Cameron Lam explores choirs new and old, and the music written for them, in this month's Australian Art Music playlist.

Cameron Lam explores old favourites and new tracks in this month's Australian Art Music playlist.

With Voss about to be revived, Ian Whitney recalls his first encounter with the famous work, and with Richard Meale himself.

Bernard Lanskey has been announced as the new Director of Queensland Conservatorium after working in Singapore for 15 years.

Christopher Latham explains the motivation behind the 200-strong Vietnam Requiem, a project he hopes will enable the healing of those who were harmed during the war.

Not your usual swansong: Andrew Schultz celebrates the maali, Perth's black swans.

Cameron Lam spotlights the flute in his latest playlist of new Australian music.

Roland Peelman traces the history of the black voice in classical and contemporary music, and explains why George Floyd's final words speak to an uncomfortable truth we cannot hide from.

The inclusion of Andrew Schultz's opera at CIMF was an inspired stroke.

Australian compositions may not immediately spring to mind when you consider the great 20th-century symphonies but, argues Rhoderick McNeill, there is a significant body of work worth celebrating.

Antony Gray is a London-based pianist who has gained praise for his recordings of Poulenc, Bach, Brahms and Goossens and one can see his skill with these composers fertilising this new disc devoted to Schultz’s pianistic output. In the Adelaide-born composer’s music there is a sense of space, which is entirely appropriate to the vast Australian landscape; and unlike many earlier composers, Schultz is is content to write in a more neo-tonal manner without resorting to dissonance or mimicry of birdcry. Even in his recent Interludes (2015), there is a sense of late-Romantic intensity. And though Schultz does not regard himself as much of a pianist, there is much here – a sparseness of creative landscape, which defines modern notions of Australia. His music is more melodic than atonal, and yet almost naively deductive in its sense of logic, place and space. Here is music that is haunting and inward, searching for a sense of landscape if not comprehension. Schultz’s literary influences are disparate – from the 10th-century Japanese Pillow Book to Inventions from his own opera The Children’s Bach after Helen Garner’s touching novella. His counterpoint is all so appropriate, making even more sense of the Bach adopted by…

Helen Gifford OAM heads the diverse list of artists and their notable works rewarded in Melbourne. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in