Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2018 i Limelight

A couple of months before Richard Gill died, he rang me in great excitement to tell me about a new school planned for Muswellbrook, to be built around his vision of a curriculum with music and physical education at its very heart. Details were still under wraps at this point but he was ecstatic about the project and asked if he could write about it for his October Limelight column rather than the subject we’d discussed. Naturally I said yes. A week or so later, he rang with more information and we agreed that he would write a follow-up to run in our November issue. He promptly delivered both columns. “Is it too soon to canonise Martin Rush?” he wrote of the Mayor of Muswellbrook. “This is my 55th year…

SALUTING TWO ACTIVISTS [Sent prior to Richard Gill’s death] In October’s Limelight there was an article by Richard Gill about the new music school at Muswellbrook and also an article about Daniel Barenboim as a citizen of the world. In these articles both these musical men deplore the diminishing opportunities for young people to learn music at school. They are both activists doing their best to rectify this situation. Now I know that Richard Gill would know about Daniel Barenboim, but does Daniel Barenboim know about our Richard Gill and what he is achieving? Daniel Barenboim is coming out to Australia soon, so tell him somebody! [Sent after his death] Further to my letter about Richard Gill, dated October 11, I think that it is a shame that he has…

Twenty-four-year-old Danish violinist Christine Bernsted has been awarded first prize at the inaugural Melbourne International Violin Competition. She won $5,000 in cash and a set of Nuraphone headphones, having impressed the judges with her interpretation of Bach’s Second Partita. “I am very honoured to receive first prize as the adjudicating panel was so extraordinary and because I have worked so intensively on my interpretation of the Partita No 2,” Bernsted told Limelight. “I greatly appreciate this award because I respect the large number of experienced musicians who rated my performance and personal interpretation. The fact that the competition has extended over such a long time, calling for the submission of a lot of material, has also meant that the first prize is very rewarding.” The competition was established by Melbourne…

Strauss Orchestral Songs Berlin Radio SO ONDINE 982 There are excellent recordings of Strauss’s orchestral songs, but Soile Isokoski’s singing is one of the finest. Her partnership with conductor Marek Janowski results in mesmerising, subtle performances, full of sensitivity and sheer unadulterated passion. Schubert String Quintet in C Brandis Quartet NIMBUS RECORDS NI5313 It is hard to imagine a more sublime piece of music than the Adagio from Schubert’s Quintet. The utter simplicity of its opening is a true example of ‘the art which disguises art’, particularly compelling in this magical performance by the Brandis Quartet. Elgar The Dream of Gerontius EMI CLASSICS 73579 It may date back to 1964 but Sir John Barbirolli’s interpretation of Elgar’s groundbreaking oratorio remains unsurpassed, not least because of Janet Baker’s glorious Angel of…

The beloved Australian conductor and music educator Richard Gill has died from cancer. He was 76, and a week shy of his 77th birthday. The afternoon before his passing was filled with music, 70 brass players gathering outside his home to farewell one of the country’s fiercest musical champions. Gill was born in Eastwood, Sydney, on November 4, 1941. The eldest of three brothers, his first exposure to music came as a student at Marist Christian Brothers College. The school sparked his love of singing, and he would carry throughout his life the belief that with a little practice, anyone could sing. After graduating, Gill taught music at Marsden High School in Ryde, where he forged two of his most important and lasting relationships. It was there that he met…

I was 10 years old when I started learning classical guitar, after playing pop and rock for a year. I owe much of my early classical development to Adelaide teacher, Andras Tuske, who developed my skills and guided me towards studying in Canberra at a tertiary level under renowned performer and pedagogue, Timothy Kain. I am proud to now perform alongside Tim in Australia’s much loved guitar quartet, Guitar Trek. I greatly admire Tim’s strong history of commissioning and working with composers, generating new music for the guitar, which is a relatively young instrument. Through Tim’s career, music that he has commissioned by the likes of Nigel Westlake, Graeme Koehne, Ross Edwards and many more has become a staple in the classical guitar repertoire. This motivated me to form my…

Tales of tyrannical conductors are legion, but the granddaddy of them all was Gustav Mahler. A small man, coming in at just five foot and four inches, there were contemporaries who put Mahler’s hyper-demonstrative style down to a sense of physical inadequacy. Others sensed the fanaticism of the composer, determined to honour the music above all else. Whichever was the case, as a maestro, Mahler set the trend for many who were to follow. In the pit, he was a conductor in the Beethoven mould, all arms. “His body was racked with movement and in the semi-darkness he looked like some kind of fairy-tale goblin engaged in a flurry of hocus-pocus,” wrote the critic Ernst Décsey. “In the harsh spotlight his face was fascinatingly ugly and had a ghastly pallor.…

How does it feel to have been named Young Performer of the Year? I’m obviously delighted, but also very humbled by the whole thing, to be given this title, given the list of impressive other people who have won in the past. How did you feel about your finals performance at the time? I honestly just had such a great time, because I haven’t played with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in the Opera House before – I’ve played with them in the Sydney Festival in the Domain in 2011 – so I was just happy to have the experience. I really treated it like a concert, like a performance – I wasn’t thinking at all that it was a competition. What do you think this will mean for your career…

Debussy Sonatas and Trio Bertrand Chamayou p, Emmanuel Pahud f, Renaud Capuçon v, Gérard Caussé va, Marie-Pierre Langlamet h, Edgar Moreau vc ERATO 9029577396 This exquisite recording couples the sonatas with the Piano Trio, written when the composer was 18 but unpublished until 1986. Despite its immaturity it is worth a listen, especially when played by such outstanding young performers. These French musicians are friends as well as regular colleagues. What they bring is twofold: innate sensitivity to Debussy’s idiosyncratic lyricism and apparent aloofness, and a detailed 21st-century way of characterising individual phrases. This is evident in Renaud Capuçon’s approach to the Violin Sonata: detached notes are well and truly detached, lyrical lines suspended in thin air. Capuçon and Bertrand Chamayou have plenty to say – and they say it…

Everyone has a Richard Gill story. The beloved conductor and educator’s influence reached across generations and cut through every section of the classical music industry and beyond. In the wake of his death on October 28, stories and memories have been flowing thick and fast in comments online, birthday wishes – Gill would have been 77 years old on November 4, the occasion marked by a concert at Sydney’s City Recital Hall – and in concerts celebrating his life. In the weeks following his death there were few concerts or performances that weren’t dedicated to the memory of one of Australia’s most passionate artistic leaders. “Every person in the orchestra has their own Richard Gill story,” conductor Nicholas Milton told the Willoughby Symphony Orchestra’s audience the day Gill died, the…

LIVED 1585 - 1672 MOSTLY IN VENICE AND DRESDEN BEST KNOWN FOR THE CHRISTMAS STORY, MUSIKALISCHE EXEQUIEN, SYMPHONIAE SACRAE BOOKS I TO III, PSALMEN DAVIDS SIMILAR TO MONTEVERDI, BUXTEHUDE, SCHEIN, SCHEIDT Excitable high recorders and dulcian speed the shepherds on their way to Bethlehem; the cries of “Ehre sei Gott”pulsate with the whirring of angels’ wings, while the brass accompanying the high priests add a touch of Rembrandt to an unfolding tableau that softens the precision and illustrative thrust of a Dürer woodcut with the festive sparkle of a beguiling instrumental palette. It’s little wonder that out of all Heinrich Schütz’s works, The Christmas Story, first heard during Christmas Day Vespers 1660, is the best known. Some three quarters of a century later, Johann Sebastian Bach would marry theology, meditation…

The Lost Music of Canterbury Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks Blue Heron/Scott Metcalfe BLUE HERON BHCD1008 (5CDS) It sounds like the name for a boutique airline. Blue Heron is, in fact, the handle for yet another crack Boston vocal ensemble with an avian name currently giving the Brits a run for their money. (Limelight readers will already be acquainted with the excellent and versatile group Skylark that also hails from the land of the tea party and clam chowder.) Blue Heron has the distinction of being the first North American ensemble to win the Gramophone Early Music award in its 41-year history. “An anonymous Missa Sine Nomine is the crowning glory of this last disc” The group was awarded this accolade for the fifth and final…

Vinyl continues its retro comeback; new releases as well as old favourites are appearing in limited LP editions. The latest vinyl reissue to come my way is a 1968 recording of Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote with cellist Jacqueline du Pré. Sir Adrian Boult conducts the New Philharmonia Orchestra. This 180G pressing is superior to the mass-produced stock of the LP era and the sound comes up warm and rich, although it is not pure analogue as it’s taken from the 1995 digital remastering. On the minus side, the piece starts quietly and intrusive clicks and pops remind me why CDs were considered an improvement for classical music. Du Pré brings utter commitment to her characterful solos, but Boult at this late stage was not always the most dynamic of conductors.…

Musica Viva Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne OCTOBER 20, 2018 Sir András Schiff is undoubtedly musical royalty. His last visit to these shores was over 20 years ago, and given this tour consists of just two concerts (one in Melbourne and one in Sydney), it’s no wonder that Musica Viva booked Hamer Hall to hold the capacity audience that turned out to hear him in the first recital of his tour. While Schiff’s playing puts himself in an exalted class, his manner is warm and simple. There are no airs and graces; rather, with a few words his deeply felt, thought-out opinions are delivered with a touch of humour. The first fruits of his intellect were the structure of the program: a first half centred around the tonality of F…

One Infinity Beijing Dance Theater/Dancenorth The Coopers Malthouse, Melbourne OCTOBER 17, 2018 REVIEW As we file into the darkened theatre, we are directed to one of two seating banks facing each other. In the middle is the long rectangular performance space, its glossy black floor dotted with traditional Chinese instruments. Out walks the show’s director and choreographer, Gideon Obarzanek, to break the news that we are not just watching the performance, we are the performance. We are instructed to copy the gestures made by two dancers (Amber Haines and Gao Jing) whenever they are illuminated. One Infinity, presented here by Melbourne International Arts Festival, then begins. Through the inky darkness emerge the first few notes from a Chinese flute played by co-composer Genevieve Lacey. Each long, floating note hints at…

Nearer the Gods Queensland Theatre Bille Brown Theatre, Brisbane OCTOBER 13, 2018 REVIEW Queensland Theatre has christened its new home theatre and Brisbane’s first corner stage with the world premiere of David Williamson’s Nearer the Gods, about the politics of science and how one of the most significant advances of the Age of Enlightenment almost never happened. Newton’s laws of motion are described in the play as ‘the greatest leap in knowledge in the natural world we have ever been gifted’, and Nearer the Gods introduces audiences to Isaac Newton (Rhys Muldoon) on the brink of this, his greatest discovery. The work focuses on the mammoth amount of effort and risk undertaken by young astronomer Edmund Halley (Matthew Backer) to wrestle these secrets of the universe from Newton, who had…

PREVIEW Maurits Cornelis Escher’s iconic images, depicting impossible architectures and whimsically tessellating patterns, captured the popular imagination in the 20th century, appearing on books and album covers, posters and t-shirts, and caught the eye of mathematicians and scientists, even if the art community itself was a little late to the party. The Dutch graphic artist’s works have undergone something of a revival in the 21st century, however, and a large-scale exhibition, which will see Escher’s work presented in dialogue with Japanese design studio nendo, is coming to the National Gallery of Victoria this month. Although the art community was slow to pick up on Escher, his images, particularly works like his staircase-ridden Relativity, remained popular. “The visual conundrum appeals to everyone’s sense of curiosity about space, how things work and…

NON-FICTION So what does a conductor do? Nicholas Braithwaite Nicholas Braithwaite, PB, 296pp, $94.83 ISBN: 9780646971452 Nicholas Braithwaite’s autobiography discusses what a conductor does, through his own career as a conductor and his life in music. For more information visit nicholasbraithwaite.com.au NON-FICTION Music as an Art Roger Scruton Bloomsbury Continuum, HB, 272pp, $50.00 ISBN: 9781472955715 As Roger Scruton shows in his book Music as an Art, we live at a critical time for classical music, and this book is an important contribution to the debate, of which we stand in need, concerning the place of music in Western civilisation. NON-FICTION Shakespeare’s Lyric Stage Seth Lerer University of Chicago Press, HB, 272pp, $52.99 ISBN: 9780226582542 As Seth Lerer demonstrates, Shakespeare’s late plays invite us to contemplate what it means to have…

The Australian National Academy of Music’s Celebrating Brett Dean concert saw the composer conduct the Australian Premiere of From Melodious Lay (A Hamlet Diffraction) a song cycle drawn from his hit opera Hamlet, with soprano Lorina Gore and tenor Topi Lehtipuu. The work premiered before Hamlet went into production and gave Dean a chance to try out the scoring. “The two solo voices (a soprano and a tenor, though not specifically signifying ‘Ophelia’ and ‘Hamlet’) sing text taken from three different scenes of the final version of the opera – and representing six different characters,” he told Limelight. “Diffraction refers to the slight bending of light as it passes around an object. Librettist Matthew Jocelyn chose this description as the subtitle for From Melodious Lay in order to describe the…

The terrific German tenor Christian Gerhaher only seems to grow in dramatic sensitivity and musicality, his performances in both the concert hall and on the opera stage marking him out as one of the world's best singers. His voice, slender and possessing a pale, liquid beauty, is always used with intelligence and a sense of the text’s poetry. Superlatives become exhausted when describing this singer’s art, and although the Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau comparisons are tiring, they certainly feel perfectly legitimate when applied here. Gerhaher returns to the Berlin Philharmonic this December to perform orchestral songs by Hugo Wolf, the lieder singer’s bread and butter. Conducted by the fantastic Iván Fischer, the tenor continues his long and glorious association with the orchestra after appearing in both Peter Sellars’ acclaimed productions of the…

“Growing up, classical music was something you had like it was medicine” It was all country and western music when I was growing up at home. If you put a Charlie Pride CD on, every member of my family would be able to sing along. He was big for two reasons – the style of music that he represented but also the idea of a black role model that he embodied. That was a huge thing. Our car had one of those big 80-track tape players and we’d listen to Merle Haggard, Slim Dusty and Johnny Cash. That ilk. My parents, they’re only 20 years older than I am, so their nostalgia for music they grew up with played out in my childhood. I remember one record of 60s music…

THE BEST OF ARETHA FRANKLIN Aretha Franklin, Atlantic 81280-1 The album I’ve been listening to the most at the moment is The Best of Aretha Franklin from 1984. For me, a musician or a piece of music is iconic when it places you in a time and a place. When I was growing up, I remember a girl that I didn’t know whether I loved or not, and I always connected The Rose in Spanish Harlem to her. Aretha had an extraordinary voice, and the way she scanned a line changed the way you could perform music.…

MATT WITHERS PLENTY OF PLUCK PAGE 18 Matt Withers is an ambassador for Australian music, a classical guitar pedagogue, performer and role model for musicians. He has performed with highly esteemed artists including William Barton, Sally Whitwell, Acacia Quartet, many national orchestras, and is a long-term member of Guitar Trek. RHYS RYAN THE NUTCRACKER PAGE 91 Rhys Ryan is an emerging contemporary dance maker, performer and writer. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) from the Victorian College of the Arts and is engaged as a performer and choreographer in Melbourne’s independent dance scene. ELISE LAWRENCE NEARER THE GODS PAGE 92 Elise Lawrence is a freelance writer and caffeine-based life form currently living in Brisbane, Australia. Her writing has been published in Limelight, Mous Magazine, Kyoto Journal and Hot…

It was with real shock that I heard the news of the passing of the celebrated musician Mr Richard Gill. Thus, firstly, to his family and secondly, to all his friends and professional collaborators, I would like to extend sincere condolences. Over the years, one could not but follow and admire his devoted life-energy to music, significantly music education for children and the young. His Limelight articles were not only engaging and forceful, but he always seemed to reveal the truth about situations, and the need and importance of establishing changes with true insight. I often wondered who his own teachers were when he was growing up and being educated – to whom he himself occasionally referred. True teachers; let us prize them. It is especially sad, that just as…

Xenia Puskarz Thomas, a 21-year-old lyric mezzo-soprano from Queensland, has won the 2018 Lady Fairfax New York Scholarship. Presented by The Opera Foundation for young Australians, the prize, worth $43,000, will allow her to study in New York with internationally acclaimed vocal, language and movement coaches. Four singers competed in the Finals Concert at the Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music in October. Competing alongside Thomas were bass-baritone Jeremy Kleeman, soprano Jessica Harper and soprano Alexandra Flood. They were accompanied by Sharolyn Kimmorley AM, with Guy Noble hosting the event. Thomas is currently completing a Bachelor of Music (Hons) at the Queensland Conservatorium. She was awarded the 2018 Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University Postgraduate Prize and the Tinkler Encouragement Award at the 2018 IFAC Handa Australian Singing Competition. She has performed…

I loved the recent report of a fight which broke out in a concert in Malmö, Sweden, where the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra was performing Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. One audience member became so distracted by a woman next to him opening a packet of gum in the softest moments that he grabbed it from her and threw it to the floor. “In retaliation the woman, after calmly waiting more than an hour for the orchestra to finish its performance, slapped the man in the face, sparking a full on brawl between the pair.” Well I know how infuriating that can be. The Mahler reaches its softest point in the Adagietto movement and suddenly there is a crackle of wrapper that completely takes attention away from the music. It’s now the Adagietto…

Berlioz Les Troyens DiDonato, Spyres, Strasbourg Philharmonic/John Nelson ERATO 9029576220 (3CD) Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande Kozená, Gerhaher, Finley, London Symphony Orchestra/Rattle LSO LIVE LSO0790 (3SACD) Shining Knight Music by Wagner, Griffes, Barber Stuart Skelton t, West Australian Symphony Orchestra/Asher Fisch ABC CLASSICS 4817219 The Wagner Project Arias and Orchestral Music Matthias Goerne bar, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Daniel Harding HARMONIA MUNDI HMM90225051 (2CD)…

Kim Williams, student, friend and media executive When Richard Gill was not at all well and was still in hospital, we both had a meeting with the visionary mayor of Muswellbrook, Martin Rush and the economic development manager for Muswellbrook Shire, Gerry Bobsien. It took place in a small meeting room off the foyer of the hospital when Richard had an extreme skin reaction to recent chemotherapy. Richard managed it as if this was all in an ordinary day’s work. Martin and Gerry were pure professionals as if they took meetings in hospital facilities every day and with a respondent who looked alarmingly as if he had leprosy. Richard announced that I would be the chair of the new school. Over the following weeks he and I put together the…

CORO FAVORITO/CAPELLA In Schütz’s personal take on the Venetian multi-choir technique of the late-16th and early-17th centuries he divides his forces into what was known at the time as a ‘coro favorito’ of more skilled musicians, whose function resembles the concertino in a contemporary Concerto Grosso, and the lesser skilled ‘Coro Capella’ that is reserved to provide any necessary heft required at climaxes. WORD PAINTING Like Monteverdi before him, Schütz was highly solicitous when it came to illustrating the words that he was setting. Sometimes a simple melodic figure suffices, such as the encircling depiction of birds to be found in his Psalmen Davids setting of Psalm 84. Perhaps more obvious is the musical matching of near approximations to the long list of instruments that are mentioned in Psalm 150.…

When and how did you first come across the Peterhouse partbooks? The summer before Blue Heron gave its first concert in the fall of 1999, I was over at the Von Huene Workshop in Brookline (in Greater Boston), browsing through music in a filing cabinet, when I came across a piece called Ave Maria Dive Matris Anne by someone I had never heard of before, one Hugh Aston. It was scored for five parts, exactly what we were after, and looked quite wonderful. The edition was beautiful but easy to read from and obviously made by someone with a keen sense of visual aesthetics combined with a practical understanding of what performers need. This editor, Nick Sandon, clearly knows what he’s doing, I thought, and oh look, he’s restored the…

Forest of Dreams Music by Koehne, Houghton, Llobet et al Callum Henshaw g CALLUM HENSHAW Canberra-born classical guitarist Callum Henshaw’s latest recording is a fitting follow-up to his impressive 2016 release, Echo and Response, and again features an intelligently curated mix of contemporary Australian works and music from other times and countries. This time we find ourselves in the company of Australian composers Phillip Houghton and Graeme Koehne, as well as Agustín Barrios Mangoré (Paraguay), Miguel Llobet (Spain), Leo Brouwer (Cuba) and Niel Gow (UK). In themselves, these little symphonies – if that is not too heavy a burden to place upon music of less exalted ambitions – are richly evocative of worlds real and imagined. What connects them, as Henshaw recognises, are “the ideas of storytelling, lament and mythology”.…

The year 1892 was extremely eventful, in Australia especially. It was a year full of significant births: John Simpson Kirkpatrick (of Simpson and his donkey fame) was born, as was Australia’s Queen of Song, ‘Our Glad’, Gladys Moncrieff. It was also the year that the Collingwood Football Club was founded, and the year that the Australian Cricket Council announced an inter-colonial cricket competition to be known as the Sheffield Shield. On the other side of the globe, meanwhile, a Canadian mathematician named James Naismith published the rules of a new sport he had invented: basketball. Speaking of significant sporting moments, in October of 1892 a record was set that remains unbeaten 135 years on, when Jackie Howe sheared – by hand, mind you – no fewer than 321 sheep in…

PREVIEW When Simon McBurney, Director of renowned British theatre company Complicité, directed Beware of Pity for Schaubühne Berlin, it was the culmination of two decades of mutual admiration and discussion between him and Schaubühne Artistic Director Thomas Ostermeier. Settling on a project, however, took some doing. Ostermeier was keen on McBurney directing a Shakespeare and suggested various plays including The Merchant of Venice. “I wasn’t really sure I wanted to do Shakespeare abroad partly because, whenever I make a piece of theatre, selfishly, I want to get something out of it, I want there to be a meaning to why I’m doing the piece and so just simply to turn up and do a translation of a Shakespeare for me was to [direct] something specifically English within a German context,…

20/20 20 commissioned portraits of leading Australians, including Richard Tognetti and Jacki Weaver, celebrate the NPG’s 20th birthday. National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, until February 10 Love This exhibition presents tender love stories of all kinds, traversing time, gender, orientation, distance and ethnicity. Immigration Museum, Melbourne, until April 28 John Mawurndjul: I am the old and the new Showcasing one of our greatest living artists in this first major survey of his work. Art Gallery of South Australia, until January 28…

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…

SINGERS IMPRESS IN CZECH FESTIVAL OPERA When a princess is asked to arbitrate between two feuding brothers, fighting over the inheritance of their dead father’s estate, her judgement is considered deficient. Why? Because she’s a woman, we promptly learn. Smetana’s festival opera about the legendary founder of Prague, Libuše, was staged in September by the National Theatre Prague to mark the centenary of the Czechoslovak proclamation of independence in Prague. It’s a little heard work that is often performed to mark such milestones, but its score, full of Wagnerian influences, meaty choral numbers and stirring marches means it deserves more attention than it has otherwise received. Like Wagner, Smetana plundered myths and legends for his works, presenting us with heroes from another time. Much of the plot is taken up…

SLAVA TAKES HOME ARIA Guitarist Slava Grigoryan has won the ARIA for Best Classical Album at the 2018 ARIA Fine Arts and Artisan Awards for his hugely popular Bach Cello Suites Volume II on ABC Classics, taking out the award for the second year running after the first volume of his Bach Cello Suites won in 2017. This is Grigoryan’s fourth ARIA win, from 17 ARIA nominations over the years. YOU HAD ME AT MERLOT Acclaimed concert pianist Anna Goldsworthy has been named the new Artistic Director of South Australia’s Coriole Chamber Music Festival. She assumes the role in 2019 for a tenure of three years, succeeding Anthony Steel. Goldsworthy was previously the Artistic Director of the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival from 2009 to 2015. Established in 1999, the…

1. Was there a specific moment when you knew you wanted to be a singer? Not one specific moment but more a growing desire over several years in my childhood. I still remember the excitement I felt as a choir boy of 12 or 13 before a performance of Bach’s Matthew Passion or Brahms’ Requiem, and the complete sense of being engulfed in the music during the concert. I think that feeling, and the encouragement I took from my first singing teacher at the age of 15 upon finding that I still had a voice after the change from soprano to baritone, prompted me to shock my parents with the confession of wanting to forsake the path of medicine for the one of music. 2. You’ll be performing Handel’s…

Steve Reich may be 82, but he is still composing exhilarating new music. In November, the Los Angeles Philharmonic premiered Reich’s first piece for full orchestra in over 30 years. Titled Music for Ensemble and Orchestra, the 19-minute piece was conducted by Susanna Mälkki. The Los Angeles Times called it a “breathtakingly beauteous and perfectly pitched work”. The performances are being recorded for release on Nonesuch. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra performs it in February, conducted by David Robertson.…

The title of my new work Crie (pronounced Cree) is from the French word meaning to cry out. It was specially conceived and written for violinist Véronique Serret. Véronique has a very rich speaking voice which had always impressed me, and although playing and singing together is never an easy task, I knew the piece I was writing would be in great 'voice' with Véronique. As I proceeded to write it turns out that my subconscious instinct lay not only with the pure task of a piece for violin and voice, but also arose out of the urgency of our present historic moment. Increasingly we are hearing of women being courageous enough to speak out about untruths or abuses. We have as an extreme example the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana…

Shostakovich Symphonies Nos 4 & 11 Boston Symphony Orchestra/Nelsons DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 4835220 This is a great honour. I am very excited that the genius music of Shostakovich’s Fourth and Eleventh Symphonies has received such special recognition, and I am also very proud of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as the brilliant recording team. I am very happy that listeners around the world – including Australia – are moved by Shostakovich’s works. Shostakovich’s music has always had a very special place in my heart and has always spoken very personally to me – from one side, I recall growing up in the Soviet communist regime, and seeing the parallels of this world in his music. But I find it more important to recognise and admire the genius composition and expression,…

Ross Edwards, composer Some of my first memories of Richard stem from the early 1970s, when we were both lecturers in the Sydney Conservatorium’s School of Composition. Our personalities could hardly have been more dissimilar: he, a born teacher who communicated vividly and effectively with broad strokes, I, a classic introvert who spouted facts and pored over minutiae. What gradually brought us together to a point of mutual respect and affection was, of course, music, our lifeblood, in which we both recognised the key to a better society – a better world. I remember Richard’s suspicion of composers in the days of what is now described as ‘plink plonk’ – the residue of the atonal period, relentlessly being pushed by one of our colleagues. In the wave of freshness and…

The Christmas Story Ars Nova Copenhagen, Concerto Copenhagen, Sirius Viols/Paul Hillier DACAPO 8226058 A superb Danish choir turns in a compelling reading of Schütz’s most famous work, winningly conducted by Paul Musikalische Exequien La Chapelle Royale/ Philippe Herreweghe HARMONIA MUNDI HMG501261 Philippe Herreweghe conducts the classic account of Schütz’s austere meditative choral masterpiece. Symphoniae Sacrae III Concerto Palatino, Cantus Cölln/Konrad Junghänel HARMONIA MUNDI HMC901850/51 (2CD) The third and last part of Schütz’s Symphoniae Sacrae is a true hymn to peace in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War. Schwanengesang Concerto Palatino, Collegium Vocale Gent/ Philippe Herreweghe HARMONIA MUNDI HMC901895/96 (2CD) The 86-year-old Schütz’s double choir settings of the verses to Psalm 119 form his fitting swansong.…

Bach 333 New Complete Edition Various artists DG 4798000 (222CD, DVD ET AL) If you enjoyed 2016’s superbly comprehensive Mozart 225 box, Deutsche Grammophon and Decca have done it again, this time celebrating the 333rd anniversary of the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach with the biggest (and heaviest) collection of any composer in recording history. According to editorial consultant Sir Nicholas Kenyon, the number 333 is important, because three is a key Bach number representing the Holy Trinity. “The symbolism of three, and three times three, is everywhere in the collection of organ works Clavier-Übung III,” he writes. “We often sense these underlying features in the composer’s work; while I don’t think he ever let them dominate his thinking, it was clearly a way in which he was expressing the…

Sydney Symphony Orchestra Sydney Opera House OCTOBER 26, 2018 The last time the Sydney Symphony Orchestra performed Beethoven’s monumental Ninth Symphony was two years ago under former Chief Conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy. Here we had a Beethoven Nine under Dutch maestro Edo de Waart, who led the SSO from 1994 to 2003. The expansive opening of the Ninth has been likened to the creation of the universe, but in de Waart’s hands – with biting horn entry and muscular tempo – it felt more like a large, powerful animal waking to hunt. While some may favour a broader reading that leans into the vast mystery suggested by Beethoven’s music, de Waart gave the movement a surging energy – and at times a kind of swinging insouciance – that made for compelling…

Cinderella Created for the company by Alexei Ratmansky, this witty ballet will sweep audiences off their feet. The Australian Ballet, Sydney Opera House, November 30 – December 19 Storytime Ballet: Coppélia Ballet’s most playful comedy in an interactive production created for children aged three and up. The Australian Ballet, VIC and NSW tour, December 12 – January 24 Dubboo – life of a songman Celebrating the work and life of composer David Page, with music by Iain Grandage and special guests. Bangarra Dance Theatre, Sydney, December 6 – 8…

A Cheery Soul Patrick White peels back the scalp of the Australian mind to reveal the horror of 60s suburbia in this classic play, with Sarah Peirse. Sydney Theatre Company, until December 15 The Dance of Death Judy Davis directs Colin Friels, Pamela Rabe and Toby Schmitz in one of the best marriage battles ever written. Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, until December 23 Eurydice Sarah Ruhl vividly re-imagines the classic myth of Orpheus through the eyes of its heroine, directed by Claudia Barrie. The Old Fitz Theatre, Sydney, until December 15 Astroman Albert Belz’s irresistibly funny and heart-warming tale of family and friendship set in the 1980s, directed by Sarah Goodes. Melbourne Theatre Company, until December 8 Twelfth Night Shakespeare’s classic romantic comedy in a new production by Simon Phillips,…

MUSIC Chopin’s Piano – A Journey Through Romanticism Paul Kildea Allen Lane, HB, 368pp, $55 ISBN: 9780241187944 Format echoes subject in Paul Kildea’s fascinating new book As I write this review, I am listening to Sviatoslav Richter playing a selection of Chopin’s 24 Preludes. That’s just one thing Paul Kildea’s rich, surprising and unusual story of an instrument, a composer, his music and the pianists who played it, does – send you straight back to the recordings by those performers he mentions, so persuasive, so evocative is his writing: “They are a good match, Chopin and Richter, the Russian’s dolorousness and poised musicality a perfect fit with the Chopin that Sand encountered late one night in the monastery after returning with the children from a nocturnal scramble: hair on end,…

ABC CLASSIC FM WEST AUSTRALIAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA December 1 at 12pm American conductor Karina Canellakis, touring Australia for the first time, leads the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in a concert that pairs Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto, with soloist Ning Feng, with Shostakovich’s brooding Eighth Symphony. The Shostakovich is particularly significant for Canellakis, as it was the piece with which she burst onto the world stage four years ago when, as Assistant Conductor at Dallas Symphony Orchestra, she filled in last minute for Jaap van Zweden, taking the podium without a single rehearsal. “It was a big turning point for me, because it was the first time that I had ever conducted anything that massive, or anything that requires that kind of mental and emotional pacing,” Canellakis told Limelight. “The Eighth…

1. Which carol is named for a town once famous for its mystery plays? 2. Good Christian Men, Rejoice is a more recent setting of what medieval carol? 3. Vaughan Williams set the Christmas story in an oratorio by what name? 4. Jauchzet, frohlocket, auf, preiset die Tage opens what festive work? 5. Which German composer wrote a two-act Christmas opera called Das Christ-Elflein (The Little Elf of Christ)? 6. The first two acts of which four act opera are set on Christmas Eve? 7. Which Australian composer adapted Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as a dance work in 1983? 8. What do Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Christmas Eve and Tchaikovsky’s opera Vakula the Smith have in common? 9. What seasonal favourite was written in 24 days and premiered on…