Latest news
APRA AMCOS Announce 2014 Art Music Award Winners
Congratulations to all the nominees and winners in the 2014 APRA AMCOS Art Music Awards, announced in Melbourne tonight! The awards recognise achievement in the composition, performance, education and presentation of Australian music including outstanding contributions by individuals and organisations in Australian music, music education, experimental music, jazz and regional music. Here is the list of Art…
Musica Viva Unveils its 2015 Season
An anniversary is a marvelous excuse for a gathering of friends, and in the case of Musica Viva’s 70th anniversary in 2015, the season is a reason to bring back some of its most popular performers from recent years. Unveiling its 2015 season at Sydney’s City Recital Hall last week, Artistic Director Carl Vine AO,…
Dollhouse – New Ideas In Performing Orchestral Music
Clarinet virtuoso Martin Frost is looking to push the boundaries of the traditional performance and has created a multi-media symphonic work Dollhouse which was premiered by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic in 2013. Dollhouse combines a symphonic performance of the music of Stravinsky, Hillborg, Dukas, Sørensen, Göran Fröst and de Falla with choreography and lighting design. (Link to trailer below). Frost…
Met Talks Reach Agreement
Talks at the Metropolitan Opera in New York have finally resolved the disagreements between workers and management, clearing the way for the opening of the 2014/15 season in September – a new production of The Marriage of Figaro conducted by James Levine. Read the article from the New York Times
Music – It’s In The Genes
You either have it or you don’t – a recent study of 1500 pairs of twins from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute suggests that practising an instrument without a natural gift for it is of little or no value. Read the feature in The Economist
Quartet For The End Of Time
Pianist Steven Osborne presents his insights into Olivier Messien’s Quartet for the End of Time, a landmark work for piano, clarinet, violin and cello, composed whilst Messiaen was an inmate of a Nazi prisoners of war camp and premiering in that camp in 1941, performed by Messiaen and three other prisoners.
Latest reviews
Concert Review – Handel: Heaven and Harmony/ Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Choir
Handel: Heaven and Harmony Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Choir City Recital Hall, Angel Place 25 February 2015 The programmes of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra continually aim to present unfamiliar music or new approaches to well-trodden paths and they also regularly introduce new faces. For their Heaven and Harmony concert all the music was by Handel,…
Review: Gounod’s Faust/ Opera Australia
‘A feeble French travesty of a German literary monument.’ Such was Wagner’s view, in 1867, of Charles-François Gounod’s opera Faust which premiered in Paris in 1859. No matter that Faust was one of the most successful operas of its time, being performed at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, every season from 1863 to 1911 and…