Last week, in honour of All Souls’ Day, I headed to YouTube to find a suitably transcendent rendition of Strauss’s gorgeous song Allerseelen. I was rather hoping Barbara Bonney would oblige. Alas, she did not. No matter; instead I found one by the one and only Miss Elly Ameling. The Mary Poppins of lieder, practically perfect in every way. Here she is. You see what I mean. Perfect. And then YouTube did what it does best — it dragged me into its suggested list of related videos. How could I resist more Elly? Clearly, I couldn’t. And then before I knew it I’d gone from Elly singing Strauss to Elly singing Schumann to Elly singing … I Got Rhythm. Oh yes. As I dimly knew, but had half forgotten, Elly the Perfect had also turned her hand to the Great American Songbook. Was she perfect at that too? Listen for yourself. I think she pretty much is. This is completely delightful, and her slight accent just makes it that much more charming. I also really, really hope that that’s her whistling at the end. And there’s more where that came from: she recorded two albums of this sort of music,…

Over the next little while I’m going to be sharing my journey on the making of my second solo album. The whole journey, from “go” to “woah”. First of all, here’s where we’re at currently. I’ve had the initial meeting with the very lovely Martin Buzacott, my producer at ABC Classics and a man of remarkably eclectic and cultured tastes. He doesn’t mind me occasionally rabbiting on about Frank Zappa or Radiohead. Or Bach. Or Celtic folk music. I really like that about him. Anyway, it’s to Martin that I am required to pitch my ideas – my concept, if you will – for this album. Yes, you heard right; I said “concept”. I’m endeavouring to make a “capital C” Concept Album, a collection of works unified by a particular theme, which could be the subject matter of the text, a narrative or some abstract musical idea. But the point is that a concept album communicates this idea as a complete and uninterrupted listening experience. As a listener, you are asked to put aside an hour of your life to listen to them properly (that is, if you’re really interested in hearing what an artist has to say). In the…

From the beginning of 2008 until the end of 2010, the only one of her Sydney performances I missed was a matinée of Otello; I also travelled to Melbourne and London to hear her, and it’s probably best if I don’t count the number of words I’ve written about her over the years. So you’ll understand why, even when I realised I’d be spending the indefinite future away from Australia, I resolved nevertheless to maintain my devotion as far as possible. And while it was ultimately impossible for me to make it to her Opera Australia Capriccio or her Vec Makropulos in Strasbourg, Opera Queensland’s Tosca was easier — all I had to do was fly over from Taiwan. Nine hours instead of 15 makes a lot of difference. I’ll get to the Tosca in a moment. But I also stopped in Sydney for a few days en route — I had to say hello, and I wanted very much to see Opera Australia’s Don Giovanni. Or, more specifically, I wanted to see Jacqui Dark as Donna Elvira. Jacqui’s Elvira was one of the things I was most… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

Like the Perth City Link, David Pye, Lee Buddle and Phil Thomson’s new opera set in the Western Australian outback may further revitalise a cityscape slowly coming to its own as a forced to be reckoned with on the Australian new music scene. At its heart, the plot of Western Australia’s newest operatic spectacle Into the Shimmer Heat is disarmingly simple. A girl, left mute by the death of her father, suffers the further trauma of her mother’s death. Through various life-affirming vicissitudes, her soul is saved, and she resolves to embrace life in all its tainted glory. Deceptively simple? Not particularly. In the end, this skeletal outline coincides almost perfectly with the scene-to-scene progression the drama follows: there is no diverting subplot, no sudden peripeteia, no earth-shattering dénouement. The story inches steadily toward its redemptive finale with the inevitability of a Western beach sunset. Yet its simplicity is not necessarily a flaw. Into the Shimmer Heat, the brainchild of Western Australian composers David Pye and Lee Buddle and writer Phil Thomson, is enriched by two layers of dramatic embroidery. The first is a special kind of Australian outback mysticism, involving desert spirits and an otherworldly oasis, a gathering spot…

At last year’s ARIA Fine Arts nomination ceremony, held at the Sydney Conservatorium’s Verbrugghen Hall, I felt like an alien, even in a roped-off event for “niche” genres like jazz, world music, heavy metal and… Classical. I winced every time a composer or artist’s name was mispronounced (the inevitable “Hey-den” was the first of many faux pas) by a presenter clearly mystified by Aleksandr Tsiboulski’s album of Australian guitar music. When that name was called, my explosive cheer echoed uncomfortably in the otherwise silent auditorium, an aural tumbleweed. All this without even examining the disastrous “genre” mini-ceremonies that followed, held in the muddy Botanical Gardens with a heavily tattooed Ruby Rose again balking at those pesky classical names. That said, the biggest crime against correct pronunciation was Jessica Mauboy’s memorable “dee-butt” blunder (she was trying to say “debut”) at the televised awards show on the Sydney Opera House steps. During this week’s proceedings for the 2011 ARIA Fine Arts and Artisans Awards at the Sydney Theatre, the Australian Record Industry Association CEO Dan Rosen alluded to some of these problems and vowed that the awards’ 25th anniversary would entail a major overhaul. But classical, jazz and world music were still…

Yesterday Sydney Camerata performed at Sydney’s brand new concert hall located in The Concourse complex at Chatswood. Upon arrival we were immediately impressed. The exterior is beautiful and striking, with bold steel and glass panels and a wide staircase leading down to a new, grassy public square and the Chatswood library. The real delights for us, however, revealed themselves once we stepped foot inside the concert hall. Boasting beautiful maple wood panelling and crimson red seating over two levels, the interior was certainly visually appealing, but was the acoustic equally pleasing? In a word, yes! As a 1,000-seat hall inspired by traditional European theatres it offered a clear, crisp response that was neither boomy nor overly generous. From the stage at times, playing Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 3, it was difficult to hear individual instruments but a bit more time in the venue would have allowed us a greater chance to get accustomed to it. Regardless, I would be intrigued to hear from an audience’s perspective how our sound was received. Overall, we were very pleased with the acoustic and as our soloist in Mozart’s Jeunehomme Piano Concerto Kathryn Selby quite simply said, “they got this one right”. I wonder how…

I think Limelight’s editor Francis Merson is winning the Most Exotic Blogging Locale right now, with his fantastic updates from the Trondheim Festival of Chamber Music in Norway. So, since I can’t hope to compete on quality, I shall have to settle for quantity, and offer you updates from three — count ’em, three — semi-exotic locales instead. And maybe, if I’m really, really subtle about it, nobody will notice that what I’m really doing is making up for my deplorable slackness in updating this blog. I last blogged from Hong Kong, but wrote about Santa Fe. Hong Kong does deserve its own update, though. We were there for the Hong Kong Philharmonic’s season opening concerts of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, which was paired with Mozart’s Symphony No 41 Jupiter. Sydney concertgoers may well have heard The Tenor in My Life sing this with the SSO last year, with Ashkenazy at the helm and Lilli Paasikivi as the alto soloist. This time it was the Dutch conductor Lawrence Renes in charge — a reasonably short notice replacement for Edo de Waart, who had been forced to cancel for health reasons — and the alto was the extraordinary Michelle…

The Trondheim Festival of Chamber Music is now officially øver. The festival’s stand has vanished from the foyer of the Hotel Rica Nidelven, replaced by one advertising a Formidlings Konferansen, whatever that is. Now the hotel, where all the musicians have lived, practised and drunk their way through countless minibars in the past week, has that lonely atmosphere of a concert hall after the crowd has gone home. There’s a lot to catch up on from the last few days. Firstly, the results of the Chamber Music Competition. The number one spot was nabbed by French ensemble Trio Paul Klee, whose cellist Tristan Cornut was the most outstanding musician I heard in the comp – a beautifully free bowing technique and effortless true intonation. Second prize – and audience prize – went to the Fournier Trio, whose Australian cellist Pei-Jee Ng won the Young Performers Award back in 2001. Third was taken by the Atanassov Trio, whose pianist Pierre-Kaloyann Atanassov was another standout, with wonderful perlé (I was reminded of Radu Lupu) and a terrific sense of rhythm. A few hours after the announcement came the closing concert – a marathon in which almost all the musicians to perform at the…

The big, and upsetting, news for Australians is that the Streeton Trio have not made the finals of the Chamber Music Competition. Whispers in the breakfast room of the Rica Nidelven Hotel have suggested many jury members thought they were a cert to get through, but others took exception to their exuberant way of moving while they played. It seems hardly fair. Shouldn’t it be all about the music? It’s enough to put you off your reindeer pancakes. But such are the vicissitudes of international competitions (insert plug here for the debate about piano competitions in the October Limelight https://store.haymarketmedia.com.au/collections/limelight). The finals of the competition are held tomorrow. Three ensembles have made the cut, two of which are French. The Paul Klee Trio (France), the Trio Atanassov (France) and the Fournier Trio (UK/Australia/Korea). At least Australian cellist Pei-Jee Ng of the Fournier is representing the green and gold. If they win, Australia will, at least, claim one third of the glory. (I’ll certainly be yelling “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” in between all the movements.) Other highlights of the past few days… The brightest was a double revelation: the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra (Norway’s own TSO) and conductor André de Ridder. This German-born…

It’s the morning of Day Three of the Festival. I’m in the computer room of the Rica Nidelven Hotel, the only one I’ve ever been in with a view of a river.

So here I am standing in the northernmost cathedral in Europe staring up into the face of an elephant. The Nidarosdomen, in the Norwegian city of Trondheim, is a miracle of 12th-century stonemasonry, festooned with gargoyles of every possible shape: goats, monkeys, dogs, dragons… and extremely cute elephants. If Pixar ever designed a Gothic cathedral, this is what it would look like. The Nidarosdomen is my first stop on a quick sightseeing jaunt around Trondheim before the annual Chamber Music Festival gets started tonight. Guest of honour and composer in residence: our own Brett Dean. His face is plastered around the town on billboards and posters, and I can’t help feeling a flush of national pride. Our boy has definitely made good. But before the Festival begins – and I’ll talk about the musical delights later – I’m captivated by the beauty of this scrupulously conserved little Nordic town. Architecture here is piously lo-fi: one- and two-storey weatherboard buildings with ornate casement windows, all painted in pastel greens, yellows, pinks… In the city centre, the only flat bit, these dolls’ houses cram the cobbled laneways, while the wide boulevards are lined with the elegant fin-de-siècle apartment buildings that are standard…

Exhibiting their unique mastery of the instrument were two of Australia’s most charismatic piano wizards – Ross Bolleter and Anthony Pateras – as well as visiting UK virtuoso Mark Gasser. The three together provided the musical fabric with which this tapestry was woven, adorning it with colours that were by turn stark and subtle, explosive and delicate. First to seduce the audience was Bolleter with his wistful and contemplative Daughters of Time. Performed on three of the five old, ruined pianos that reside in Bolleter’s kitchen, this lengthy work plays like a homage to the passage of time. Seated on the floor with the three pianos towering over him – one in front and the remaining two flanking him on either side – Bolleter works the three instruments like an acoustic mixing desk. He passes from one to the other, at times plucking strings on one piano with the right hand and striking keys on another with the left, then shifting his position to reach the highest notes of one piano with his left hand and the highest notes of the third piano with his right, his arms barely able to stretch the distance. The pianos are in themselves worthy…