Innehållsförteckning för April 2025 från Limelight

Few 20th-century composers are as popular these days as Maurice Ravel. This year sees an avalanche of performances in Australia as orchestras and artists celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth, and yet his orchestral works fit easily onto four discs and the piano music onto two. Ditto the chamber music, songs and his two comic operas. So, how did this famously private man emerge as one of the most distinctive musical voices of his generation? Taking a stroll through the first three formative decades of his life – for Ravel took time to find his feet – it’s worth reflecting on the impact of time and place in determining what makes his work unique. According to his pupil Ralph Vaughan Williams, the composer himself described his music as “Complexe…

The events depicted in the film are based on Greste’s own account of the 13 months he spent in prison, written in Australia after he was unexpectedly set free. There are few places in Australia as grimly atmospheric as Callan Park in Sydney’s inner west. For those who venture into the subterranean passageways and dank cells of what was once the Callan Park Hospital for the Insane, it’s a stark glimpse into what it might feel like to be utterly deprived of one’s freedom and – even worse, perhaps – hope. For the cast and crew of the new Australian film The Correspondent – a retelling of the story of journalist Peter Greste’s 13-month incarceration in Egypt after his arrest on 29 December, 2013 – Callan Park proved to be…

Our April Recording of the Month is the latest in Opera Rara’s ongoing project to record Donizetti Songs (all 200 or so). All four volumes to date have done much to enhance the composer’s reputation, but the combination of tenor Michael Spyres and Carlo Rizzi on piano makes the particular tranche of French songs on Volume 3 a five-star must-hear (Opera Rara 9293802562). The program, mostly written with fashionable Parisian salons in mind, opens in high style with Le Retour au désert, a dashing salute from a master to his horse, which Donizetti sets as a rollicking Spanish bolero. Spyres’ swashbuckling tone and nimble articulation paints a lively portrait, as it does in a string of upbeat gems. What makes this album unique, however, are the more unusual items, like…

ABC listening highlight Adelaide Symphony Orchestra – Horizons 30 April at 7pm Max Bruch is remembered primarily for his much-loved Violin Concerto No. 1. The quietly mournful opening passages of the first movement portend the dramatic announcement that follows, and right from the first bars, Emily Sun creates magic with her eloquent rendering of the lush melodies. In a bravura performance that is heartrending at times, she and visiting conductor Shiyeon Sung bring out the concerto’s romantic character. The concert opens with Felix Mendelssohn’s concert overture Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. The work begins with quietly shimmering strings that develop a musical line that seems stalled. After a time, a flute passage heralds a fresh breeze and the music gains pace and energy as the wind picks up. Concluding triumphantly…

I grew up with a wildly eclectic soundtrack – from Frank Sinatra’s smooth charm and the wholesome vibes of The Carpenters to Nina Simone’s soulful grit, Sinéad O’Connor’s fearless spirit, Whitney Houston’s powerhouse anthems and the obligatory show tunes from The Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Les Misérables. My parents couldn’t play an instrument or carry a tune, but they sure knew how to cut a rug, which was their little taste of freedom. Every time I popped on a cassette in the car, I relished not only that satisfying click at the start of a musical journey but also the chance to sing my heart out. I’d strain for those high notes and entertain my family with my running commentary on the sheer absurdity of some of the…

CLASSICAL MUSIC Australian Chamber Orchestra: Abel Selaocoe Making his Australian debut, South African cellist Abel Selaocoe directs the world premiere of Nigel Westlake’s Ascension, commissioned by the ACO, and the Australian premiere of Giovanni Sollima’s When We Were Trees, for which he is joined by Timo-Veikko Valve. The program also includes Platti’s Cello Concerto in D major, Bernard Rofe’s arrangement of Stravinsky’s Three Movements from Petrushka and original works by Selaocoe, who is accompanied by his regular collaborator, percussionist Sidiki Dembélé. Jansson J. Antmann 3–15 April, venues in Wollongong, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide, aco.com.au Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra: Beethoven’s Triple Concerto TSO Concertmaster Emma McGrath, Principal Cello Jonathan Békés and guest pianist Konstantin Shamray join forces for Beethoven’s only concerto for three solo instruments. Begun in 1803 and written around…

When Lyndon Terracini and his wife, opera singer Noëmi Nadelmann, moved west of the Divide to make a home for themselves among the cool-climate wineries and cattle country outside Orange, the thought of mounting a brand-new opera festival couldn’t have been further from their minds. It didn’t take long, however, for memories of Hans Werner Henze’s 1976 Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte in Montepulciano, Italy, to come flooding back. It was there Terracini, the former Artistic Director of Opera Australia, had first come to appreciate the importance of staging cultural events that engage regional communities and inspire creativity. “There’s too much of a reliance on touring,” he says, “and it’s only part of the equation. A festival, on the other hand, is all about bringing a large number of people to a…

music.org.nz Like Making Music Stenders is very aware of the demands he placed on his actors. “I think I was torturing Rox quite a bit,” he admits. “I’m a very visual director, having trained as a cinematographer, so I’m obsessed with framing and composition. I probably drove Richard a little crazy with my fixation on getting each shot exactly right. But to me, directing is like making music. You have to find the right rhythm, and we were lucky in that Richard is a brilliant timekeeper and he can turn on a dime emotionally. He’s a precision instrument as an actor. He set the pace, and the other actors synced up with that. The whole shoot was a very intuitive, musical process.” There are passages in the film which take…

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Metropolis Festival was established in 1996 as a showcase for contemporary symphonic music from Australia and around the world. It’s taken “various formats and guises” over its almost 30-year history, says co-curator Liza Lim. This year, it features an all-Australian, two-concert program under the umbrella title Composing Australia. “Metropolis’s role has typically been to show what’s current, with a focus on Australian music. What are the stories the composers are telling? It’s a tiny slice, but we’re also looking at who the composers are – where they’ve come from, where they are now and where they’re going. There’s a sense of journey, of the migratory world of story, in the festival,” says Lim. Lim was invited to co-curate Metropolis with MSO’s Principal Conductor Benjamin Northey as…

Newsworthy A round-up of our recent news reports The latest arts controversy has raged around Creative Australia’s decision to dump Khaled Sabsabi as Australia’s representative at the 2026 Venice Biennale – just a week after announcing his selection. A short statement released by the Board on 13 February, said, “Creative Australia is an advocate for freedom of artistic expression and is not an adjudicator on the interpretation of art. However, the Board believes a prolonged and divisive debate about the 2026 selection outcome poses an unacceptable risk to public support for Australia’s artistic community and could undermine our goal of bringing Australians together through art and creativity.” The decision was triggered by questions in parliament about two of Sabsabi’s works – a 2007 video installation featuring the late Hezbollah leader…

Simone Young conducts Mahler’s Third Symphony ABC Classic broadcasts the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s magnificent opening concert for 2025. Most arts organisations launch their new season with a big statement, and they don’t come much bigger than one of Gustav Mahler’s all-encompassing symphonies. Sydney Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductor Simone Young has waved her magic Mahler wand since starting her tenure during the COVID lockdowns. In 2022, she celebrated the reopening of the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall with the No. 2 Resurrection Symphony, moving on to the First in 2023 and the ever-popular Fifth last year. This season it is the turn of the Third – the longest in the canon. The six movements clock in at one hour and 45 minutes, with the first movement alone about the length of…

In February, I saw the opening night of the musical Hadestown in Sydney, co-produced by Opera Australia. It’s an odd choice for an opera company, as there is nothing operatic about its singing or musical style. Meanwhile, this year’s Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour is Guys and Dolls, which is surprising as I didn’t think it was an opera. I checked online thinking it might have been Guys and Dolls by Gluck or Jean-Baptiste Lully, but apparently it is the traditional musical by Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows set in New York. Meanwhile, inside the Sydney Opera House, OA presented another musical in February – Candide. At least that is close to an operatic experience, featuring music by Leonard Bernstein and knockout coloratura arias like Glitter and Be…

When did you and Lloyd Van’t Hoff first meet? I first met Lloyd in 2012 when we played Gerard Brophy’s trio gloVe (for piano, clarinet and cello) at the Melbourne Recital Centre. The occasion was the Australian Voices series, alas now defunct, that Paul Dean developed to highlight Australian composers while he was Director of the Australian National Academy of Music. Lloyd was a young student (although already playing like a pro) and I was a visiting guest artist, curating an all-Brophy concert. We met again a decade later, in 2022, when I conducted him in an ensemble chosen to perform six world premieres by emerging composers at Yale University’s Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Six months later, we performed Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat together at the 2023 Sydney Festival, and…