For the past four years I have worked at Victorian Opera in various capacities, progressing from a repetiteur for Youth Opera productions to a Developing Artist and Assistant Conductor, where my role involved playing the piano, coaching singers, assisting music director Richard Gill and generally learning as much as I could about the craft of producing an opera. In mid-2011, I was told that these years of support and guidance from the people at Victorian Opera would lead to my debut as a mainstage conductor, in a double bill of Falla’s one-act puppet opera El Retablo de Maese Pedro (Master Peter’s Puppet Show) and the Australian premiere of Elliott Carter’s only opera, What Next?. After all that time, during my training, that I had spent imagining how I would go about interpreting an opera to take on this extraordinary opportunity. The question at the forefront of my mind: given the fact that in opera everyone must know the music and all its details before arriving at the first rehearsal, how does one prepare for such an experience? During my preparation for the darkly comic, musically challenging opera What Next?, written when Carter was already in his nineties, my request to meet with…

Following on from yesterday’s focus on the piano, and in particular some specific thoughts  from Kathryn Stott, today as promised I’m focusing on the Festival’s other British pianistic lynchpin. The man in question is the prodigiously talented Jonathan Plowright.  Like Stott, he is a northerner (although from the other side of the Pennines) and like her, he’s an engaging storyteller albeit with quite a different story to tell.  Brought up in a Yorkshire mining community, Plowright recalls playing in pubs as a young lad while his parents, both amateur musicians, coaxed him along to competitions with the lure of bonus trips to the seaside.  Alexander Kelly, his influential teacher at the RCM, never criticised him for lack of practise, but encouraged him with four hour lessons that frequently digressed into lengthy abstract discussions.  Something of a original, Jonathan recalls Kelly once illustrating a dance figure by standing on the piano lid  and performing an Irish jig!  Kelly, by the way, was the connection between Plowright and Piers Lane, ultimately leading to his first visit to Townsville. An enthusiastic talker, I was lucky enough to collar Jonathan for a chat between rehearsals.  His Festival survival technique is clearly ‘heads down, don’t…

As we are nearing the end of the Townsville part of this year’s Festival (there are still two days in ahead Cairns for some), I thought it was worth focusing on the piano, in some respects the mainstay of procedings over the last week.  The pianists somehow maintain a lower profile, perhaps it’s because they aren’t dashing around with their instruments under their arms or because they can’t be heard though the walls of the hotel.  Anyway, I tracked down two of them, Kathryn Stott and Jonathan Plowright for some insight into their Festival goings on.  I’ll focus on Kathryn today and take a look at Jonathan tomorrow. The first thing I discovered was that Kathryn Stott is in the room next to mine!  Unlike her duet partner, Norwegian violinist Atle Sponberg, whose delightful tones waft through my other adjoining wall, I’ve not heard a peep out of Ms Stott.  She is quick to reassure me that practice is very much a part of her daily routine.  All the pianists have keyboards in their rooms – they are, however, kitted out with headphones, hence the relative peace and quiet.  I, of course, will spend the next few days trying to……

After a splendid recreational day of isolation and bush walking on nearby Magnetic Island it was back to chamber music business with a vengeance.  This mornings Concert Conversations featured Nigel Westlake, our approachable Composer in Residence and so I thought that I should devote todays blog post to what that means and bring readers up to speed with a few more Festival artistic highlights. I collared Mr Westlake a couple of days ago and asked him a little about what being ‘in residence’ at AFCM is all about.  Although there is no specific commission from the Festival, Nigel was keen that he and Piers should programme some recent work, and in particular, the two guitar version of the 2010 solo sonata especially written for the Grigoryans.  His other main ‘duty’ which he was keen to identify as a privilege is to drop in on rehearsals, and in some cases lend a conductorly hand.  Given that some of his music is quite tricky, no doubt the performers consider it an equal privilege. Westlake has always been a hands on type – the sort of man to go poking around his own home in search of a hungry redback or the odd…

Today’s programme is dominated by strings players: what they have to say followed by what they like to play.  In a typical piece of smart programming by Piers Lane, he and no fewer than eight ‘stringies’ give us a thorough grounding in the teaching and professional habits of this normally shy breed before they run the gamut from A to Z in three separate concerts.  First the chat, and again, I’m impressed by the level at which these platforms are pitched.  A relaxed mood predominates but the topic is allowed to soar when required (though never over our heads) and the audience never feel spoken down to. Brendan Joyce from the impressive Camerata of St. John’s got the ball rolling by talking about the ethos of his conductor-less group.  Apparently, it was a US job satisfaction survey placing orchestral musicians firmly below garbage collectors that persuaded Queensland music educator, Elizabeth Morgan to create this autonomous collective of string players.  Not only do they refuse the tyranny of a conductor, they don’t even have an Artistic Director.  Joyce is keen to point out that as leader, he doesn’t want the pressure of a traditional concert master, preferring directional input to come……

This year marks 150 years since the birth of Claude Debussy and like most musical organisations the AFCM is keen to celebrate.  Most days have a work or two but day 3 is definitely ‘Debussy Day’ with numerous performances as well as a biographic special event. We kicked off with an annual Townsville event, a Reef Talk, where marine scientists are set the challenge of telling us something about the unique aquatic culture of the Coral Sea that links in with an ensuing musical programme.  In this case it was rather an easy one as Debussy’s La Cathédrale Engloutie was pretty much ripe for the picking.  If I had a criticism it was that an informative half an hour on ‘sea mounts’, ‘coral cathedrals’ and the need for conservation could have been enlivened with a few more underwater images, or better still, film. On the musical front, Marshal McGuire gave us a charming little aquatic harp piece entitled La Source (The Well-Spring) by Adolphe Hasselmans.  Friendly and upbeat, McGuire is here for the duration of the festival which contains an impressive array of works that include harp. Nigel Westlake’s Entomology for six players and tape followed, pretty much upstaging everyone…

The morning after the night before has a habit of leaving you wondering whether things to come will live up to memories of what has been. Festivals are no exception and after a terrific opening concert (see separate review online) the devotees turning out at 10.00am had something of a ‘match that’ look about them.  It had been a beautiful Queensland morning – shorts weather on the hotel balcony – and Concert Conversations had a slightly musty sound to it, so I was heartened to discover the secondary space at the Civic Theatre laid out rather like a church hall with tea cups and round tables at the front.  Equally appealing was being sat next to a remarkably chirpy Maggie Beer, a Festival regular and chamber music devotee, whose infectious enthusiasm was spreading like wildfire amongst the ranks of the faithful. On the menu for this morning was Festival Director, Piers Lane in conversation with the Storioni Trio and the Grigorian brothers, followed by performances from each.  In my experience, a relaxed musician can be an entertaining talker, but ‘to the point’ isn’t necessarily in the repertoire.  We needn’t have feared this morning for we were in the… Continue reading…

A tempting array of headliners you would consider yourself privileged to see in Sydney or Melbourne, let alone a remote city in Northern Queensland.

Having returned yesterday from a huge week in Hobart, recording from Tuesday to Saturday with the inspiringly focused, musicianly and unceasingly energetic Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra under Howard Shelley, I realised with a sudden lurch of anticipation, the AFCM starts later this week! It is suddenly upon us and Atle Sponberg, fab violinist from Norway and the equally dazzling UK pianist Kathy Stott, have already arrived up North. It’s now Monday breakfast time and I am in a plane headed for Townsville. I had just taken my seat when I noticed a steward quibbling with a passenger about too much hand luggage. Looking up, I first spotted two violin cases – and then the smiling face of Leo Phillips, who was allowed on, violin cases and all, in the end! I last bumped into him in New Zealand late last year, as I had done the previous year. Before that, it was ages since I’d seen him, but I cherished vivid memories of performing with him as leader of the Vellinger String Quartet. One of the most pleasant aspects of my job as Artistic Director of the AFCM is being in a position to invite performers I admire and like to……

I write this to the backdrop of the warm tones of Marion Arnold and this year’s broadcast of the Sydney International Piano Competition. They do a magnificent job, the ABC Classic FM team, and during the intermissions several of the presenters have been touching on some of the issues I often think about. Falling within the age bracket for international piano competition participation, listening to bits and pieces of SIPCA and currently preparing for a competition myself, my deep-seated discomfort about the insularity of the piano competition bubble is resurfacing and I’ve been giving the topic some thought. The world is teeming with brilliant, impeccably-equipped pianists hungry for concert careers, many of whom make it something of a full-time profession to jet from one international competition to the next in search of that “big win” which will kick-start their international careers. But it is becoming a well-known fact that even the most prestigious win today does not have the same outcome that was ensured even just a couple of decades ago. It would be fair to say that the world is overstocked when it comes to pianists; there is a stark imbalance between supply and demand, which means that even…

I’m off to Hobart to record concertos by Malcolm Williamson with the Tasmanian Symphony for the Hyperion label in London. My partner in crime will be Howard Shelley, the British conductor and pianist of surpassing natural musicality and intelligence. It will be a week of intense concentration, culminating in a public performance of the second concerto on Saturday night. The following day, overseas artists for the Australian Festival of Chamber Music will start to arrive in Australia. Some won’t arrive until Wednesday the 25th, the first day of rehearsals. As always, they’ll somehow cope with the crazily demanding schedule of rehearsals and performances – but those who can, and who know what jetlag means, will get here as early as possible! Williamson’s Second Concerto will feature in the Governor’s Gala concert on the first Saturday evening of the festival. It is orchestrated just for strings, so it qualifies as a “chamber” concerto and will complement a second half of zany and attractive Aussie pieces by Nigel Westlake and Matthew Hindson, with the Goldner String Quartet and the Camerata of St John’s hotting things up in Hindson’s The Rave and the Nightingale, where disco meets Schubert! That’s not a bad representation…

Had I a pseudonym to hand, I might attempt to ghostwrite a properly newsy piece in this space, with a headline like “Homegrown Heldentenor returns for Aussie concert tour” or “From the Met to Melbourne: Skelton’s Australian concert series” or something else slightly cheesy. But you’d probably know it was me and then we’d all feel a little awkward. So instead, allow me to file this quick post under the “Shameless Plug” category as I draw to your attention that the aforementioned Homegrown Heldentenor is indeed back in Australia for a little while and singing with not one, not two, but three of your favourite symphony orchestras: Tasmania, Adelaide and Melbourne. The last of these might be particularly appealing as it pairs Beethoven’s 6th Symphony with Act I of Die Walküre, and thus offers a sort of foretaste of the Melbourne Ring next year – and at a fraction of the cost, of course! For what it’s worth, these concerts are the first time Stuart’s been back to sing in Australia since 2010, and as it turns out, they represent the three composers who pretty much define his career these days: Beethoven, Mahler and Wagner. They also involve some fabulous…