From Mozart's Classical perfection to the dark turbulence of Taneyev, music shows it's power to emote.

The Shock of the New I’ve just returned from Townsville where I spent a very pleasant four days at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, and I’d like to share a secret with you – an aging audience isn’t always a bad thing. An issue that crops up in conversations all the time these days seems to be the million dollar question of how do we get a new audience for classical music? Arts organisations all over the world seem fixated on finding the silver bullet that will rejuvenate their patrons (if I may muddle my metaphors). There’s often an assumption that an older audience is a crusty one, set in its ways and only interested in ‘the three Bs’. A day in Townsville, however, is enough to put you right. Here are a crowd of mostly self-funding retirees (and you need to have the time and a little bit of spare cash to commit to this kind of event) who are up for a challenge. For three sessions a day they eagerly embrace the obscure, the new, and will even listen intently to the downright demanding. During my time up north, Piers Lane and his team offered us everything…

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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……