Australian composer Robert Davidson is almost as ubiquitous in this year’s revolution-themed Canberra International Music Festival as Shostakovich. The composer’s music is often political – broadly fitting the theme of social upheaval – and has attracted attention in the past for incorporating iconic political moments.

Davidson set former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s “apology speech” in a commission for The Australian Voices in 2012, giving Julia Gillard’s famous “misogyny speech” a similar treatment in 2014. His 2016 work Total Political Correctness combined music with video footage of Donald Trump – then campaigning in the Republican Primaries – using excerpts from the now President’s statements on women.

^{Sonya Lifschitz performing Stalin’s Piano at the Canberra International Music Festival. Photos © Peter Hislop}

His new multimedia work for the Canberra International Music Festival, Stalin’s Piano – premiered by Ukrainian-born pianist Sonya Lifschitz – was in a similar vein, presenting a series of vignettes or portraits of 19 historical (including some living) figures, exploring the points where art and politics intersect. Harnessing the words of artists and politicians from Bertolt Brecht and John F Kennedy to Judith Wright...