Category: The Diary

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

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

WORLD TOUR

TwoSet Violin

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Tuesday January 25 at 7:30 pm

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

FESTIVAL GALA #3

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Monday December 4 at 7:30 pm

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

SCHUBERT’S LAST SONATA

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Tuesday December 5 at 7:30 pm

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

LIGHTS DOWN LOW # 2

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Tuesday December 5 at 9 pm

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

ANGELUS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Wednesday December 6 at 7:30 pm

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

MAHLER 4

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Thursday December 7 at 7:30 pm

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

DECLASSIFIED

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Friday December 8 at 7:30 pm

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

POULENC TRIBUTE #2

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 10:30 am

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

HELLISH CELLIST

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 1 pm

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

NOTES FOR TOMORROW

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 2:30 pm

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

THE FIREBIRD

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 4 pm

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

COURTENAY CLEARY IN RECITAL

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Saturday December 9 at 6:30 pm

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

ROMANCE BY THE BOOK

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10 at 10:30 am

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

CONCORD

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10 at 1 pm

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

TEN OF SWORDS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10 at 2:30 pm

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

JINGLE FINGERS

Brisbane Music Festival

FourthWall Arts, 540 Queen St.

Sunday December 10 at 4 pm

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

THE SOUND OF CHRISTMAS

The Queensland Choir

The Old Museum, Bowen Hills

Saturday December 16

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

4MBS CHRISTMAS SPECTACULAR

Brisbane Chorale

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday December 17 at 3 pm

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

SONATA PROJECT 1

Yundi Li

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Wednesday November 1 at 7:30 pm

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

INAUGURAL PADEREWSKI TOUR

Friends of Chopin

Old Museum, Bowen Hills

Saturday November 4 at 7 pm

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

SPOTLIGHT ON THE DOUBLE BASS

Brisbane Symphony Orchestra

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday November 5 at 3 pm

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

ORGAN RECITAL

Simon Nieminski

St. John’s Anglican Cathedral

Thursday November 9 at 7 pm

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

CHOPIN & THE MENDELSSOHNS

Australian Chamber Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Monday November 13 at 7 pm

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

MICRO-MASTERPIECES

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Concert Hall, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Friday November 17 at 11:30 am

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

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

A JOYFUL NOISE

Brisbane Chorale

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday November 19 at 3 pm

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

WILDSCHUT & BRAUSS

Musica Viva Australia

Conservatorium Theatre, Griffith University

Wednesday November 23 at 7 pm

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

HANDEL’S MESSIAH

Oriana Choir

Brisbane City Hall

Sunday November 26 at 3 pm

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

ZEPHYR: VOICE WITH WINDS

Brisbane Chamber Choir

St. John’s Anglican Cathedral

Sunday November 26 at 3 pm

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

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.