 7 pm

Once again, the devil’s in the detail. Yes, the Brodskies have been in operation since 1972, so a 50-year observation is in order, if slightly overdue. Two of the original players have survived: second violin Ian Belton and cello Jacqueline Thomas. Another member musician has retained his Brodskyism since 1982: viola Paul Cassidy. First violin position has undergone the most change until 2021 when Krysia Osostowicz took over the role. So it’s 50 years – good on you all – but only half the group has seen out the distance. Anyway, this British ensemble is offering tickets from $79 to $99 with the usual $7.20 fee to put you off. As for what’s to be heard, the Brodskies will indulge in a bit of nationalistic touting with Britten’s String Quartet No. 2, which is the most impressive of the composer’s three major essays in the form, probably for its concluding Chacony; if there’s one thing you can rely on Lord Benny for, it’s clever foraging in the past. Added to which, this group has recorded all of Britten’s quartets – twice. Then the musicians make their assault on Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, recorded back in 1993. To kick off, we’ll hear Cassidy’s arrangement of the Bach G minor Sonata for violin solo, BWV 1001 which the Brodskies also recorded two years ago on a CD containing all three sonatas Cassidied into string quartet format. So the whole occasion is a well-rehearsed celebration-cum-remembrance of things past – some recent, some mid-Brodsky ageing – with the main point of interest in listening to how Osostowicz melds with the old-timers. I’m assuming that QPAC is sponsoring this event, chiefly because I can’t find any publicity spruiking a specific sponsor.

AMONG THE BIRDS AND THE TREES

Musica Viva Australia

Queensland Conservatorium Theatre, South Brisbane

Wednesday May 3 at 7 pm

As far as I can tell, the three artists on this latest national tour are not regular collaborators. Flautist Adam Walker recorded with violist Timothy Ridout a CD of French flute music, but of harpist Anneleen Lenaerts I can’t find a mention in either of her two male colleagues’ discographies or recital lists. In any case, they have come together to perform the Debussy Sonata – the only work anyone is aware of that was composed for this particular instrumental trio. You’ll have to wait till night’s end to hear it but the three Musica Viva guests will work through another two flute/viola/harp compositions: Gubaidulina’s one-movement Garden of Joy and Sorrow from 1980, and Takemitsu’s 1992 And then I knew ’twas Wind which took its title from an Emily Dickinson poem. Along the way come a few piano solos – Debussy’s Jardins sous la pluie and Clair de lune, British composer George Benjamin’s Flight for solo flute and the famous Messiaen duo Le Merle noir for flute and piano (harp?). And I assume that the Telemann Fantasia No. 7 in E flat – all four movements of it – will be entrusted to Ridout, although with these sorts of programs you can’t be sure who’ll wind up doing what; those two Debussy piano solos come to mind insofar as they’d have to be transcriptions by or for Lenaerts – or will one of the others step in for a solo line? Mind you, they’d have trouble with the gardens. Tickets range from $15 to $109 with concessions available but I can’t figure out if there’s an attached booking fee; sadly, there probably is.

NIGHT MUSIC

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Brisbane

Friday May 5 at 7:30 pm

We’ve got two famous night musics on this 75 minute interval-less program. First comes Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, the Serenade No.13 in G, K. 525 which is known to pretty much anyone who’d be attracted to this QSO event as one of serious music’s signature dishes, harnessed to the advertising industry like few other scores. Here’s hoping that concertmaster/director Natsuko Yoshimoto can bring plenty of verve, if not novelty, to these familiar pages.. This Classical gem is followed by Romanticism’s last gasp in Schoenberg’s sextet Verklaerte Nacht of 1899, packed with depression, guilt and redemption-through-love. It’s a great nocturnal journey, nowhere better than from the breathtaking change of key to F sharp Major and the radiant final 12 bars. You’d probably be right in thinking that both Mozart and Schoenberg will be given in string orchestra format, chiefly because the final work to be presented – Telemann’s 8-part Don Quixote Suite – calls for a big string sound (with harpsichord? and lute??) and what’s the point of having all those musicians hanging around through a quartet and sextet in which they could easily (and legitimately) swell the numbers? This trio of scores shows a sensible, if uninspired, temporal sweep but the arrangement would be improved if the Baroque work came first. Tickets range from $30 to $75, plus an inflated booking fee just 5 cents short of $8: a compulsory tip of over 10%.

This program will be repeated on Saturday May 6 at 3 pm.

DON QUIXOTE

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday May 12 at 7:30 pm

And tonight, the QSO makes another foray into the world of Cervantes. Nothing as refined or as brief as Telemann’s little suite from a week ago but Richard Strauss’s vast, blowsy depiction of the knight and his squire which asks for two soloists: cello for the Don, viola (and a few others) for Sancho. I’ve heard this once in live performance from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the performance wasn’t memorable, apart from Christopher Moore carrying out discreet solo viola duties. Here, with chief conductor Umberto Clerici in charge, the character lines will be performed by the QSO’s section principals – Hyung Suk Bae and Imants Larsens. Not that the tone poem is a trial; it falls into 14 sections over its 35-minute length and the orchestration is as subtle as that for Till Eulenspiegel. In the program’s first half, Piers Lane will be soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor K. 491. With a big frame, this work calls for more orchestral forces than any other in this division of the composer’s catalogue and its emotional demands are as severe as Beethoven’s Op. 37. It’s a solid half-hour, granted, but I can’t understand why the orchestra needs an interval between this and the Strauss. Tickets range from $90 to $130 with the supplementary charge of $7.20 for stuff-all.

A guest I can’t explain convincingly is actor Eugene Gilfedder. It’s hard to see him fitting into the concerto format, so it’s probable that he’ll be involved in the Strauss reduced epic. Yet, as far as I know, there’s no place for a narrator or any dialogue in the score. So he could be present on stage to welcome us, or to apologize for us to the original inhabitants for being there, or to attune us to post-COVID changes in concert hall etiquette, or (best of all) to explain the workings of a wind machine.

This program will be repeated on Saturday May 13 at 1:30 pm

UTOPIAS

Australian String Quartet

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Friday May 19 at 7 pm

On a rare visit to Brisbane – but not as rare as some other chamber groups with lesser drawing power – the ASQ is performing at the Con theatre. Last time I was aware of them here, the group played in a library building opposite QPAC which took me ages to find, especially in the penumbra that operates after dark through the riverside buildings of the Cultural Precinct. Griffith spends a good deal more on lighting so we should have a well-lit path to where the ensemble in its current format – violins Dale Barrltrop and Francesca Hiew, viola Christopher Cartlidge, cello Michael Dahlenburg – will present a solid recital. The evening begins with Thomas Ades’ Arcadiana: a seven-movement, non-stop composition celebrating the idyll with a good many references to other composers and several options as to what the composer understands by Arcadia. The recital’s title is a pretty good representation of where Ades is leading his listeners. After this British early work, the ASQ heads for Mozart in D minor K. 421, second of the Haydn quartets and irregular in many aspects, mainly formal. Then it’s the turn of Shostakovich through the No. 9 in E flat Major (you reckon?) which, like the Ades, is played without a pause between its five movements. It seems that a good many youngish ensembles take on the Russian master’s quartets without much preparation and even less natural insight, resulting in bland readings which stay on the surface. You’d hope for much better from these artists who have enjoyed several years of mutual experience behind them – and the fact that two of this score’s movements are adagios where bouncy, biting satire is absent from the interpretative equation. Tickets are a flat $81, without a booking fee but apparently with no concessions on tap.

EARTH WATER FIRE

Queensland Youth Symphony

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Saturday May 20 at 7 pm

Under Simon Hewett, these young players taken on Debussy’s La mer which will be as mobile and possibly as inchoate as you’d expect. It’s is a hard ask for any orchestra and I’ve yet to hear live a performance that fully satisfies. But do we stand still and put it into the too-hard basket, almost 120 years after its gestation? To be honest, I’d rather hear what the QYS can make of these sketches than watch them labour through yet another slab of German Romanticism. The concert ends with Stravinsky’s Firebird, and I believe that this means the complete ballet rather than one of the three suites. Which is both interesting and unsettling as I heard part of the work in the car a few days ago on ABC Classic; I think it was the 1945 suite because I came in during one of the Pantomimes and left during the Khorovod. But the shock was that, for about three minutes, I had no idea what I was hearing; there is a good deal of the complete work that is unfamiliar to those of us who have been bred on the 1919 suite and who have come to realize that there’s precious few pages outside those five movements that comprise neglected gems. In the program’s middle, the orchestra escorts William Barton through his own Apii Thatini Mu Murtu (To sing and carry a coolamon on country together where a coolamon is a dish). Barton will play a didgeridoo and sing, as he did at the work’s premiere with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra under Benjamin Northey in July last year. I’m out of sync with this sort of music where the Aboriginal instrument and chant are superimposed on a Western orchestral sound fabric. The most convincing fusions of didgeridoo and orthodox instruments come from writers with advanced compositional techniques, or so it seems to me. You can applaud the respect shown to First Nations musicians who make the effort to grapple with serious music-making, rather than award time and space to those proposing country/rock imitations of hillbilly Americana. But listening to this work of Barton’s won’t convince you that such a hybrid music leads forward. Tickets are a flat $45, with the $7.20 tax-for-no-service added.

LOVE AND PASSION

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday May 21 at 11:30 am

After what seems to be an out-of-town try-put, the QSO is dishing out one of its lollipop programs in an obvious attempt to put bums on seats. On May 19, a Symphony Under the Stars night to be held somewhere in Gladstone will be conducted by Johannes Fritzsch and feature, as guests, soprano Rebecca Cassidy and tenor Rosario La Spina. The audience will be treated to clumps of Puccini (Un bel di, E lucevan le stelle, the Act III Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut, Che gelida manina to the end of the act), a bit of Bizet in the Prelude to Carmen, and Verdi’s Act 2 Triumphal March from Aida. Another art form gets a look-in with The Young Juliet from Prokofiev’s great ballet. A few other isolates are included, like Elgar’s Salut d’amour and the Strauss waltz Roses from the South. Back in Brisbane, the Elgar, Bizet, Prokofiev and Strauss are scheduled, as are excerpts from Madama Butterfly, Tosca and La Boheme (I wonder which ones?), as well as ‘AND MORE’ . What’s missing? The Verdi and the Puccini Intermezzo? Still, there’ll be the same guests, the same conductor but – especially written in for The Big Smoke – Guy Noble will play host. Not much has gone into preparing this event with its catch-as-catch-can list of classical hits, but seats – from $75 to $105 with concessions and booking fee surplus of $7.20, regardless of how much your ticket costs – are selling like Vegemite hot cross buns.

CINEMATIC

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday May 26 at 7:30 pm

It appears to be a simple celebration of contemporary film music, but does it have accompanying clips? With the Voices of Birralee singers, the QSO under Nicholas Buc will bring back memories – some pleasant, others nauseating – of movies we have seen, beginning with the opening to Richard Strauss’s 1896 tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra, bars that provided so much grist to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey mill of 1968. From there, it’s pretty much all downhill. James Horner is represented by scraps from Avatar (2009) and Titanic (1997). Hans Zimmer also scores a double with The Dream is Collapsing and Time from his 2010 suite for Inception. And so does Danny Elfman with the Main Theme and Ice Dance out of his 1990 score for Edward Scissorhands. Not to forget Craig Armstrong’s work for Love Actually of 2003, from which we hear the Glasgow Love Theme and Prime Minister Theme. You get to hear quite a few oncers: Alan Menken’s Main Theme for 1991’s Beauty and the Beast; the whole symphonic suite (apparently) from The Two Towers of 2002 by Howard Shore; a spin-off in Ludwig Goransson’s 2019 Main Theme for The Mandalorian; Australia’s own Nigel Westlake’s Ready to Launch from Paper Planes of 2014; Michael Giacchino’s Married Life sequence from 2009’s Up; Simple and Clean from a ring-in with Kingdom Hearts of 2002 (hope that’s accurate: these video games are so hard to track down to specifics) by Hikaru Utada; and Merry-Go Round of Life from Joe Hisaishi’s 2004 music for Howl’s Moving Castle. But let’s not forget the grand master John Williams, who is honoured with the Hymn to the Fallen from Saving Private Ryan of 1998, Harry’s Wondrous World from 2001’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and the 1999 Duel of the Fates from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. For me, the memories would be more thin than most; I’ve seen the Kubrick, Avatar and Titanic (sort of; between dozes), Edward Scissorhands, Love Actually, The Lord of the Rings trilogy,, all the Harry Potters and all the canonic Star Wars epics – a little less than half of the program content. But I’d much rather watch complete films and be exposed to their full audio components than listen to bits and pieces. After all, doesn’t everyone want to know what happens after Strauss’s magniloquent proclamation? Well, perhaps not. Tickets, with concessions available, range from $90 to $130 but there are precious few of the former left; what is constant is the $7.20 tax for daring to come to the Concert Hall.

This program will be repeated on Saturday May 27 at 1:30 pm and 7:30 pm.

SHOSTAKOVICH NO. 11 THE YEAR 1905

Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Friday May 26 at 7:30 pm

It’s big, as suits its theme: a memorial to the revolutionary demonstration outside the Tsar’s Palace in St. Petersburg; to be specific, the massacre of January 22 when the army came to the aid of a nervous government to commit yet another atrocity in a long line of disasters that pepper Russian history. The Symphony No. 11 is something of a polemic, full of big strokes – drama, conflict and mourning come in impressive splashes across the work’s hour-long canvas. Triple woodwind (thirds doubling piccolo, cor anglais, bass clarinet, contrabassoon), 11 brass, two harps, xylophone, tubular bells, celesta, timpani and assorted other percussion, with a large bank of strings – all ensure a powerful climax or twelve. Johannes Fritzsch will conduct this work, but will he conduct anything else? The university website proposes that this ‘program includes’ the Shostakovich symphony, but no details are available as to what else will be given to us. Adult tickets are $45 but there are concessions for pensioners, seniors, students and 4MBS patrons; and no booking fee/consumption tax on top! Yes, they’re students but The Year 1905 Symphony is rarely heard in this country, particularly when the major Australian orchestras are concerned with cash flow and expanding their client base. In that context, where conservative programmers are racing for survival and leaving the hard stuff alone, a little child shall lead them.

BACH TO THE MENDELSSOHNS

Brisbane Chorale

St. John’s Cathedral, 373 Ann St., Brisbane

Sunday May 28 at 2:30 pm

The Chorale is presenting this concert under the auspices of 4MBS and that station’s Festival of Classics. The Bach is easy enough to assimilate as conductor/music director Emily Cox and her forces will present the Magnificat – but only the first movement: all 90 bars of it with three trumpets, timpani, braces of flutes and oboes plus continuo forces and strings. Seems like a lot of people gathered together for a short burst. Fortunately there’s more, if not much. On the program is Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, which could be Wohl mir, dass ich Jesum habe or Jesus bleibet meine Freude from the Cantata BWV 147. Doesn’t really matter: it’s 71 bars in both. Before this come the Mendelssohns. In Felix’s case, it’s a setting of Psalm 42, Wie der Hirsch schreit nach frischem Wasser (As the hart pants for fresh water; or, as the Chorale has it, As the deer longs for water; or, as I recall from my Gelineau days, Like the deer that yearns for running streams). This concentrates heavily on a soprano soloist who also enjoys the assistance of pairs of tenor and bass soloists in the penultimate movement. Double woodwind, four horns, strings and organ support the edifice while the full SATB choir actually frames the work at either end while the female voices carol along with the soprano through Denn ich wollte gern. All very lovely and German Anglican. But the afternoon’s real interest comes with sister Fanny’s Oratorio on words from the Bible, following the 1821 cessation of a cholera epidemic in Berlin. Despite the recent revival of interest in this writer, we still know so little, apart from the Piano Trio. This score packs 15 movements into a little over half an hour with choruses and solos alongside two duets (one involving the choir) and a trio. The soloists for this reading will be soprano Sarah Crane, alto Anne Fulton, tenor Paul McMahon and baritone (bass) Shaun Brown; with the Chorale, all will be escorted by the Sinfonia of St. Andrew’s, fresh from the nearby Uniting Church. Adults pay $55, as do Seniors; Centrelink concessionaries and 4MBS subscribers pay $50; students pay $20; other group costs can be arranged. But the booking fee for any ticket is $1.25, which is – given what other bodies try to scrounge out of you – almost forgiveable.

HYMN TO MOTHER EARTH

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday April 2 at 11:30 am

So far, we know of five works that are being presented as part of this paean to the earth. You will have to wait to find out more; possibly the programmers haven’t fleshed out their own concept fully – if they have one. You won’t find much that is elemental here – not even a wayward excerpt from Mahler’s big Lied and very little that summons up awful mental images of Gaea or Goethe’s Ewigweibliche. As for coverage of the world’s environment or its cosmic positioning, you’d be underwhelmed. Someone believes that Smetana’s Moldau tone poem would be a fine illustration of primordial essence rather than what it is – an amiable jaunt, courtesy of a Scenic Tours precursor, down a totally civilised European river. Peter Sculthorpe’s From Uluru begins with a Copland-reminiscent fanfare, then moves to a repetitive ostinato punctuated by slapsticks to give us that Outback/Dreamtime/Never-Never atmosphere; not a particularly successful piece, least of all in sustaining a depiction of Uluru which, in this sound-world, could be situated in any continent. Still, the suggestion of a refined barbarism does take the goddess out of the drawing room. To which we return with excerpts from Respighi’s The Birds suite, arrangements of 16th and 17th century pieces to do with various avian species; sparkling orchestration, of course, but this Mother is corseted and powdered. Lili Boulanger’s Of a Spring Morning miniature presents as a frisson-rich jeune fille en fleur covered in a lightly applied orchestral veil. And the final element we are assured of is the concluding movement to Mozart’s last piano concerto, No. 27 in B flat. At this point, we leave all thoughts of earth mothers behind; this allegro is more aristocratic and eloquently self-contained than even music’s more sophisticated maternal figures like the Marschallin. Soloist in this bleeding chunk of Mozart will be Hannah Shin, winner of three prizes at last year’s Lev Vlassenko concours. And superintending the variegated riot of offerings will be Johannes Fritzsch, the QSO’s principal guest conductor. The exercise runs for 80 minutes straight, so there’s a fair amount of unscheduled music to flesh out this program and tickets range from $75 to $105 with discounts available and, of course, a transaction fee applies with about as much fiscal justification as the Stage 3 tax cuts.

RECITAL

Rebecca Lloyd-Jones

Ian Hanger Recital Hall, Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University

Wednesday April 12 at 7:30 pm

This musician is lecturer and coordinator of percussion at the Conservatorium, so this a significant occasions – where the teacher shows how it’s all meant to be done. I don’t know Lloyd-Jones or her work but she’s obviously a product of the current crop of percussive artists that flourish all over the country; in Melbourne, I got to know them under the Speak Percussion label. I have no idea what she’s playing; such mundane details are unavailable, possibly until you’re about to enter the Hanger Hall, but it would be a pretty safe bet that most of the evening’s content will be current. At least that’s what I’ve found to be the case at most percussionists’ forays into the public arena. Still, I’ve always admired academics who offer public displays of their craft. My first experience must have been hearing Max Cooke performing Pictures at an Exhibition in Melba Hall in 1963 or thereabouts. But every so often you come across others, like cellist Howard Penny who never seems to leave the principal’s desk no matter what is going on at the Australian National Academy of Music. Or the Dean brothers at the same institution (in Brett’s case, occasionally helping out in the back desks of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s violas). Speaking of percussionists, I got to see an awful lot of Peter Neville who, for many years, was omnipresent at Melbourne’s contemporary music gatherings, often supplemented by Eugene Ughetti, later Matthias Schack-Arnott. What always fascinates about contemporary players in this field is the minute pains they go to in arranging their resources – the endless tweakings in suspended cymbal placement, the rearrangement of the rolling stock marimba, the twitchy checking of sticks and mallets, the endless shufflings in music-stand sequence as the player prepares to alternate between three operational platforms. All this – and more – could be yours at Lloyd-Jones’ demonstration. Tickets are to be bought at the door: two prices only – $22 and $17

THE PLANETS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday April 14 at 11: 30 am

All of us know – and perhaps love – Holst’s suite that delineates the other seven planets in our solar system. Do you remember those days when some bright spark – Colin Matthews, to be accurate – composed a Pluto, the Renewer to flesh out Holst’s unavoidable ignorance of the ‘new’ planet’s existence? And how pointless that exercise proved to be when, 17 years ago, Pluto was downgraded in status? And who could forget the rhapsody of compliments with which the British critics greeted the arrival of Matthews’ short-lived interloper? Happy days. At all events, we are set to hear the original in this strange program, conducted by Shiyeon Sung, currently guest principal conductor of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. The extended orchestra (especially in the percussion section) will be assisted by The Australian Voices for the Neptune finale; when I say ‘The Australian Voices’, I’m referring, of course, to the female members only; Holst was a famous equal opportunist, thanks to his daytime job. The other major piece being essayed in this mid-day straddling enterprise is Osvaldo Golijov’s Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra, all written for different occasions and brought together by the composer for a 22-minute cycle: Night of the Flying Horses (Lullaby, Doina and Gallop), Lua Descolorida, and How Slow the Wind. The work has a checkered history: the publishers list the year of composition as 2002-2 (2009) – a mystery that I tried to solve but yielded any pursuit of knowledge in the face of scholarly verbiage. Whatever you care to make of it, the second song was composed to highlight the idiosyncracies of Dawn Upshaw’s voice, the first comes from a film soundtrack, and the final Emily Dickinson setting was possibly written for laughs. In any case, the soloist will be Sara Macliver, whose participation ensures an emotionally powerful, technically precise interpretation. As a starter, the QSO performs Wagner’s Tannhauser Overture in the (original) Dresden version that comes to an emphatic conclusion. The concert lasts 80 minutes without interval, and ticket prices go from $89 to $130, with concessions available and transaction fee compulsory.

This program will be repeated on Saturday April 15 at 7:30 pm. This performance is distinguished by having an interval of 30 minutes.

LAST SEEN

Conservatorium Symphony Orchestra

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University, South Brisbane

Friday April 21 at 7:30 pm

This concert has a highly honourable purpose in that it has come about through a partnership between ten composers and the inspiration each has found in the most cherished sighted memories of visually impaired Australians, including paratriathlete Katie Kelly, guitarist/speaker Lorin Nicholson, and jazz pianist/composer Jeff Usher (a lecturer at this Conservatorium). As well as the Con orchestra, Associate Professor Peter Morris conducts the Queensland Youth Orchestra (which one?) and Biralee Voices (presumably the Brisbane chapter) in compositions by Usher, Nicholson, John Rotar, Lisa Cheney, Tim Davies, Hudson Beck, Steve Newcomb, Paul Jarman, Catherine Likhuta, and Ralph Hultgren. Well, you may know all of these musicians; I know/have heard the work of half their number. You’d have to assume that Usher and Nicholson will be writing about their own impressions of sightedness; as far as I can tell, the other eight composers aren’t visually impaired. In any case, it makes for an intriguing, if not unnerving, experience – bringing (or having brought for you) into the aural field a happy memory of something that you recall from a time when your visual field was not totally blighted. Fine if it’s a scene or a landmark; much more difficult if you’re remembering a person . . . but then, you have the outstanding example of Elgar. Not that I think there’ll be much Enigmatic tonight, given the vocabularies of several among these writers. No indication how long this decathlon will last but tickets are a flat $58 without any apparent add-ons for the privilege of negotiating your entry pass via email.

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS IN CONCERT

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, South Brisbane

Saturday April 22 at 1:30 pm

This is where the whole saga starts to unravel for me. We’re back to Square One with the goodies driven from pillar to outpost, improbable escapes, resurrections and deaths, gimmickry that belongs in online games, as well as a charmless heroine and a spoiled brat villain. Where is the credibility? Where is the menace? Where is the creativity? Anyway, none of us would be going for the film, right? No: it’s the immortal (ho ho) soundtrack of John Williams that draws us in for this inter-galactic entertainment. I’ve never been to the BCEC but I suppose it’s similar to the Plenary Hall at Melbourne’s Convention and Exhibition Centre. Perhaps not: the Brisbane Great Hall seats 2000, Melbourne over 5000, but then the southern city has more deluded punters who go along with this latter-day Star Wars belief that size matters more than anything else. The composer of Hamilton, currently wowing more undiscriminating witnesses at QPAC, composed the cantina scene score; yes, Lin-Manuel Miranda was invited to put his oar in for a part of the work that Williams wasn’t interested in providing. If only the rest of us could handle our responsibilities with such cavalier panache. Oh: we do, as can be seen from nearly every supermarket, medical clinic, clothing store, chemist, cafe and entertainment centre across this wide brown Gold Coast. Lucky conductor of this feat of synchronisation will be Nicholas Buc. Tickets range from $59 to $120, which is a lot to pay for a film, especially if common practice is followed and the dialogue has to be subtitled. Your popcorn and choc-top treat will be subsumed by the unavoidable $7:40 transaction fee. Enjoy.

This program will be repeated at 7:30 pm.

SIR SIMON RATTLE CONDUCTS THE LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday, April 28 at 7:30 pm

Don’t know why I’m including this here as both performances are sold out. Still, you might be one of those desperates who loiters around box offices, waiting for discards and returns. Tickets range from $79 to $279, plus the transaction fee that will be sorely needed to expand the travelling-expense coffers of this British band of players. The current tour is the organization’s fourth visit to Australia (I heard them in 1983 and, after 40 years, little [well, nothing] remains in the memory) and I believe that this time around the players are kicking off their endeavours in Brisbane. Simon Rattle is retiring from his six-year-long stint as London Symphony Orchestra music director; hence, I suppose, the interest (manifest in sold-out houses) at seeing him in that role for the last time. This opening program begins with Adams’ Harmonielehre, a draining 40 minute, three movement work infused with a mixture of didacticism and whimsy. Its main attraction for me is its large orchestra, including two harps, 15 woodwind (almost double the number you’d usually bring on tour), 2 tubas, four percussionists plus celesta plus piano. What Adams accomplishes with his inflated ensemble doesn’t much appeal to me; that afore-mentioned combination seems to misfire half the time. Still, as long as patrons aren’t short-changed by having local musicians brought in to fill out the ranks, you’ve got nothing to complain about when you’re getting your money’s worth for a truly all-London body. A video of the third movement, Meister Eckhardt and Quackie, performed by Rattle and the LSO, is available on YouTube. You’d have to assume that interval follows this inflated American score. Then we go all-French with Debussy’s La mer, using 12 woodwind and those two harps, although the percussion demands are nowhere near as great as those for the Adams construct. And Rattle brings the whole LSO experience home with the Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2 by Ravel – Lever du jour, Pantomime, Danse generale – which also requires two harps, 15 woodwind, and a wind machine. Again, you can watch this conductor and orchestra on YouTube getting through the score in a lickety-split 17 minutes. Forget the pace and revel in the generous timbral mesh of one of Britain’s leading (and most successful) orchestras.

A second program will be performed on Saturday April 29 at 7:30 pm. This comprises Mahler’s Symphony No. 7.

SING WITH THE ORCHESTRA

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Bank

Saturday April 29 at 5:30 pm

Any choral volunteers can have a field day with the QSO under Brett Weymark for this performance. You begin at 9:30 am with a rehearsal of Haydn’s Mass in D minor Hob XXII:11 and you wind up eight hours later with a public performance for a paying audience. This work is the popularly-known Nelson Mass, really the Missa in angustiis. written when Napoleon was succeeding everywhere except in Egypt. It’s an individual orchestral palette using five woodwind, three trumpets, strings and organ. But, like its many companions, it calls for soloists – the usual SATB set in this instance. Will the lucky four be chosen from the 9:30 assemblage, or have they already (and unfairly) been selected? Hard to tell; still, the parts are not easy, although competent choristers could master them in the given time, I’m sure. Less importantly, you have to wonder about performance arrangements. The QSO Studio is not that large a space and the 5:30 pm audience will be up close and very personal with the performers. I suppose it all depends on how many prospective choristers turn up. Of course, the ideal would be for about 500 of them to gather for a real Albert Hall bun-fight, but presumably the ABC organisers have a control mechanism in place and established cut-off points for both singers and audience. Tickets are a flat $49 with a swingeing $7.95 transaction fee. I would have thought that the smaller ticket price would attract a smaller fee; how stupid – when you’re on an unfair thing, stick to it with all stops out.

DEEP BLUE

Ensemble Q

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday April 30 at 3 pm

Top of the line at this recital will be George Crumb’s Vox Balanae; a rather restrictive work, even for conscientious musicians. In his 20-minute mimicry of the balenic voice, the American composer (who died only a year ago; it seemed as if, like Elliott Carter, he would go on forever) asks his interpreters (electric flute, electric cello, amplified piano) to wear half black masks (top half of the face, one would hope, if only for the flautist) and to operate under blue lighting, if possible. Its eight movements conclude with a Sea-Nocturne (for the end of time) in a nice Messiaenic suggestion. After this, we may return to normal transmission by way of Ensemble Q founder Paul Dean‘s 2019 composition for bass clarinet and percussion, The Sea Meets Infinity. In keeping with the program’s emphasis on muted sounds, the pre-interval classic is Margaret Sutherland’s brief violin-and-piano Nocturne of 1944. Balancing Crumb’s whale sounds, mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean sings Chausson’s half-hour cycle Chanson de l’amour et de la mer, which gives us a healthy prefiguration of aquatic excursions by Debussy and Ravel, among others. I’d assume that the version offered here is the original for voice and piano. And the entertainment concludes with Frank Martin’s smooth Pavane Couleur du Temps which was originally written in 1920 for string quintet with two cellos, then arranged for string orchestra and also for two pianos. There are no indications of exactly who will be performing; Ensemble Q is nothing if not a malleable, expandable group, so the versions offered could be any of those listed above. Dean will probably play his own work, but I’m worried about that Chausson, mainly because of the Lent et triste interlude between the two songs; an instrumental pause which will sound rather vapid on piano alone. Tickets are $75, concession $55, plus the $7.20 transaction fee for reasons that continue to escape me.

SENSATIONAL STRINGS

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Bank

Sunday April 30 at 3 pm

That’s a bit of unadulterated puff, isn’t it? Calling your own musicians ‘sensational’? Or are the publicists referring to the music being performed? This afternoon begins with the velvet warmth of late Richard Strauss in the Prelude to Capriccio, his last opera. After this lushness, we’ll enjoy a cutback to Frank Bridge’s plangent Lament for two violas from 1912 – well before the composer fulfilled his true destiny by teaching Britten. A pick-me-up follows in Telemann’s Gulliver’s Travels Suite for two violins which offers an intrada, then four movements to illustrate the travels of Swift’s hero. This work is notorious for the extraordinary time-signatures employed for the Lilliputian and Brobdingnagian movements. And it’s an indication of the composer’s widespread interests. Finally, a string septet will take on Adams’ Shaker Loops, although enough QSO members will be present to allow for a string orchestra performance of this sometimes exhilarating series of four movements – the summit, so they say, of minimalism. Speaking for participants, it’s quite a roll-call: violins Rebecca Seymour, Katie Betts, Gail Aitken, Natalie Low, Sonia Wilson; violas Charlotte Burbrook de Vere, Nicole Greentree, Nicholas Tomkin; cellos Hyung Suk Bae and Matthew Kinmont; double bass Justin Bullock. The event is scheduled to run for 75 minutes, although that strikes me as optimistically generous – unless there’s going to be a lot of desk and seating rearrangements. Tickets range from $30 to $55 with a transaction fee of $7.95: the rort that keeps on growing.

KARIN SCHAUPP & FLINDERS QUARTET

Musica Viva Australia

Queensland Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Tuesday March 7 at 7 pm

Born in Germany but raised and educated in Queensland, Karin Schaupp leads the first Musica Viva recital series event in Brisbane for this year. To make us feel more warm and fuzzy, she is accompanied by the home-grown Flinders Quartet which, at current time of printing, comprises violins Thibaud Pavlovic-Hobba, and Wilma Smith, viola Helen Ireland, and cello Zoe Knighton. These last two are original members while the upper lines have seen a few excellent musicians leave for fresh pastures; Erica Kennedy and Matthew Tomkins spring to mind as long-term previous members, she currently occupied with Orchestra Victoria and he still leading the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s second violins as he has since the Punic Wars. At all events, here they are in partnership, recalling their 2011 successful CD Fandango for ABC Classics, but only slightly: the one surviving program element is part of Boccherini’s D Major Guitar Quintet – the last two movements, comprising a Grave assai and a fandango. As for the rest, the night starts with a Carulli guitar concerto, Op 8 in A Major which, as far as I can tell, has two movements only. Of more temporal substance is Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s 1950 Guitar Quintet Op. 143, written for Segovia and comprising four movements. Another work of substance is Imogen Holst’s one-movement Phantasy Quartet of 1928; an early work, full of common sense and opening with the promise of relaxed British pastoralism. Interspersed with these come two Australian scores. First, Richard Charlton‘s Southern Cross Dreaming from 2007 – a short tremolo study for solo guitar, written for and first performed by Schaupp. Then Carl Vine‘s Endless, commissioned for Musica Viva and enjoying its world premieres across this national tour; it’s a substantial commemoration of the architect Jennifer Bates, killed by a motor accident in December 2016. Tickets range from $15 (Student Rush) to $109 (Standard). As far as I can see, the customary pernicious booking fee is waived, but I could be wrong.

MACBETH IN CONCERT

Opera Queensland

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Thursday March 9 at 7 pm

Not my favourite Verdi opera, although fanatics will hear nothing against it, just as they will tolerate no negative comments about Ernani or I masnadieri. A few performances in Melbourne over a span of about 30 years reinforced this prejudice, the first one starring Rita Hunter as Lady Macbeth; the highpoint of that night lay in coming across the strangely inappropriate brindisi, Si colmi il calice, by means of which the murderess greets her guests for the ghost-dominated banquet. But also, I’ve been jaundiced by having to teach the play to hundreds of uninterested Year 11 students over much of my secondary school purgatory. How Verdi’s first Shakespeare dabble will fare without the trappings of scenery and lighting is anyone’s guess; still, you’ll enjoy an extraordinary focus on the singing. Who gets the title role? Well-known Opera Australia bass stalwart Jose Carbo takes the honours here. As for his toast-mistress wife, this is soprano Anna-Louise Cole, whom I remember from her student days before she went off-country to study in Germany, recently returning home to take on heavy roles like this and a 2022 Turandot for the national company. Big winner/loser (‘All my pretty ones?’) Macduff will be Rosario La Spina, local celebrity tenor from whom we’ve heard little in the past few years (an absence from activity that he shares with many other singers, of course). The Banquo will be New Zealand bass Wade Kernot, tenor Carlos E. Barcenas the luckless Malcolm, while the Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s newish chief conductor, Umberto Clerici, controls the pit – and, with a bit of luck, the stage. OQ’s publicity mentions a director and a pair of costume creatives, so things may not be as visually bleak as I’d expected. Tickets range from $75 to $ 125 with some slight concessions available and – of course – the booking fee that is a compulsory penalty for using a credit card in this rubbishy new world where nobody pollutes themselves with cash.

The performance will be repeated on Saturday March 11 at 2 pm.

BASSOONS, BANDONEONS AND BEETHOVEN

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Brisbane

Sunday March 12 at 3 pm

Welcome to the first of this year’s Sunday afternoon chamber exercises from the QSO, where members of the organization get to play together in small groups; all very pleasant, even if the resulting performances can creak at the seams. In fact, this program will feature some fairly noticeable creaking in its first part, while the second segment is made up of a string quartet stalwart in Beethoven’s Razumovsky No. 3 in C – last in the three-part set and the one that doesn’t have a Russian tune/theme incorporated. As preludial matter, a quartet of bassoons – Nicole Tait, David Mitchell, Evan Lewis, Claire Ramuscak (contra) – will air Gerard Brophy‘s brief Four Branches of 2015. Then a group of strings might present the first movement of Piazzolla’s Tango Suite. This was originally written for two guitars, but I’ve also come across an arrangement for four bassoons (no contra) by Fraser Jackson. So the QSO’s low woodwind may be extending their Brophy experience to take in the pugnacious Argentinian’s Deciso opener which lasts a little longer than the Australian composer’s five minutes of piquant burbling. Another Argentinian voice comes through with Golijov’s 1996 Last Round, a two movement construct for string orchestra/nonet in two movements which attempts to imitate the sound of a bandoneon in an elegy-homage to Piazzolla, the title coming from his life-long participation in street fights rather than being a reference to the call that used to echo through the world’s pubs at the end of every night’s excursions into soddenness. As for the nonet, it could include any of the following musicians, bar the essential participation of double bass Phoebe Russell who sits/stands mid-stage between two string quartets: violins Mia Stanton, Sonia Wilson, Nicholas Thin, Natalie Low, Delia Kinmont, and Katie Betts; violas Nicole Greentree and Graham Simpson; cellists Hyung Suk Bae, Kathryn Close and Matthew Kinmont. Naturally, the Beethoven interpreters will come from the above list and the transitional jolt from Buenos Aires to Vienna should be suitably chastening. This program is scheduled to last for 75 minutes and tickets range from $30 (various concessions) to $55, as well as the customary booking fee/theft.

THE FOUR SEASONS

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday March 13 at 7 pm

Artistic director Richard Tognetti is once again hosting the Tawadros brothers, Joseph (oud) and James (riq), in this amalgamation where Vivaldi’s four violin concertos will be interspersed with original compositions by Joseph/James and other Baroque works from Italy and the Ottoman Empire. You’d be right (and probably happy) to suspect that the seasonal sequence will be given straight, not re-interpreted Max Richter style. The questions rise with the interpolations as the Tawadros brothers and Tognetti aim to offer Venice and the Near East as musical companions. Well, they’re certainly geographically closer than Australia and Finland and were assuredly more intertwined commercially than Nepal and Chile. Aesthetically? A bit of a stretch. Musically? I’m having a lot of trouble finding the Ottoman in Vivaldi (or in the Gabrielis or in Monteverdi); conversely, I can’t see the Baroque contribution to the Tawadros’ Permission to Evaporate or The Hour of Separation albums. In the preparatory playlist provided on the ACO website for this event, you can hear the essential Seasons, as well as some Vivaldi additions – the final Presto from the Op. 3 No. 6 in A minor plus the Recitative/Grave and final Allegro from the Grosso Mogul concerto. The only other Venetian track is a motet by Legrenzi: Lumi, potete piangere; perhaps Tognetti & Co. will be surprising us with a vocalist – or one of the multi-talented Tawadros brothers will turn his hand to this plangent Baroquerie. Speaking of the Ottoman contribution, we will hear five original Tawadros compositions (the inference from the playlist being that they will come in part from the above-mentioned albums), as well as a Turkish concerto called izia semaisi (by Toderini?) and an Ottoman march with the bellicose title Der Makham-i-Rehavi Cember-i Koca (I’m a tad worried about that Der). Not looking a pair of gift horses in their mouths, but I’m not sure where the guest brothers’ work really fits in with the Eastern components of this program, mainly because their own compositions are an individualistic blend of Arabian sounds with Western emotional tropes. It makes for a beguiling melange but one that stretches even further the relationship between East and West, musical Venice and anything heard in the 16th and 17th centuries from Turkey to Egypt. Still, the composite makes an intriguing envelope for Vivaldi’s series of brief tone-poems. This event is scheduled to last for two hours and tickets range from $25 to $159, as well as the compulsory booking fee that spices up the whole experience of concert-going.

HAYD’N SEEK

Ensemble Trivium

Old Museum Building

Thursday March 16 at 7 pm

This expandable group is presenting a set of works involving flute, viola, cello and piano in various combinations. As for its participants, flautist Monika Koerner takes part in four of the evening’s five works; cellist Katherine Philp will be heard in three, as will violist Yoko Okayasu; pianist Allie Wang performs in two. You can probably glean from the title that we’ll get to enjoy some Haydn: a flute/cello/piano trio, Hob XV:16 in D Major, in three movements with the central one in D minor. The concluding work is a Prelude, recitatif et variations by Durufle, that highly self-critical French composer’s only chamber work; this involves Koerner, Okayasu and Wang. Between these masterful products come three varied scores. Caroline Shaw’s Limestone and Felt was written in 2012, a viola/cello duet that follows a pizzicato sound production for most of its six minutes with a few bowed arpeggios (representing the fabric?). Brisbane composer Connor D’Netto‘s parallel involves flute and viola following a 12-minute process of changing and becoming – into what, is anyone’s guess. And leading into the Durufle will be Guillaume Connesson’s 2002 Toccata nocturne for flute and cello: slightly over three minutes of mainly subterranean whistles and quick whispers. The recital is projected to last an hour – which it might with some pre-performance chats. Tickets range from $22 to $52 but the inevitable additional charge is a few cents over $1 – which might even be justifiable.

MAGNIFICENT PIANO

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday March 17 at 11:30 am

The titular instrument refers to that employed in Grieg’s Piano Concerto: for my money, the greatest show pony in the repertoire – and the easiest, as far as interpretative depth is concerned. My first ever CD was Dinu Lipatti’s recording of this work, unloaded on me by a French teacher with a penchant for making money on the side. Having paid through the nose for it, I listened to the recording until it wore out. But the concerto was also an accessible orchestral concert favourite for decades, until it fell by the wayside as being too popular. Tonight, Grieg’s four-bar-phrase extravaganza is paired with the Brahms Symphony No. 1 – a long time a-coming but a rewarding source of discovery and delight in the right hands; and, in several senses, the most effective of the four. For the concerto, the soloist will be Sergio Tiempo, a Venezuelan-born musician with an impressive discography. He has appeared in Brisbane before, apparently, with his sister, duo-pianisting for the QSO under Alondra de la Parra. The steadiest of hands, Johannes Fritzsch, principal guest conductor for this orchestra, will take us through the concerto and symphony, prefacing the lot with an Impromptu, after Schubert by Richard Mills, produced in 2014 and premiered in Tasmania. This is not an orchestral refurbishment of one of the 8 Impromptus but a meditation on fragments from two lieder – one I know (Auf dem Wasser zu singen) and one I don’t (Ariette) – with a few additional references emerging from the Unfinished Symphony and the Winterreise cycle. A lot of material to ferret out, in other words. Tickets range from $89 to $105, with concessions available as well as the usual credit card charge, here coming in at over $7.

This concert will be repeated on Saturday March 18 at 7:30 pm. This event has more seats available, from $90 to $ 130 – also with concessions and the credit card compulsory tip.

SERGIO IN RECITAL

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Brisbane

Tuesday March 21 at 7:30 pm

Putting their guest artist to use – just as the ABC used to do, pairing concerto appearances with a recital – the QSO powers-that-be here re-present Sergio Tiempo in solo mode. His program is half-Chopin (this pianist made a splash with his CDs of this composer’s music – some of it) and half-South American, with Piazzolla featuring twice while worthwhile masters like Villa-Lobos and Ginastera get one look-in each. Oh, and one of the Pizzollas is Muerte del Angel which has been thrashed into oblivion (sorry) by too many musicians of minimal ability. Anyway, the Chopin will involve three preludes (Nos. 3, 15 and 16 from Op. 28 [where else?]), two etudes (No. 6 from Op. 10 and the No. 1 Aeolian Harp heading Op. 25), and the last sonata, that in B minor. Moving well south of the border after interval, Tiempo starts with Venezuelan Moises Moleiro’s Joropo, a brief 6/8 romp in D minor. The two Piazzolla pieces follow, the other being Fuga y Misterio which has been extracted from the composer’s opera Maria de Buenos Aires. A rarely-encountered name in serious music is that of Brazilian writer Antonio Carlos Jobim, whose moody song Retrato em Branco e Preto has been arranged for himself by Tiempo. A more familiar Brazilian voice arrives with Villa-Lobos whose offering comprises excerpts from his 1918 The Dolls, Book 1 in the three-part cycle A Prole de Bebe. You (well, Tiempo, actually) choose between dolls made from porcelain, papier-mache, clay, rubber, wood, rag, cloth – and Punch for a possible gender-imbalance leavening. Last element of all comes Ginastera’s feisty Malambo of 1940, an Argentinian response to Moleiro’s piece but more aggressive and blessed with a powerfully discordant conclusion. Tickets range from $30 (child) to $75 (adult); the surcharge is now up to $7.95, regardless of your concessionary status.

HIGH HEELS & HORSEHAIR

Ensemble Q

The Raven Cellar, 400 Montague Rd., West End

Tuesday March 28 at 7 pm

Second in an off-shoot series distinct from the main Ensemble events, this recital presents two artists: harpist Emily Granger and cellist Trish Dean. Details about their program are sketchy but Falla’s Suite populaire espagnole appears; it might as well as it’s been arranged for a large number of instrumental combinations. The composer himself and Paul Kochanski put the collection together from Falla’s original Siete canciones populares espagnolas, leaving out the Seguidilla murciana. As well, Dean gets to swoop through Saint-Saens’ The Swan, that near-immobile chunk carved out from the Carnival of the Animals. And we are also promised Granville Bantock’s Hebrew melody, Hamabdil, in the composer’s own cello/harp arrangement. When you go looking, there’s not much music that was specifically written for this duo combination, but the three works promised are unobjectionable. So much so that you’d expect Granger and Dean to show high competence at fleshing out a program scheduled to last for two hours. Perhaps a few solos will be inserted along the way? Tickets range from $22.49 (student, and prepare to stand) to $70.14 (adult), into which prices a graduated booking fee has already been added. Nice to see that somebody is trying to preserve a modicum of social responsibility.

VIVALDI FOUR SEASONS

Eclective Strings

St. John’s Cathedral, Ann Street

Friday February 3 at 6:30 pm and 8:30 pm

Beginning the year with absolutely no style at all comes this run-through of Vivaldi’s greatest hit. Not the whole thing, mind you, but ‘selections’. I suppose the excuse will be that such an abridgement, a digest helps bring in punters who don’t usually listen to serious music, or who want to graduate from enterprises like the Tamworth mud bath. So, as a benefit to the intentionally stupid, let’s give voice to those movements from these four violin concertos that have become most recognizable through TV advertisements. Tonight is one of the more presentable efforts in a program of candlelight concerts, most of which are homages to various pop singers and groups; this program sticks out in its context like a diamond in a sewer. Still, I’m rather wary of the main performing structure; we’re not offered a soloist but a string quartet – which is not enough of a resource to carry even this lightweight music. As far as I can see, the Eclective haven’t operated much outside Victoria but they specialize in tribute concerts – ABBA, Adele, Beatles, Coldplay, AC/DC – when they’re not indulging in cut-down Baroque. On its website, the ensemble claims to be respectable by day, up-to-the-mark rockers by night; I would have been impressed if the roles/times were reversed. Anyway, they’re giving their selections twice on this evening, depending on your eating arrangements, I suppose; tickets start at $29. To be honest, I’d need a lot of persuading to sit through even a filleted version of these works, particularly when there’s so much more Vivaldi to hear.

JOY AND SORROW

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Queensland Symphony Orchestra Studio, South Brisbane

Friday February 10 at 7:30 pm

Chief conductor Umberto Clerici takes a small set of forces through this three-component program schedule to last 75 minutes without interval. He begins with Strauss’s Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings, written in the dying days of World War II and probably intended as a threnody for German culture which was at that time being pounded into dust. Not the most interesting of the composer’s works but it has relevance to the current world situation, given the war being inflicted on us by the latest in a series of Russian megalomaniacs. It’s hard to tell how this will come across in the Studio’s close quarters; you’ll certainly know if anyone wavers. Then comes a new work by the QSO’s long-time principal percussionist, David Montgomery – a suite for brass and percussion that, at time of writing, has no name. I know of Montgomery as a performer and educator – not as a composer, which could make part of this night revelatory. Finally, we hear Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite, eight movements from the original ballet: Sinfonia (Ouverture), Serenata, Scherzino, Tarantella, Toccata, Gavotta, Vivo, and Minuetto+Finale. The instrumentation asks for pairs of flutes, oboes, bassoons and horns, with a trumpet and trombone for ballast and a string quintet alongside a string orchestra. The composer’s transformation of Pergolesi pieces, the full ballet is rarely heard (or seen) but this suite is packed with piquancies: a rare sight of Stravinsky the Funster. Tickets are $75, unless you have a concession or are very young; children get in for $30, but will they put up with the Strauss willingly?

DANCE AROUND THE WORLD

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday, February 12 at 11:30 am

Another special with QSO chief conductor Umberto Clerici holding the leading strings. I’m not sure how far around the world this dancing extends; what we know of what is to be played leaves me feeling more than a little Eurocentric. The problem is that, after listing a number of highlights, the promoters promise ‘. . . and more’, which always makes me wonder if that more has been decided or will it be decided between lunchtime tomorrow and Australia Day. We know that we’re getting the Can-can from Offenbach’s comic opera Orpheus in the Underworld, an energetic terpsichorean remnant of the belle epoque and forever associated with impossibly frilled petticoats and startlingly unrevealing knickers. Further along the morning promenade, Clerici & Co. will perform Strauss’s Voices of Spring, presumably without the optional soprano; like the Offenbach, a musical portrait of a world of outward brilliance but rotten to the core. Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5 in F sharp minor/G minor puts in an appearance, doing its best to live up to proud Zigeuner pretensions in orchestral garb supplied by Schmeling, Parlow, or Ivan Fischer. The tone moves upwards with the Act 1 Waltz from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, which is a splendidly balanced product in every sense. As a Me Too genuflection, the program includes the third of American black composer Florence Price’s Dances in the Canebrakes: the cakewalk Silk Hat and Walking Cane, probably in the orchestration by William Grant Still. But there’s more, and good luck with that. Tickets range from $75 to $105 for a scheduled 80 minutes playing time without interval; good value, if there’s no irritatingly amiable chats involved.

ILYA GRINGOLTS PLAYS BRUCH

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday February 13 at 7 pm

Five years ago, ACO habitues heard this Russian violinist play Paganini brilliantly. The popular appeal item this time (and it’s the only one on the program) is the first of the three Bruch concertos in an arrangement for the string ensemble by the organization’s librarian, Bernard Rofe. What we will miss out on hearing are the pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, the horn quartet, but the original score’s timpani part is spared any editorial cut. Will you feel the lack? Probably, if you know the work well, and I’d say most of us do. Still, it saves on employing an extra 14 musicians and transporting them round the country for a series of one-night stands. Gringolts also contributes his solo skills to Frank Martin’s Polyptyque of 1973, written to a Menuhin commission and calling for two small string orchestras underpinning the solo violin. These six images de la Passion de Christ make a substantial work, slightly longer than the Bruch concerto, and most of us will be hearing them for the first time. As well, the ACO performs Mendelssohn’s one-movement String Symphony No. 13, a new score – Slanted – from Melbourne-born Harry Sdraulig, and Bacewicz’s 1948 Concerto for String Orchestra, a major composition from the Polish composer and one which carries its neo-classicism with an impressive pnache. Prices range from $49 to $115 with concessions available for qualified patrons.

ODE TO JOY

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday February 17 at 7:30 pm

Always a crowd-pleaser – except for those pesky three movements before the choral finale – Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 can be a shattering experience. The trouble is that you have to take it as a job lot, instrumental predecessors and all before you get to the furious heaven-storming of the choir’s massive explosions. Umberto Clerici conducts his orchestra and the Brisbane Chamber Choir with a clutch of four soloists, three of whom I know well from their concert/recital/opera work: soprano Eleanor Lyons (I’ve not come across this artist), mezzo Deborah Humble, tenor Andrew Goodwin, bass Michael Honeyman. We’ve all got a perfect Ninth in our heads, and some of us have had poor experiences (one of mine was an appalling realization of the males’ Seid umschlungen entry from the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic under Tzipine, and a recent one was a painfully lacklustre reading from Bendigo this past December), but the omens are propitious for this reading. With monstrous over-reach, the publicists have claimed that Peter Sculthorpe is Australia’s Beethoven because he is the founding father of this country’s music. Well, he was a lovely fellow but he wasn’t the founder of anything except his own sound world. We get a well-worn sample of that in his Earth Cry of 1986 which has an optional part for didgeridoo; no options about if because tonight we enjoy the services of William Barton. Following this theme of finding a place for Aboriginal-inspired music, the concert begins with a collaboration between Barton and violinist Veronique Serret: Kalkani, which was a 2020 commission by the ABC. Here, it has been transmuted from a duet into orchestral dress and enjoys its Queensland premiere. Does the whole set of proceedings sound like a mess? That’s because it is one, no matter which way you try to dress it up. Admission ranges from $90 to $130 and the program includes an interval; the two didgeridoo-inclusive pieces last about 20 minutes while the symphony has an average length of about an hour plus five minutes.

This program will be repeated on Saturday February 18 at 1:30 pm and again on Sunday February 19 at 1:30 pm

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE IN CONCERT

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre, South Brisbane

Saturday February 25 at 1:30 pm and 7:30 pm

Ah, this brings back happy memories of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra opening its year’s practice at the Plenary space near the Convention and Exhibition Centre with Dr. Who or Wallace and Gromit extravaganzas, as well as some films for the masses. Then, throughout the year, we would enjoy more film screenings in Hamer Hall with the MSO providing a live soundtrack – which usually meant the films had to be supplied with subtitles. Starting the academic year with a dollop of infantile necromancy, the QSO under Nicholas Buc will support David Yates’ adaptation of J. K. Rowling’s sixth novel in the Harry Potter series, which is one of the darkest of the lot – well, it’s the darkest (novel and film) so far because it (the film) begins with the suborning of Snape and climaxes in the death of Dumbledore – after which fun times at Hogwarts definitely come to an end. Nicholas Hooper’s score uses elements of the John Williams music that we have imbibed into our very souls but his instrumentation is an interesting, carefully placed element in the narrative. Has the Potter fever been sustained? Will audience members come dressed in their house colours or swathed in cloaks and besoming their ways into the auditorium? You’d have to be there to find out, I suppose. Tickets range from $59 to $120 and I couldn’t find any concessions. Bookings attract that meaningless Service Fee, which is an accounting swindle both universal and unavoidable (believe me, I’ve tried).

CITY OF LIGHTS: FROM PARIS, WITH LOVE

Southern Cross Soloists

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Sunday February 26 at 3 pm

Here we go once more, perpetuating the legend about Paris being the artistic centre of the world. Yes, it was: not anymore, The last time I visited (pre-COVID), the population was in a sour mood with strikes galore and consequently a fair few sites shut. Very little music-making and no opera. Still, the Soloists are determined to celebrate its palmy days, beginning with some selections from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice – Blessed Spirits, anyone? Actually, yes: Portuguese flautist David Silva will be exposed in this bracket. The composer was German, the libretto was Italian, but Gluck did revamp his work in 1764 for Parisian audiences; something of a link, then. Mozart’s A minor Piano Sonata, K. 310, was apparently written about the time of his mother’s death – in Paris; this will be performed by the Soloists’ artist-in-residence, Konstantin Shamray. A firmer connection comes with selections from Debussy’s books of Preludes (Flaxen? Sunken? Fireworks?), which will also involve Shamray. And another Debussy appears in the art song Beau soir, which features one of the night’s guests, cellist Guillaume Wang, the programmers possibly deciding on using Julian Lloyd Webber’s arrangement. Wang also leads the way through Georgette by Rumanian violinist Georges Boulanger. This is a piece of salon music named after the composer’s daughter; despite his (adopted) name, Boulanger had no connection to Paris – perhaps his daughter did. As far as I can tell, Prokofiev wrote his Piano Concerto No. 4, the one for left-hand alone, in Paris during 1931. Commissioned by that unpleasant personality Paul Wittgenstein, the work was never performed during the composer’s lifetime. I don’t know if the Soloists will play the score as written or (more probably) an arrangement; regardless, you’ll be hearing Shamray at work again. Finally, Ravel’s Tzigane will exhibit the talents of guest violinist Courtenay Cleary. By the time he wrote this, the composer was living outside Paris but let’s not be too pedantic at this late stage of the program. The program lasts for 90 minutes (interval? maybe) and the cost is a flat $85.

There is nothing.

I’ve looked assiduously in every potential corner, wherever information could be assimilated, assessed, obscured.

But in January, no musical activity worth the name is being presented in Brisbane or on the Gold Coast.

It makes me long for the Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields that has shrunk from its previous impressive substance to a few days’ shadow of its former self. And the Mornington Peninsula Summer Festival is spreading itself even more thinly these days. But at least both these events promise something.

Not north of the Tweed.

For your cultural input, perhaps Sydney may offer something with its Festival. From what I can see, a couple of contemporary operas and a chamber concert would seem to be the main (only?) offerings.

The nation is on holiday, but nowhere more seriously inactive than in the land of the Where-The-Bloody-Hell-Are-You?

Better luck for us all next month.