Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2018 i Limelight

You’d think that music would be a core essential on the curriculum of all Australian primary schools. Umpteen research reports have confirmed the enormous benefits of music education, particularly if children begin young. Literacy and numeracy improve when children study music, it helps memory, builds self-confidence and discipline, increases co-ordination, and encourages team play. What’s more, involvement with music is joyous and helps relaxation. And yet, according to Music Australia, as few as 23 percent of Australian state schools are able to provide an effective music education for their pupils, compared to 88 percent of schools in the private system. Beloved Australian conductor Richard Gill has spent more than half a century fiercely lobbying for access to high quality music education for all children, both in his columns for Limelight…

GEOFFREY TOZER DOCO Listening to The Conversation Hour on ABC 774 Melbourne recently, Virginia Trioli interviewed Janine Hosking about her documentary film The Eulogy, named after Paul Keating’s eulogy given at the funeral of concert pianist Geoffrey Tozer. It was part of the Melbourne Film Festival. I wasn’t able to attend the screenings of it, but I’m sure there would be many musicians throughout Australia that would be interested to see it. I’m hoping that with more publicity we might get another opportunity to see it. Thanks for a very informative magazine. Margaret Treadwell, Niddrie, VIC BACH AGAIN AFTER 80 YEARS Your guest columnist Maria Raspopova of the Omega Ensemble (September) makes the statement that “(JS) Bach was forgotten for 200 years”. His dates of 1685 to 1750 make such…

Soprano Zoe Drummond has won the prestigious Marianne Mathy Scholarship at this year’s IFAC Handa Australian Singing Competition, which comes with a cash prize of $30,000 to assist with a program of study or singing activity. The 25-year-old Victorian joins a prestigious list of winners that includes the likes of Stuart Skelton and Jessica Pratt. The Mathy comes with an opportunity to audition for Lyric Opera of Chicago’s professional artist-development program, a portrait painting of the winner, a taped interview conducted by historian Diana Ritch, and a statuette. Drummond was also awarded the Canberra Symphony Orchestra Prize, which will see her perform with the orchestra. Drummond impressed judges with a technically refined reading of the aria Nel grave tormento from Mozart’s early opera, Mitridate, re di Ponto. She followed it…

Rufus Wainwright Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall GEFFEN 0602517516724 I love the original Judy Garland recording of her 1961 Carnegie Hall concert and Rufus Wainwright is the perfect artist to celebrate her in this inspired creation. I love Wainwright’s ability to capture Garland with his own unique artistic style. Wonderful. Juan Diego Flórez The Ultimate Collection DECCCA 4830814 I was fortunate to see Juan Diego Flórez at the Metropolitan Opera in New York a few years ago. His effortless tenor has always been an inspiration to me and here he sings some fun arias including Ah! Mes amis with all those wonderful high Cs! Amy Winehouse Back to Black ISLAND RECORDS 1714211 In my opinion this album, Amy Winehouse’s second and final studio album, is one of the greatest…

INGE BORKH 1917 - 2018 The German soprano Inge Borkh, one of the finest Strauss and Wagner singers whose repertoire also encompassed Turandot and the heavier verismo roles, has died in Stuttgart at the age of 101. Born in Mannheim on May 26, 1917 to a Jewish diplomat father, the rise of Nazism forced the family to leave Germany for Austria and then Switzerland in 1933. Borkh first gained international attention in 1951 when she landed the theatrically demanding role of Magda in the first German-language performance of Menotti’s The Consul. The following year she was singing Sieglinde under Keilberth at Bayreuth. Debuts across Germany as well as in Vienna, London and San Francisco followed, with Borkh demonstrating early on a linguistic flexibility that would allow her to sing Tosca…

Billy Bray was part of the folklore that I grew up with. I grew up in the southwest of Britain and Billy Bray is fairly well-known down there as a somewhat eccentric preacher in the 19th century. There’s one book about Billy Bray and a few articles here and there, and they’re mostly from the point of view of evangelical Christians talking about what a wonderful man of God he was. But the thing that interests me about Billy is not that aspect of it so much as the fact that he had this incredible capacity for joy in every aspect of his life. He was an extraordinarily energetic man. As well as working as a tin miner and raising food for his large family – and a number of…

Few musicians have spent more of their lives on the run than Czech piano virtuoso and composer Jan Ladislav Dussek. Yet despite dodging debtors, slighted lovers and peeved crowned heads, classical music s up boy (until the arrival of Liszt) managed to rattle off a wealth of attractive music. Not only that, as the first to sit sideways on in recital – “so the ladies could admire his handsome profile,” according to Spohr – Dussek, who was known as “Le Beau Visage”, defined the piano recital as we know it. Born in 1760 into a musical family, young Jan was a gifted if lazy student. Early successes in Austria and Belgium led him to the court of Catherine the Great where he proved a hit on the glass harmonica. Giving…

It has long been my fervent hope that every child in Australia should have access to a properly trained music teacher; a teacher who taught music sequentially, based on singing and movement. To friends and colleagues I had started talking about founding a National School of Music Education situated within a working school. The school would focus on providing practice-teaching opportunities for music students over extended periods of time and be open to all student teachers studying music teaching anywhere in Australia. The nature of the practice-teaching would be detailed to each student’s needs ranging from one-on-one to micro teaching to full class teaching. The spirit of the school would centre on a love of learning for its own sake. The children, of course, would be well aware of this…

Punch and Judy London Sinfonietta/ David Atherton NMC NMCD138 (2CD) Birtwistle’s violently ritualistic first opera, vividly delivered by the finest British singers of their generation. Melencolia 1, Ritual Fragment, Meridian London Sinfonietta/ Oliver Knussen NMCD009 Exemplary readings of three contrasting representative scores conducted by fellow composer, the late Oliver Knussen. Gawain Le Roux, Angel, Tomlinson, Royal Opera/Elgar Howarth NMCD200 (2CD) A superb realisation of perhaps Birtwistle’s finest operatic work sung by the original Covent Garden cast. Night’s Black Bird, The Shadow of Night The Hallé Orchestra, Ryan Wigglesworth NMC NMCD156 Dark, virtuoso late works packed with atmosphere reveal a master craftsman and musical dramatist.…

John Adams Doctor Atomic Gerald Finley bar, Brindley Sherratt b, Andrew Staples t, Julia Bullock s BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers/John Adams NONESUCH 566773-2 (2CD) “I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu… says: ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’.” – Robert Oppenheimer Oppenheimer’s words describe the moment when the first atomic bomb was tested on July 16, 1945, at the Trinity site in Los Alamos, New Mexico. This famous quote does not appear in Peter Sellars’ libretto for John Adams’ opera Doctor Atomic, but lines from the Bhagavad-Gita do, scattered among transcripts of the people involved in the Manhattan Project. “This wonderful recording conducted by the composer must be considered definitive” Sellars had the idea of melding original source material – some…

One of the most exciting collections to come my way lately is the Sony box set of recordings by the Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958). Like Pierre Boulez, Salonen is a composer who turned to conducting to showcase his own music. He soon gained an international reputation, becoming Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1992 to 2007. He was also associated with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and London’s Philharmonia: this 61-CD set contains performances with all three. The repertoire leans heavily towards 20th-century music. Salonen is a terrific Stravinsky conductor, so exceptional recordings of The Firebird, Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring are here, but also Pulcinella and the late Cantata, both featuring Australian soprano Yvonne Kenny, and a taut Oedipus Rex with Anne Sofie von…

Accidental Death of an Anarchist A battle of the individual against the establishment, of underdog against overlord, with an all-female cast. Sydney Theatre Company, September 10 – October 27 An Enemy of the People Kate Mulvany stars in Ibsen's masterpiece about a woman who finds herself standing up to her community. Belvoir, Sydney, October 7 – November 4 The Architect Navigating the thorny politics and emotions that come with confronting the end of life, as well as its joys. Melbourne Theatre Company, September 27 – October 31 Trustees An explosive new play interrogating the Great Australian Silence around atrocities at home and abroad. Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, September 28 – October 21 Nearer the Gods David Williamson brings us a gripping and blackly funny drama about ideas that would change the…

Australian Impressionism All of the NGA's masterpieces of Australian Impressionism will be seen together in this new display. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ongoing Nick Cave: UNTIL An ambitious, immersive exhibition that addresses issues of race relations, gender politics and gun violence in America. Carriageworks, Sydney, until March 3, 2019 Cuttings – Elizabeth Gower A survey of one of Australia's best contemporary artists, noted for her feminist interest and use of repurposed material. Geelong Gallery, until November 25…

NON-FICTION Home Ben Quilty Penguin, PB, 304pp, $45.00 ISBN: 9780190606404 Home is a heart-breaking and awe-inspiring collection of drawings by Syrian children, the most vulnerable victims of a brutal civil war, edited by Archibald Prize winner Ben Quilty, with a foreword by Man Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan. NON-FICTION The Classical Music Lover’s Companion to Orchestral Music Robert Philip Yale University Press, HB, 1024pp, $55.99 IBSN: 9780300120691 Robert Philip, scholar, broadcaster, and musician, has compiled an essential handbook for lovers of classical music, covering four hundred works by sixty-eight composers from Corelli to Shostakovich. NON-FICTION Rimsky-Korsakov and his World Marina Frolova-Walker, Ed. Princeton University Press, PB, 384pp, $69.00 IBSN: 9780691182711 In this collection, Rimsky-Korsakov’s major operas, The Snow Maiden, Mozart and Salieri, and The Golden Cockerel, receive multifaceted exploration and…

Musica Viva: Sir András Schiff Gala Piano Recitals Appearing in Australia for the first time in over 20 years, Sir András Schiff performs two imaginative programs of great beauty. As always with this artist, Bach is at the heart of everything: his ingenuity and virtuosity, as well as his deep faith and humanity, shine through the music of the famous 19th-century composers who followed in his steps. WHEN: October 20 – 22 WHERE: Melbourne, Sydney BOOK: 1800 688 482 [ musicaviva.com.au  ]…

MONDAY - FRIDAY 6am Classic Breakfast Start your day with a delicious selection of the best in classical music 10am Classic Mornings Spend your morning with great music, including new releases and classic performances, plus the latest news and stories from the world of music 1pm Lunchtime Concert The best concerts from Australia and around the world 3pm Music in Time and more Music in Time / Legends / Passenger / Duet / Game Show 4pm Classic Drive A journey home through classical sounds, designed to relax, refresh and delight you 8pm Evenings Concerts from Australian and international ensembles plus music to help you wind down 12am Night Music Classical music that’s perfect for all-night listening, presented by some of your favourite ABC Classic FM voices SATURDAY 6am Weekend Breakfast…

Verdi’s Il Corsaro has an interesting genesis. Premiered in 1848 at the Teatro Grande in Trieste, the composer regarded it as an out and out failure, unsurprising given the conditions in which he wrote it. Based on a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave that strains even the most hardened operagoer’s credulity, it was composed to fulfil a contract that Verdi had tried his mightiest to escape. Based on a Byron poem, Il Corsaro boasts warring pirates, wily slave girls and a drawn-out suicide – it’s therefore not the subtlest of works, and for it to cohere in any meaningful way, it requires a strong cast and matching dramatic concept. We have the former in this broadcast from the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. Headed by the American tenor Michael…

OFF WITH HIS HEAD! Romeo Castellucci’s new production of Strauss’ Salome for the Salzburg Festival is coolly enigmatic, a steady foot on the gas before the glorious, bloody roar to the finish. The New York Times described it as “a dissonant chord torturously on the verge of resolution. King Herod wants a dance from Salome that never happens; Salome wants the head of Jochanaan, but it never comes; viewers want to make sense of Mr. Castellucci’s images, but they likely never will.” Some of these images include a brass cube for a throne, a horse’s head for that of Jochanaan’s, and a shallow pool of milk that serves as a bath for the final scene. It’s intriguing, if nothing else, and is a glorious playground for the Salome of Lithuanian…

1. Which crazy composer once falsely claimed to be Director of the Vienna State Opera? 2. Wagner’s early Das Liebesverbot is adapted from which Shakespeare play? 3. Verdi, Bellini and Sullivan all wrote operas about pirates. What were they called? 4. Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky were both inspired by which frosty fairy-tale? 5. What institution was created by this conductor, who also composed the popular Fantasia on British Sea Songs? 6. Set in South Africa, Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars was adapted from which Alan Paton novel? 7. Which tune inspired works by (among many others) Liszt, Brahms, Lutosławski and Andrew Lloyd Webber? 8. Which Bernstein work includes numbers entitled On Ten Square Miles by the Potomac River and The President Jefferson Sunday Luncheon Party March? 9. Which famous composer…

CHRISTOPHER LATHAM DIGGERS’ REQUIEM PAGE 22 Christopher has been an ACO violinist and festival director. He was Canberra’s 2013 Artist of the Year, created the Gallipoli Symphony and directs the Flowers of War. Awarded the French Government’s Order of Arts and Letters, he is artist-in-residence at the Australian War Memorial. ALEXANDRA COGHLAN VERSAILLES PAGE 64 Alexandra is a classical music journalist and writes regularly for publications including The Spectator, Prospect, Gramophone and Opera magazines, as well as The Independent, The New Statesman and the i Paper. She is Glyndebourne Opera’s Content Specialist. STEVE MOFFATT DOCTOR ATOMIC PAGE 70 By day, Steve is Production Editor of the NewsLocal group of community newspapers, but by night he haunts Sydney’s concert halls, reviewing everything from classical music to jazz and rock. The nearest…

I regularly receive your newsletters with great pleasure and interest. As a French classical music lover, I noticed your last Albert Roussel CD review (Évocations, released by Chandos). First, I must state that, in my opinion, Roussel is as great as Ravel and Debussy, to speak only about two great and better-known composers of his time. But I also think he is one of the greatest French composers of all times. This being said, I would like to draw your attention to the wonderful masterwork Évocations released by EMI in 1987 with the French conductor Michel Plasson and the Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse. May I also [point out] that the exact title of the other work found on the 1994 Supraphon CD is Le festin de l’araignée and not…

Australian Hector McDonald has been granted Honorary Membership of the International Horn Society, the society’s highest honour, recognising living hornists who have made a major contribution at the international level to the art of horn playing. The Toowoomba-born hornist, who is only the second Australian to receive the honour (the first was Barry Tuckwell) has had decades-long careers with both the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Concentus Musicus Wien, and was awarded the IHS’s Punto Award (for regional or national impact) in 2010. “The award means recognition of a lifetime in music,” McDonald told Limelight. “Since I began on the horn at the age of 18 I have had a very intense involvement with the instrument, now almost 50 years.” McDonald has held positions in Australia, working with the Elizabethan Trust…

Benson Wilson, a 27-year old baritone born in New Zealand of Samoan descent, has won this year’s 2018 Bel Canto Award worth $30,000, while the Elizabeth Connell Prize has been awarded to French soprano Claire de Monteil. This year’s Bel Canto Award final, with prizes totalling $95,000, was held at Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music on September 1, with Richard Bonynge, Bernadette Cullen, Fiona Janes, Anne-Maree McDonald and Patricia Price on the adjudicating panel. Australian soprano Livia Brash took out the second prize, while Tongan New Zealander Filipe Manu came third. The other finalists were soprano Olivia Canwell, baritone Andrew Williams and soprano Jessie Wilson. The finalists were judged on two arias sung at the Final, as well as two arias performed at the Preliminary Final, held at Shore…

I remember being on ABC radio on the morning of June 24, 2010 as Julia Gillard deposed Kevin Rudd, a sitting Prime Minister. I hardly listened to whatever music CDs I was sticking in the machine because I had the TV on in the studio, glued to the drama. Fast forward to August 24, 2018, and I eagerly sat down to watch Episode 3 in the Australian series that might be called ‘No, Prime Minister’. The Liberal Party, learning not one single lesson from the years of Labor squabbling, tore itself apart in a frenzy of egos. The shark-like Peter Dutton went in for the first bite, and Malcolm Turnbull, wounded and seeing the blood in the water, managed to keep swimming long enough to allow Scott Morrison to make…

I have always believed that great Art can change the world, in small but tangible ways. The Diggers’ Requiem, whose Australian premiere in Canberra will mark the centenary of the last Australian battle of World War One, is an example of a new commission being used for cultural diplomacy. It will demonstrate the depth of the Australian, French and German relationship, allies now, but on different sides of that terrible conflict 100 years ago. It is designed to honour the dead, acknowledge the burden of grief on families who lost loved ones, and to empower the work the three countries jointly undertake to create lasting peace in the world. “Jeanne d’Arc, as she is known in France, seemed the equivalent of those young soldiers” Peter Sculthorpe’s Earth Cry (1986) is…

You studied with the legendary Ferenc Rados. How was he as teacher and person? Rados is the best piano teacher. To me he was the most important one. It wasn’t easy. On the contrary, I cried a lot but never gave up. For years he criticised me for everything, nothing was ever good. He was sarcastic and even cynical, but deep down he had a heart of gold. And he was always right. And what were the most important lessons? From Rados I learned the main elements of piano playing, tone production and self-control. How to listen to myself and how to practise well, without wasting time, always musically, never mechanically. He could show it all on the piano – he is a very great pianist. You also studied with…

Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen Bayreuth Festival/Daniel Barenboim WARNER CLASSICS 2564620912 (14CD) Recorded live at the 1993 Bayreuth Festival, Barenboim’s magesterial survey of Wagner’s epic is far and away the finest modern account. John Tomlinson, Anne Evans and Siegfried Jerusalem lead a fine cast in a reading with real dramatic sweep and musical vision. Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Daniel Barenboim DG 4631272 (9CD) Barenboim’s second survey of these 32 masterworks benefit from a natural acoustic, spot-on engineering and decades of interpretative insights. Always thoughtful, never overindulgent, this is a set to live with. Wagner: Parsifal Berlin Philharmonic and State Opera Chorus/Daniel Barenboim WARNER CLASSICS 2564642633 (4CD) Barenboim’s effulgent reading is led by Matthias Hölle as a rock-steady Gurnemanz with Siegfried Jerusalem a heroic-sounding Parsifal, Waltraud Meier a thrilling Kundry and José…

PLACE & TIME This free exhibition explores how the architecturally significant buildings of both the Teatro alla Scala and QPAC have shaped the culture around them. It also looks at other La Scala productions, including Le Corsaire in 1966 featuring Rudolf Nureyev (pictured). Visitors can enjoy a four-minute Virtual Reality tour, which takes them to places within Teatro alla Scala. Sit in the stalls of the famous theatre or the central box, peek inside the dressing rooms and rehearsal spaces, and wander through the famous sets of Petruška designed by Nicola Benois, accompanied by personal tour guide, Principal Dancer Nicoletta Manni. Place & Time is at Tony Gould Gallery, September 18 – November 18 (Tuesday to Saturday) QUEENSLAND SIMULCAST Eight Queensland cities and towns will experience Teatro alla Scala’s performance…

LIVED 1934 - MOSTLY IN ACCRINGTON, MANCHESTER, FRANCE, WILTSHIRE BEST KNOWN FOR PUNCH AND JUDY, EARTH DANCES, GAWAIN, SECRET THEATRE, MINOTAUR SIMILAR TO PETER MAXWELL DAVIES, ALEXANDER GOEHR He has been director of music at the National Theatre and Henry Purcell professor of composition at King’s College, London; he has had major operas premiered at the Coliseum, Covent Garden and Glyndebourne; he was knighted in 1988 and made a Companion of Honour in 2001. He is Sir Harrison Birtwistle CH – an honoured figure, one might think, in the very heart of the British Establishment. In it, perhaps, but emphatically not of it, for there is little one could ever describe as conformist about the man or his music – or the way in which he became a composer. “He…

What was your own experience of growing up during the Cold War? The gift of the role for me was that I had been a scientist when I was in high school and had really thought physics and chemistry would be where I was going. I actually gave up a chemistry scholarship to come to the Royal College of Music in London. Doctor Atomic reignited my fascination with the subject matter, completely. As a Canadian, one was aware of the whole atomic business at that time. I lived under the shadow of practice air raid sirens in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s in Ottawa – we had drills and stuff like that. You did feel you were in the path of the Soviets and the Americans. If somebody misfired,…

The year is 1644, and all around the British Isles war rages. The most famous of these is the English Civil War between Charles I’s Royalists and Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians, which would continue in various waves and machinations from 1642 until 1651. But at the same time distinct (though occasionally overlapping) conflicts were underway in Scotland and Ireland, which collectively are known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. On the other side of the world, the intrepid Abel Tasman was making his second voyage in the service of the Dutch East India Company, leaving Batavia (now Jakarta) before sailing along and mapping the north-west coast of Australia. 1644 is also noteworthy for the birth of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, probably the greatest pre-Mozart Austrian composer. A violin virtuoso from…

Ballet Under the Stars: Giselle A free outdoor performance of the timeless, much-loved classical masterpiece, Giselle. Bring a picnic rug and friends. The Australian Ballet, Penrith, October 6 Forever & Ever A double bill features Rafael Bonachela’s award-winning Frame of Mind and Antony Hamilton’s brand new work Forever & Ever. Sydney Dance Company, October 16 – 27 A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare's masterpiece has been transformed into glorious dance by the acclaimed Liam Scarlett. Queensland Ballet, Melbourne, October 3 – 7…

PREVIEW Adriana Xenides spent 19 years spinning letters as co-host of the television game show Wheel of Fortune. She was a glamorous presence in a sexist industry, and when she died in 2010, at age 54, sections of the media duly represented her as two-dimensional: “She battled anorexia, suffered severe depression, attempted suicide and was an emotionally needy woman,” wrote one tabloid. Clare Watson never met Xenides, but the Artistic Director of Perth’s Black Swan State Theatre Company believes Xenides was so much more than a tragic figure and by many accounts an intelligent and deeply kind person. Watson would watch Wheel of Fortune while growing up in 1980s Melbourne suburbia, entranced by this woman playing second fiddle to a string of four male co-hosts, including Ernie Sigley, who chided…

GANAMBARR WINS NATSIAA VISUAL ART Northern Territory artist Gunybi Ganambarr has taken out this year’s $50,000 Telstra Art Award. From East Arnhem Land, he was selected the overall winner at this year’s Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards for his intricate etching, Buyku. It depicts the congregation of the Dhalwangu clan for fish trap ceremonies, highlighting how these rituals bring together the Yolngu. Represented through a weave of etched forms depicting water and fish traps, Buyku honours Ganambarr’s forefathers, particularly his Dhalwangu grandfathers. DANCING TO THE TOP DANCE The 21st Australian Dance Awards winners have been announced, with Beau Dean Riley Smith receiving the Outstanding Performance by a Male Dancer honour for Bangarra’s Bennelong. Outstanding Performance by a Female Dancer went to Jana Castillo for her turn…

Ladies In Black Opens: September 20 Genre: Period comedy-drama Duration: 109 minutes Beresford’s loving look at ladies’ life in long-gone Sydney I doubt Sydney on the cusp of the 1960s has ever been painted in such loving detail as in this retitled adaptation of Madeleine St John’s 1993 novel about the lives of women working in an upmarket department store. Veteran filmmaker Bruce Beresford has gone all out to make this light-hearted, gently sentimental comedy-drama above all a sensual experience, closer in spirit to 1957 Audrey Hepburn vehicle Funny Face than camp TV dross like Are You Being Served? From the eye-popping colours of the period’s fabulous floral dresses to the snapped suspenders and silk petticoats beneath, this is a film above all for women who love fashion. But Ladies…

ARTSOUND FM SELBY & FRIENDS October 7 at 8PM Kathryn Selby’s fourth Selby & Friends tour for 2018, Tormented Souls, saw the return of well-known Friends violinist Natalie Chee (Concertmaster of the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stuttgart but back home recently for concerts with the Australian World Orchestra, among others) and cellist Julian Smiles (of Goldner String Quartet and Australia Ensemble fame), in a concert of Beethoven, Schumann and Messiaen. Clarinettist Lloyd Van’t Hoff – winner of the 2015 ABC Symphony Australia Young Performer of the Year Award and clarinettist in Arcadia Winds – joined the trio for one of the masterpieces of 20th-century chamber music, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. The final movement, Praise to the Immortality of Jesus, was absolutely stunning – Chee’s ethereal, winding ascent…

There’s no opera quite like Richard Strauss’s Elektra to bring out the barbed looks and rubber faces. Here, the magnificent Birgit Nilsson confronts her mother, Barbro Ericson, at Covent Garden in 1965. So what might they have to say to each other? ENTER TO WIN... Complete Grigoryan Brothers The Collection Want to win the complete Slava and Leonard? ABC Classics has boxed up all eight of the classical guitar duo’s bestselling albums. SEND YOUR CAPTION TO: Limelight Magazine, Suite 37, Level 13, 167 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000, or email caption@limelightmagazine.com.au For full terms and conditions, go to www.limelightmagazine.com.au.…

“In high school, the music department composed musicals for us to star in” My dad was a motor mechanic and my mother worked in school administration, but they loved their music and so we always had the record player going. It was Queen and Neil Diamond, then heading into the 80s and 90s it was pop music all the time in our house. I remember growing up listening to Doug Mulray on Triple M and having a lot of powerhouse female vocals in my CD collection. People like Wendy Matthews, Alanis Morissette, Toris Amos, Tina Arena and Tracy Chapman. I probably couldn’t have got through my teenage years without Tracy. My interest in musicals was sparked when I started performing in primary school. I think the very first one was…

ABC SHOP ONLINE TO CLOSE The ABC has announced the imminent closure of both ABC Shop Online and in-store ABC Centres. The news comes three years after the ABC closed all of its physical stores. While a final day of trade has not yet been set for ABC Shop online, all ABC Centres will have ceased trading by close of business on February 15, 2019. ABC Classics releases will still be available to purchase through other retailers. DAME JOAN’S GLAD RAGS Opera Australia and Arts Centre Melbourne have announced that 30 of Dame Joan Sutherland’s treasured costumes will be donated to the Australian Performing Arts Collection. OA’s Dame Joan Sutherland collection spans three decades and comprises dresses, wigs, headpieces and accessories featured during her illustrious career. The first costumes will…

1. What are your earliest musical memories? A memory that I am particularly fond of is when my mother would pick me up after school, and take me to rehearsals with her in what was back then Kulcha (Multicultural Arts of WA), a cosy venue upstairs on Fremantle’s famous Cappuccino Strip. She often collaborated with other migrant musicians, facilitated expertly by multi-instrumentalist Peter Keelan. There would be a tapestry of classical Indian singing, African rhythms, Peruvian pan pipes and Macedonia traditional song being created in the background whilst I did my maths homework in a corner. I am certain that it has left a significant subconscious mark on me. 2. Who inspired you growing up? I have a deep gratitude to the Australian flute community, in particular Virginia Taylor, Margaret…

A year before he officially takes up his post of Chief Conductor, Kirill Petrenko has opened the Berlin Philharmonic’s season with a concert of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and Strauss’s Don Juan and Tod und Verklärung. “The benign, wonderfully expressive yet self-effacing persona that Petrenko projects from the podium seems to bring the best from orchestral players,” commented The Guardian when the same program came to the BBC Proms. “This was immensely thoughtful as well as superlative music making.”…

Given that I’ve earned a living as a composer for several decades, it’s still difficult to explain how this came about. I remember my musical education being very patchy, including almost no specific composition tuition. I recall piles of harmony exercises and fugues at college, and my too-sketchy abilities on piano and organ. So how did music become my lifetime job? I now realise it was thanks to the oboe, which I began learning at age 11. I began borrowing ‘the school oboe’, followed later by lessons with a great musician and oboist, Robin Miller. Then came performing in bands and orchestras, and, despite the unavoidably baroque atmosphere of the oboe, playing improv and even jazz. For such a polite instrument, it demanded workmanlike skills such as carpentry (making the…

Late on a Friday night, just weeks after starting her new role as Assistant Conductor at Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Karina Canellakis got a call to say that the orchestra’s Music Director Jaap van Zweden was stepping down from the following day’s concert due to a shoulder injury. In 24 hours the young conductor would have to take his place and lead the orchestra in Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony without a single rehearsal. As Assistant Conductor it’s your job to step in if the conductor is indisposed, and you prepare accordingly, Canellakis tells me, but it’s a very different feeling when it actually happens. “You spend a lot of time sitting there where everybody is just fine and nobody gets sick – and then if it happens that you actually have to…

Renée Fleming has always been a bit of a vocal chameleon. Put on Dark Hope, her 2010 album of indie rock titles, and opera aficionados would likely be hard pressed to guess the singer. Given she’s just passed the 200 mark in her run of Carousel on Broadway, it should come as no surprise that she can sing show tunes, but what is perhaps surprising about her new album, simply entitled Broadway, is the imagination behind a refreshingly eclectic program containing few of the usual suspects. But then Fleming, whose encores in recital often include the odd bit of Lerner and Loewe, has been a musicals fan all her life. “I sang Eliza Doolittle in eighth grade and again in eleventh grade, and the Mother Abbess in The Sound of…

Imagine this. It is Russia and the beginning of the 20th century. You are a student, a journalist, an intellectual or simply an art lover. You’ve heard of these radical impressionists that are scandalising French society. How do you see what all the fuss is about? You simply head to Moscow, for it’s there that you’ll be able to feast your eyes upon some of the most cutting-edge modernist artworks coming out of France. The course of art history would be very different indeed if it weren’t for two Russian art collectors, Sergey Shchukin and Ivan Morozov. Both businessmen from textile families, they represented the merchant class’s growing patronage of the arts within Russia, filling their palatial homes with works by Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin, Cézanne and Monet. A significant proportion…

FRACTURED LOGIC Birtwistle appears to regard composition not so much as a means of personal expression as a metaphor for a world ruled by forces of fate and chance. By confronting formalistic procedures with chance-derived disruptions, he aims for what he calls a ‘fractured logic’ out of which a certain spontaneous invention and lyricism may be wrested. SIGHT AND SOUND Birtwistle has frequently drawn upon art and art theory in order to suggest musical ideas, for example, Cézanne’s quest to reveal the inner structure of landscape; Paul Klee’s notion of ‘taking a line for a walk’; Picasso’s practice of basing a whole sequence of pictures on an original image by methods of variation and distortion. TOTAL THEATRE Rather than follow the traditional procedures of expected foopera or music drama, Birtwistle…

All Who Wander Songs by Mahler, Sibelius and Dvoÿák Jamie Barton ms, Brian Zeger p DELOS DE3494 American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton is a rising star, that’s for sure. With a rich, opulent instrument that puts you in mind of the great Stephanie Blythe, she’s a thoughtful, dramatically attuned artist whose debut recording heralds great things. First coming to international attention as the winner of the 2013 Cardiff Singer of the World, her career has been going from to strength in recent years, with upcoming engagements including big girl roles like Azucena and Fricka. “A thoughtful, dramatically attuned artist whose debut recording heralds great things” The Sibelius miniatures are the real winners on this disc, showing off Barton’s evenly produced, gleaming sound, as well as her innate gift for communication. Rich…

MUSIC A Coveted Possession The Rise and Fall of the Piano in Australia Michael Atherton La Trobe University Press, PB, 288pp, $34.99 ISBN 9781863959919 The ups and downs of Australia’s favourite form of entertainment A box piano accompanied the first fleet into Sydney in 1788. Owned by a fleet surgeon, George Bouchier Worgan, it began an Australian love affair with the instrument, which was to have a profound impact on the colony right into the late 20th century. Given the size and weight of the average piano, its spread across Australia, especially in early days, was extraordinary. Vast distances, dust and heat had to be overcome. Sea water was another barrier – I will never forget the absurd sight of the grand piano in the film, The Piano, stranded on…

Joyce Yang’s tour for Musica Viva featured a new Piano Sonata by Elizabeth Younan. Although she is only in her 20s, Younan has developed an idiosyncratic musical voice and a skilful compositional technique. This work was tightly structured, with musical cells building and evolving in complex and interesting ways. Her sonata is in a rather traditional three movement form, with two outer fast movements and a central slow movement. The first movement opened with a slow, expressive introduction, with hints of almost blues-like harmonies, before launching into the main body of the movement, which was both highly intricate and dramatic. The second movement was expansive, with cross rhythms and melodic contours reminiscent of some of the music of Carl Vine, who was one of the dedicatees of the piece. The…

ÉMIGRÉ Wendy Matthews, rooArt 846 649-2 I’ve been playing this one a lot in my dressing room recently during my performances of Rocky Horror Show. It’s got all those lovely songs by Wendy Matthews, like Token Angels, Woman’s Gotta Have It, State of Mind, Let’s Kiss (Like Angels Do). She was an Australian artist at the time I was coming into my own sense of self and voice, and just someone I really looked up to. I also like that it’s an Australian album. I’m feeling quite patriotic lately with Evie May.…