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…

The Sydney Camerata Quartet are fortunate to be one of Musica Viva’s “Rising Stars” ensembles this year. Along with our friends in the Enigma Quartet and Streeton Trio, we’re receiving masterclasses with both local and international artists and presenting concerts with the assistance of Musica Viva. It’s an exciting opportunity that we’re thrilled to be a part of and we hope you’ll join us for some of our performances throughout the year as we showcase what we’ve been working on. A number of our events will take place in unusual spaces, such as the pop-up concert the Enigma Quartet performed last week as part of the Vivid Festival at an intimate heritage venue in The Rocks. This past week we made our Rising Stars debut at two masterclasses, one with Aiko Goto of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and another with Julian Smiles of the Goldner Quartet. Both players brought a wealth of experience to contribute to our rehearsals. We worked on Prokofiev’s String Quartet No 1 and Haydn’s Op 33/3 The Bird. As any chamber musician would know, one can work in such incredible detail and we spent time particularly on the Haydn, working bar by bar to focus on intonation and achieve a……

Italian conductor, harpsichordist and organist Rinaldo Alessandrini and his versatile period-instrument ensemble Concerto Italiano have for many years possessed a reputation for over-the-top yet technically precise performances of Renaissance and Baroque vocal and instrumental music. Their high-octane recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons has to be heard to be believed, while their ability to communicate the eroticism, febrile intensity and innovatory chiaroscuro of the madrigals of Monteverdi and Gesualdo is treasured amongst connoisseurs of that repertoire. Here they apply their considerable interpretative skills to Italian chamber music written at a time of musical transition, when the polyphonic textures of the Renaissance were giving way to a more homophonic language enlivened by soloistic flights of fancy. Using the Italian string quartet format, which would eventually lead to the classical string quartet, aand filling out the harmonies with theorbo, harpsichord and/or organ, Alessandrini and his fellow musicians explore music written by travelling Italian composers including Frescobaldi, Torelli, Bononcini, Marini, Zanetti, Merula and Castello. Here are the dances, canzones and fantasias long favoured by Renaissance composers, streamlined and then re-embellished, the resulting sonatas and sinfonias electric with virtuosic passages and sometimes belligerent “conversations” among the instruments. A good example of the latter is Castello’s…

These two major works from Rachmaninov’s last decade form a substantial and varied program, given here in excellent performances and recorded in very vivid Super Audio format. Thirty-something Russian virtuoso Yevgeny Sudbin gives a dashing account of the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, investing the work with all the requisite drama, colour and wit. Lan Shui and his Singapore musicians are totally committed to the cause and support Sudbin with excellent ensemble. Rachmaninov’s orchestration is brilliantly highlighted by the engineering to the point that everything is very present, and this listener at least lost some sense of sonic perspective on standard audio equipment.Doubtless playback in surround sound would yield added dimensions. Don’t let this caveat, however, deter you from enjoying Sudbin’s considerable artistry. Mention “Rach Three” to music lovers and they will immediately think of the Third Piano Concerto rather than the Third Symphony. Rachmaninov’s symphonies have always lived in the shadow of his piano concertos. Completed a few years after the Paganini variations, the composer’s last symphony did not receive a rapturous welcome and at least one commentator has referred to it as “a sad failure”. Despite all of this, the work does have a voluptuous art deco…

Another young pianist makes a splash with a well-structured and scintillatingly played program. Only 21, Tashkent native Abduraimov won the 2009 London International Piano Competition, and toured Australia earlier this year. If Europe is trying to wrest the piano wunderkind crown back from China, then Abduraimov is definitely the real thing. He takes on the titans in the very first track: Horowitz’s elaboration on Liszt’s piano reduction of Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre. With old-school aplomb Abduraimov produces sparklingly even scale passages, quick clean staccato and over-the-top rubato. Here and there I feel a sense of control being carefully maintained – Horowitz and Earl Wild made pieces like this sound effortless – but what control this young pianist has! Prokofiev’s Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Piano Sonatas were composed in the wake of WWII, and are often called the composer’s war trilogy. They not only form the peak of Prokofiev’s keyboard output, but one of the peaks of 20th-century piano music. Abduraimov toughens his touch in the first movement of the Sixth to conjure up a steely militarism that is frighteningly appropriate. In the pungent slow movement he maps out the dramatic landscape with care and sensitivity, while the Scherzo is suitably light-fingered….