THE POETRY OF WAR
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Iwaki Auditorium, Southbank
Sunday August 3 at 11 am
Here's another element of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's Chamber series, in this case combining music and poetry in a program curated by violinist Monica Curro. Of course, the subject/theme won't be hard to flesh out, and the printed material on the MSO website refers to music by Debussy, Britten and Webern. And that's not an 'of course' matter at all. No worries with Britten who has some war material to his name, even if we're not being treated to snippets from the Requiem. Debussy's a bit harder to pin down; you might take one of the three instrumental sonatas as being ' of the time' rather than having any military connotations. Mind you, the same could be said of the Berceuse heroique (a piano solo) or En blanc et noir (probably not on this program as it calls for two pianos). As for Webern, I've no idea; the Cantata No. 2 was written during World War II but I doubt if anyone's taking that on, particularly if you take into account the musical forces that Curro has gathered. They involve herself and Kirstin Kenny on violin, Gabrielle Halloran viola, Michelle Wood cello, Shane Hooton trumpet, Andrew Macleod flute, and Elyane Laussade piano. As for the poetry, that comes from actor Dennis Coard whose contribution is non-specific except that it's coming from the 20th century. Here's hoping we get a bit of French and German texts to go along with the Owen and Sassoon. A standard ticket costs $55, concessions go for $50, and kids get in for $20; you have to fork out $7 as a transaction fee, or for having the cheek to place an order.
ATMOSPHERE 3
Corpus Medicorum
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Sunday August 3 at 5 pm
Turn it into Latin and immediately the thing takes on gravitas. I don't know when the Doctors' Orchestra turned itself into the Corpus Medicorum, but here we are. The group of combined medicals - doctors, students, health professionals - will be directed in this concert by the estimable Fabian Russell; actually, Russell has conducted/is conducting all the Corpus' events across the year. This evening, the group is going all-French in an ambitious set of forays that opens with Debussy's La mer, that taxing set of three symphonic sketches from 1905. Violin soloist Natsuko Yoshimoto, currently concertmaster of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, then fronts Chausson's Poeme of 1896, the composer's best-known work and a professional's staple. She follows this with Ravel's flashy Tzigane from 1924 - as boisterous a musical joke as the Bolero from four years later. The entertainment ends with more Ravel in La valse, that nightmare vision of 19th century Vienna written in 1920 and apparently having nothing to do with World War I. It asks for a big orchestra and is difficult, even for gnarled old-timers, to carry off persuasively. A standard entry is $65; concession card holders and students both are being charged $30, and 'Booking fees may apply', according to the publicity - I think you can count on it.
CIRCA & THE ART OF GUGUE
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Thursday August 7 at 7 pm
Is this going to work? We've seen previous marriages between the Queensland-based circus company and Paul Dyer's Australian Brandenburg Orchestra in the past. I recall hearing/seeing French Baroque and Spanish catch-all programs in the latter years of the past decade. The Italian Baroque collaboration of 2022 didn't travel live outside of Sydney, but now both organizations have put aside national colour and opted for a massive torso in Bach's one theme-based collection of 14 fugues and 4 canons. This compendium lasts as long as the performers decide, it seems; one performance barely lasts 50 minutes, several more close to 90 and one I've come across goes for over two hours. Most musicologists agree that the work was probably written for - and is best served on - a harpsichord but I have little doubt that the Brandenburgers will not be consigned to the back-blocks by their artistic director's instrument alone. Of even more moment is the question of the Circa acrobats' choreography which will need to be of a sharp order to come into line with the matchless skill of Bach's contrapuntal marvels. Still, the few occasions I've seen this collaboration in action, the music has to fight hard to attract any attention from the Circa corps' brilliant aerodynamics. I don't understand the ticketing process. A standard costs between $30 and $196; full-time students pay a flat $20; Under 40s pay $40; concession card holders pay between $59 and $109. These prices vary between performances and booking fees apply if you get your seat(s) online or by phone. You'd want to get good Bach for your buck.
This program will be repeated on Saturday August 9 at 7 pm and on Sunday August 10 at 5 pm.
TCHAIKOVSKY'S VIOLIN CONCERTO
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne
Thursday August 7 at 7:30 pm
Oh well, it had to happen: a rather orthodox program, even if it holds one surprise. Clearly, the evening's focus falls on the great concerto of 1878, the most exhilarating of them all, thanks to the composer's inimitable capacity for drama and colour. As soloist, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is initiating Dutch musician Simone Lamsma who has proved highly successful in North America and Europe. I believe she has played with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra but, like so many of her ilk, has not made it to anywhere more southern - until now. The concert's conductor, Korean-born Shiyeon Sung, has been principal guest conductor of the Auckland Philharmonia and has worked with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Her big task is finding even more reserves of warmth in the benign Brahms Symphony No. 2 in D: the happiest of the composer's four and blessed with a welcome underpinning gleam across its length. It's also almost an exact contemporary of the night's concerto, being written in 1877. But up-to-the-moment joy comes in a premiere from Greek-Australian writer Klearhos Murphy, the MSO's Cybec Young Composer in Residence; his The Ascent, commissioned by the orchestra, is to be revealed - a triptych of (not too exhaustive, one hopes) meditations on the teachings of St. Nikitas Stethatos and that holy man's proposals for a successful spiritual life. Normal rickets range from $75 to $139; concession holders are charged $5 less (big deal); if you're under 18, the charge is $20., But everybody has to stump up $7 transaction fee per order; one day we'll find out where that money goes.
This program will be repeated on Saturday August 9 at 7:30 pm
DANIELLE DE NIESE
Australian Contemporary Opera Company
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Friday August 8 at 7:30 pm
A singer with a large profile, Danielle de Niese is going to work through a wide-ranging program that stretches from Marcello and Handel to Weill and Gershwin with not much in the middle. I've not heard her (I think) so have no comment about her talent but she has an excellent group of well-known musicians supporting her: violins Curt Thompson and Sophie Rowell, viola Lisa Grosman, cello Richard Narroway, oboe Rachel Curkpatrick, harp Marshall McGuire, piano Coady Green. As well, she is being assisted by a vocal septet from the Australian Contemporary Opera Company: Sophie Bissett, Uma Dobia, Saskia Mascitti, Callum Warrender, William Grant, James Billson and Daniel Felton. The recital's first half is specific with definite numbers and arias from Jimmy Lopez, Kurt Weill, James Macmillan, Christopher Tin and Patrick Cassidy, as well as the afore-mentioned Marcello and Handel numbers. After interval, it's just names - Dan Bryer, Mike Needle and Tom Grennan, Kenneth Macmillan (really? The choreographer??), John Denver, Jerome Kern as well as Gershwin. In other words, you're getting a potpourri of songs that I suppose de Niese likes to present. If you're attracted, a standard ticket comes in between $75 and $149; concessionaires get in for $10 or $20 less, depending on where you sit; students can get mediocre seating for $35, and Under 40s get the same for $40. In this case, the transaction fee is a moveable feast, somewhere between $4 and $8.50; no idea how they apply this although I suspect the more affluent get stung most.
GERSHWIN & SHOSTAKOVICH
Australian Chamber Orchestra
Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne
Sunday August 10 at 2:30 pm
My favourite Ukrainian-born Australian pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk is appearing for the first time with the Australian Chamber Orchestra; it's taken a while for the organization to perceive those talents that, to many of us, have been obvious for years. Still, here he is at last, front man for Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (written in 1924 and here arranged for strings and solitary trumpet backing, God knows how) and the 1933 Piano Concerto No. 1 by Shostakovich for which the ACO and David Elton comprise the proper environment. We also will hear the Chamber Symphony arranged for string orchestra in 1967 by Rudolf Barshai from Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8, a work we've heard from the ACO on previous tours and which was released on a CD by the current players (you'd think) in February of this year. The event starts with Claude Vivier's taxing Zipangu, the Canadian composer's 1980 vision of Old Japan, with the help of some other Asian countries. As well, the ACO presents a newly commissioned work: A Moment of Memory by senior Ukrainian writer Valentin Silvestrov, who fled from Kyiv three years ago to find refuge in Germany after the Russian invasion. This is a remembrance for the victims of fascism and oppression, although it sits somewhat oddly beside Gershwin's buoyant tour de force. Tickets range from $30 to $167 for full adult cost - now there's a spectrum of choice for you. Pensioners and Healthcare cardholders get a lower rate (but not much), as do students and those under 35 (why them?).
This program will be repeated on Monday August 11 at 7:30 pm
MUSICAL FRIENDS
Flinders Quartet
Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre
Tuesday August 12 at 7 pm
This ensemble has kept its shape for a while now - violins Elizabeth Sellars and Wilma Smith, viola Helen Ireland, cello Zoe Knighton. This particular program offers several surprises and two staples of the repertoire that you now hear all too rarely. Of more than usual interest is the presence of two commissions. The first is by Natalie Nicolas, a Sydney writer and a favourite of the Flinders Quartet. This is By the Tide of the Moon and celebrates Aida Tuciute, a former Lithuanian Olympic swimmer who has an affinity with the ocean. As for the second, it's a joint work by Melody Eotvos from the University of Melbourne and Rishin Singh - Malaysian-born, formerly resident in Sydney, now living in Berlin. Called The Letter Writing Project, this is a joint composition where the composers constructed this work turn and turn-about by sending each other completed portions. In between and following these fresh compositions, we hear Mozart's Adagio and Fugue in C minor from the ominous (for Mozart, as well as for our First Peoples) year of 1788. And the Flinders end with Borodin in D Major, his second string quartet of 1881 which proved such a fruitful source for Robert Wright and George Frost when they were assembling the score for their 1953 musical Kismet. Tickets are a very reasonable $53 full adult, and $42 for concession card holders and students; never forgetting that oddly varied transaction fee between $4 and $8.50 if you phone or email your request for tickets. Is that range in operation because of a client's suburb? Bank? Credit rating?
TAKACS QUARTET WITH ANGIE MILLIKEN
Musica Viva Australia
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Wednesday August 13 at 7 pm
One of the world's great string quartets returns under the Musica Viva banner to perform Haydn, Beethoven and a once-local composer's work commissioned by the organization. This last is Cathy Milliken, born in Brisbane and now based in Berlin. Her new Sonnet in Emigration is a setting of Brecht (probably not the On the Term Emigrants poem of 1937; more likely Sonett in der Emigration of 1941 commemorating when the poor fellow and his family wound up in America). As I understand it, the interpreter of this, with the Takacs Quartet, will be Australian actress Angie Milliken - could be a sister, or a cousin, or completely unrelated. Anyway, before this comes Haydn's Op. 74 No 3 in G minor, called for no good reason 'The Rider', and one of the least performed of the set written for Count Apponyi in 1793. The Takacs recorded this work in 2011 but with different players (now retired) on the two inner voices. The group ends with Beethoven's Razumovsky No. 3 in C of 1808: the only one of the three which doesn't have an identifiable Russian tune in its melodic content. But it is a powerful exercise in stamina for any executants, not least for its rapid fugue-finale. Standard tickets range from $65 to $153; concession holders and students pay the same - between $56 and $135. Under 40s get in for $49 and there are special rates for groups of ten-plus. Never forgetting that you have to deal with the swinging-freely transaction fee of anything between $4 and $8.50 if you try to get your tickets any old how except in person at the door.
ELEVATOR MUSIC
Omega Ensemble
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Saturday August 16 at 7 pm
Only three works in this program that runs for ninety minutes without interval; shades of a Mahler symphony or two. No need for an interval? No convenient spacing? The Sydney-based Omega Ensemble begins with British composer Anna Clyne's Stride of 2020 for string orchestra, premiered in that year by the Australian Chamber Orchestra in Wollongong. It presents as a three-part essay in fusing Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata with contemporary sound, basing her exploration on the 'striding' octaves in the Beethoven work's first movement left hand (at the start of the Allegro di molto). I suppose the Omegas can rustle up enough strings to deal with this piece, even if it's hard to tell who will actually be playing on the night. The night's principal guest is the UK clarinettist Michael Collins who I assume will take the centre spot in Copland's Clarinet Concerto of 1947/8 which calls for strings, harp and piano. Both these works come in together at less than thirty minutes. Which puts huge emphasis on the last element of this program: a new double clarinet concerto by Graeme Koehne, commissioned by the Omegas and featuring Collins and David Rowden, the group's artistic director. Will this last an hour? Or will patrons get to enjoy verbal explications of some length? I suppose the night's title is some sort of tribute to Koehne as he wrote a piece with that title in 1997. Standard tickets range from $49 to $119; concession tickets are $10 cheaper in all categories but the top Premium bracket, which isn't available; Under 30s get in for $39 in all areas except Premium. I won't go into the season package deals but wherever you go and whatever you select, you'll be faced with that transaction fee swinging like an arbitrary pendulum between $4 and $8.50.
MUSETTE
Melbourne Chamber Orchestra
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Thursday August 21 at 7:30 pm
In this concert, we enjoy the pleasure of hearing once again cellist Li-Wei Qin who is giving a run-through to a work most of us will have heard from him in his previous appearances here: Haydn's C Major Concerto No. 1 from somewhere between 1761 and 1765. It's a jewel among Classic era concertos for its melodic felicity and good-humoured vigour, especially in a lightning-fast finale, Moreover, this player is a dab hand at its sweeps and swerves. He's also playing Jean Francaix's 1950 Variations de concert - ten in all, with a short interlude before the last one; a nice match for the Haydn in light-filled bonhomie. Sophie Rowell and the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra begin operations with a work written for the artistic director herself during her time with the Australian String Quartet: Elena Kats-Chernin's From Anna Magdalena's Notebook. Written in 2007, the composer uses two polonaises, two menuets, an aria and a musette from the 1725 collection. To end, the MCO plays Boccherini's Symphony No 4, named La casa del diavolo. Written in 1771, the work is in three movements, both first and third having the same opening (economical old Luigi). It calls for a flute, and pairs of oboes, bassoons, and horns; but then, the Haydn concerto asks for pairs of oboes and horns, which may stretch the organization's budget. Ticket prices are of the usual complexity: standard adult ones range from $72 to $144; concession and senior card holders pay between $52 and $129; Under 40s can get mediocre tickets for $40; children and students are admitted for $20; groups of 10+ pay less than the standard price on a sliding scale where the deduction decreases in proportion to your seat price. And you have that $4 to $8.50 variable transaction fee that probably operates on a Boolean intersection grid.
This program will be repeated on Sunday August 24 at 2:30 pm.
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