BRUCKNER AND STRAUSS
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne
Thursday October 2 at 7:30 pm
A celebration here for two late Romantic masters of verbosity. In its endeavours, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will be directed by Vasily Petrenko, currently conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and a youngish veteran who will bring fresh eyes (you'd hope) to some of the three works programmed. He starts with The Flying Dutchman Overture by Wagner, a hero for the two composers named in the title of tonight's program. This 1841 work manages to bundle up all its leitmotifs in a wild and windy stretch of scene-setting. Then Victorian-born soprano Alexandra Flood will emerge to sing a selection of Strauss lieder including Zueignung (1885), Cacilie (1894), Befreit (1898), Freundliche Vision (1900), Winterweihe (1900), and Waldseligkeit (1900-1). Possibly there will be others, but these six set a worthy bar because all were orchestrated by Strauss himself. I'm finding Befreit and Waldseligkeit particularly appealing because they both call for a harmonium. Outweighing all these is Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 of 1883 which presents myriad opportunities for rabid enthusiasts to question which of the several available editions will be used, and why. A harmonic feast throughout, the two outer movements are splendid examples of this composer in full rhetorical flow. Tickets move from $20 for anyone under 18, through to between $51 and $139 full price, with concession tickets a measly $5 less, plus - for everyone - the inexorable $7 transaction fee added on because processing your credit card is so time-consuming.
This program will be repeated on Friday October 3 at 7:30 pm in Costa Hall, Geelong, and again in Hamer Hall on Saturday October 4 at 7:30 pm.
GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS
Luminescence Chamber Singers
Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre
Friday October 3 at 7 pm
You'll find six singers constitute the Luminescence Chamber Singers from Canberra: sopranos Josephine Brereton and Rachel Mink, mezzo AJ America (the group's founder), tenor Dan Walker, baritone Lucien Fischer, and bass-baritone Alasdair Stretch. The sextet will be directed by Roland Peelman, long-time director of The Song Company from Sydney. In providing a musical counterpart to Bosch's great painting, the singers have gone for the very old and the very new, opening with a Hildegard of Bingen double-header comprising the antiphons Cum processit factura and its companion Cum erubuerint (both about 1180-90). At various stages we hear the three Agnus Dei settings (four parts, three parts, then six parts) from Josquin's Missa Hercules Dux Ferrariae of 1603-4, Orlando de Lassus's chanson Dessus le marche d'Arras (published in 1584), Verdelot's motet Veni in ortum meum which at least has the distinction of mentioning a garden, and Luzzaschi's Dante setting of Quivi sospiri, written in 1576. Set against that, you have some early Cage in the 1940 Living Room Music: Story, the madrigal Poi che voi from Gavin Bryars' Second Book of Madrigals which may have been written in 2010, the world premiere of Australian composer Nicole Murphy's Escape, three of Netherlands writer Frank Nuyts' XXX Songs - Anime, Dodl , Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - written in 2007 for Peelman and The Song Company, another premiere in Ode to an apple from Sydney writer Archie Tulk, then (speaking of that fruit) American singer/songwriter Fiona Apple's Hot Knife from the 2012 album The Idler Wheel . . . , Norwegian self-effacer AURORA's Earthly Delights (Hieronymus! You're back in town) track from her 2024 album What Happened to the Heart? (arranged by our ensemble's tenor Walker), and American humorist Bo Burnham's Welcome to the Internet from the double album Inside (The Songs) from 2020-21 (arranged by Peelman). A diffuse program, of a piece with the painting it all somehow celebrates. This arecital takes 70 minutes to get through; there's no interval. But entry is $30 for a student, $35 for those under 35, and $60 ($55 concession) for the rest of us. And don't forget the MRC's curious added fee of between $4 and $8.50 if you book online or by phone - the now-traditional fiscal penalty for being au fait with modern-day banking.
TRANSCRIBED SONATAS
Kristian Chong & Friends
Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre
Saturday October 4 at 7 pm
To speak of 'friends' is stretching it, in the context of this recital. The accomplished Melbourne pianist Kristian Chong is tonight in association with one pal only: the Australian Chamber Orchestra's principal cello, Timo-Veikko Valve. The pair are presenting a 75-minute recital that comprises two works, neither of which originally involved the cello, although one is nowadays completely associated with that instrument rather than with its original voice. We're talking about Schubert's Arpeggione Sonata of 1824, featuring a hybrid cello and guitar creation that didn't last long on the playing field and which gave rise to this amiable work: the only reminder of an early 19th century fad. Still, it's the single sample we have of a cello/piano duet from Schubert, even if it's a spurious one. Before this, Chong and Valve play Beethoven's Op. 17 Sonata for Horn and Piano of 1800, which we recently heard in another transcription at a Musica Viva event from Nicole Baud and Erin Helyard on basset horn and fortepiano respectively. It makes for a mildly enjoyable quarter-hour experience without rattling your receptive rafters with any shocks or even little surprises. As the Arpeggione work comes in at about 25 minutes, you have to wonder how the rest of the promised time-span will be filled. Students can get in for $20, concession card holders for $42, standard-size patrons pay $53 - and everyone has to stump up a fee between $4 and $8.50 if you book online or by phone because it's more time-consuming booking in advance than rolling up to the MRC box-office - I guess?
TRIO ISIMSIZ
Musica Viva Australia
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Tuesday October 7 at 7 pm
When the Trio Isimsiz got round to picking a name, the members opted for a Turkish word that means 'nameless'. A fine example of artistic anonymity, I expect: don't bother associating us with any irrelevant connotations because we are simply servitors of the muse - or something like that. The musicians - violinist Pablo Hernan Benedi, cellist Edvard Pogossian, pianist Erdem Misirlioglu - met while studying at the Guildhall in 2009, and here they are, prepared to soothe Music Viva patrons with a full-bodied program of three four-movement works. We begin with Brahms Op. 101 in C minor, written in 1886 and the last of his set of three masterworks in the form. Then comes Valencia-born composer/conductor Francisco Coll's Piano Trio, commissioned for the Isimsizes in 2020 and a regular feature in their repertoire ever since. Finally, a chamber music glory in Schubert's B flat Trio No. 1 of 1827, a score that is fused into the consciousness of many musicians, especially those myriad ensembles (and their grateful audiences) that have grappled locally with its framework across many years of the Melbourne International and the Asia Pacific Chamber Music Competitions. So, it's a rich program and admission costs anywhere from $20 to $153, depending on your age and financial situation, the latter put under further strain by a grasping $7 transaction fee when booking by phone or online.
WATER MUSIC
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Thursday October 9 at 7 pm
Something like the Luminescence Chamber Choir's program on Friday October 3, this presentation from the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra features the old and the new, even if that new traces its way back to the oldest of old. For the moderately ancient music, Paul Dyer and his ensemble will perform all three of Handel's Water Music Suites. Most of us are very familiar with the first of these collections which lasts about half an hour, while the remaining two average about 10 minutes each and, for quite a few, this will be the first time we'll have heard the complete 1717 compilation. Before this, the ABO will give the premiere of a collaboration between Aboriginal singer Rrawun Maymuru and Sydney writer Nick Wales. This currently goes by the over-indicative title Water but promises novelty, given Wales' reputation for electronic composition while Maymuru brings us the ancient by singing in the Yolngu Mata language. Both musicians have previously worked together for the Sydney Dance Company, so the relationship between them isn't a passing one. The occasion's other feature is that it calls for a lighting designer - Trent Suidgeest who has worked consistently with the Brandenburgers since the COVID interruption. As usual, the ABO ticket price schedule offers a lesson in variety, costs varying slightly according to whichever performance you choose. Maximum is $196, minimum is $30 but there is a whole world of differentiations and not just if you're claiming a concession or a seniors reduction (I wouldn't worry about the second because it's not much and is available for only one of the performances). On top of whatever you select, you'll be hit with the MRC's weird transaction fee range of anywhere between $4 and $8.50 if you order by phone or online - a sort of perverse anti-lottery.
This program will be repeated on Saturday October11 at 7 pm and on Sunday October 12 at 5 pm.
JOURNEYS
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus
Iwaki Auditorium, Southbank
Saturday October 11 at 7:30 pm
Another one of those run-through 75-minute programs, this outing from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Chorus doesn't actually offer much variety of travel. The central panel in this four-part excursion is Victoria's Missa pro Victoria, published in 1600 and taking its impetus from a Janequin chanson celebrating the French triumph at the battle of Marignan in 1515. This presents a vivid Renaissance texture, the choral forces in nine parts with an unusual (to me) telescoping in the Agnus Dei. Further into the night, we hear the composer's motet O quam gloriosum est regnum of 1572; just as jubilant as the Mass but less imposing as it's written for four parts only. Under director Warren Trevelyan-Jones, the singers also give an airing to two modern-day products. The first is Joseph Twist's Versus est in luctum, the first of the Australian-born composer's Three Motets after Victoria published in 2011 and an effective work for voices with a decided turn towards grating 2nds. Finally, the singers revisit English writer Gabriel Jackson's To the Field of Stars, also from 2011, written for choir, percussion and cello and co-commissioned by the MSO Chorus. It adds to the concentrated Spanish flavour of the occasion by being a series of commentaries on the pilgrimage road to Compostella, written to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Victoria's death. It's the program's major offering, substantial in having 8 movements that take nearly 40 minutes to negotiate. As you can see, the journey is a highly concentrated one. Entry is simple: $20 for those under 18, $55 for a standard ticket, with a risible reduction of $5 for a concession holder. Of course, you face a transaction fee of $7 as a necessary hurdle to impede financially your interest in these singers and their offerings.
LUX AETERNA
Melbourne Ensemble
Iwaki Auditorium, Southbank
Sunday October 12 at 5 pm
This Melbourne Ensemble has grown out of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, surprisingly enough, its core participants sufficient to perform Beethoven's Septet: clarinet Philip Arkinstall, horn Saul Lewis, bassoon Jack Schiller, violin Freya Franzen, viola Christopher Moore, cello Elina Fashki, double bass Stephen Newton. For this recital, the numbers have been increased by one: violin Anna Skalova. All are current MSO players and will present a wild mix of a program this evening. To begin, Lewis plays the Epilogue from Britten's 1943 Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings: a solo with the horn permitted to use only the instrument's natural harmonics; o recherche little Benjamin. Next, Newton enjoys a solo in Gubaidulina's Espressivo-Sotto voce: the third from her Eight Etudes for Solo Double-bass of 2009, spring-boarding from a work for cello. Keeping momentarily to the Russian side of life, Newton and Fashki perform Schnittke's Hymnus II of 1974 which holds an engrossing final page. Into the home stretch and we encounter Osvaldo Golijov's Tenebrae of 2000 in its second version for string quartet which juxtaposes the ethereal with the brutal. To end, the ensemble presents the premiere of a new Gerard Brophy score: ISTANBUL, The Magic of Daily Life, written for these very players in their septet format - in 2020; a long time between drinks, as we say. It's in five movements, taksim (reservoir), namaz (prayer), pepemelik (possibly stuttering), petrus (Saint Peter), geveze (chattering); doubtless, it will all become clear in the hammam. Tickets are $55, concessions still laughable at $50, and you pay a $7 transaction fee for booking online or by phone - Australian artistic entrepreneurship at its finest.
BENJAMIN GROSVENOR
Melbourne Recital Centre
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Tuesday October 14 at 7:30 pm
Here's a young British talent who is a 'genius', according to the Spectator (what crazies write this sort of puffery?). We've had a few of such pianists over the past ten years, coming and going, adding to the weight of human experience, then sinking into the ruck, eclipsed by fresher faces. Well, let's not abandon hope: Benjamin Grosvenor may be as good as the commentator opines. He's certainly treading a familiar route on his march towards the pianistic pantheon. Tonight, he opens his fieldwork with the Chopin B flat minor Sonata No. 2, finished in 1839 and containing the famous Funeral March that the composer himself rejected for its association with death - something of a pity as it was played at his own funeral. Grosvenor then turns to Gaspard de la nuit, Ravel's 1908 three-movement suite which tests severely everyone who delves into its pages. To end, the young (33) pianist presents Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, that 1874 compendium of varied and vivid colours that stands as a trial of endurance for the interpreter and a continuous chain of delights for an audience. Grosvenor is certainly not shying away from challenges, particularly as these three works have passed through the hands of many giants from the world of which he is part. Tickets begin at $67, then $87, up to $102, and $115 for 'Premium', while there are two concession grades of $67 and $87, neither of them applying to the top class. Also, if you're booking online or by phone, you can anticipate a transaction fee of somewhere between $4 and $8.50, adding another financial standing level to the exercise. At this time of writing, the Murdoch Hall is about a third full.
IMPRESSIONS OF PARIS
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne
Thursday October 23 at 7:30 pm
Sort through this program, and you'll come across a bit of non-French music. To begin, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under Venezuelan-born conductor Rodolfo Barraez premieres a new Australian work, currently listed on the MSO website as 'New work', which is being contributed by James Henry, the current Cybec First Nations Composer in Residence with the MSO. It remains to be seen (and heard) how this writer will transport us to Paris, or even if he intends to do so. At the evening's centre is an unarguably French work in Ravel's Piano Concerto for the left hand of 1930 which was the most successful product of the many commissions generated by that curmudgeonly artist, Paul Wittgenstein. Tonight's soloist, British pianist Nicholas McCarthy, was born without his right hand - different to Wittgenstein who lost his in World War One. But the work is a riveting experience to hear, particularly for its final pages. After interval, Barraez conducts Franck's Symphony in D minor, one of the mainstays of the orchestral repertoire and a lasting monument to the poor judgement of music critics. Fortunately, it has become inextricably linked with France's musical history, even if the composer was born in Belgium. Anyone under 18 can get in for $20; standard tickets range between $75 and $139, while concession holders pay $5 less (Ubi caritas . . . ); everyone pays the $7 transaction fee if they book online or by phone, for (I keep asking) what?
This program will be repeated on Saturday October 25 at 2 pm
AUSTRALIA FAIR?
Flinders Quartet
Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre
Wednesday October 29 at 7 pm
It's always heartwarming to see a formerly staid organization like the Flinders Quartet kicking over the traces and making a political statement. Or is that not what's happening here? The current members - violins Elizabeth Sellars and Wilma Smith, viola Helen Ireland, cello Zoe Knighton - make a bold opening move with a string quartet by Deborah Cheetham-Fraillon: Bungaree, written in 2020 and premiered online by the Flinders during the COVID years. Honouring the Aboriginal who went right round Australia with Matthew Flinders in 1802-3, the work is in three movements: November 24 (the date of Bungaree's death), Kaaroo (the first of his wives), and Navigating the Truth, about which you'd have to ask the composer. Continuing this national introspection comes Australia Fair? Volume I: 'The Australian Dream' by Bryony Marks which first appeared at the Port Fairy Spring Festival of 2022 and which ran in tandem with a film showcasing the safe, monocultural life of this country in the first half of the 20th century, the era that culminated in the Big Sleep of the Menzies era. Then it's back to the mainstream for Dvorak No. 14 in A flat Major, the composer's last in the form and meant to be celebrating his life in America, although he finished it after returning to Bohemia in 1895 and it always strikes me as a protracted sigh of relief. There's no home like your own home, even if it's not perfect. Tickets are $42 for students and concession card holders, $53 for the rest of us, plus the enthralling exercise of negotiating a transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50 if you order online or by phone.
A CELEBRATION OF SIBELIUS
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Melbourne Town Hall
Thursday October 30 at 7:30 pm
This year is the 160th anniversary of the great Finnish composer's birth, so why not? It's all well-known material, until we get to the last work, the hearing of which live is almost worth the price of admission. Benjamin Northey conducts the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Finlandia, that rousing 1900 call to arms against the Tsarist bear. Then we can delight in the 1904 Violin Concerto which ABC Classic Radio seems to have on a loop. Tonight, the soloist is Edward Walton who is under 20 and so just the right age to take on this flamboyant, emotionally rich display piece. Another popular work follows in the Valse triste of 1903, part of a stage music contribution to a play by the composer's brother-in-law. Then we finish with the Symphony No. 3 in C which I believe I've heard only once in the concert hall, as opposed to multiple auditions of No. 1, No. 2 and No. 5. This work, written across 1904-7, has a more brusque voice than you find in the first two symphonies, and not just because the score has only three movements. The texture is more clear, less self-indulgent; even the last chord comes as a bit of a shock. So the whole event is a concentrated sample of Sibelius, all works falling inside a seven-year span. If you're under 18, a ticket costs $20; standard price falls between $35 and $105, with concessions coming in at a not-worth-mentioning $5 cheaper. Never forget the transaction fee of $7 if you order online or by phone - the price of doing business and an inevitable evil.
This program will be repeated in Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University on Friday October 31 at 7:30 pm.
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